The Great Whatever

The anti-natalist position is about birth. You cannot decide that you know better than a non-existent person. I am not talking about a hypothetical pe...

One way of putting the anti-natalist sentiment is that having been through life and knowing what it's like, it's not something I would ever want to pu...

Where do you (think you) get your philosophy from?

That is correct. But generally it is not a good idea to inflict harms when the alternative is something indifferent. Thus, the fact that I am not bein...

Special pleading is not nuance. You can claim that your position has been qualified intelligibly to avoid a bad result, but this does not mean you suc...

I am not saying that. There is no one to save. Lack of pleasure is neither good nor bad, it is indifferent.

That giving birth forces someone to undergo incredible amounts of suffering, and so it's better not to do that.

But I'm not claiming that anti-natalism saves people from suffering.

This is not what anti-natalism is about. It is about birth.

You cannot take away an opportunity to live, without taking it away from someone. It makes no sense to say it is just 'taken away.' What does that eve...

Also, just to shove this in your face again, because you keep doing it: No opportunities are being taken away by not procreating. There is nobody to t...

Okay, then answer this: unfortunate for who? Can something be unfortunate simpliciter, without being unfortunate for anyone? Think carefully, and cons...

That is not what you say. What you say is: If the issue is that of being born (and what else could it be, given that we are discussing anti-natalism),...

It is not possible to give someone the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they want to be born. The other option is not to procreate, which ...

If future generations are not missing out, then no one is missing out, and therefore there cannot possibly be anything to object to. You cannot simply...

Okay, so why then is natalism, which makes precisely such a decision, justified? Notice the absurdity of your position: to not have a child because yo...

Because unborn people aren't fictional characters? I don't understand the relevance of this question. As an example, Frodo Baggins is a fictional char...

I feel like this question isn't worth answering. I don't need a complete account of fiction to know unborn people aren't fictional characters. To insi...

No. Unborn people are not fictional characters. Even if one were a modal realist, unborn people would not be actual, and only actual entities can be a...

Also, there is no baby to be thrown out. Unborn people do not exist. Unborn people do not exist. Unborn people do not exist.

Life is mostly misery, there is little joy, for some people none. To focus on joy is cherry picking. Pleasure also plays its part in propagating miser...

My life has been okay. By most standards pretty easy, probably. And yeah, one problem is that each generation forgets the thrashing.

Heh, you haven't met many parents I guess! A lot of sadsacks out there.

The only thing that convinces people is life beating them. There's no point in moralizing at all.

It is not your duty to do anything; but it would be nice if you didn't procreate. What that would accomplish is not brining another generation of mise...

I'm reading over your post and I don't really see anything else?

So if I understand your 'argument,' there's no hope for pessimism because joy is all around if you watch lots of TV?

Yes, I already gave examples regarding suffering. It happens just as a result of living, with no special circumstances needed. Joy is not like this; i...

So you think joy just sort of falls out of the sky? It's literally hard to avoid? It just happens as a result of being alive?

http://www.newser.com/story/147889/death-rates-spike-on-birthdays.html pfffttHAHAHAHA

Boredom and suffering are inevitable, commonplace, and come just as a result of living, whereas there is no surefire, or even easy, or often even poss...

That's certainly what people say about life in the popular mythology, and what maybe you write on a Hallmark card or Facebook post, but whether it's t...

I think a significant portion of the human race, perhaps the majority, lives day to day with no joy in their lives to speak of.

I guarantee you that at this moment, millions of lives are transpiring without any joy. I'd say billions, but let's be conservative.

Our existence in the world is at the same time fundamentally passive and fundamentally coercive. Passive because we can't choose to be born, and our p...

Suffering is guaranteed, joy is unlikely.

Also, to suggest that a real parade of suffering ought to be continued indefinitely in service of a fantasy that one day it will end is absurd.

My own responses to this: 1) I think it's a non-trivial question whether it is possible for life to be fundamentally different from how it is now, tha...

But wait, you got your beliefs from... "Blah blah from my life experience and thinking" pffffffHAHAHAA

I imagine it would differ for different people, but for me, I'd say the obvious important criterion is sentience, in the sense of being able to suffer...

The funny thing about bizarre works of fiction, especially dystopian science fiction (which I took some time to read a bit of earlier this year -- nea...

Look, someone's upset the article's about them (notice that the working class is "them").

Recall this: it is nonsense to require that unborn, i.e. nonexistent people, could, as an alternative, be given 'some say' in the matter. Nonexistent ...

Say it with me, children: you can't make a decision on behalf of non-existent people. So if you are in no way suggesting they are actual people, you h...

No, they don't. They decide nothing for anyone, since there is no person they are making the decision for (the unborn are not people, i.e. do not exis...

But the antinatalist decides the worth of the life of no one, since you cannot decide the worth of the life of someone who isn't born (i.e. doesn't ex...

But it is. How is that a strained use? That's the regular use of the word. As in, it would be false to deny that.

The only way I can make sense of your assertion is by assuming you don't know what the word 'cause' means.

Yes it does -- that is quite literally what it means. And the cause of that thing was their birth.

Sure they do. It is not possible to be born and not suffer. Therefore, they suffer by virtue of being born. Everyone gets over everything in the end, ...