The Great Whatever

So the suffering people experience in the world by virtue of being born is not a problem? Everyone is just whining and will get over it? I'm trying to...

How many people would have to not want to be born in order for it to be not a good idea to reproduce and possibly create such a person. Suppose to sta...

Isn't the natalist, not the antinatalist, deciding for everyone how good life has to be in a sweeping generalization in order for it to be forced on p...

Think of it as therapy for people with Stockholm Syndrome.

Not that I'd ever expect a critic of a philosopher to read the philosopher they're criticizing. But anyone who sees Schopenhauer's project as only one...

Okay, I don't really find discussion with you productive, so it's probably for the best.

I never said babies have a will, nor do I see why that's required/relevant. Still not sure what your point is.

Obviously one cause of death is being born -- though murder would probably not be an appropriate term, because it is a primarily moralistic or legalis...

In a magical time long past, and still in many places in the world today, having children is an economic investment: they provide labor, care for the ...

Not sure what your point is, there's nothing nonsense about what I said.

Not wanting to have children often accompanies being wealthy because there is no financial incentive to have them. To think that babies just pop myste...

If you have alternatives as to where to build a house, and you intentionally build it somewhere where it is sure to be destroyed, I think it is perfec...

But we are deliberately brought into the world by people, and those people know full well that we will be in circumstances that make it unavoidable th...

Okay, I don't see the relevant difference between perfection and an ideal. The point is not that life fails to meet some ideal, but that it's palpably...

It looks to me like you're the one playing word games -- your post all but admits that birth causes suffering and then special pleads to say it doesn'...

I never said only a perfect life was worth living. It's not that life isn't perfect, but that it's (unacceptably) awful, and so it's not the right thi...

It's not arbitrary though, that's what you've been told so you believe it (and you tell it to yourself, obviously quite a lot).

The cause of all these is birth.

The future is not really unknown in an important sense with birth: namely you will suffer terribly, which is guaranteed. Given this I don't see any go...

I don't even understand what you're trying to say. It sounds like you're just saying 'p, but not p.'

As far as I can see I neither said nor implied this, so I don't know what you're on about.

I don't see anything in the previous answers that addresses the question.

So, going forward, if the 22 years of sickness were good for you, shouldn't you strive to make yourself sick for the next 22 years? If not, what's dif...

And that chronic illness made your life better? If you had to relive it, would you rather be healthy for 22 years or sick?

So, shouldn't you be looking for ways to make yourself sick on purpose, so that you can recover from it, since that's better than just staying healthy...

Personally, nothing. I would just like to get out without too much hassle. I'm just trying to make sense of what a natalist expects/wants from life, a...

So you're saying, there is an ideal amount of misery a life should have in order to be happy, but that there can also be superfluous suffering? And th...

So why not purposefully look for ways to suffer? Doesn't that make life worth living? Won't it make you happy? Why not stab yourself in the foot or te...

So, if you want your life to be great, you should look for ways to be miserable? I mean, you should look for apples if you want to make a pie, right?

Misery is not great. I's actually miserable. The knots people put themselves in!

The issue is not sex per se or the pleasure that comes from it, but reproduction. It would be naive not to be wary of the connection between the two, ...

Yeah, my bad, I was in the unfiltered list and didn't realize.

Why are all these topics on this board? Mainstream American politics is not philosophy, even political philosophy.

LOL #bernvictims TOLD, can't stump Trump

I think none. Given that painful truth, you have basically two broad options: (1) stick to your guns and deny that coercion is acceptable, and since a...

Read this claim over and over again until you realize that it's nonsense. I really don't want to discuss this, it's not what the thread is about and I...

Which implies nothing about whether those beliefs are justified, correct, true 'only be happenstance,' etc. But this is derailing anyway.

I don't see why your thoughts being determined means their turning out a certain way is a 'cosmic coincidence.' Indeed put that way the claim is plain...

So what exactly do you think follows from that? Above you said this means that whether the beliefs are true is just happenstance. But this simply does...

That doesn't follow.

It doesn't matter whether my thoughts are determined or not to whether they're true. I would say I'm a 'hard indeterminist' overall, but acknowledge (...

Yes you do, hold your breath for three minutes.

No, I understand, it's just a terrible argument. A variant of it is used by certain sort of religious apologists often. Not that that discredits it in...

In some cases you are. In some cases, other incentives overpower that (in which case, one can't really be blamed for suicide in the sense that one can...

What does that have to do with suicide? It was about breathing, etc. not being freely done because they're done on pain of coercion. The rest is about...

I don't think I ever said that I can't find anywhere where I did, but you're free to point me to it if you find it.

Because you brought it up and so I responded.

It obviously doesn't, since I've explicitly included suicide among those possible actions.

The operative quote:

I was talking about birth the whole time. Everything I mentioned about suicide was in explicit response to you.