/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12321598]

Sweet reminder that there are no successful arguments against antinatalism

[Anonymous No.12321612]

>>12321598
>Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not “the absence of pain,” intelligence is not “the absence of stupidity,” light is not “the absence of darkness,” an entity is not “the absence of a nonentity.” Building is not done by abstaining from demolition; centuries of sitting and waiting in such abstinence will not raise one single girder for you to abstain from demolishing.
-Ayn Rand

[Anonymous No.12321615]

>>12321598

[Anonymous No.12321626]

>>12321598
I was an antinatalist for a while, then I realized that my biochemical system was just inferior to others and that my highs were not as high as theirs and my lows were lower than theirs. I’d love to believe the Schopenhauer/Buddhism/etc pill is for everyone (misery loves company, as they say), but I’ve come to understand it is a salvation only for us defective types. I still try to hit the gym, eat right, get good sleep, and so on, because that can help a lot. In the end, I’m gonna just have to exit samsara.

[Anonymous No.12321627]

>>12321598
>Pain is a bad thing

[Anonymous No.12321637]

>>12321598
How someone appreciate the pain they're not subjected to if they don't exist?
Fucking stupid, unless some spinster's feelings of self-satisfaction supersede the value of life itself.
Also >>12321627
Enjoy Brave New World

[Anonymous No.12321648]

I don't think you can convince someone not to have children with an argument. It's such a deeply ingrained biological drive. Most of the arguments against it are just word games (>>12321637), name-calling (>>12321615), or some sort of religious delusion (>>12321627). A person will either come to a deeper understanding of their own self-awareness through experience, or they won't. Most won't.

[Anonymous No.12321672]

>>12321612
>-Ayn Rand
did not read

[Anonymous No.12321680]

>>12321672
Do recommend

[Anonymous No.12321684]

Negative utilitarianism is retarded.

[Anonymous No.12321688]

>>12321598
>absence of pain is a good thing for a being that doesn't exist

[Anonymous No.12321691]

>>12321598
reminder that even fucking peterson of all people beat the leading antinatalist in a debate on the topic. he couldn't even say why pain is bad

[Anonymous No.12321697]

>>12321691
>he couldn't even say why pain is bad
You shouldn't need to.

[Anonymous No.12321699]

antinatalism is aesthetically wrong.

[Anonymous No.12321702]

>>12321697
But you have to if you want to make an argument. Why is a decrease in suffering better than an increase in happiness?

[Anonymous No.12321782]

>>12321691
>>12321697
Any attempt to answer this other than assert it's an axiomatic self evidency is doing fucking wrong.

[Anonymous No.12321790]

>>12321782
>it's an axiomatic self evidency
It's not.

[Anonymous No.12321792]

>>12321697
Define “pain”

[Anonymous No.12321839]

>>12321648
>muh word games
>muh religion
Antinatalists are the fucking worst debaters. What more can you expect from someone following the dumbest fucking meme ideology in existence? Well since they're so obsessed with pragmatism let me pose this to them. If you are born and you don't like your life you have an easy out. You can just kill yourself. But if you're not born you're never given a chance to decide whether you find life an endeavour worth living through or not. And given most don't kill themselves we can determine that most found something to live for.

[Anonymous No.12321884]

>Pain
>Innately Bad
>Pleasure
>Innately Good

[Anonymous No.12322039]

>>12321790
How else do you propose to validate that pain=bad?

[Anonymous No.12322086]

>>12321637
>>12321627
Dumb masochists

[Anonymous No.12322102]

antinatalism is a reddit ideology, what more argument do you need

[Anonymous No.12322150]

>>12321612
>when you agree with rand

what went wrong

[Anonymous No.12322158]

>>12322102
am actual argument

[Anonymous No.12322218]

>>12322150
Maybe there's a degree of meta you don't know about her

[Anonymous No.12322263]

>>12321691
>even fucking peterson
Wow, even Peterson? And he's like the smartest guy ever!

[Anonymous No.12322354]

>>12321697
>You shouldn't need to.
Not an argument.

[Anonymous No.12322364]

>>12322354
empirical evidence?

[Anonymous No.12322394]

>>12322364
Proof that it is empirical?

[Anonymous No.12322409]

Why is a decrease in suffering better than an increase in happiness?

[Anonymous No.12322565]

>>12321839
>kill yourself
Big difference between suicide and not having kids. Not having kids doesn't hurt anyone. Suicide is often a terrible ordeal for the person before s/he dies and also for friends and family. Parents with dead kids are broken.
>inb4 no one loves you
They do
>never given a chance to decide whether you find life an endeavour worth living through
There's no unborn kid in the sky who wants to be born to check it out. You're not depriving anyone of the experience.
>given most don't kill themselves we can determine that most found something to live for
We're wired to stay alive and be optimistic; see the Pollyanna principle. There are also different standards for beginning a new life and continuing one. If you lost an arm, you'd probably keep going. If you found that your baby would be born without an arm, you'd probably abort it. (That's just an example, maybe replace the arm with something more convincing).

[Anonymous No.12322602]

>>12321598
Based

[Anonymous No.12322605]

>>12321598
>suffering isn't bad
Just debunked it in 3 words

[Anonymous No.12323043]

>>12321648
This. In 2015 there was some actual discussion taking place, now that /lit/ has been overrun with /pol/, unironic Randroids and larping Catholics it's just a shitshow.

[Anonymous No.12323050]

>>12321612

[Anonymous No.12323051]

The fact that the vast majority of people want to continue living, and don't regret being born, is a good argument against anti-natalism.

[Anonymous No.12323074]

>>12323051
It's not really. Vast majority of people thought owning slaves was ok and think that factory farming is ok, neither is.

[Anonymous No.12323140]

>>12322565
It's a bit of pain before committing suicide but at the end of the day it is your decision to make.You can do it whenever you want.
>there is no one waiting to be born
Of course,but there is definitely someone hoping they are never born.
>the parents feel bad
They may also feel bad if they never had children.
>We are programmed to live
So you are programmed to find life meaningful? Not to mention an instinct is just that. You can act against it anytime.

[Anonymous No.12323145]

>>12323074
Both of these things harm other people. You projecting your subjective experiences onto theirs is different from that. Also
>owning slaves and factory farming is wrong

[Anonymous No.12323147]

>>12323043
>before it pandered to me but now it doesn't WAAAH

[Anonymous No.12323161]

Absence of pain, when differentiated from the presence of pleasure as in the picture, is the same thing as absence of pleasure, thus both are neutral and scenario a and b are equivalent.

[Anonymous No.12323166]

>>12321598
Only if we accept the premise that pain is bad (it cannot be; pain's basic function is to serve life) and that pleasure is the point of life (highly debatable).

Every flavor of coolaid is fascinating, anon. Antinatal guavapeach doesnt have a corner on the market.

[Anonymous No.12323173]

Sweet reminder that antinatalism is used by angry virgins to justify their lack of drive

[Anonymous No.12323177]

>>12321598
>Absence of pain: good
>Absence of pleasure: not bad
???

[Anonymous No.12323184]

>Absence of pain is good
>Therefore willingly making yourself paralysed from the neck down is a good thing because it reduces your pain

[Anonymous No.12323187]

>>12321598
We're not in a position to permanently end all life everywhere right now, and it's not clear we ever will be. We could conceivably end much of current life on earth, but doing so would achieve nothing but subject countless beings to a senseless repeat of the brutal evolutionary struggle our forebears endured to get us to the point where we are just now beginning to gain power over our collective destiny. The more sophisticated life becomes, the greater its potential to influence the universe at large and thus minimize suffering in self and other. Antinatalism is about as immoral as it gets.

[Anonymous No.12323542]

>>12323051
Vast majority of people don't have euthanasia legalized in their countries. Vast majority of people make kids accidantely because they don't pull out on time.
Vast majority of people don't publicly express they're antinatalists because the public doesn't know this exists as a philosophy, let alone accept it as an attitude

[Anonymous No.12323645]

>Inflicting pain onto others is tolerable because pain isn't bad.
Okay?

[Anonymous No.12323657]

I thought that it was common knowledge as to the failure of DB's axiological asymmetries, I'd recommend Cabreras essay on the counterfactual approach if you haven't already read it.

[Anonymous No.12323660]

>>12323184
Pain is not only physical, it can also be psychological. Thus paralyzing yourself from the neck down would, in my opinion, lead to more pain than pleasure.

[Anonymous No.12323676]

>>12323660
Not to worry we can place you in a medically induced coma and then you'll have no pain at all and that would logically be the optimal state of living for the anti-Natalist

[Anonymous No.12323685]

>>12323676
No because in the anti-Natalist moral system not only pain exists, but also its inversion; pleasure. the goal is not solely to minimize pain, but also to maximize pleasure. The latter is neglected in your example.

[Anonymous No.12323694]

>>12323685
Absence of pleasure isn't a bad thing therefore being paralysed and comatose is the irrefutably optimal state of living for the anti-Natalist because it reduces all pain to a negligible level which is an objective good

[r/books No.12323705]

Let's say a guy has you and another person's legs tied up. He has a gun. He says he's going to bash the other person with the butt of his gun if you don't give yourself some pain with one smack to your own face. Oh but you're antinatalist, so it's wrong to smack yourself because any pain whatsoever means nobody should be born, and he bashes you both.

[Anonymous No.12323716]

>>12323694
Absence of pleasure is neutral - whether good nor bad - but presence of pleasure is good and thus better than the neutral state. Thus being paralyzed would not be optimal, since presence of pleasure is better than absence of pleasure.

[Anonymous No.12323717]

>>12323694
>criteria B is maximizing pleasure
>absence of pleasure doesn't break criteria A
are you retarded or just not reading the other person? in any case, why bother posting?

[Anonymous No.12323729]

>>12323716
The anti-Natalist states that it is better not to live at all than to suffer any form of pain and since according to the anti-Natalist life is suffering it is impossible to both have absence of pain and have pleasure at the same time so again the paralysed comatose state is objectively the most optimal state for the anti-Natalist to live in

[r/books No.12323745]

>>12323716
All you have to do is pump the comatose person with serotonin, dopamine, etc. It's fairly easy to invent dystopias or horror with antinatalist ideology, like Brave New World's or Wall-E's. You could kidnap people and pump them full of good-feeling chemicals, that's ok because now they're happier.

[Anonymous No.12323746]

>>12323705
>He says he's going to bash the other person
>he bashes you both
Epic.

[Anonymous No.12323758]

>>12323729
Paralyzation would only be good if continuing living would result in more pain than pleasure. If continuing living would result in more pleasure than pain, then continuing life would be optimal.

[Anonymous No.12323772]

>>12322150
Sometimes you need to give the devil their due.

[Anonymous No.12323781]

>>12323745
I don't disagree with you. I'm not an anti-Natalist myself. I just wasn't content with his way of arguing against the anti-Natalist moral system.

[Anonymous No.12324430]

Why is a decrease in suffering better than an increase in happiness?

[Anonymous No.12324696]

>>12321598
>Absence of pain
>Good
Yikes

[Anonymous No.12324704]

>>12323745
We need to spread out into the universe and convert as much matter as possible into pleasure-experiencing-machines

[Anonymous No.12324728]

Why haven't you killed yourself yet? That would be the most convincing argument you can make.

[Anonymous No.12324737]

>>12324728
>cuz it's too hard wahhhhhh >:(((

[Anonymous No.12324763]

>>12321598
this is such a dumb chart. by that logic spilling some coffee myself is just as bad as losing my father to cancer. good and bad are not measurements to judge the value of life accurately. just because you aren't having the time of your life every second of the day doesn't mean you have a bad life and you are just burning wick waiting for death. How can you even consider this chart to be an argument when life so much more complicated that pain or pleasure?

[Anonymous No.12324765]

>>12321598
There are also no successful arguments for it when talking to someone who feels an inherent will to love life.

[Anonymous No.12324788]

>>12324765
Such as?

[Anonymous No.12325408]

>>12323145
>Also
>>owning slaves and factory farming is wrong

no point even talking to you desu. fuck off

[Anonymous No.12325418]

>>12322102
kek this basically