Fuck this book

[Anonymous No.16304720]

Firstly, the asymmetry makes no sense. How can a lack of pain be a good, when nothing exists to benefit from it? You must exist for welfare states to apply to you. And if the lack of pain is good for a non-existent nothing, then a lack of pleasure is bad for a non-existent nothing. It makes zero sense. At most, what we can say is. given the assumption that we should privilege the prevention of suffering over literally everything (literally, the entire human race, all meaning, value, everything, as long as someone is going to get a boo-boo we should do away with the whole universe entirely..), we should not have children.

But why make that assumption? It's stupid. And why don't we then apply that assumption to our own, already here lives? Why don't we just kill ourselves because we know 100% we're going to suffer in the future? David benatar is still alive, so either he's a pussy faggot who doesn't live by his own philosophy (probable), or he thinks there's some distinction that applies between preventing our own, and our childrens sufferings?

Secondly, he takes an arrogant paternalistic approach to the value people give to their own lives. He literally spends half the book telling people "well akchsually you may THINK you're life is good but it's actscchully bad!! and I know the truth!! IYOU ARE WRONG ABOUT THE VALUE OF YOUR OWN LIFE!! I AM RIGHT!""

Fuck you? I value my life, and I think his real issue is this autistic brute focus on hedonic pleasure and pain. What makes my life good is not some autistic scale on my shoulders that balances my pleasure units against my pain units, but rather what my life means to me - my ends, my aims, my relationships, my family, my girlfriend. I value my life because it's meaningful to me. I am interested in what is to come, and I don't want what is here now to go away or end. It's as if benatar is saying "well, if I autistically calculate your 'here and now' hedonic units, it's actually more pain than pleasure!!". And my response is so? Even if that is true, the balance of those units whichever which way is not what makes my life good. I think he's confused, because he probably contemplates suicide because his balance is in the negative, and thinks people live solely because there's is in the positive. But that's not the case. For example that victor frankl book, about people living through pure misery because even then, they found meaning and value.

[Anonymous No.16304725]

>>16304720
And then he says we shouldn't gamble with other people's welfare, when they are the ones who suffer the loss. Well firstly, I can't gamble with chips that don't exist. The child must first be born before you can address it's welfare states. Something must be first existing before you can 'gamble' on the quality of it's life. And it's not a gamble either, it's not luck. It's called good parenting. "B-but what if your kid gets cancer!!" Yeah that's bad, but is that a reason to end the human race? Many people get cancer and are glad to live and have lived. And what about the here and now? You can kill a kid just driving your car down the road, but I'm sure benatar drives one. What's the difference? We could avoid all road accidents by doing away with cars altogether. But fuck that. I like driving, we can make roads safer, cars safer, train drivers better, educate pedestrians.

This whole book triggered me, it's like he see's life like a game of chess that he's losing, and his 'solution' is just to flip the fucking board over. Nobody plays (and therefore nobody else feels the pain of losing). The logic makes sense in a crude sort of way, but to me, that is a just a reductio ad absurdum of the whole utilitarian project. If your moral theory ends up advocating for the extinction of the human race, it's time to go back to the drawing board

[Anonymous No.16304728]

>>16304720

[Anonymous No.16304811]

David Benatar just suffers from clinical depression, and his entire project is just the ultimate exercise in cope.

[Anonymous No.16304823]

>>16304720
Congrats you just re-invented Nietzsche's response to Schopenhauer's anti-natalism.
Thizs is one of the reasons I can't take an*lytics seriously, they pay no attention to history outside of their little logic game laboratory and end up re-inventing the wheel.

[Anonymous No.16304832]

>>16304823
>Thizs
*This

[Anonymous No.16304843]

>>16304823
>Nietzsche's response

More like his cope

[Anonymous No.16304890]

i think the book makes sense but we are programmed to survive and procreate regardless and any control we think we have is just an illusion so it's whatever

[Anonymous No.16304903]

>I want to have a child for my own satisfaction, and I'm willing to accept the risk that he or she might end up with a life not worth living
What exactly is an acceptable risk to your child in exchange for your ego masturbation? Would you accept a 40% risk? How about a 4% risk? How much pleasure would you have to be offered in order to accept a 0.4% chance that you child be tortured, killed, or horribly disfigured?

[Anonymous No.16304922]

>>16304720
Neither antinatalists nor natalists will ever achieve anything with their respective philosophies. They’re completely pointless. Natalists will continue to create more ANs, and people won’t care about all the suffering, no matter how much there is, and create more people. Why would they care? They neglected it for thousands of years, it’s completely irrelevant if either philosophy is more justified for whatever reason.

[Anonymous No.16304931]

>>16304903
>and I'm willing to accept the risk that he or she might end up with a life not worth living

You act like procreation is like spinning a roulette wheel, but parenting is a game of skill, not chance. We would be good parents, and would make sure our child would live a good life. I want a child because me and my gf would make a good family, would love our child, and life itself is good. It's good to be born into a good family, to experience joy and laughter and happiness. Why is that so wrong?

[Anonymous No.16304938]

>>16304922
that may be true, but the same logic could be applied to any ethical theory. Governments legislate against murder, but people still kill each other. Vegans blabber endlessly, but the slaughter continues.

That's not the issue here. It's about whether procreation is the right/wrong thing to do. First that issue must solved, and then comes the political action.

[Anonymous No.16304994]

>>16304938
This problem will not be solved as long as people tend to believe happiness can outweigh suffering. I’d be interested in hearing what people who have experienced some extreme cases of suffering have to say about this, they are never included in such debates.

[Anonymous No.16305027]

>>16304931
>but parenting is a game of skill, not chance
kek. implying you have any individual control what so ever of your childs development (and destiny) in the current year. big fat kek

[Anonymous No.16305033]

>>16304720
You did it wrong.
Firstly you should have read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race and then maybe this book.

[Anonymous No.16305064]

>>16305033
I read that book and it's a piece of shit

[Anonymous No.16305083]

>>16304720
>Firstly, the asymmetry makes no sense. How can a lack of pain be a good, when nothing exists to benefit from it?
You can't beat AN's arguments with a counter-argument from the point of view of "this side of the grave", so to speak. AN's arguments are inherently transcendent with regards to life here on earth, and as long as you concieve of "existance" only in terms of a mortal life you can't beat their arguments. This is why most Anti-AN's are brainlets, they can't into the realm of the transcendent. Typical of Anti-AN's to not even be capable of understanding the notion of "existing, but not being born" such as for example the state you were in before being born. Very materialistic thinking , many such cases.

[Anonymous No.16305120]

>>16305083
>such as for example the state you were in before being born.

ahh, the magical state where the lack of pleasure, for nothing, is neutral, but somehow the lack of pain, for nothing, is good? Both are neutral/irrelevant/nonsensical, just like this sentence:

>"existing, but not being born" such as for example the state you were in before being born.

I did not pre-exist my own birth. Nothing existed for 'states' to apply to. AN's literally think there's an actual purgatory realm or some shit where baby souls are sucked from and shoved into a baby.

Children form from worldy affairs. An egg and sperm meet and fetus develops in womb. There is no non-existence 'non-existence prior to birth' where you somehow existed as a non-existent thing, and somehow spawned in this world from there. There is just the world, with it's human biological reproduction.

[Anonymous No.16305125]

>I did not pre-exist my own birth.

[Anonymous No.16305136]

>>16305120
>AN's literally think there's an actual purgatory realm or some shit where baby souls are sucked from and shoved into a baby.

[Anonymous No.16305202]

>>16305136
>>16305125
retarded eternalists

[Anonymous No.16305208]

>>16305202
>retarded
You're projecting, bro.

[Anonymous No.16305245]

>>16305125

[Anonymous No.16305248]

>>16305125
Yes
>>16305136
Cringe

[Anonymous No.16305760]

>>16304931
>Based on absolutely nothing, I can confidently claim that I am good enough of a parent to absolutely guarantee that my child never burns to death in a house fire
You're a fucking moron. God help your offspring.

[Anonymous No.16305765]

Reminder that you have no obligation towards a person that doesn't exist, but you do have obligations toward future people that you choose to create.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16305773]

There’s a very very very simple solution to this problem.

“I do not consider it as an axiom that pleasure or suffering matter on an ethical level” boom they literally have no argument. If you do not value the basis of their argument it doesn’t matter how much pleasure or suffering they may argue for.

>>16304903

See above, pain and please do not inherently matter, they are subjective valuations and thus I can have a different subjective morality. There has been no proof that pain-pleasure is the basis of a universal moral and ethical life, so I have no reason to accept it as some universal basis.

[Anonymous No.16305781]

>>16305120
>>16305773
The board is fucking crawling with braindead redditors
What the fuck is going on?

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16305801]

>>16305781

/lit/ has become known as /b/ without the porn by a lot of folks, it attracting unironic redditors is not surprising, I personally have never used Reddit and do not intend to ever use it. Point remains though, I haven’t seen a single argument for why we should all accept the axioms of what amounts to negative-utilitarianism applied in the most hedonistic way possible, which if extended to everyone would amount to everything in nature being dissolved.

[Anonymous No.16305802]

Based Opee

[Anonymous No.16305814]

>>16305801
I haven't read a single academic critique of this book.
But if you want to have kids then sure go ahead, who gives a shit?

[Anonymous No.16305817]

>>16305781
r*ddit is unironically a breeding ground for godless heathens who profess anti-natalism, a code word for anti-whiteness. Now go back you soi drinking faggot.

[Anonymous No.16305818]

>>16305773
That wasn't my argument. My argument was that in order to choose to have children, you have to judge that:
>Your desire to have children is important
>Your future child's desires are not important
Without the first, you would simply decide not to have children unless it might actually affect the survival of the species. Without the second, you have to actually consider whether your child will ultimately want to be born. There's many reasons why he or she might not want to, that are entirely outside of your control as a parent, such as a severe birth defect or being crippled in a car accident. Note that never having been born is a very distinct state from being killed, so you can't just disregard this by saying "if it's really that bad, he can just kill himself."

[Anonymous No.16305828]

>>16305817
Thanks for showing your Christian generosity.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16305849]

>>16305814

Ya don’t need to because again, you can just battle the ethics itself and not worry about his argument stemming from acceptance of his ethics.

You can look at Nietzsche, Nicholai Hartman, Heidegger, every single deontologist like Kant, the logos-rational-causal system of Hegel, Hell the stoics and Epicureans would even have arguments for why life has other values or for why life is enjoyable. If you apply any level of skepticism towards the acceptance that the Good=the pleasurable and the Bad=suffering, the entire argument falls into pieces.

[Anonymous No.16305855]

>Thanks for showing your Christian generosity.

[Anonymous No.16305881]

>>16305849
I don't need to read these thinkers to rationalise having kids because I have my life experiences. And I fully agree with the thesis of Schopenhauer.
Also Epicurus argued against having kids, although not for pessimistic reasons.

[Anonymous No.16305892]

>>16305760
I can't absolutely guarantee anything.

What I see as the fundamental distinction between the breeders and the ball-snippers, is the amount of risk they are willing to take on behalf of their children. AN's say no risk at all. Breeders say some.

AN's claim moral superiority. But like I said in the OP, we all take risks with other people's lives and safety all the time. I can't guarantee I'm not going to crash my car and waste some schoolkids, but I still drive. I can't guarantee the people I cook for are not going to get food poisoning from my dishes. You can't guarantee saftey 100% in anything, but that's never stopped anyone, even the AN's.

Why is having children some sort of fundamentally different thing? Explain it. I risk pain and harm to others when I drive in a school zone. I risk pain and harm to my child by conceiving it. One - we all do. The other - endless debate on /lit/.

AN's just regret their own births and project that onto the unborn. As if by preventing the births of others they can somehow erase their own. What they need is mental help, not their life denying philosophy.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16305901]

>>16305881

I get what you’re saying but I’m saying it’s incredibly easy to argue against the basis of their ethics, and as for epicurus, yes but because he wanted to maximize pleasure and quality of pleasure which has fullness of expression in the intellectual. That’s fundamentally an enjoyment of Life, it isn’t doom and gloom whatsoever.

[Anonymous No.16305916]

>>16305855
Why you're mocking Jerry Messing for no reason?
He is really nice dude. And he has been getting bullied for this photo from a long time.

[Anonymous No.16305930]

>>16305916
that's gabe newell you dip

[Anonymous No.16305946]

>>16305901
Life isn't doom and gloom maybe if you live in a first world country. But it's pretty suffocating here in third world and it is totally doom and gloom. If you're rich then things get boring(according to my well off friends) most of the times.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16305973]

>>16305946

Doom and gloom as in the epicurean justification, and once more suffering/pleasure aren’t inherently valuable. And it isn’t a matter of first world/third world, physical labor, sickness, disease, ennui and so forth exist globally. The Answers remain the same, seeking pleasure makes pleasure the furthest from you, the largest part of joy being interior based and being remedied by philosophy, religion and Art.

[Anonymous No.16306004]

>>16305973
>And it isn’t a matter of first world/third world,
Kek, you have literally no clue about 3rd world. And you should feel lucky and privileged if you find "joy" in art, religion, philosophy and you have time to "meaningfully" pursue these things.
Keep licking the honey while your at it.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16306013]

>>16306004

Sir I am literally a Gypsy; what part of first world does that imply.

[Anonymous No.16306155]

>>16306013
You still live in Europe and I can assure you that lowest Gypsies living standard isn't as bad as at least middle lower class in my country.
If you want to see the condition of Indian subcontinent's Gypsies then google "Changar" caste. European Gypsies may have stopped living the nomadic life. But these poor souls are still stuck in that painful bullshite cycle.

[Anonymous No.16306394]

>>16304720
a sad book from someone who's never experienced wilderness or the true power-process. this ideology is the end-point of technology.

Read Kaczynski.

[Anonymous No.16306404]

>>16306394
>Read Kaczynski.
Mega cringe

[Anonymous No.16306435]

>>16306394
>Kaczynski
He have no kids.

[Anonymous No.16307397]

>>16305892
>AN's just regret their own births and project that onto the unborn. As if by preventing the births of others they can somehow erase their own. What they need is mental help, not their life denying philosophy.
This has no basis in reality. Even if you have a perfect life, you cannot control the innumerable variables that produce such a life sufficiently to assure that your offspring will have the same quality of existence. Having children isn't imo something that one should renounce completely, but humanity as a collective is FAR too flippant about it. Nearly every major social issue which exists could be treated with superior society-wide control of reproduction, and a growing majority of births in America and Europe are in low-income, single-parent families.

People who are in effect ANs are primarily middle-income people intelligent enough to take child-rearing seriously but not affluent enough to have time.

[Anonymous No.16307456]

>>16305892
I, as an AN, don't say "none," you, on the other hand, don't even consider the risks. As I asked before, what number would you consider an acceptable risk to your unborn child? I'm not projecting my own resentment onto others, I'm simply aware of and accepting of the possibility that my potential future children could end up with an agonizing and unfulfilled existence, while you're in complete denial of it. You give examples of risks you would take with yourself or with others, but what is the level of risk you're willing to accept with regards to *your own children*?

[Anonymous No.16307490]

Based posts OP
Not many OPs arent giant faggots, i'm glad you shared your thoughts, they were essentially the same as mine but i wasnt able to express them
Thanks again, primito

[Anonymous No.16307654]

https://www.youtube.com/user/inmendham

[Anonymous No.16307858]

>And, after all this time, i have seen that it would have been Better Never To Have Been.
Seriously, Benatar?

[a No.16307939]

>>16307456
the theology behind any facetors of pleasure units is much beyond people who write a statute book never mind the egyptians.

viewed as lickable sundial magnet explanations.capwhenyouccancapwhenyoucan

[OP No.16308488]

>>16307490
I'm actually an antinatalist (I got a vasectomy at 25). I just wrote the OP from the perspective of a natalist to start a debate.