Antinatalism

What does /lit think about antinatalism?

This book provides a nice summary for the arguments for and against. Personally found the antinatalist more compelling.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Q7wIQckNS9o
vhemt.org/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Anti-natalism makes me want to dump my cum into a nice lady.

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First of all, that OP is my hero.

Second, why is /lit so ignorant about this? 99% of the replies in that thread were "LOL why don't you kys?"

what do you think about the replies about there being no basis to prefer pleasure over pain. that was me

If you're asking this question, I assume that you agree the world contains a lot of pain/suffering

It's OK if you think that we shouldn't prefer pleasure over pain, but clearly, many people don't share this view.

So why should you get to make this choice for another person (the person that gets born into this world)?

it isn't simply a matter of a difference of opinion. by moving the discussion to discussing whether or not I'm justified in making that choice for another person you're skipping over the most important part of this debate which is whether or not my view is actually correct. even if we both agreed that I have no justification for making that decision for another person that says nothing about the truth of my position.

Benatar
>Derives from Ben-Atar, a Hebrew name signifying descendance from Atar
Wasserman
> German (Wassermann) and Jewish (Ashkenazic): German topographic name or Jewish ornamental or occupational name from Middle High German wazzer, German Wasser, Yiddish vaser ‘water’ + Middle High German -man ‘man’, Yiddish -man (see Wasser). This surname is also established in Sweden.

Yes white bigoted goyim, don't breed. Oy vey, remember the sixteen gorillion.

wew lad

Antinatalism is literally a psy-op to lower the birthrates of certain pale, genteel demographics perceived as ethnic rivals by a certain mercantile tribe of Khazarian extraction.

If by your position, you mean "no basis to prefer pleasure over pain", then sure you're right. This is a matter of preference and therefore there can't be a fact of the matter. But I don't see how this advances the pro-natalist position.

To add, we avoid pain, not simply as a matter of preference but also due to an instinctual/neurobiological drive which a biologist may explain better.

So glad that /pol could join us.

well, i already have 1 kid. and my wife and i are trying for another. so that should say more about my stance than any philosophical rhetoric.

not that i claim everyone should have kids. i don't care what choices individuals make on this subject, and i understand that some people don't want them. that's fine. i just know that for me having a kid has been the most amazing and rewarding thing i have ever experienced.

The judgement that life is shit is subjective judgement.
Therefore, it would immoral for me to project my own subjective judgement and not create more beings, giving them the sacred choice of deciding if life is worth it or not.

Now excuse me while I impregnate my wife for 5th time, lads.

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Nothing inherently terrible about life. Gay pessimism.

Suffering happens. Get over it pussies. Life is full of good shit too to balance it out. Can't think of anything more pussified than deliberately not wanting to carry on your lineage. Antinatalism is sick to the core.

>most amazing and rewarding thing i have ever experienced
How very selfish, you ironically have backed up Benatar's point you brainlet

anti-natalists place all the emphasis on suffering but they give no points to pleasure, to them a pleasurable existence is neutral, but a life of suffering is a negative, and somehow it's also a positive thing to "give" somebody who doesn't exist a life of non-suffering, by not bringing them into existence. Sam Harris rightly pointed this out in his podcast with Benatar

If you took any amount of time to attempt to understand the anti-natalist's argument then you would not find the points you have just made compelling. My guess is you've already had your life ruined by getting married and having a child or that you are underage. Having to deal with people like you that think 'get over it pussies' amounts to a decent argument only serves to back up the point that life is suffering. Try educating yourself

>be born
>wow life is good
>thanks mom and dad

>be born
>wow life is shit
>kms

So, what's wrong with this again?

>the (((authors))) of this book.
What a surprise

There is a certain point where evolution selects against intelligence. Most highly intelligent people either breed below replacement rate or not at all.

When you're too smart conscience backfires. Life seems to favour a ~60 to ~110 IQ pleb who can't really oversee the consequences of his actions.

The irony is that the same lack of foresight that causes people to breed is also the lack of foresight that causes them to ruin the environment in which their children have to live.

Intelligent life is a fragile new gimmick that won't last anyway. Take the Medea hypothesis pill.

Benatar uses this analogy to help brainlets understand his point 'a performance at the theater, for example, might not be bad enough to leave, but if you knew in advance that it would be as bad as it is, you would not have come in the first place.' Though I would recommend actually engaging with the material yourself.

Most people are stuck at the theater but for various reasons don't have the willpower or desire to go ahead and commit suicide. It is, after all, completely against our nature

So, people shouldn't make plays because of the possibility that some people might not enjoy it, despite the evidence that most people find plays enjoyable?

If you were born and had to live forever, anti-natalism would make sense. But you're free to leave at any time or just wait out the play if you're too much of a pussy to leave.

Pleasure is dopamine and serotonin. It gets no points because the pleasure you get isn't special its a combination of different neurotransmitters. In the absence of these there is only suffering. Suffering is the default state

Make no mistake you are not 'free' to leave at any time. Your subjective perception of reality has to reach such a low-point that every fiber of your being fights to end itself. Suicide is not a free choice like everything else that humans 'choose' to do.
How long do I have to wait for people to catch up to modern science and realize that free will doesn't exist?

I like it. I'm astonished at the number of people who fail to understand the very simple core argument of it, though.

They understand the core argument but respond with the equivalence of cupping their hands over their ears and screaming 'lalalala'. I imagine most of them are saddled with bringing up a child they don't really want and are trying to justify their decisions

how much of a fucking shitty life do you have to have to become an antinatalist? i've had numerous shitty periods in my life and i'm still incredibly glad i was born.

youtube.com/watch?v=Q7wIQckNS9o

>Pleasure is dopamine and serotonin
suffering is the same thing, without transmitters how could you possibly suffer? If I'm on fire or my dog dies I can't feel pain or suffering without those same receptors. if you want to argue suffering goes beyond that then I can argue that pleasure also goes beyond dopamine and serotonin

Why did you ignore the rest of his post? The first sentence of his that you're responding to is just the first part of his argument

Too bad the book is in English.
Maybe you should translate it and hand out copies in third world shitholes instead of convincing first world young males (likely white) that they shouldn't reproduce.

Fuck off, rabbi.

suffering isn't the default state if suffering also relies on neurotransmitters and biology. Rocks don't suffer, they are in a neutral state. Somebody who doesn't exist is in a neutral state, and their life could either be good or bad with positives and negatives which tip the scale in either direction

Reasons to have children
>Economic growth
>Fulfillment of natural order
>Family
>The joy of life

Arguably certain classes of people are not going to get the full value out of these reasons, but no one in this thread can make that argument for themselves.

These conditions are imposed upon them by their own government's stupid policies, and have nothing to do with large families.

Ironically for the purpose of your argument, the children in the video seem quite happy.

I cannot fathom the kind of little bitch who would unironically be anti-natalist (barring edgy teenagers)

>no basis to prefer pleasure over pain
I think the practice of putting terminally ill pets to sleep is pretty strong evidence against that claim.
I guess you could argue people do this because they're selfish and not because they care about their pets, but I think that would be a pretty silly argument to try to make. Most people aren't psychopaths and have their pets put to sleep because they love them and want to spare them suffering, not because they'd prefer getting out of having to take care of them.

s-screw you man, i f-felt real suffering, you don't know what it's like.
fuck you mom and dad im not giving you grandchildren haha life is pain :(

>I am miserable and unsuccessful, my life is not worth passing on
Its absolutely pathetic

Having a reaction like that is probably the least mature stance you could take. Antinatalist writers aren't teenagers, they're mostly old guy academics. And their motivation isn't to be "edgy," it's to prevent suffering.

There's just two things here I don't get:

1) Why is there this overall assumption that choosing not to have children is some form of suffering? It's not like forcing yourself to remain abstinent despite your growing urges, there just literally is no urge. Some people just don't want to have kids.

2) Why does everyone shit on people who don't want to have kids? So what if they don't want to have kids? What's the worst fate you could imagine for them - cutting off their lineage and denying them successors? Whoops, they already chose to do that and are totally okay with it. So, basically, you already won.

Why are you assuming the antinatalist has a miserable or unsuccessful life?
Most of these writers are well educated, wealthy, and don't have cancer, so you're probably missing the mark there.
This is a common lazy line of attack people make on this topic, trying to shift the focus to the person you're arguing with instead of dealing with the actual merits of their argument.

>Why does everyone shit on people who don't want to have kids?

Because they extend that personal choice to everyone else.
Same thing with vegans, they have to tell everybody they're immoral because they like burgers.
Fuck off.

The appropriate food stance is to be a meat eater who knows it's morally questionable but who does it anyway because the alternative of a vegetable heavy diet would involve trashing your intestines with undigestible plant matter. I don't get the meat eaters who feel the need to be all edgy and post about how they like that animals are being slaughtered for their amusement, it just sounds like you're trying way too hard to convince yourself it doesn't matter by going in the opposite direction and acting like animal suffering has no sort of moral significance.

Well said

Okay, now that's understandable.
That's not a "no kids" person thing, that's just an obnoxious person thing.
Like you said - It's also vegans, LGBT "allies", bronies, stoners, furries, soccer moms, etc.

There are plenty of reasonable people around you who don't want kids, and expectedly - you wouldn't even know about it. It's the "squeaky wheel" thing: A few loud, proud assholes ruin the overall image of the group they claim to represent.

Third world populations will decrease once they finished their demographic transition. As for a lot of other matters, first world population should lead and make an example of it.

Because you're not an edgy brat for insulting the stance instead of criticize it, right ?
Try harder and start by using arguments.

>and make an example of it

>Wealthy white North Americans and Europeans start moving into third-world nations, buying tons of property
>Taking advantage of every one of the country's meager resources thanks to a stronger currency and lots more of it
>Setting up 1960's-era-suburb-looking communities with white-run convenience and grocery stores that sell imported goods from North America and Europe
>Everybody and their future families only speak English and extremely minor or broken versions of local languages
>Not "colonizing"! Just moving in! Don't mind us!

>Ethiopian guy gets lost in the wrong neighborhood, walks into laundromat, rows of blue, green, and hazel eyes all stare him down until he awkwardly leaves
>Cops, punks, and greasers alike eyeball him until he makes his way to the next neighborhood

I was just speaking about the demographic aspect, you extrapolate.

a nonentity doesn't need to have a preference in the first place.

So if you take all of someone's finances and invest them in lottery tickets and they win a million dollars then your initial decision is rendered ethical?

>the whole point of existence is getting into a dick-measuring contest with the other races.

This is the kind of thing that makes it easy to go on being an antinatalist.

>redirecting to false-flag bait

I understand the arguments antinatalists make but they don't make sense whatsoever. They rest on the assumption that life is commonly enough not worth living to the point that creating life is flatly unethical. In reality only 13 out of 100000 people decide that it's bad enough that they choose to cease living by killing themselves, which is the logical decision once someone concludes life is a net negative. If antinatalists believe that suffering outweighs pleasure (and that pleasure is all that matters in life, which is so fucking retarded I won't even get into it), why don't they kill themselves? Not being edgy, that's the only logical thing to do in their case, unless they get satisfaction from feeling like martyrs by chastising everyone outside their cult.

Gee I've never heard that argument before. You sure aren't dumb or anything.

>meanwhile he tells some guy who's contemplating suicide to keep fighting until the end and some other normie bullshit

Normies are fucking weasels

Life is a trap and every person once in existance has extreme instinctive and cultural biases against taking his own life or death in general.

It's like getting people forcibly hooked on heroin and saying 'well they can quit later on if they decide they don't like it, if they don't quit they're obviously having fun'.

Then truly, what's the reasoning behind it? I know a few "antinatalist" couples and when I ask them about it they just screech about breeders and fuck trophies.
They're also rich early-30s alkies in open relationships. Huh.
>instincts not to kill yourself
Huh wonder if there's a reason for that.
Thinking it's a good thing to prevent further life is mental illness, not enlightenment.

I might consider it if someone could give me a reasonable rebuttal to the argument that existence is infinitely better than not existing.

Also children are the only thing one can truly create, a life without them seems pointless.

>Huh wonder if there's a reason for that.
selection bias. if your genes have made it this far you're obviously offspring of those who valued survival.

doesn't mean it's morally right though. is/ought.

Speaking personally I don't have confidence that I have any reliable way of eliminating my consciousness from the continuum of the universe. In fact this is mostly the reason that I am an antinatalist. Now how are you going to deploy the "like omg literally kys" argument against me?

I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I have no biological desire to create offspring. I get horny, I love sex, I've had relationships and am in a long-term one, but never have I had the desire to start a family. I even had to break up with a woman who was hot in one of those ways where it hits all my buttons, because I couldn't force myself to want to have kids just for her, despite my best efforts to.

One of my biggest reasons for not having kids is due to overpopulation in my continent. Our birth rates exponentially outweigh our death rates and are only spreading apart faster and farther over time. I see the growing mass of people with no desire for kids as our species' natural way of controlling our population. Like the "beautiful ones" of lab-controlled intentionally overpopulated mouse enclosures. Once space and food started becoming too scarce due to the rapidly-growing population, some mice just stopped giving a fuck about mating, wouldn't try it, would refuse others' advances, and just spent all their time cleaning and entertaining themselves until they had silky smooth fur, better physiques, and lived longer per individual.

ITT: If you hated [alcohol/drugs/bad habit so much], you would stop

kek
>For example I explain in the document that her baby could potentially of course gain pleasure from its first ever burp but could also gain pain from accidentally burping up its own stomach juices due to a rupture in the belly from birth defects, as well as other things. She was enraged like the bitch she is.
leged

>I might consider it if someone could give me a reasonable rebuttal to the argument that existence is infinitely better than not existing.

That's actually a claim, not an argument. An argument consists of premises leading to a conclusion.

I used to think that /lit was pretty smart but this has been a letdown.

Is "antinatalism" something wilting late-30s spinsters and cucks use to stave off the cognitive dissonance of having created nothing with their time on earth other than pursuit of "pleasure" and materialism?

Having a kid is just another self-indulgence, it's not like you're doing anyone a favour with your brats.

Yeah
It's one thing to decide not to have kids (though I'll never understand why), turning it into a "movement" and using euphoric "arguments" to demonize everyone you deem inferior to you screams doubling down from insecurity.
The only guy I know who calls himself an anti natalist posts Facebook statuses about mandatory euthanasia for people over 80 and uses "breeder" as an insult.

>They rest on the assumption that life is commonly enough not worth living
This isn't the argument. You don't understand it as well as you seem to think you do.

this was always the next logical step of MGTOW: to become a part of VHEMT
vhemt.org/

I was referring to the argument not trying to state it, how was intro logic this semester, nigger.

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i think anti natlism make some good points. but also i think its kinda pointless. like people are always going to breed. its unstoppable. its like being anti shitting, because its smelly and gross. well yeah, but it happens.

It views all life as suffering more than "pleasure", when it's pretty clear, to me, that being born in upper-class with great genetics is fucking heaven. The suffering this person will experience is insignificant compared to the good.

this

Christian anti-natalism is pretty interesting. I agree on the basis that it's immoral to imprison a divine immortal soul within flesh. The issue of natalism hinges more on someone's ontological views than anything else.

I meant to add that there is misanthropic anti-natalism as well as philanthropic anti-natalism. That's a little less vague and polarizing than saying "Christian anti-natalism".

well it sure beats the hell (kek) out of the alternative

absolutely disgusting, I agree

>more than
That's wrong.
The asymmetry of pleasure and pain argument still works even with massive amounts of pleasure and very little pain because the point is:
A) We all recognize it at least makes sense (whether you personally choose to do this or not) to want to use euthanasia as a way to stop suffering e.g. with terminally ill pets and
B) The state of wanting pleasure is dependent on a new life being created, meaning nobody "misses out" on anything good by never having been born, much like how nobody suffers from heroin withdrawals when they've never even tried heroin to begin with.
We tend to assume pleasure and pain are somehow equal opposites, but this argument challenges that assumption by showing how the elimination of pain through cessation of life can be good while the loss of pleasure from prevention of life is not bad since you need to be alive to be able to feel like you've missed out on something good in the first place.

>most amazing and rewarding thing i have ever experienced
kek, parenthood really lobotomizes parents, as expected (biologically speaking)

yes because giving birth to 13 children in bangladesh is the same as responsibly raising two children in the first world

suffering is just brain chemicals too.

how is one CATEGORICALLY different?

that's not what the categorical imperative means patrick.

Any antinatalist have anything to say to this?

consent tho

that's right goyim, no one should have kids

By not having kids you are not living up to your potential. Same as a genius who doesn't do anything with his intellect. The responsibility of caring for a life you took part in creating is character building and a major part of human experience. If you try to rationalize not having a kid, instead of taking the leap of faith and experiencing if for yourself, then how can an antinatalist know that it truly isn't worth it?

>maybe if I use a philosophical term like "leap of faith" my comment will look intellectually rigorous

With enough will power you can. That's how people begin to break addictions.

Except it isn't self-indulgence. Having a child is given sacred significance, even for people that claim they aren't religious. If you had a child and seriously took responsibility for them you might know

Why isn't it that even the smallest pleasures of life, not in some scientific way, but in an experiential way, outweigh even the harshest suffering?

If they find it worth it tho they can live on, if not they can become an antinatalist or commit suicide.

I'm not trying to speak intellectually exactly. There are a lot of things in life you must do to know. Rationalizing not doing something is a great way to squander your potential and miss out on life's greatest joys, the things that make it all worth it.

Thank you for the sophistry Tony Robbins