Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence---rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should---they presume that they do them no harm. Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence. Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence. The author then argues for the 'anti-natal' view---that it is always wrong to have children---and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a "pro-death" view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct. Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence
We will suffer greatly if people were to adopt this doctrine and let everything collapse. It's a better idea to build up civilization so people's quality of life improves.
>Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.
I can't read this with a straight face.
>Wahhh, life is painful and that means we'd be better off without it
Fucking cowards. I toy with the idea of killing myself at least once a week and I still never wish I was never born.
My problem with it is that some other intelligent species would evolve and then they would run into the same problems. Anti-natal is pretty defeatist.
funny, for me it's the opposite. I don't think much about suicide but I would have preferred to have never been born.
That's why we need to develop a self-replicating robot AI first, that explores the universe while hunting down any lifeforms.
"Defeatist" is just nonsense, anti-natalism is about looking at the terrible equation that is the human condition and realizing how futile and painful everything is.
You called?
when did anti-natalism become a meme?
From the archive
>So thanks to some stupid bullshit called "True Detective" we've been blessed with a glut of anti-natalism threads
>haha we would better off if we were all dead always remember to abort your children
.t person who hasn't killed them self
Wait, seriously?
Did people somehow not get the message that Rust was a sad, drug-addled, nihilistic shell of a man and that his perspective completely changed at the end anyway?
summer will end eventually
Veeky Forums has had discussion on procreative ethics for years before TD, Benatar's book came out in 2007.
There's no logical connection between killing oneself and not procreating.
Of course the last generation will suffer existential angst and whatnot, but the question is whether it's better for reproduction and therefore needless suffering to continue until the heat death of the universe or a sufficiently destructive extinction event or to just bite the bullet now. It's not like life in any shape or form will go on forever.
On the other hand, here we are. Sentience.
You and I are speaking to each other at this very moment, correct?
The universe is communicating with itself.......
Most humans are terribly smart but they just don't know it. Preoccupied instead with pretty butterflies and delicious treats and snacks......
We are apes, man.....simians. We don't know what the fuck is going on in the universe, we are still fighting over bananas.
What are trying to communicate here? I only see New Age platitudes.
Fuck off kike
I'm of the opinion that we are neither sentient nor communicating. We are mindless drones going about our lives in a pre-destined pattern set forth by our DNA and training with no resemblance of free will which would be biologically impossible anyway.
And yet awareness is a thing, which doesnt really make sense as a component of a fully determined material reality
What if we would go insane if we could look through the illusion of sentience?
I dont understand what you're saying
I hate these fucking whiners
This is the solution to the Fermi Paradox. When someone first described the Fermi Paradox to me as a puzzle, I was surprised that anyone was puzzled by it. Then I remembered that most people aren't depressed, they're "keeping busy".
What STEMlords never took into consideration, is that beings who understood more than us might not be happier than us. Especially if they have nothing to "keep busy" with.
An entire planet posting on /r9k/. Followed by mass suicide.