His conclusions are wrong, r-right?

making someone suffer for your own entertainment

...

His conclusions are not new, shocking or interesting (he cites many pessimistic thinkers of the past, along with certain gnostic sects like the cathars and bogomils)..., but are they correct though? It depends who you ask. It depends on your view of man and his place in the universe. I can't imagine a concise explain action that would overturn his conclusions, and anyone offering such a inchoate response should be treated with extreme skepticism.

Value judgements aren't falsifiable. Opinions can't be right or wrong.

So you're saying that people don't realize that they secretly want to kill themselves? Who gives a fuck about how we're socially conditioned? You were socially conditioned to sympathize with Ligotti's antinatalism probably because of your inability to fit in with normies resulting in social ostracizing and hence your presence here. It doesn't matter how people are conditioned, once they are a cognitively mature being, what they want is what they want.

Ligotti uses logic to come to his conclusions, the logic is very much so falsifiable

You mean like little symbols and shit? Oh fuck, well I'm sorry then. I had no idea.

I'm saying that people may be in a position where they are unhappy to be alive but for a lot of reasons don't have it in them to kill themselves.

So saying that spawning people and then letting them decide for themselves if they want to live is in any way fair is incorrect, because it is not a simple rational decision to make. The living are for the most part extremely biased to continue living, even if they wish they were never born.

The logic only works if you accept his particular premises, which he acknowledges.

You're presupposing that suffering overrides joy as the natural state of affairs and people only don't kill themselves because of some innate Will to continue surviving and reproducing. This assumes that whatever mysterious basal survival urge within us is extricable from cognition and personhood, which is not true. If in fact there is some drive in our reptilian brain to live and proliferate (which I don't doubt is true), it is unfair to say that its expression in our human lives as an apparent investment in life is not a fundamental constituent of being, and in order to come to the conclusion that it is 'better to have never been,' we would have to reject not only this survival instinct, but the entirely of humanity and personhood altogether, which is impossible to do from our vantage point (namely, one of existing in the world as a thinking human being). The most we can do is advocate for a utilitarian individual self-destruction based on our own inability to flourish

What about happiness?

...

...

>asking for opinions without first posting a summary of his views.

How can you really equate joy and suffering? Not only is the latter more obvious and more ubiquitous, it also signifies an immutable universal law.

If there is no stability then suffering, just like happiness, is not lasting, i also don't buy that happiness always comes with disillusionment

Demonstrate (1)

Demonstrate (4).

> Suffering is more ubiquitous
> Most humans are happy

oh, you sweet summer child

Also demonstrate (3).

> I have not heard of hedonic adaptation
> I have not bothered looking up the stats on this
> Implying there exist an objective metric for measuring pain or happiness

Oh, you sweet summer child

Listen. You're wrong.

> This is the extent of his demonstration.

No. You're the one who's wrong.

Read the excerpts on Goodreads if you're too lazy to read the entire book.

#3 is so fucking stupid. The absence of pain is impossible in a non-existent entity, it's simply illogical. It's like claiming the absence of lung cancer in my foot is 1) possible & 2) good enough to outweigh the (pleasure - pain) side of the equation of life.

see Also can we talk about whether or not John Green is subconsciously antinatalist?

Ask most people if they wish they were never born, they'd say no.

read the book niggers

Doesn't matter.

I can logically prove that life is not a net good, and is in fact bad.

What the idiotic sheeple think about their lives does not matter to an intellect such as myself -- do you think the average beer guzzling cretin truly knows if he wishes he was born? If he had an ounce of intelligence, he would wish he had never entered this world.

You think that chart is a logical proof?

Refute my argument about #3 you bing bong ching chong

The absence of pain is not impossible in a non-existent entity, it's implied. It is not a positive quality.

Just like something that does not exist can't have a colour. You wouldn't say that being non-coloured when non-existent is absurd. The non-existent is per definition without features and therefore without colour.

Most people are indoctrinated idiots, most can`t even differentiate between never to be born and having to die.

Ask most people who have had sex if they wish they never had it, they'd say no.

Therefore rape is okay.

t. You

Something that does not exist cannot have a color, but it also does not have the capacity to have a color. Pain is only undesirable in beings that have the capacity for pain, therefore it is neither good or bad that there is no pain in colorless things.

The only thing he's wrong about is his conclusion concerning Buddhism.
>everything they say is true except enlightenment cuz it can't be demonstrated by syens
wew

But hey he's honest and states from the very beginning that the book is very personal and primarily aimed at people who would share parts of his worldview. It's not a grand treatise for convincing those who fell for the "every part of life even the bad things in it are great & the universe/god loves you" meme.

>sadboy circlejerking

I never got this idea about it being depressing. It seems mostly just factual with the occasional sarcastic remark thrown in for fun.

Ligotti himself is not wallowing in sadness over his own conclusions because he truly understands the implications of them: Everything is truly meaningless and everything is the same so do whatever, killing yourself is just as pointless as living so why bother? why not do exactly what you want because there's no reason not to, even if it is just chemicals and whatnot, that doesn't mean you have to go against them to 'prove' you're 'enlightened' because being enlightened is just as pointless as the rest of it.

There's no justification for wallowing, of course there's also no reason not to, but why would you when there are so many other things to do?

Ligotti is a writer making a living off his works. This is not someone who cries about everything being pointless and then uses that as a justification of never leaving their parent's home.

He has anxiety about talking to interviewers and such so he doesn't; he doesn't have to do things he doesn't like because there just is no reason to. His life is exactly what he wanted given the circumstances.

There is humor and sarcasm hidden in a lot of his works if you stop going in with the mindset that it all has to be depressing.

what?

did I miss some part of the human experience where people recreationally send themselves into a near death experience and back into life once or twice a month?

The point is that you say: Most people enjoy a thing, so it's alright to do it to everyone without their permission.

Which is silly.

>emo kid with a dictionary and thesaurus

What I meant by that is his writing serves as validation for depressed people to wallow in their own depression, not that he himself is always mopey and morose. Beyond that, the work serves little purpose other than the historical survey of pessimism

>his writing serves as validation for depressed people to wallow in their own depression

Definitely true, but I don't think you can blame him for that or hold that against the book (not that you necessarily were).

I still found it to be an enjoyable read just because of how all encompassing it was. Kind of like you were saying: It doesn't really have any new ideas in it but just pulls a bunch of other people's ideas into one work.

antinatalist threads are always full of a few people who are intelligent enough to understand antinatalism and a large group of low IQ apes repeating the same fallacious arguments ligotti talks about in the book

there's no point arguing with natalists, you will never convince idiots

No you can't because "good" and "bad" are subjective positions.
>>pain is bad
>what are masochism and self-defeating personality disorder
>what are histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders and dramatic personality disorders in general
>what are sadism and schadenfreude
>what are people who like to be used and abused
>what are people who want to give all of themselves to others
>what is pride
>what is relishing the sour moments
>what is (lack of) boredom
I mean, really now

The absence of pain in something that does not exist is not comparable to the absence of pain in something that does exist. (I also question the "good" and "not bad" ratings of the things that nonexistent beings have.)

what makes antinatalists smarter than natalists?

Why is it so easy to piss of antinatalists?

Unlike happiness suffering can be stable (well till death anyway). For example if you have multiple sclerosis or acouphenes.

>redpill memer thinks he's more than a worthless sack of shit

Even nature is against us

Trying to convince a natalist not to have kids is like trying to explain math to a goldfish.

see

A sign of mental illness?

troll'd

right but a bit to gloomy nothing matters and life sucks for most, but I can still have fun.

an admirable but ultimately fruitless endeavour (unless of course you do actually manage to, in which case you'll probably be considered the most impressive person who ever lived)

Thomas Bernhard, Arthur Schopenhauer, Leopardi, Cioran, Zapffe, Beckett, Houllebecq, Shakespeare, Pascal, Poe, Tolstoy, HL Mencken, etc... I think it is clear that taking the black pill is something all great white men have eventually had to do. Can you name one African pessimist(without using Google)?

Can you name 10 published authors from Africa without using google?

HAHAHAHA

antinatalists perpetually btfo :')

Ooga Booga, Mingo Bumbo, Joomba Loomba, Bixxy Noodle, Scipio Africanus, Imhotep, Shakespeare, Mnongo Pumba, Pumpum Yahoo, and Mia Couto

fucking racist

upvoted 4 epic

>walking down sidewalk with by buddy and his wife as they push their baby in a stroller
>see semi truck coming
>push babby stroller in front of semi as I watch their horrified expressions

Why are natalists so easy to troll? Makes me laff every tiem

upvoted 4 epic

To be fair, their critique of Christian morality and exposition of moral nihilism has taken philosophy to a new place where the academic elites fear to tread. Refreshing!

>thinking you can go and do a "happiness survey" in a despotic shithole with any level of scientific rigour
>thinking the results would not be manipulated or presented in a way to insulate the positive feelings of first-worlders
>thinking that saying "I am happy" negates suffering or that suffering is entirely subjective anyway

I PUT YOUR BABY IN OVEN I MAKE OVEN ON

upvoted 4 epic

The African journal The Necessity of Necklacing really made me think.

Look at it this way

Joy= specific conditions providing equitable circumstances for a person
Suffering=all other conditions

Entropy is a thing pal. The universe doesn't give you special treatment because you have an ego.

>someone mentions Africa
>/pol/ termites come out of the woodwork

please stop hijacking thread

I'll just say what I always say when this disengenuous argument is made. When we are talking about suffering we are talking about conditions that are automatically deleterious and undesirable to the person. There is no long-term gain, no subjectivity or any of it. The simple matter is whatever specific conditions the person requires to feel existential equity should never realistically be expected. If you want we can call this The Jergenschlut, instead of the loaded term "suffering".

>happiness

only some people experience this

>pain is neither good nor bad (quality/utility being a concept subordinate to human valoration) because only humans can experience pain.

Lifecucks everybody.

Yeah its called procreation

Suicide and antinatilism aren't solutions to the problem of suffering, they nullify it. That's like saying the answer to a complex math problem is to back away from the test.

I think those were relevant points, South Africans have become much more nihilistic since '94, etc.

>suffering a problem, wahhhhh
lmao, have you idiots ever considered just gritting your teeth and enduring it? bunch of faggots itt, rofl

This, stoicism 4 lyfe boi

The problem with antinatalists is that they base their entire argument on the primacy of consent, which is in reality low on the list of moral imperatives.

Reminder even seemingly meaningless suffering can be utilized to advance yourself toward ubermensch-hood

rape

RAAAAPE

>killing yourself is just as pointless as living so why bother?

See this is where nihilism goes too far into the realm of being silly. The reason you kill yourself is to reduce negative utility. Why the fuck would you rather experience cancer than peacefully breathe in some helium while listening to Ravel? Death on your own terms must be like a superlative human experience; final, absolute, unalloyed by future anxieties. I can't think of a greater aspiration in all honesty. Sure do some shit before you off yourself but once you are 70 and already feeling the infirmities of old age, what the fuck are you waiting for, the worst and most undgnified experience conceivable?

truth

when will you soft pussy antinatalists realize the moral imperative of genocide and culling the world population?

>It doesn't matter how people are conditioned, once they are a cognitively mature being, what they want is what they want.

What someone wants is not necessarily what they want to want.

>Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
Damn, expected this kind of thing on /pol/, kind of disappointed to see this philosophy peddled here.

And who gets to play daddy and decide what people secretly want? You? Who's to say you're not the one who is indoctrinated with the nihilistic liberty of the West and you're fooled into buying this 'dude nothing has any meaning lmao' angle

I already have family

>breath some helium while listening to Ravel

What a gaping vagina you are

What if people who want children are encouraged to only have two children or something?

No, what am I, a moron? Why am I gritting my teeth and bearing the reality that the universe doesn't revolve arond me instead of realizing its ultimate design by killing myself? I mean, I am not enjoying my life so it isn't doing anything for me and in the grand scheme of things to rail against the disorder in my life is just arrogant and preposterous.

>Man was formed of dust, slime, and ashes; what is even more vile, of the filthiest seed. He was conceived from the itch of the flesh, in the heat of passion and the stench of lust, and worse yet, with the stain of sin. He was born to toil, dread and trouble; and more wretched still, was born only to die. He commits depraved acts by which he offends God, his neighbor, and himself; shameful acts by which he defiles his name, his person, and his conscience; and vain acts by which he ignores all things important, useful, and necessary. He will become fuel for those fires which are forever hot and burn forever bright; food for the worm which forever nibbles and digests; a mass of rottenness which will forever stink and reek.
-Hea Gudboi, N'Djamena, 2011

u gay, son