What are some good critiques of antinatalism

Antinatalism is not necessarily misanthropic or anti-life. Schopenhauer, for example, was antinatalist while valuing compassion, aesthetic experience, and more.

Other than error theory which by extension would render antinatalism false as well (although nothing prevents AN from being "true" under fictionalism, just interpret morally wrong as asshole-ish), nothing really. Advocates of non-identity claims and strictly positive utilitarianisms face far more unintuitive consequences than "we ought not to procreate". Teleological dickwaving about human destiny, responsibility to keep the species going on even though as far as we know the whole universe will eventually reach a stage where information processing is impossible etc should be dismissed as just that.

I'm not saying it'd be a bad idea for everyone who is against life to create a commune where they never breed.

Pretty much what this guy says. When you really understand the arguments for antinatalism, then you'll see how technically any meta-ethics that attached negative value to suffering will inevitably lead to antinatalism. The only way to avoid this is by becoming a moral anti-realist, which then undermines all normative ethics.

Schopenhauer was misanthropic as fuck who are you kidding.

>attached
attaches*

I don't think they'd mind something like that, but mostly someone who holds that position only does so superficially.

Fine, I wasn't really focusing when typing that. I should have said sadist instead of misanthropic.

To me, real misanthropy is tantamount to the sadism of Marquis de Sade. It doesn't matter what people think of civilization, its march being futile or not, or whatever to me: so long as they don't like harming others, or want to minimize suffering, then I do not consider them misanthropic. I was foolishly operating based off my definition.

I will go a step further and say antinatalism is, by definition, ant-misanthropic because it does not want to add to the pool of suffering that is for naught.

Not really. There is not much to do in regards to antinatalism. I am married with a potentially bright future. I could have a kid now, but I do not want to ever have one. I think anyone with a half a brain can come to the conclusion antinatalism is the best approach.

But to be honest, given my own honest exploration in philosophy, I tend to be child free in the sense I find antinatalism poorly defended in moral anti-realist camps of thought. I wish moral realism were true, but one needs a non-materialist metaphysics to ground that in. Thus, I am child free largely due to Hume's Is-Ought gap. So you lot can go ahead and be like Marquis de Sade for all that I care. I choose to act with compassion and not bring kids into this malignant world.

>further enforces
kill yourself

Sorry to stray from the intended topic, but you should know that it's poor form to inb4 as OP.

...Since when was this a thing?

Since user said so lol.

fpbp.

If antinatalism is ideal, then just off yourself. No one [few] actually take that step though. By mere virtue of not killing yourself, you've disproven the antinatalist thesis.

You lack aesthetic appreciation of classical art and visual symbols because you are either uncultured or over nourished with visual representations. You're the type of person who complains about how people over act or over dramatise in old films and expect only "realism". Have fun learning more soon, dumbass.

You're an idiot. Attaching negative value to birth does not mean you don't appreciate art, lived experience now, and more. It does not necessarily lead to viewing everything as being bleak.

Why are most of you posting here so fucking retarded? I'm not joking. You lot are some of the most insipid, brain-dead idiots I've communicated with on philosophical ideas. It's fine to dislike antinatalism, but this is straw man after straw man.

"Hurr durr, antinatalist! kill yourself! i luv baby, u don't and are inhumane and big poo poo head!"

^ That's how you sound. Such a fucking imbecile you are.

Bump

Some reasons to have kids, slightly strawmanning the position:

Anti-natalism is often justified by a utilitarian calculus, e.g. the common argument that the child's life is likely to have net negative utility (because this world is a trash fire). So a critique of utilitarianism is indirectly a critique of anti-natalism.

It's obvious that most people find great meaning and fulfillment in raising a family. Do you want to miss out on this because of philosophical arguments and internet memes?

If you're smart enough to know about anti-natalism and understand the arguments, you would likely be doing the world a favor by reproducing. Dysgenics is real.

If you think you have some sort of mission that's more important than children, you have to weigh that against the sum of all your counterfactual descendants and their accomplishments. If you don't even have anything of the sort, you're basically choosing a premium mediocre hedonistic lifestyle. (cf. the basket cases at r/childfree.) I think it's possible to make the child-free life work without ending up as some grotesque caricature of arrested development, but most people don't know what they're getting into, and aren't equipped for it.

Anti-natalism is being selected against (duh), therefore it will disappear. This means anti-natalists are deliberately putting themselves on the losing side of history and relinquishing any influence or legacy. I guess that's the point, but you need edgy teenager-tier nihilism to pretend these things are not desirable or important for at least some people some of the time.

Antinatalism is an appropriate response to godless nihilists preaching subjective morality.

They will all be judged for choosing to destroy rather than build. Of course had they chosen to be builders then we might occupy a world of divine beauty and they may resultingly have come to an opposite conclusion about natalism.

If it were easier I would.

>any meta-ethics that attached negative value to suffering will inevitably lead to antinatalism
is this actually true?

>So a critique of utilitarianism is indirectly a critique of anti-natalism.
Arguments based off Benatar's asymmetry, consent, or a big picture of the futility of mankind's march are not necessarily utilitarian.

>It's obvious that most people find great meaning and fulfillment in raising a family.
I'd argue most people become disillusioned and in great pain. It's a lot like the film Hana-bi.

>This means anti-natalists are deliberately putting themselves on the losing side of history and relinquishing any influence or legacy.

"Winning is illusion, losing is satori." - Kodo Sawaki

"I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!"
- Emily Dickinson

>is this actually true?
If you attach negative value to suffering, then antinatalism is unavoidable. If you view suffering as neutral, then you can avoid antinatalism. This is why I said, "I tend to be child free in the sense I find antinatalism poorly defended in moral anti-realist camps of thought. I wish moral realism were true, but one needs a non-materialist metaphysics to ground that in. Thus, I am child free largely due to Hume's Is-Ought gap. So you lot can go ahead and be like Marquis de Sade for all that I care. I choose to act with compassion and not bring kids into this malignant world."

Antinatalism is almost always justified by the asymmetry:
Pain=Bad
Pleasure=Good
~Pain=Good
~Pleasure=Neutral

But the asymmetry makes no logical sense.
If Pain=Bad then ~Pain=~Bad
If Pleasure=Good then ~Pleasure=~Good

~Bad=Good OR Neutral
~Good=Bad OR Neutral

So how it actually works is
Pain=Bad
Pleasure=Good
~Pain=Good OR Neutral
~Pleasure=Bad OR Neutral

Antinatalism in and of itself is as pointless as suicide in and of itself. One has to contemplate the whole abomination of this world, see its suffering and "pleasures" as two halves of the same wheel, and reject the whole thing or else not even the quantitative extent of suffering will be fully ascertained, not to mention the qualitative perversion of its complementary relation to its illusory relief. The irony of claiming to have authority in rejecting the word when you know less about it than those who accept it aside, raw suicide in any form is unlikely to even open the cage of your own persona. Purgatory, Hell, Underworlds, Oblivion - they're all on the table if you don't even know, and hate, abomination in earnest.

>Attaching negative value to birth does not mean you don't appreciate art, lived experience now, and more. It does not necessarily lead to viewing everything as being bleak.
So if life has all the positives, why bother with the antinatalism bullshit?

>If you attach negative value to suffering, then antinatalism is unavoidable.
Why? Pleasure is an even bigger part of life if you're born in the first world and aren't an idiot.

This guy did a good job summarizing the arguments. Read it before you say "OMG Reddit!!" It's a quality post that sums up some recent philosophical arguments for antinatalism:
reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/26a7g2/general_discussion_opinions_on_antinatalism/chr3vkv/

>Pleasure is an even bigger part of life if you're born in the first world and aren't an idiot.
Go back to /pol/.

There are no good critiques of anti-natalism, because nobody wants to convince the kind of people who fall for anti-natalism that having kids is a good idea.

>Go back to /pol/.
Nigga, what? How is the suggestion that life is tutorial mode difficulty in the first world even remotely /pol/ shit?

Well, I am bored enough... so let's do it.

1.
He himself realizes it's a shitty subjective point, and frankly it's just wrong.

2.
Is interesting but kinda flawed. If most will enjoy the gift, it's better to keep giving it even if 1 faggot out of 100 won't like it. In the end, everyone has the power to throw it away. It's not 100% consent of course but moral absolutism is a silly meme either way.

3.
Again, he realizes that it's a shitty subjective argument. Why focusing on the negatives with the crazy amount of positives?

All the antinativist shit is flawed with the premises that life is suffering, which might be the case for the majority of the world but in the first world, you really need to be extraordinary unlucky for it to be the case. (Ignoring idiots who create their own problems of course but I guess most count as unlucky too due not having the chance to learn how to solve the shit)

The positives are irrelevant when considering creating new consciousnesses if they aren't all-encompassing and maximal, in which case procreating would be merely neutral since you can't claim existence has benefits over never-existing without running into some pantsu-on-head retarded conclusions. Never-existent people can be spared of the guaranteed suffering (after all, the first thing newborns do is cry and one might die of sudden infant death syndrome before having the chance of getting to experience any pleasures) even if they're not around to appreciate the fact, but they can't be deprived of the goods.

On one side you got nothingness, on the other a lot positivity with a bit guaranteed suffering. The latter sounds like a much better deal.

>Anti-natalism is being selected against (duh), therefore it will disappear.
This is a profoundly stupid statement and I'm not even anti-natalist. Ideas aren't genetic and they don't behave like they are genetic. You imply that an idea will somehow die out with its followers who don't procreate, as if ideas can only be transmitted genealogically. And even if an idea somehow "died out" that still wouldn't matter regarding its truthfulness. This argument is shitty and I'm pretty sure you know that already.

>a lot positivity
I just showed how this might not be the case and even if it was every time it would be irrelevant.
>with a bit
Read a book, nigga. Suffering is the best motivator for action and was selected for accordingly in all animals with a central nervous system. Worst pains are worse than the best pleasures are good, this is a psychological fact.

> Worst pains are worse than the best pleasures are good, this is a psychological fact.
Which is irrelevant given how pleasure is much more frequent.

How many people say that they would rather not have had lived by the end of their life compared to the ones who do?

>Which is irrelevant given how pleasure is much more frequent
A lot of our everyday "pleasure" is merely the temporary absence of suffering, for instance you feel (hunger->eat->don't feel hungry anymore) doesn't actually benefit you but merely returns to you to a base level that's tolerable.
>How many people say that they would rather not have had lived by the end of their life compared to the ones who do?
Fairly irrelevant since the vast majority of people are pretty horrible at evaluating their own lives and capabilities and reasoning in general. If the first generation of near-enough-homo-sapiens would have opted not to procreate, no moral crime would have been committed since the never-existent wouldn't have been deprived of their oh-so-perfect-lives, but they would have prevented all the horrors of the the Black Death, Hitler and Stalin, Unit 731, witch hunts, the African slave trade the holocaust and so on.

freedom of choice

By choosing to not perpetuate your own good will towards life (the main cause of a disappointment with the situation of life) you're ensuring that this tragic situation remains the same, when it could otherwise improve.

Procreating is not the only way, or even close to the best way, to do this.

>for instance you feel (hunger->eat->don't feel hungry anymore)
Most people enjoy their food way beyond sating hunger. Hence so many become addicted to it.

>majority of people are pretty horrible at evaluating their own lives and capabilities and reasoning in general
Does it matter in this case? If someone enjoyed getting raped and hence want to get raped again, this mind be incredible idiotic but doesn't change the fact that they feel positive about the experience. The reasons and experience in question are all irrelevant.

>but they would have prevented all the horrors of the the Black Death, Hitler and Stalin, Unit 731, witch hunts, the African slave trade the holocaust and so on.
Also all the great things and even more great things coming. Given how most people did feel positive about their lives, it was still a proportionally small sacrifice of all the people who didn't. Whether your consider it democratic or tyranny of the many is up to you of course.

>All the antinativist shit is flawed with the premises that life is suffering, which might be the case for the majority of the world but in the first world, you really need to be extraordinary unlucky for it to be the case. (Ignoring idiots who create their own problems of course but I guess most count as unlucky too due not having the chance to learn how to solve the shit)

There are a striking amount of extraordinarily unlucky people if you leave your hugbox

As in numbers? Sure. As for their proportion among the population? Not really.

almost 18% of americans take psychiatric drugs

A much bigger percentage of the population got problems, it doesn't mean their lives suck constantly.

thats not the point, is it?

That says more about america than about human nature and suffering.

would you like me to quote the suicide rates of other 1st world nations?

Or will you keep diverting to random shit?

Why just first world nations? And what about the usage of psychiatric drugs outside USA?

did you not read what I specifically responded to?

It is obvious you didnt so please go and read it

But what is your point? Muricans take a fuckloads of psychiatric drugs since their health system sucks (and generally they look subpar compared to other first world countries) that's very interesting but doesn't tell us much about their life quality.

>Muricans take a fuckloads of psychiatric drugs since their health system sucks

this isn't logical so please explain it

(btw I work in a pharmacy so random appeals to "americans are stupid" won't do anything)

Given the treatment options and specially the cost, just stuffing a patient with pills is the preferred solution sans doing nothing. Given how most of the stuff also tends to be addictive, it's not surprising that it's so popular.

It was less "americans are stupid" and more of "they struggle with basic first world things like health care, safety, education, labour laws or safety net for their citizens". A systematic problem of a country not with the people per se.

You misinterpreted 2. He's saying throwing a golden brick into someone's house is unethical without consent because it carries risk to kill them.

A more fitting example would be hitting them and causing a lot pain, but either way you get the same end result: You throw 100 bricks and make 99 happy while hurting 1. Sounds like a better success rate than most of our ideas and systems.
As for the specific number, it can be tricky to calculate after suicides but it's very, very unlikely to be beyond low single digits seeing how relatively few people are killing themselves, how even most people who attempted and failed at suicide rediscover their desire to live and how many dying people wouldn't want to never been born.

Due the fact that some people are getting hurt it's obviously not a perfect solution but with the alternative being so absurd as nothingness, it's clearly the best call available.

The faster humanity dies out the sooner collective suffering will end.

The more kids there are, the faster humanity will die out.

Also, it's even more destructive to have smart kids and raise them well, since smart, responsible people make the money and maintain the infrastructure that enables the stupidest and most degenerate to proliferate faster, which will speed up the collapse.

>while hurting 1.
What if you're that one? The point is about consent. You never consented to it, so it's unethical.

>What if you're that one?
Tough luck. I'll probably become a writer or at least a philosopher.

>You never consented to it, so it's unethical.
Based on that every political and economical system is unethical, which isn't wrong per se but not a very productive position.

"you just need to get out of the house"

my aunt said to this me implying i am ignorant because i don't leave the house. you don't have to leave the house to know how shitty life is.
I could see it on liveleak and read about it on wikipedia

To be fair, we're still living with a "pre common internet" generation, where "you need to leave the house" was a very valid thing. You had no way of the world coming to you, to learn anything you would have to actually go out and either experience it, or go out and buy books, or go out and meet people.
Now you can do most of those things from home. The biggest thing you could actually miss is travelling and meeting other people and cultures first hand.

>Tough luck. I'll probably become a writer or at least a philosopher.
In the thought-experiment, it kills you...

>which isn't wrong per se but not a very productive position.
Well, one has to be pragmatic to survive, but we're discussing philosophy, which is more about the foundations of knowledge, being, and meaning. Spouting philosophy as a madman chases you is dumb, but we can do it when we're relaxed and impartial.

>it kills you
by antinatalist logic this is actually a good thing

>In the thought-experiment, it kills you...
Who said it kills me right away? I was under the impression that it's used as metaphor for depression or at least cancer and similar life draining shit. A fast death wouldn't be enough suffering.

>which is more about the foundations of knowledge, being, and meaning
Certainly but do we have to disregard all pragmatism? It becomes too much of a talk of what we'd do if we'd get an unicorn.

true, but what they really mean is something a little more complicated than just seeing different things. because you wouldn't have any clue about the world or life in general just walking around your town at any moment in history.

what they mean is once you "get out of your house" you are spending time having fun with friends. and you are having so much fun that you forget about anything other than them.

that's pretty much the goal of most people. to have so much fun with your friends you actually believe that what you are doing matters.

Peterson is a critic of malevolent nihilism, specifically.

>after all, the first thing newborns do is cry before having the chance of getting to experience any pleasures
So? Who's to say that babies don't experience while still in the womb?

*experience pleasure

How would that work? Nutrients are pumped at a steady rate through the cord and they're pretty much isolated from external, possibly positive stimuli.

>equating abstinence with infanticide

wew lad

Please leave this board.

>If antinatalism is ideal, then just off yourself. No one [few] actually take that step though. By mere virtue of not killing yourself, you've disproven the antinatalist thesis.
But antinatalism is against birth, not life

Unborn life master race desu.

Simple, no one has actually proven that life is meaningless. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So why have faith in the meaninglessness of existence? The only intellectually honest position is admitting we don't know shit and trying out best to find the truth.

This doesn't address the topic at hand.

You should be able to infer how my statements relate to the topic at hand. If you assign a negative value to birth you most likely do so out of belief that life serves no purpose outside of mere existence in an imperfect and cruel world. You choose to believe so because there's no current empirical evidence to the contrary. However, you're making a premature judgment. We haven't got the information to make such a judgment, and doing so is naive at best and arrogant at worst. So why have faith in the meaninglessness of it all? What kind of twisted form of faith is that? Antinatalism is based on an assumption. Why are you so sure of it?

Life could serve a negative purpose by being entertainment for an omnimalevolent Devil or the positive purpose of whatever might not outweigh or redeem all the suffering at hand, you can entertain an infinity of unfalsifiable possibilities and combinations of metaphysics and axiologies, so what? The real question is whether we should procreate or not and you can't really expect anyone to take an answer seriously if its only justification is a knee-jerk appeal to the nonzero possibility of its being true despite complete lack of evidence.

Life has no meaning therefore antinatalism makes no sense.

Presumably the get some sort of pleasure in their surroundings, or else they wouldn't cry when they were deprived of them.

At the very least they're not suffering, which is as good as feeling pleasure by antinatalist standards.

hahahaha

>you can't really expect anyone to take an answer seriously if its only justification is a knee-jerk appeal to the nonzero possibility of its being true despite complete lack of evidence.

This also describes antinatalism.

Should we procreate?. We don't know and we're trying to find out. For us to find out we have to be alive, so we should procreate for the time being. That is the temporary answer. I'm not saying that you should believe that there's a higher purpose. I'm not saying you should have faith. All I'm saying is that we as a species should remain humble and keep searching and inquiring for as long as we can. We don't have the answers to these problems and we should stop pretending we do. Just because we feel like we should have all the answers doesn't mean we're entitled to them. I don't know about you but I'll just work with what I got and not rely on unfalsifiable possibilities for the time being.

Kierkegaard

>i'm going to condemn sentient beings to suffering and death and encourage others to do the same for as long as we don't know for certain that we ought not to, and raise the bar for knowledge so high a priori that this whole natalist shlick of misery and annihilation will continue until the involuntary extinction of our species due to heat death of the universe oops sorry we dont know that will happen FOR CERTAIN either, selective skepticism is a bitch innit hehe guess I win)

Is this your final answer?

>i'm going to condemn sentient beings to suffering and death
and pleasure and life
you keep ignoring those two

>There's a possibility that life is pointless so we should terminate it all without doing further investigation and spend the remainder of our days whining about it achieving jack shit. Regardless of all of that, I'm willing to deprive billions of individuals of the opportunity to experience and know life because of my favorite unfalsifiable ideology. Selective skepticism is a bitch innit hehe I guess I win.

Is this your final answer?

And yes, that just so happens to be my final answer. Why do you care anyway? Our premature extinction would be just another meaningless act in your meaningless universe. It's bound to happen anyway. So why not have a crack at it? I sure want to have a go at life and I enjoy it. If you don't, feel free to end your life and you won't be bothered by my ilk anymore. Try not to project your misery onto others too much. Some people actually enjoy life.

not that guy but AN doesn't advocate termination
of life, the only "termination" would be people dying of old age, which isn't a choice.
>So why not have a crack at it? I sure want to have a go at life and I enjoy it. If you don't, feel free to end your life and you won't be bothered by my ilk anymore.

did you not read the thread?

Terminate: To bring to an end
Stopping procreation wouldn't bring the human race to an end?
I have read the thread. I just wanted his answer.

The best criticism is that it's a non-position; whether or not you wish for all to stop procreating, people will continue to procreate until they don't. As a personal-practical ideal it isn't too assertive: the west has a long history of chaste individuals who helped society in other ways than reproduction. One usually just defaults to pessimism, which can be much more interesting and poetic than the dull utilitarianisms and ecologisms of popular 'anti-natalism.'

Thus Spoke Zarathustra