6 ms·

Value-Null Antinatalism [pdf]

15 points by dusted 1y ago

ChrisGranger 1y ago
I've felt this way for decades and almost invariably get negative push-back when I raise these points. I've stopped worrying about it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- wahern 1y ago
  A huge number of people feel this way, especially post Gen-X generations--Millennials, etc. From the paper: > moral authorisation has to come before the imposition. What's the expression... tell me you're a Millennial without telling me you're a Millennial...? The anti-natalist movement and it's reactionary natalist counterpart are perfect case studies in how people's beliefs are shaped by their cultural environment.
  - efilife 1y ago
    Maybe we should consider whether the ideology is logically correct, not who it comes from. Also, what you said are just baseless assumptions where you assign ideas you don't like to people you don't like
    - wahern 1y ago
      I never said I didn't like the idea. I neither like it nor dislike it. I just meant to point out that the conclusions are in large part a consequence of the the way the question is framed, and the framing is largely cultural determined, in particular by generational beliefs and concerns. Indeed, the entire question of natalism/anti-natalism is generationally specific; older generations would find it an odd thing to have an "ideology" about, notwithstanding small cohorts in earlier generations, or the fact that in the abstract it had long been discussed. Given all that, it's expected that a large number of people--in particular, those of the same or adjacent generations--would share these beliefs and even analysis; and an even larger number sharing similar framing, even if coming to opposite conclusions. It's disquieting when you come to the realization that so many of one's beliefs are, in a sense, predetermined, or at least channeled by a cultural experience shared with millions of other people. This of course applies to myself no less than any other. I long ago stopped considering any of my thoughts rare, let alone original. I read half of the literary output of people from my generation and think, "gee, I was saying that 20 years ago"; and the other half, "gee, I was arguing the opposite 20 years ago". Well, of course I was, and so were they. That's not to say there aren't novel exceptional moments, cases, and people. Just very few and far between. And the whole natalism debate is definitely not the exception.
      - boston_clone 1y ago
        Well, here's Schopenhauer channelling his American millennial in 1850s Europe: "If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?" The wikipedia article from where I snagged that quote has a few more examples that go back to like, ancient Greece. Check it out! P.S. it does sound like you have at least a mild disdain for millennials and also an opinion on the matter - share your thoughts, tease out those details! dismissing a topic as a generational "odd thing" isn't fun, and is definitely a common and unoriginal idea.
- efilife 1y ago
  And now you will get dismissed as being a post gen-x or a millenial
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
xyzzy9563 1y ago
The people who believe this stuff don't have kids, so they lose out in the Darwinian race, and the people with pro-natalist beliefs continue the human existence and more often pass down those beliefs. So regardless of who thinks they're right, evolution wins in the end.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > The people who believe this stuff don't have kids, so they lose out in the Darwinian race, and the people with pro-natalist beliefs continue the human existence and more often pass down those beliefs. So regardless of who thinks they're right, evolution wins in the end. Not necessarily. Parents aren't the only source of beliefs: as an extreme example indoctrination in forced boarding schools for young children can nearly totally eliminate parental influence. So if anti-natalists want to beat evolution, they've got a window right now to crank up the indoctrination to keep humanity on a glide path towards extinction. IMHO, procreation has historically driven by a desire for sex, but technology has decoupled those. It'll take some time for explicitly pro-natal psychology to get equivalently powerful.
- dusted 1y ago
  I am a parent. The amount of responsibility I feel towards my child is all encompassing and absolute. The love I feel for them is immeasurable, as is the joy they bring me. The guilt of this selfishness, however, is not entirely weightless either. My child being created is, 50% my doing, I created them into a world I cannot control, without their consent. Every pain they will experience, will rest on my shoulders, until I die, and even from beyond my death, it will be due to me. I will do everything in my power to prepare them to achieve a good life, this does not mean shielding them from pain, because experiencing pain is part of life, and learning how to deal with it appropriately, increases the quality of life they can have. This is the worst from both worlds, it is the parent who feels all their pain, and it is the parent that recognizes that it is part of becoming a full human. My parents were very loving and caring, they wanted to have me, they wanted a child, and they gave me life. I am not grateful for them giving me life, in fact, that they did that is something I do not appreciate. But I am grateful for the love and care they showed me, and I love them very much, despite them creating me. If you feel there are contradictions here, think harder. "Evolution wins in the end", well, in the end I guess entropy wins.. But, you attribute a goal to evolution, but evolution, as a concept, really boils down to "the laws of physics also apply to life", it's not like we know it to be trying to do something in particular.. the life that continues is the life that continues, it's not that life really finds a way, it's just that there's enough variance that some of it will likely survive a change, not that every species does that.. but I don't really think that matters to whether knowingly creating life is moral or not.. it's not like nature or life is inherently moral.. it'd probably be a stretch, but one could say that, at least when perfectly executed, the least moral are most likely to succeed.
Heliodex 1y ago
Interesting to find one of my closely-held philosophical beliefs on HN. I'd recommend looking at Aponism <https://aponism.org/manifesto https://aponism.org/manifesto> for a set of beliefs that include this + others relating to reduction of suffering, or Negative Utilitarianism for similar ideas built upon the same building blocks.
kazinator 1y ago
> JC: Intentionally creating a new rights-bearer S is permissible only if it is necessary to discharge a duty owed to S That pontification just feels pulled out of thin air. Suppose I just need S to take over the family fortune? Also pulled out of thin air.
- dusted 1y ago
  What I'm trying to say is, that, if a person is not born, they don't exist.. they're not waiting eagerly in the "before life" to be born, therefore, there can be no duty towards them, because there's nothing there.. You can't owe anything unless you have some subject, a rights-bearer.. If you don't create one, there is not one, and so, you do not have any duty to create one.. You know, like, if you don't take a loan, you don't owe any money on that loan, it's not like there is already loans made in your name, with debts waiting to be paid off, that you must go to the bank and take, so that you can pay them off.. I don't know how many different ways there is to say the same thing, but if the _THING_ does not exist, then it really has no rights, and you really have no duty towards it.. Those start only if you make the thing exist.. If you have a fortune, and nobody to inherit it, then you don't have any obligation to create a heir, you can chose to do that (even if I argue that it's morally bad to do, I will amend that it's probably less morally bad to do than if you created them so they could inherit the debt you don't have enough time to pay off during your own life)
  - kazinator 1y ago
    > there can be no duty towards them That part is obvious and incontrovertible. The idea that such a duty must exist, or is even relevant, is just something someone made up.
csb6 1y ago
> Every moral duty is owed to a real, identifiable someone. You can’t have a duty to “a possible person” who does not yet exist. This doesn’t hold up. It is effectively denying that people will be born in the future, which of course they will be since antinatalism is not universal and fertility rates are above zero. There are valuable things that can be done today that will help those people but not anyone alive today (e.g. preservation of media that is well-known and widely distributed today but may not be in the future when it is more historically valuable). It is safe to assume that new people will be born at some point in the future (given current conditions) and will then be “identifiable”, so you have to account for their future existences when making moral decisions with future consequences.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > This doesn’t hold up. It is effectively denying that people will be born in the future No, it merely denies that people that do not exist can have moral duties owed to them.
  - csb6 1y ago
    If the actions I take now will affect someone I know will exist in the future and who will be owed duties, I effectively have a moral duty. You can say the moral duty is not in existence until the person is actually born, but my duty to that future person has to be taken into account now so it already exists in a meaningful sense.
    - dusted 1y ago
      The argument is specifically treating the duty to create new people, not any other duties. A common argument against antinatalism, is that we have a duty to create new people, because if we don't create them, they can't have good lives.. That would be true, if there was an actual pool of unborn people, like, some metaphysical vault of people yet to be born, waiting for their turn.. In _THAT_ case, we _would_ have a duty to create them, so that they can have good lives, and experience all the amazing stuff we get to experience.. However, since there's no such vault, there is no duty to create them, there is nobody that is owed life on the grounds that if they do not get it, they are deprived of it.. because people that are not born yet, do not actually exist in any way. That does not eliminate any duty towards the unspecific mass of people that will indeed be born in the future, regardless of whether creating them is wrong or right, there is still a moral duty to attempt to make the world as good a place for them to be in..
palmotea 1y ago
If you can cherry-pick your assumptions, you can reason to almost any result. Which is a tactic for manipulating people to change their beliefs that I see often: don't argue for your position directly, but focus on more distant propositions that your target isn't as guarded about.
- dusted 1y ago
  Granted. I didn't mean this as a complete framework, only as an additional perspective or "mod" to amend the weakest part of Benetar's asymmetry. Also, I'm not personally interested in changing peoples views, only to contribute the idea of value-null, or that the discussion really ends with the existing.
nuldev 1y ago
I don't know man... in general, these arguments seem more like pulling out the rug from a discussion by obfuscating arguments through abstract yet vague claims with some intellectual snobbery to make them feel correct, a trump card argument. You win either by slinging undue complexity and forcing others to tap-out of the discussion in an awkward pause, or if a counter argument is made, you claim they do not understand your original argument. I feel like the author is really trying hard to justify why they are not having kids. Fine! that is their preference, there is no need to justify it.

15 points by dusted 1y ago

I've felt this way for decades and almost invariably get negative push-back when I raise these points. I've stopped worrying about it.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
wahern 1y ago
A huge number of people feel this way, especially post Gen-X generations--Millennials, etc. From the paper: > moral authorisation has to come before the imposition. What's the expression... tell me you're a Millennial without telling me you're a Millennial...? The anti-natalist movement and it's reactionary natalist counterpart are perfect case studies in how people's beliefs are shaped by their cultural environment.
- efilife 1y ago
  Maybe we should consider whether the ideology is logically correct, not who it comes from. Also, what you said are just baseless assumptions where you assign ideas you don't like to people you don't like
  - wahern 1y ago
    I never said I didn't like the idea. I neither like it nor dislike it. I just meant to point out that the conclusions are in large part a consequence of the the way the question is framed, and the framing is largely cultural determined, in particular by generational beliefs and concerns. Indeed, the entire question of natalism/anti-natalism is generationally specific; older generations would find it an odd thing to have an "ideology" about, notwithstanding small cohorts in earlier generations, or the fact that in the abstract it had long been discussed. Given all that, it's expected that a large number of people--in particular, those of the same or adjacent generations--would share these beliefs and even analysis; and an even larger number sharing similar framing, even if coming to opposite conclusions. It's disquieting when you come to the realization that so many of one's beliefs are, in a sense, predetermined, or at least channeled by a cultural experience shared with millions of other people. This of course applies to myself no less than any other. I long ago stopped considering any of my thoughts rare, let alone original. I read half of the literary output of people from my generation and think, "gee, I was saying that 20 years ago"; and the other half, "gee, I was arguing the opposite 20 years ago". Well, of course I was, and so were they. That's not to say there aren't novel exceptional moments, cases, and people. Just very few and far between. And the whole natalism debate is definitely not the exception.
    - boston_clone 1y ago
      Well, here's Schopenhauer channelling his American millennial in 1850s Europe: "If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?" The wikipedia article from where I snagged that quote has a few more examples that go back to like, ancient Greece. Check it out! P.S. it does sound like you have at least a mild disdain for millennials and also an opinion on the matter - share your thoughts, tease out those details! dismissing a topic as a generational "odd thing" isn't fun, and is definitely a common and unoriginal idea.
efilife 1y ago
And now you will get dismissed as being a post gen-x or a millenial

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

xyzzy9563 1y ago

The people who believe this stuff don't have kids, so they lose out in the Darwinian race, and the people with pro-natalist beliefs continue the human existence and more often pass down those beliefs. So regardless of who thinks they're right, evolution wins in the end.

palmotea 1y ago
> The people who believe this stuff don't have kids, so they lose out in the Darwinian race, and the people with pro-natalist beliefs continue the human existence and more often pass down those beliefs. So regardless of who thinks they're right, evolution wins in the end. Not necessarily. Parents aren't the only source of beliefs: as an extreme example indoctrination in forced boarding schools for young children can nearly totally eliminate parental influence. So if anti-natalists want to beat evolution, they've got a window right now to crank up the indoctrination to keep humanity on a glide path towards extinction. IMHO, procreation has historically driven by a desire for sex, but technology has decoupled those. It'll take some time for explicitly pro-natal psychology to get equivalently powerful.
dusted 1y ago
I am a parent. The amount of responsibility I feel towards my child is all encompassing and absolute. The love I feel for them is immeasurable, as is the joy they bring me. The guilt of this selfishness, however, is not entirely weightless either. My child being created is, 50% my doing, I created them into a world I cannot control, without their consent. Every pain they will experience, will rest on my shoulders, until I die, and even from beyond my death, it will be due to me. I will do everything in my power to prepare them to achieve a good life, this does not mean shielding them from pain, because experiencing pain is part of life, and learning how to deal with it appropriately, increases the quality of life they can have. This is the worst from both worlds, it is the parent who feels all their pain, and it is the parent that recognizes that it is part of becoming a full human. My parents were very loving and caring, they wanted to have me, they wanted a child, and they gave me life. I am not grateful for them giving me life, in fact, that they did that is something I do not appreciate. But I am grateful for the love and care they showed me, and I love them very much, despite them creating me. If you feel there are contradictions here, think harder. "Evolution wins in the end", well, in the end I guess entropy wins.. But, you attribute a goal to evolution, but evolution, as a concept, really boils down to "the laws of physics also apply to life", it's not like we know it to be trying to do something in particular.. the life that continues is the life that continues, it's not that life really finds a way, it's just that there's enough variance that some of it will likely survive a change, not that every species does that.. but I don't really think that matters to whether knowingly creating life is moral or not.. it's not like nature or life is inherently moral.. it'd probably be a stretch, but one could say that, at least when perfectly executed, the least moral are most likely to succeed.

Heliodex 1y ago

Interesting to find one of my closely-held philosophical beliefs on HN. I'd recommend looking at Aponism <https://aponism.org/manifesto https://aponism.org/manifesto> for a set of beliefs that include this + others relating to reduction of suffering, or Negative Utilitarianism for similar ideas built upon the same building blocks.

kazinator 1y ago

> JC: Intentionally creating a new rights-bearer S is permissible only if it is necessary to discharge a duty owed to S That pontification just feels pulled out of thin air. Suppose I just need S to take over the family fortune? Also pulled out of thin air.

dusted 1y ago
What I'm trying to say is, that, if a person is not born, they don't exist.. they're not waiting eagerly in the "before life" to be born, therefore, there can be no duty towards them, because there's nothing there.. You can't owe anything unless you have some subject, a rights-bearer.. If you don't create one, there is not one, and so, you do not have any duty to create one.. You know, like, if you don't take a loan, you don't owe any money on that loan, it's not like there is already loans made in your name, with debts waiting to be paid off, that you must go to the bank and take, so that you can pay them off.. I don't know how many different ways there is to say the same thing, but if the _THING_ does not exist, then it really has no rights, and you really have no duty towards it.. Those start only if you make the thing exist.. If you have a fortune, and nobody to inherit it, then you don't have any obligation to create a heir, you can chose to do that (even if I argue that it's morally bad to do, I will amend that it's probably less morally bad to do than if you created them so they could inherit the debt you don't have enough time to pay off during your own life)
- kazinator 1y ago
  > there can be no duty towards them That part is obvious and incontrovertible. The idea that such a duty must exist, or is even relevant, is just something someone made up.

csb6 1y ago

> Every moral duty is owed to a real, identifiable someone. You can’t have a duty to “a possible person” who does not yet exist. This doesn’t hold up. It is effectively denying that people will be born in the future, which of course they will be since antinatalism is not universal and fertility rates are above zero. There are valuable things that can be done today that will help those people but not anyone alive today (e.g. preservation of media that is well-known and widely distributed today but may not be in the future when it is more historically valuable). It is safe to assume that new people will be born at some point in the future (given current conditions) and will then be “identifiable”, so you have to account for their future existences when making moral decisions with future consequences.

dragonwriter 1y ago
> This doesn’t hold up. It is effectively denying that people will be born in the future No, it merely denies that people that do not exist can have moral duties owed to them.
- csb6 1y ago
  If the actions I take now will affect someone I know will exist in the future and who will be owed duties, I effectively have a moral duty. You can say the moral duty is not in existence until the person is actually born, but my duty to that future person has to be taken into account now so it already exists in a meaningful sense.
  - dusted 1y ago
    The argument is specifically treating the duty to create new people, not any other duties. A common argument against antinatalism, is that we have a duty to create new people, because if we don't create them, they can't have good lives.. That would be true, if there was an actual pool of unborn people, like, some metaphysical vault of people yet to be born, waiting for their turn.. In _THAT_ case, we _would_ have a duty to create them, so that they can have good lives, and experience all the amazing stuff we get to experience.. However, since there's no such vault, there is no duty to create them, there is nobody that is owed life on the grounds that if they do not get it, they are deprived of it.. because people that are not born yet, do not actually exist in any way. That does not eliminate any duty towards the unspecific mass of people that will indeed be born in the future, regardless of whether creating them is wrong or right, there is still a moral duty to attempt to make the world as good a place for them to be in..

palmotea 1y ago

If you can cherry-pick your assumptions, you can reason to almost any result. Which is a tactic for manipulating people to change their beliefs that I see often: don't argue for your position directly, but focus on more distant propositions that your target isn't as guarded about.

dusted 1y ago
Granted. I didn't mean this as a complete framework, only as an additional perspective or "mod" to amend the weakest part of Benetar's asymmetry. Also, I'm not personally interested in changing peoples views, only to contribute the idea of value-null, or that the discussion really ends with the existing.

nuldev 1y ago

I don't know man... in general, these arguments seem more like pulling out the rug from a discussion by obfuscating arguments through abstract yet vague claims with some intellectual snobbery to make them feel correct, a trump card argument. You win either by slinging undue complexity and forcing others to tap-out of the discussion in an awkward pause, or if a counter argument is made, you claim they do not understand your original argument. I feel like the author is really trying hard to justify why they are not having kids. Fine! that is their preference, there is no need to justify it.