Since you haven’t addressed my arguments, no.

However, in the same vein as it were, would you prevent a child being born in heaven? No, you wouldn't, oui? — Agent Smith

I've already answered this..

I've stated many times that if life was someone's individualized utopia, then it's no longer an imposition. — schopenhauer1

Since life does not offer a personalized utopia, it is creating major impositions onto someone else, so being that this existence is not that (and it's not even a debate that this existence is not that), it is an imposition.

This does bring up an analysis of the word "imposition". There are two ways it is used, and I think both are relevant here.

A) Imposition- foisting one's will onto another.
B) Imposition- creating a burden for another.

Both of these definitions can apply here. In the case of the utopia example, the absence of B makes the the case a bit murkier, but this existence never has a case where there is not B, it it wouldn't matter. In my argument I had three things here:

1) The range of choices are limited to the physical-cultural arrangements of this existence and circumstances of time and place. This was assumed to be an appropriate set of choices for another.

2) Known harms are assumed to be enough for others to endure.

3) Unknown harms are simply had by a person through collateral damage of being born. The parent knows there are unknowns but they can't say what they are.

2 and 3 are certainly a violation of B.

1 may seem to not be a violation of B, but besides just the fact one is imposing one's own will (A), the fact that the choices are limited to what existence currently has to offer, B is still relevant too in that the choices may not be wanted if otherwise one could choose so. A and B are violated in all three parts of the argument.

If you insist that with respect to antinatalism no one exists to be deprived of joy and hence my objection fails to pass muster, I'd be forced to respond likewise - no one exists to benefit from not being born into a life of pain. You can't have your cake and eat it too is what I mean. Be consistent and antinatalism has no leg go stsnd on, oui monsieur? — Agent Smith

Go back to my response again and not just put out the same old non-identity argument which I have objected to many a time. You talked about someone not enjoying X. I explained the faulty reasoning for such thinking on mourning the bike that is missed by no one. As for your (separate red herring) non-identity argument (unrelated to that other point but seemingly thrown in there as yet another chance at this discussion), the collateral damage of imposition only goes one way- birth. The missed goods don't cause collateral damage (to that person that is supposed to miss out). It doesn't matter what you even judge the state of affairs as, no collateral damage took place. No "good" took place either, but think of that missed bike mourned by only you. Birth guarantees the collateral damage, no birth has no collateral damage. It only has you thinking about a missed opportunity.

Also, this is about impositions made on others behalf, not harms not had by non-existent people, oui? So is this sneaking in another argument into this particular one to pry open room for a red herring debate on the non-identity argument, or is it not understanding this particular claim which does not rely on non-existent people enjoying or not enjoying something?

Imagine you know for certain that a child about to be bern will live an enchanted life, perfectly happy in every possible way. Would you not do your utmost to ensure the birth of this child? This demonstrates, in my humble opinion, that antinatalism too can be immoral. — Agent Smith

In this universe do people live such a life, ever? If you bring in probabilities of some 1 trillionth chance we're done. I've stated many times that if life was someone's individualized utopia, then it's no longer an imposition.

Nevertheless, I can't shake off the feeling that not giving birth to someone who could've enjoyed life to the fullest (suppose his/her parents are super-rich) is also a privation. This too is an imposition of sorts. — Agent Smith

On what person is this imposing? A person could be born that likes a bike you could have bought them. Do you mourn that person who is not there to like the bike you bought? That would be odd indeed. Even if you did mourn it.. That is YOUR problem as an already existing person.. not the person who doesn't exist who didn't need the bike in the first place. Nor do you need to create that circumstance JUST BECAUSE you have some notion that it is necessary for them to experience liking the bike. Unfortunately, the case is you create a person who has a range of choices, harms, and unforeseen circumstances that you imposed on them, not just X positive experiences that that person would have liked had they lived out some utopia. All major assumptions for others.

Is antinatalism murder? — Agent Smith

No. How would it be?

At the very least it is a kind of preemptive euthanasia. — Agent Smith

Not really. Euthanasia entails someone exists and is already being harmed. It just leads to poor framing of it to mislead.

But many natalists are doing the exact same thing. Just look at the severe judgment with which the antinatalists on this forum are being met. — baker

This is a very true observation.

But people who procreate don't typically seem to see it that way. What do you make of that? — baker

I call it aggressive paternalistic thinking. Their values must be lived by another person. I don't know what to say other than it is an attitude. Attitudes can lead to all sorts of things.

It's kind of like this...
Life presents itself as a series of problems that have to be overcome:

Problem: I feel kind of unhealthy..
Solution: Well, the way to fix that is good diet and exercise..

This is seen as "good" by the potential parent that a child will get to experience the maintenance of healthy eating and exercise. But wait, this is just creating the problem of unhealthy conditions that then needs remedy by healthy eating and exercise. Why is this maintenance routine something that should be experienced by another in the first place? All you have is presumptive answers that only make sense for the decision-maker and can never be made by the person it is presuming for.

Problem: You need to survive- usually by some system of exchange of labor for money which buys goods and services.
Solution: Well, the way to resolve this is have to figure out jobs to apply to with a range of limited choices of time, place, circumstance, market conditions, background fit, etc.

This is seen as "good" by the potential parent that a child will get to experience the survival routine of working a job. But wait, this is just creating the problem of surviving that then needs remedy by finding a suitable job (if there are any that combine in such a way by such and such circumstances). Why is this survival routine something that should be experienced by another in the first place? All you have is presumptive answers that only make sense for the decision-maker and can never be made by the person it is presuming for.

Problem: You have a major health issue.
Solution: Well, the way to fix that is by going to a doctor to find out how to deal with it and get better...


And of course, it's the person's fault for not "getting in line", or "not preparing better", or "not getting the habits right", or not "doing this the right way", "let that person down", "let down the team", "you haven't quite got it", "you must learn to deal with this and that and the other", "you forgot this", "you overlooked that", "here's another thing to add".. You see all those negative things happened because YOU didn't play the game right and it's your fault..

I can keep going on and on and do thousands of variations based on locations, situations, etc. But the point is that these problems to overcome and experience the overcoming of, are seen as somehow necessary for someone else to endure. That is a big presumption.

The only thing the other side can do here is make a red herring/straw man of my examples as "not that bad".. But you can "not that bad" anything... And I can use more extreme examples, but purposely choose not to as I don't even think it's necessary, though I will if someone wants to pull that nonsense response. The point is the choices are limited, the harms are known (and some unknown), and that there are immense assumptions being made for imposing them onto other people.

pain now for glory later. — Agent Smith

You aren't forced onto a sports team though. How is this not a violation if you were? Even if it was seen as a benefit if you joined the team. Not only is it a violation of the individual by overlooking the very agent who this is affecting, but it is exactly the kind of aggressive paternalistic assumption I am talking about where another gets to decide for an individual what the conditions are for them (whether for a cause or otherwise).

I think the objection would be that many here believe us not just to be victims, but also beneficiaries. Would that change the nature of the pyramid scheme? — Tzeentch

No. It would have to be some sort of personalized utopia you know the person was born into to not violate the imposition of one view into another person.

Those weren’t moral claims in that post but descriptions of what your stance leads to. You were waiting to take that “arbitrary ethics” attack out of your arsenal though.

Your philosophy leads to punishing others for harms others are incurring basically and pushing the victims continually into the future by using them to ameliorate the past.

At the end of the day aggressive paternalism as what counts for others as to the range of choices, known harms, and unforeseen harms that they must endure, is an underlying assumption that can be questioned and examined. How is that ever good to assume for others en totale? It’s creating the obstacles and limitations de novo for others. It’s not ameliorating anything. It simply imposes one persons view of what another person should deal with onto another. In a way, because other animals never have to make these assumptive, imposing choices on behalf of others, I am not really concerned with antinatalism proper as concerning other animals. We have an agenda. We understand the deal and then decide others must endure what we deem as necessary.

Exactly so, however it has been Isaac's argument that one is thereby creating conditions for harm, and is thus immoral. (The way this ties back into the original topic is that he is arguing that not having children creates conditions for harm). — Tzeentch

But this to me is insane moral thinking, if examined and not just taken due to current convention. Your project being deemed worthy means another person must pay. One that cannot by its unique nature have agreed upon the conditions.

There’s something else going on here too. Where the already existing people can’t help but try to endure the stress of existence, by putting a new person in the fray, it’s creating yet more harm and harm-overcoming upon someone else in order to try to fix the current problems. The ultimate case of using people. It’s also the ultimate pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes don’t resolve anything, they simply create more victims that rely on yet more victims to survive. But it’s even worse cause it’s combining the two. I’m having a problem, therefore I will force recruit yet more people into the pyramid scheme operation that creates another person to endure harm itself. It actually solves nothing but to further continue the creating of victims.

So on two fronts we have some bad things here:
1. Making others pay for your problems. It would be like making a relative get punished for what you did.

2. Making future victims to fix a past problem and continuing the harm cycle.

@Tzeentch @Isaac
So I was gone for a bit, but rejoining this thread, there are several points to consider regarding this current back-and-forth about the builder:

The decision to procreate is always one of force recruiting. The aggressive paternalism in the OP is the stance that force recruiting is justified. Is it ever okay to force recruit people into your projects? I think never. Generally people have a chance to move, associate differently, etc. The assumption about building the house is that someone else needs to help build that house because someone wants it. That by itself is not a moral obligation. That just leads to slippery slope thinking whereby technically everyone at all times needs to be busy helping others out... It would be an insane utilitarianism the likes of the repugnant conclusion. Just working infinitesimally more for other people's projects will technically help them accomplish it, and perhaps 16 hours of your day can be arranged for helping in these projects because, ya know, people always need helping!

But really, I don't want to get bogged down in these silly arguments of utilitarianism, because I think it misses one of the main points of the wrongness of this kind of imposition that procreation represents. Rather, the background de facto understanding is life presents various choices and limitations limited to the physical and cultural realities of this existence. These things are well known because we live, experience, and learn about them everyday. Yet the big leap is assuming that THESE sets of choices offered in THIS existence is something OTHERS should endure. That is the stance I am objecting to. Along with these particular range of choices that existence offers (and of course more limited by place and time of where and when the person is born), but the harms of existence are also fairly well known, and the assumption that THESE sets of harms are okay for others to endure. And of course, the unforeseen harms that no one is sure of will befall people in the future. All of this is assumptions one makes on others behalf. Unlike other decisions where the person can just move out, associate with different people, get out of a contract, the actual set of choices and conditions themselves cannot be chosen or agreed upon.

irstly, how could you possibly know what they meant? — Isaac

Because that's how governed is used unless in the context of talking about government, as in "The people were governed by X government". Anyways, this is pedantic asides. Look up govern in the dictionary, besides the political usage, it means controlling something.

Secondly, one is no more 'controlled' by one's own rule than one is governed by it. If you can change the rule any time you desire, then you are de facto controlled by your desires, not the rule. — Isaac

Well that's a separate issue on whether people change the rules they think they follow. Clearly, that in itself is moving the goal posts and is not moral so much as expedient, quite the opposite of what moral reasoning is doing. So again with vegetarianism.. You may really miss meat, but not indulge in it as an ethical rule. See how that works?

On the other hand, if you want to justify any action, you constantly change morality to fit your needs, whereby it is no longer a governing rule but simply preference-maximizing with post-facto justification (unless I guess your ethic was absolutely preference-maximizing, which is more egoism or self-interest.. hard to justify as an ethic).

One is not 'governed' if one gets to make up one's own rules. One is simply doing as one pleases. — Isaac

That’s not how the definition was using governed. It referenced no actual government or community and the word just means there controls.

There are many things that are natural, e.g. we're violent by nature, but does that mean we should be violent? — Agent Smith

Yep. Remember my arguments around the differences in things like drinking water, taking a shit, and procreating? Procreating is not instinct in the way the first two are (necessary or death).

Same thing. Key word being 'govern'. Not do as you please. — Isaac

It says govern, but the definition I pasted did not mention "accepted rules about behaviour". That of course makes your definition entail some sort of community-deemed foundation to ethics, when it is more general than such a definition. Rather, it is simply rules that govern behavior, and can have a multitude of foundations in ethics and metaethical analysis.

So, Benatar has to be inconsistent in how he treats nonexistence to make the case for antinatalism. That's the flaw in his argument in my humble opinion.

That's why I wished to take nonexistence out of the calculus by proposing we assume people exist before they're born on Earth. That way we can avoid the metaphysics of nonexistence, a complex topic in its own right and reduce the problem to a mathematical game of chance. — Agent Smith

Well, I think that's why it should be read in its context. He gave common intuitions we have when trying to justify the claim. So he thinks that while not experiencing good is always instrumental, not experiencing bad is intrinsically good. There is something weighted to make the asymmetry such that no bad occurring is just "good" whilst good not occurring is not just bad but bad only if instrumentally felt by an actual someone.

He gives examples like, it seems intuitively weird to be sad about the non-existent aliens on Mars. It seems intuitively more salient if we knew there were aliens and they suffered. We would probably feel a sadness.

eth·ics
/ˈeTHiks/
Learn to pronounce
noun
1.
moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity.

The point is we already disagree, you and I.

So we've only two choices. We arbitrate (come to a binding agreement), or you do as you see fit and I do as I see fit (we do as we please). — Isaac

Agreed.

I liken it to vegetarian/veganism. Propose, make a case, don't impose. I also separate discussions of ethics from law. Government/law and ethics is not the same but may overlap with personal ethics.

Based on what it means to have an ethics that obtains for reasoning, feeling, people who have their own internal reasons and preferences. It comes from that understanding expanded to everyone respecting this upon everyone.. Similar to Kant's foundation give or take.

Because the alternative is that everyone just does whatever they want. Again, if you prefer that system, that's your deal, but it just not what morality is. — Isaac

See, this is the false dichotomy I don't accept. Morality itself just becomes the capricious whims of a community's time, place, and circumstance. There seems something above and beyond community standards going on for things like when (or if) it is okay to harm an individual. Something that is irrespective of time and place of a community.

Yes they are. They're making an assumption that all the b people who would benefit from the prospective person should suffer. — Isaac

Why is a person's dignity being violated something that must be based on some community standard? Again, the witch being burned. Why is that allowed? The community feels this person is bad. She must suffer?

So who gets to decide what the rules are? — Isaac

That's the interesting part...
If no person is born, no person is imposed upon. There is no person not obtaining anything. If they are born, there is an imposition going on. Someone IS deciding in one, and in the other, no one is making that assumption for another, literally.

So, each person does exactly what they wish. Doing exactly what you want is not ethics, not by any definition at all.

The only alternative is that someone has the right of expectation that another will adhere to some behaviour even if they don't want to.

But then you can't avoid the question of who gets to set what that behaviour is.

You have three choices...

1. Everyone does whatever they want.

2. People are expected to behave in certain ways even if they don't want to. The community comes to a decision somehow as to what that behaviour is.

3. People are expected to behave in certain ways even if they don't want to. You, God, or some other arbitrary person, decide what that behaviour is. — Isaac

No, I don't know how that conclusion is reached that each person does exactly as they wish. That isn't a necessary conclusion. Clearly there are rules, the ones about not using people or violating their dignity by forcing upon them significant conditions.

1- That doesn't follow.

2- And then you run into things like the colonists burning witches- something you didn't address. Rather, there must be some rule above and beyond the community's standards. That's why ideas of rights came into play, to protect the individual. But beyond this, no one can act upon someone and then say that they are acting on behalf of the community or some goal that just "needs doing" and thus doing something to another unnecessarily is justified for these reasons.

3- This may be true if I am reading it correctly. Arbitrary is not accurate though. Rather it is the idea of people are not pawns to be moved around and to be used for some other entity whether that be a cause, another person's preferences, or what have you.

To my reckoning, Benatar is guilty of an inconsistency - look at 3 & 4. In the case of 3, nonexistence diminishes the value of possible happiness (Not bad only), but in 4, the value of unhappiness remains unaffected by nonexistence (Good). Benatar is trying to eat his cake and have it too. — Agent Smith

No it's not an inconsistency, he is working off of moral intuitions about non-had goods and non-had bads. I rather don't like it formulated in that fashion you wrote. Rather, the way I would put it but gets to the same idea:

1. When someone doesn't exist to experience good, damage has occurred to no one.
2. When someone does exist to experience bad, damage has occurred to someone.

Not bringing about 1 harms literally no one in its absence.
Bringing about 2 will harm someone.

The collateral damage only obtains for 2 and never for 1.

When subjectivity is involved, all bets are off!!! — Agent Smith

Right, but this doesn't refute the point, if the things are different for everyone, why go with the riskiest move? And then this also goes back to the asymmetry. WHO loses out on "no goods had"? Look back to my last post about the asymmetry.

I'm with you in that it would be presumptuous of anyone to think for someone else given that people differ so much in all the relevant respects (the subjectivity of hedonism comes into play). To illustrate, I might be happy living on minimum wages, with no health insurance, in a one-room apartment while you maybe miserable in a 40-room mansion with a full complement of staff to run the place. — Agent Smith

Yes, this is more to the point I was trying to make.

However, for this very same reason, I can't defend antinatalism and nor can anyone justify natalism. To do either, we need objectivity (we are arguing, oui?) but that as we just discovered isn't there (vide previous paragraph). — Agent Smith

But one doesn't affect a person, and the other does. So even if one is aware of the problem, but doesn't know if it is objectively true, why go with the riskiest, most harm-creating one? And then the idea of aggressive impositions starts coming into play even more... Why this assumption that others must do or like or comply with what you deem as good/meaningful and in such a significant and irreversible way?

People's own private objectives are not ethics, it's just subjective. If I want a big car it's not ethics to get me one. — Isaac

I wasn't saying that. I wasn't advocating for some preference-maximizing or something like that. I was saying that WHO is the person that enjoys, doesn't enjoy, feels the affects of X, Y, Z? It is the individual. There is no collective WE that feels anything, even if a collection of people are necessary to coordinate to move the project forward. Coordinated entities, are not the locus of ethics, a person is.

That's exactly what morality is, a general agreement among a community — Isaac

I'm just going to have to disagree with you there as to your conception of ethics.

Absent of agreement it's just personal preferences, not ethics. — Isaac

No, the assumption is that the community wants what the community wants, and you must comply with it (or die). That itself is the aggressive idea I am trying to refute as anything to do with being ethically valid.
Why should such aggressive assumptions that impact a person so significantly hold? What makes you the judge and jury for someone else's set of choices and harms? Anyone can do anything to anyone in the name of community then.. No you don't understand... COMMUNITY!! But then even if let's say it wasn't just me but a ragtag team of colonists in the 1600s that claim that that one person is a witch to be burned at the stake... COMMUNITY!! it must be moral? Of course not.. Or a community of any X things. It doesn't matter. No particular project should be used to impose on another because you value that project yourself.

Why not? More arbitrary rules. — Isaac

I was defending against your idea of community lording it over the individual and saying that in this particular situation, the individual is the ethical locus, not some community consensus as to what is acceptable to someone in the first place. And again, go back to what you said that the rule must fit for the circumstance of procreation which is different from imposing to ameliorate greater harms with lesser harms (because that only happens if people need that...). It is a matter of kind and not just degree here. You are assuming the projects one must encounter for someone else, including all the harms they will encounter, not just mitigating already existing harms for which people can't help but encounter.

Then you've no ethics. If the community don't get to have any expectation of anyone they don't personally agree with then all you have is everyone just does whatever they want. that's not ethics. — Isaac

I think I addressed this further up in the post about the so-called needs of a community census on whether something is validly moral.

People do already exist with these needs. The current community. All of whom will suffer if there's no succeeding generation. — Isaac

See above. What is 'good' for a community cannot be a subjective decision because we all affect each other, so I have expectation of you and you of me on the grounds of our mutual need for each other. It is not only reasonable to expect others to adhere to the general consensus on what is good, it is completely necessary for a community to function. — Isaac

While I agree perhaps about certain things about the community (perhaps not fully though because it seems like your rule makes a slippery slope consequential conclusion about how "useful" people are), in this case you are creating someone else's needs de novo. That is the violation. The community is not some amorphous entity either, but comprised of people with feelings, attitudes, ways of beings, and their own internal thoughts.. It is THAT which the ethics obtains to.. The projects to stay alive for them.. To then put the projects above the persons in question is to put the wrong thing as the locus of ethics. Projects on their own are for the humans. And not all humans might like the projects... nor is there anywhere that it says that the projects must be carried forward simply because OTHERS have a notion it must (and so they get to impose it on other people).

So? Why care about affecting others? — Isaac

Because people are not to be used, even if it is for a "greater cause of the community". People are where ethics lies, not communities. If I have a project that I like, I don't get to impose it on others because the project cannot move forward and then claim anything that doesn't further my project is not moral, therefore I can do X things to other people, whether it is good/whether they want it or not. I also don't get to create harmful situations for them because it furthers my project. Again, it's aggressive paternalism. It uses people. It assumes what YOU think is good is good (for them).

You talk about meaning, I'm talking about good. — Isaac

I don't see how you can't replace the word and the logic not be the same. Just replace meaning with good then.

What is 'good' is not fine being subjective because you sffdct me and I affect you, we share common resources, we share space, we collaborate to achieve stuff we couldn't achieve alone. We must come up with an agreement as to what constitutes the common good. — Isaac

I'll allow you that if you want to make that distinction with those two words.. but though on the surface that looks like it is relevant, it actually isn't because you are talking about cases where a person exists to already need to share resources, space, and "achieve stuff". Hence why I really try to emphasize the unnecessary nature of creating these things for another person to encounter (the very imposition in question).

Once we have such an agreement, the maintenance of it is all morality is. Anything else is pointless. You could say "you mustn't do X", " you must do Y", but why? Who sets these bizarre rules and why ought we obey them? — Isaac

Procreation is a case that doesn't fit this conception and yet it is something that will (or at least could) affect another person so squarely fits in morality. It is not exempt because it doesn't fit with other cases. The rule itself must make room for this decision as well.

If you don't want to build a better community, if you don't care for their welfare, then that's fine, you do you, but you've got no business with morality, the subject matter of which is the welfare of our community. Anything less is just a set of arbitrary rules for no purpose. — Isaac

But here we are getting closer to the matter at hand. Your assumption seems to be that people NEED to be born TO build a better community.. Well, hold on, who says? Why do you get to make that decision?

So your concern for the autonomy of the as yet unborn is noble, important, but completely pointless unless in the service of the larger goal of community welfare. Otherwise, why? Why bother with autonomy? Why bother with rights? Why bother with dignity? What's the purpose? — Isaac

Because it affects people in significant ways to have to do X. It is about when is it right to ever impose your view of reality onto another in such a profound way.. That your view of acceptable choices, harms, and unforeseen harms is what another person must encounter.

@Tzeentch@Agent Smith@Isaac

But beyond the idea of the gamble, which is mainly about the "unforeseen harms" (third point), the first two are intended and known by the parent:
1.that there are only a certain range of choices for the person born, and that THESE CHOICES are good FOR THEM

2. There are a range of harms, and THESE HARMS are acceptable FOR THEM.

When is it ever okay to assume for another that these choices and harms are good and acceptable for someone else? I think this goes beyond just "not knowing" (which Tzeentch makes a great point of). That is part of it, but it is also not knowing and then going ahead and thinking that your view of harms and what choices are meaningful or good to encounter, are something others should experience (because YOU think it).

EDIT: If I sit you in a manufacturing plant and have you make widgets for 8 hours a day and say this is MEANINGFUL.. you will just say, this is what YOU think is meaningful..

Then the inevitable response is, "Well, life has way more CHOICES than just a manufacturing job making widgets!"..

But my point is EVEN THESE RANGE OF CHOICES are limited.. one ASSUMES these range of choices are something the other person would want to choose from.. And there are limitations based on the situatedness and de facto realities of physical and cultural existence.

Then the natalist may pull out their final defense.. The "Most people" defense...They'll claim:
"I have a right to do this to another because MOST PEOPLE would have wanted this".. But is there a situation you would do that to someone else (unasked/unnecessarily)? But I feel there is more here than just that idea too... I'll have to come back to it..

Ok, I have come back to it.. It's something to do with the working in the manufacturing plant making widgets.. Objectively, the person could be wrong about what is meaningful. Subjectively, the person could be wrong for that person for what is meaningful. There is something not right about aggressively assuming for others what is meaningful and what is acceptable harm for someone else.

Whence the tree? Whence the leaves? Whence the verb "has"?
Clearly properties don't seem to exist on their own in Witt but as something kind of inhered in the object. Or so I read it.. So certain objects will bring possibilities that are inherent in that object, some of which get actualized. If we considered other objects and THEIR relations (to this object), then it would not be atomic but complex, and no longer be a simple.

Reading Schopenhauer left me pondering the limits of the intellect, at how some intellectual avenues seem to be dead ends. This is a theme I'm picking back up in the Tractacus. — Tate

What makes them dead ends? Circular reasoning may follow...

The Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard connection makes that seem fairly likely. — Tate

But Schopenhauer didn't mind (actually most of his writing was about) going into the noumena/thing-in-itself (i.e. Will), the epistemological limitations of the phenomena, and the like. All things Witt avoids to be super cautious he's not violating his own theory.

I believe I grasped the gist of the OP's antinatalism.

Pronatalists are of the opinion that a person (the child) will share the same values as his/her parents and agree to their assessment of what kind, and how much, of that kind of suffering s/he will consider acceptable. This assumption is unjustified. People suicide for various reasons that differ from one another in kind & degree!

Unfortunately, the knife cuts both ways. The antinatalist too is unwarranted to, in their turn, assume that children will have the same thoughts about life & suffering as theirs. This is also, sadly for the antinatalist, wrong.

In short, the subjective nature of joy/sorrow precludes both antintalism & natalism.

What next?

Left to the reader as an exercise. — Agent Smith

You have almost grasped it.

When you say "the knife cuts both ways. The antinatalist too is unwarranted...to assume.."

However, it doesn't cut both ways (i.e. the asymmetry). That is to say, no actual person is deprived (not good or bad). You did not unnecessarily impose suffering onto another, that can surely be counted as good, no?

EDIT: In other words, the collateral damage only goes one way, not both ways.

What gives A the right to interfere unasked? What's the sacrifical lamb to make of this? — Tzeentch

This is more to the spirit of the OP.. Great arguments going on here, but this specific thread is about if/when/the right to make impositions on others unnecessarily.. The key word you used there was "unasked".. Otherwise it could just be typical ameliorating greater with lesser harms with a bad outcome, but someone who sought the help or something.

Does that sentence count for a true state of affairs? The tree has leaves.

:fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: :fire: …oh shit you just started a forest fire

See my post about the lava pit.

kill themselves asap. — 180 Proof

Why are you so off the rails hostile? Kill yourself is callous. I don’t even jokingly say that.

Not an apt wording. Atomic facts are not constituted from things; rather things are constituted by their relations to each other. — Banno

That tree has leaves. I say this pointing to a tree that has leaves. Would you count this as an example of a true proposition because it mirrors a true state of affairs (state of affairs that obtains aka a fact)?

In this case the tree has leaves is the true state of affairs that the proposition is mirroring.

And facts are broken into states of affairs that are broken into objects and their relations to other objects.