Response to 1 - We make decisions for other people, especially children, all the time without their approval. We take them to the doctor; make them take medicine; make them have operations; make them go to school; punish them for bad behavior....

Response to 2 - Non-existent persons are not persons.

Response to 3 - Even if non-existent children were persons, the power of consent for children resides in their parents. — T Clark

See above... Those are Ameliorations.. The child is already born and would be a dereliction of duty as a parent to not prevent greater harm.

I have read all or some of many of your threads. Discussion after discussion, post after post, paragraph after paragraph, word after word. Long posts that finally boil down to just one argument.

[1] It is immoral to make decisions for another person without their agreement.
[2] Before they are born, children are non-existent persons.
[3] It is impossible to obtain agreement from a non-existent person.
[4] Therefore, it is immoral to cause children to be born. — T Clark

I think that is not charitable that everything I've written boils down to the consent argument. Agreement is actually one I don't use too often. Rather, just the more simple axiom that "It's not good (wrong) to create unnecessary (not for amelioration of a greater for lesser suffering for that person), non-trivial burdens/impositions/harms on someone else's behalf". To boil that down even further, it would be of the deontological variety, similar to Kant's second formulation of not using people, and treating individuals (that could be born) as ends in themselves rather than a massless aggregate utility-producers of possibly bringing a better situation in the world (if that's even possible info to obtain).

That question would be valid only if there was a way to "ask" the unborn kid if it want that or not. Since that it's purely impossible the choice to be made is on parent's hands. Simply as that. — dimosthenis9

I don't necessarily agree with all of Bartriks' line of arguments there, but on this one I can see the validity. If there cannot be consent, you have two outcomes:
1) A person is not born, and a person is not imposed upon (and relatedly, does not suffer, experience all the harms over a lifetime).

2) A person is not born, and a person does not experience good things life. But to whom does that matter? Certainly, not the non-existent being, as that makes no sense.

So there is some asymmetry here between 1 and 2 where 1 seems waited as more important to consider than 2.

It's also poorly supported, no matter how convincing you find it. And by "poorly supported" I mean "silly." — T Clark

I don't see how that is a good characterization. Why is it "silly"? See all my recent threads.

This "new stuff" refers to the known "No one asked me if I wanted to be born!" This indeed indicates a lack of option, a "no option", as you call it. We can say then that "no option" indicates a forced action. It can also indicate something less realistic: Fate! A lot of people believe that all things, their life etc. are predetermind, already preplanned. So, they believe that they actually have no choices in their life! Consequently, they believe that there's no such a thing as free will! How sad! — Alkis Piskas

Same response as to James Riley.

I'm not convinced that we had no option regarding birth. I can see souls sitting around, bored out of their minds with eternity and infinity. And, while not necessarily uncomfortable with being All, they decide they want to drill down on being a part of All instead of All itself. After all, someone has to do it. So they say "This time I'll be that (person, place or thing)." And presto! It happens. Their memory may be wiped for having made the decision (it wouldn't be you if you started out with a slate full of knowledge, and life is learning, after all) and so they start anew.

Some go on to whine about not having been given a choice. But that's cool too. Maybe, as a soul, they said "I'd like to live and not like it. I'd like to live and blame someone else, like my parents. Someone has to do it." — James Riley

Right but this just has all the problems with hard determinism. On a meta-level there it is all mapped out and you cannot change the situation, but on a daily level, it seems as if you can. Since we can never know the meta-level.. It is not even knowable, all you can do is look at the daily level part where we all believe we can effect/affect things.

Never having the option not to option is not just. One needs to have this option. Not to option is not an option is not an option is not an option is a human right. It's not an option. — VincePee

Well-stated, on the state, of no option status.

So this had to do with the idea that we have no option for "no option" when it comes to being born. Is it just to procreate with this in mind? One can never opt out of the endevour in the first place. This leads to all sorts of problems.. We must "deal with" and endure burdens great and small because we could not not do this excepting the option of committing of suicide (which is not the same as opting out of life in the first place).

Huh, funny, I was just about to say the same to you.

You understand it takes two to debate right?

And it was only recently with your saying “having surprise parties is wrong” that I began to find it ridiculous. But you also introduced old arguments which are what I spend most of the list addressing. — khaled

Well, at least I don't hear anything about echo chambers so I think I made my point on how it isn't/wasn't for my threads.. so still suspicious for your ardency. I probably debate you as I feel if I just leave it, then you think that I am just saying that the case rests.. I don't know how you interpret silence, but it is not going to be in a charitable way based again, on your ardency and style. You can also say, that I fall for troll bait, not sure.

There is a difference between 0 and “practically 0”.

Practically 0 is what you say when you want to make a ridiculous position sound less ridiculous. “Yes gifts are wrong, but so slightly that we’re better off ignoring I just said this”. — khaled

No, not at all. It's what others might say is "trivial harm". I have nothing against trivial harms.. If life was JUST trivial harms, then it is fine.. That is the point of type-extent.. You don't get that part because you are still shoe-horning it into type-only arguments and not getting how degrees work.

False. And I pointed out on 3 separate occasions that this is not what I’m doing. It's more like "If you think this isn't wrong you have no consistent basis by which you can tell someone life is wrong". Now you do, since you thinking gifting people things is wrong.... — khaled

Okay.. I see at least a landing pad here for your argumentation.. I know you have said this before but you did keep arguing so I am still in the air, so to say...

So, you recognize the fact that next generations will exist, and even in light of that fact do not consider that having children could be ameliorating? — khaled

I am not an aggregate utilitarian so this wouldn't even be a consideration. Creating UNNECESSARY, non-trivial, inescapable, burdens on someone else is the key. We do not have a right to cause unnecessary, non-trivial, inescapable burdens on someone else because it might increase our happiness.

You consider surprise gifts wrong, and to make it less ridiculous you introduce a degree of wrong at which it "tends to 0 like in calculus" so it's fine to do, not realizing that this doesn't help you at all since now you have to explain why surprise gifts are "wrong but not wrong enough" while life is "wrong and wrong enough". Again: — khaled

So other people would phrase the term of giving a gift or surprise parties as "trivial harms" (if anyone at all is even harmed by this, hence why it's so trivial). You are comparing trivial harms that can easily be dealt with and gotten rid of with perpetual, inescapable, and unnecessary burdens. You know the difference but you are trivializing trivial harms. It is showing how non-trivial, inescapable, persistent, and unnecessary these burdens are, that I normally do on the threads when I am not talking about surprise parties with you.

One point of view is that you can be unpolite, and give the gift back; or you can decide to never use it. Or throw it away. You can not return your life for anyone.
Of course some will say, that if your life is miserable, you can always make suicide. — Antinatalist

That is an excellent point.

Do you mean when somebody - there is not somebody, but how can you express this correctly in natural language - does not born, it will not harm anybody? — Antinatalist

That's why I said there will be no one. There will be a state of affairs where no person exists, where there could have been the counterfactual case that indeed a person could have existed. This is what is meant by preventing birth or not procreating (with the assumption that there was a possibility for a counterfactual).

I think, Benatar is partly wrong. Theoretically, could be so that life is better than non-life. I personally don´t think it´s true in general, but I like to argue also against my own arguments.
So, if it so that life is better for someone/some people/everyone than not being at all, is true like Benatar have said there is no harm of losing something or suffering for something good, which cannot be realized. Because there is no one who could suffer from those things. — Antinatalist

Right, so you kind of answered your own objection and seem to be in agreement with Benatar's main asymmetry (in regards to prevention of goods). I think the main axiom here is that prevented harms is more important than missed goods (when nobody exists to be deprived). That is the basic axiom which the rest of the asymmetry seems to follow. And it does make sense. No person to miss out on the goods of life is neutral. A person missing out on harms, is good.

Let´s assume that life is always better than not life at all, and somehow we can know this fact. Let´s assume that what we call non-life is something where is no experiences at all, there is no one who could experience anything at all.

I don´t think, even in this situation, that no one has duty to reproduce. I don´t think that not having a child is harm doing for anyone (then again, I have to agree with Benatar on this, although I think he is partly wrong on asymmetry argument). Even situation like this, I don´t think it´s obligation to reproduce. — Antinatalist

I don't quite follow what you are trying to say here. I think with Benatar's asymmetry you simply have to keep in mind that preventing harm is more important than happiness-bringing. I guess that is the basic asymmetry.

Because I FEEL LIKE IT!!!!!!!!

Also to prevent AN threads from turning into the echo chambers they usually turn to. Start whatever thread you want, but stop complaining when the same people respond to the same arguments in the same way. — khaled

But you were the one who mentioned being annoyed that I start these threads. And yet you continue to engage in argument with me, despite this. Sometimes a troll is a troll is a troll. There is something odd of the fact that you find this whole line of argument ridiculous and yet you engage. I find the echo chamber thing dubious. Barely anyone agrees with me.. If anyone else agrees, they leave like two comments and then they tend to leave, leaving me with the brunt of the work to defend. More so I find disagreement, maybe not as ardent and continuous as yours, but that is NOT an echo chamber. Take a general survey here if you like.. I don't mind argumentation, it's trollish pointed argumentation that I am suspect of. Instead of being mutually invigorating, it's just a slog.

You think slaves were culturally indoctrinated to believe what’s happening to them was fair? — khaled

Some of them, yes. A lot of religion was used in this respect for example. Systematic breaking down of one's own identity as an independent person, and then generationally etc.

Is it no one gets harmed or is it: — khaled

I don't know, does someone get harmed? Did we not agree that there is something called type-extent? Or at least did you not acknowledge that I posited this and then explained about degrees and limits to practically 0?

Because it makes a pretty big difference. Also, when did this comparison take place? Kindly point me to where I compared imposing life to giving 5 bucks. — khaled

That's your whole strategy to say, "If this isn't wrong, life isn't wrong".

And I also ignored them because you don’t see the obvious next problem: You think that some things, while wrong by to do, are acceptable (surprise parties). What makes life not one of those things? And we’re back at step 4 — khaled

Right as I said above you are doing.. We disagree on the extent of the unnecessary burdens of life. You think I'm overestimating it and I think you are underestimating it. I also disagree that self-reports are the only way to assess whether it is estimated correctly. Rather, both inescapable and contingent burdens great and small take place regularly, whether or not people report that they have a positive favorability towards life.

False. — khaled

You mean, YOU believe this to be false based on how you view philosophical positions on this manner. But I get it, shorthand..

The people who exist are ameliorated usually. Unless everyone decides tomorrow not to have kids, which won’t happen. Assuming the “torch will be passed” (which we agree it will) it is not clear that having children is so unnecessary. — khaled

Irrelevant. If the majority found X wrong thing to be good, doesn't make it so. Some people are ameliorated by things that harm others.. I don't put any malicious intent on this, just a kind of ignorance of the harms. Do you think that I think most natalist-sympathizers are malicious in wanting or condoning having kids? Then you would be very mistaken.

Added a bit to the previous post.

Hi Antinatalist, as you may already know, I like your arguments.. Things that I have to add here:

1) Unnecessary, and unwanted harmful impositions are wrong, period, entailed in the fact that it is on someone else's behalf. All life has some minor transactional harms.. Even giving someone a gift can lead to some harm (butterfly effect maybe). However not procreating is one example where absolutely no harm will follow to any ONE (as they won't exist), and no ONE misses out either (Benatarian asymmetry).

2) Ethics should be based on deontological grounds more than utilitarian, but this doesn't mean that degrees of harm are not existent. Thus, as an example, a very low level theft is wrong, but not as wrong as a theft of someone's life savings or life saving drugs.

3) Amelioration is inherent in existence. That is to say, we are always compromising minimal harms to alleviate lesser harms. Perhaps the cost of a low level harm of a surprise party (because the person doesn't like being surprised) is what must happen in living in any social milieu. We are always compromising, and imposing on others by necessity. Procreation prevents any need for amelioration. All harms are prevented with no collateral damage.
a) No one is obligated to bring about happy people
b) We are obligated to prevent unnecessary harm if it's possible.
c) Not procreating prevents all unnecessary harm for another person (and conversely doesn't create unnecessary harm on their behalf).
d) Once existing, ameliorations must take place for life to move forward. Thus though things can have a low level harm, they can be necessary to ameliorate greater harms.

You also think that if I surprised you with 5 bucks as a gift that I just did something wrong so I don't particularly care what you think anymore. — khaled

Also, now that I think about it, why would a case so clearly unharmful even be considered as in the same category as imposing harms? How is this not under the supererogatory category of happiness-bringing? But you see, this goes down to disanalogies. Life itself contains all harms, and yet here is a case of so limited a prospect of harm as to be negligible in terms of "harmful imposition". In fact, no act of unasked for happiness-bringing would be exempt of that minimal possibility of harm. This would also put more evidence in my camp that once born, there is almost no escaping ameliorations. Happiness bringing becomes wrapped up in the possibility of harm. But again, procreation is one place where no ameliorations have to take place. No using anyone has to take place either. You simply prevent unnecessary harm, period. No ONE loses.

They shouldn't debate it every week would be my answer. I just don't understand what you hope to gain by starting the same topic over and over. — khaled

Same goes to you buddy. Why are you debating me so much? You feel your life's mission is to put me in my place on this forum for some reason? If my debating is repetitious to you, yours is that much squared, as you are perpetuating it and you don't even like the philosophy.

You know they couldn't land right? They get punished or killed for cowardice. Again, conflating not being able to voice opposition with agreement to the current system. — khaled

Not necessarily. Like everything, there is nuance. Some might have been pressured or forced, but some volunteered.

The tradition of death instead of defeat, capture, and shame was deeply entrenched in Japanese military culture; one of the primary values in the samurai life and the Bushido code was loyalty and honor until death.[3][4][5][6][7] In addition to kamikazes, the Japanese military also used or made plans for non-aerial Japanese Special Attack Units, including those involving Kairyu (submarines), Kaiten human torpedoes, Shinyo speedboats and Fukuryu divers.

While it is commonly perceived that volunteers signed up in droves for kamikaze missions, it has also been contended that there was extensive coercion and peer pressure involved in recruiting soldiers for the sacrifice. Their motivations in "volunteering" were complex and not simply about patriotism or bringing honour to their families. Firsthand interviews with surviving kamikaze and escort pilots has revealed that they were motivated by a desire to protect their families from perceived atrocities and possible extinction at the hands of the Allies. They viewed themselves as the last defense.[59]

At least one of these pilots was a conscripted Korean with a Japanese name, adopted under the pre-war Soshi-kaimei ordinance that compelled Koreans to take Japanese personal names.[60] Eleven of the 1,036 IJA kamikaze pilots who died in sorties from Chiran and other Japanese air bases during the Battle of Okinawa were Koreans.

It is said that young pilots on kamikaze missions often flew southwest from Japan over the 922 m (3,025 ft) Mount Kaimon. The mountain is also called "Satsuma Fuji" (meaning a mountain like Mount Fuji but located in the Satsuma Province region). Suicide-mission pilots looked over their shoulders to see the mountain, the southernmost on the Japanese mainland, said farewell to their country and saluted the mountain. Residents on Kikaishima Island, east of Amami Ōshima, say that pilots from suicide-mission units dropped flowers from the air as they departed on their final missions.

Kamikaze pilots who were unable to complete their missions (because of mechanical failure, interception, etc.) were stigmatized in the years following the war. This stigma began to diminish some 50 years after the war as scholars and publishers began to distribute the survivors' stories.[61]

Some Japanese military personnel were critical of the policy. Officers such as Minoru Genda, Tadashi Minobe and Yoshio Shiga, refused to obey the policy. They said that the commander of a kamikaze attack should engage in the task first.[62][63] Some persons who obeyed the policy, such as Kiyokuma Okajima, Saburo Shindo and Iyozo Fujita, were also critical of the policy.[64][65] Saburō Sakai said: "We never dared to question orders, to doubt authority, to do anything but immediately carry out all the commands of our superiors. We were automatons who obeyed without thinking."[66] Tetsuzō Iwamoto refused to engage in a kamikaze attack because he thought the task of fighter pilots was to shoot down aircraft.[67][/quote]

I would think that a large part of that was not by choice. — khaled

Cultural indoctrination is a thing. When something is just "the way it is" for a long time, it isn't really questioned as there was never a precedent for it.

Well, good thing no one would do that! You make it seem like having children can never ameliorate harms. As above, having children can itself be seen as amelioration of harms.

Do you think that the person who gave birth to the inventor of painkillers did something wrong assuming he knew that would be the outcome? — khaled

Don't need painkillers if there was no pain to begin with. This is just moving the needle down the line. Using people for ends like this is a slippery slope. How many generations and people need to suffer so someone can "save" them? And did the painkillers save anybody? It is a bandaid on a much larger wound that life itself creates for people. By having children it's like hot potato.. and the potato gets passed on over and over anew.

You also think that if I surprised you with 5 bucks as a gift that I just did something wrong so I don't particularly care what you think anymore. — khaled

Thank goodness. Your tactics are getting old. Create a situation where no one gets harmed and then compare it to one where there is immense harm. At least surprise parties the chance of harm is a bit more greater. What I do notice is you clearly don't pay attention to the argument if it doesn't quite jive with the "checkmate" you were looking for. For example, right here you ignored all the examples of wrongs that are so negligible as to not matter, like the limits of calculus. Giving five bucks to someone is so far off the harmful impositions of life, you have lost the forest for the trees in your tiresome trick pony show.

There are multiple reasons a dialogue can't go forward. Either, a party refuses to move it forward, or the parties have found a fundamental disagreement in values. You keep making it seem like the latter is what is occurring here. But if that is the case, why do you keep starting threads advertising your view when you know that the opposing view is just as valid? — khaled

So why should anyone debate anything that they care about? You think this is about debating specifically YOU. Most debates last for a certain amount of time. Every time I make a thread I am not trying to debate specifically YOU, with the same type of debate topics over and over believe it or not.

It is well known that public sentiment wasn't exactly all for the war in Japan since it put a ridiculous toll on the working class. The "need" to expand was mostly only seen in the military. But hey, I just live here, I'm not from here so I don't know the history very well. At least, that's what the Japanese seem to think happened. — khaled

Maybe, but then you had fighter pilots committing kamikaze. That doesn't seem like simply being forced. But I do get that it is more nuanced.

Do you think at the time women's rights weren't a thing that most women were convinced that a lack of rights was fair? Same with minorities. You seem to equate a group of people not being able to voice their opposition, to that same group agreeing with the current system. — khaled

Yes, a lot of women didn't really rally around it for a long time. It was just not part of the culture yet. It slowly spread over time. There was a strong minority though that kept pushing for more recognition of rights like voting. There had to be convincing for some women and for at least some men for this to have become more popular. My point was that a majority had different ideas that didn't come about until there was a push for it. Caveman, nor ancient man, nor medieval man, had the same ethical principles of Enlightenment man, and even then the Enlightenment hadn't reached more than the educated elite. And even then, people like Thomas Jefferson believed slavery tolerable (if not preferable). And today, even more rights are recognized than in the Enlightenment.

No. But it does require you to say "Surprise parties and surprise gifts are wrong". Then you'd be out of the "wall" — khaled

I am saying that. Surprise parties are >0 wrong (but just barely). I find it akin to let's say being pressured to go to a family dinner party when you don't like going to family dinner parties. Maybe you find them boring. Maybe you get anxiety around certain people. You have no real obligation to go to the dinner party simply because you are a family member that was invited to the dinner party. If one were coerced to a degree of shaming and such, one can say that is similar to being "imposed upon" by the surprise party. Now one is going there from severe guilt mechanisms rather than truly caring or wanting to be there. This severe form of coercion is unnecessary impositions and is wrong. However, it is not like they are coercing some horrible miserable event on the person.. It's just a dinner party, so though the coercion is wrong, it is minimal and nothing like imposing a whole lifetime of inescapable limits and harms on someone.

Another minor imposition.. A really busy waitstaff that is slammed with people, mistakenly overcharges a meal $4. The person who is overcharged doesn't realize this until after the meal. However, they see how busy the restaurant is and then at the end of the day says, "it isn't worth $4". Now the waitstaff was definitely in the wrong. They unintentionally stole from the customer. However, the imposition was minor. It was wrong still.. Doesn't matter what the customer allowed to be the case. However, imagine if the waitstaff did that every time the customer came in..again again and again. At some point the customer, even if they are just too nice to say something, is getting ripped off to the point that this crosses the threshold of dignity.

Most would see that the harm done in having children is much much less than the harm done by trying (and most most likely failing) to bring humanity to extinction. But that's an argument we already went over forever ago. And your response was something like "There is some degree of dignity that cannot be violated" or something like that. It will go very similarly to this. I'll ask you "Why is someone that thinks that life doesn't violate the "dignity threshold" wrong?" And we'll go around in circles again. I don't mind, but I don't understand why you're rehashing arguments from months ago when you seem so keen on ending the conversation. — khaled

Because you keep bringing them up, so I keep answering as I usually do to these same/similar lines of inquiry.

Right. So surprise parties and gifts are wrong? — khaled

Sure, negligibly. The same way that if someone puts a spritz of lemonade in their free water at the soda fountain, are "negligibly" wrong but if they kept taking full cups of lemonade or soda every time they went there, it starts add up to a bigger offense. Like in calculus where limits are essentially going to zero, negligible wrongs like this can be practically swept under as near to not wrong as it can get while still being wrong.

Also makes surprise parties wrong. But as of yet, you haven't said they are. — khaled

I have been and did say I'd "bite the bullet" for your little analogy.

1- Say "Surprise parties and surprise gifts are wrong" to be consistent. — khaled

This one. I've already said it.

However,

2- Show that people are completely incorrect in their evaluations of life quality while maintaining that they're not wrong about evaluations of surprise parties (if you want to keep those morally ok). — khaled

This is also the case but I'm not going down the science forum article game with you. I will offer my examples of the Exploited Worker and Willy Wonka's Game (limited choices that people don't realize are more limited than they think).

If I said to you, "I don't want to work to survive". Then you can say, okay, "find a better job". And I say, "No no, I just don't want to play the game of work itself (Willy Wonka Game of limited choices), what do I do?" And you said, "Oh, well you take some pills, or a gun, or a sharp knife see, and you destroy your body and consciousness in one fell swoop".. I don't know if you realize how fucked up that is. Of course I'm going to play Willy Wonka's Game rather than the latter.. A majority don't commit suicide but not because they necessarily like the game of working to survive. They don't mind it cause there's NO OTHER OPTIONS!! Of course the course of advice will be to radically ACCEPT the situation and embrace some form of work and find happiness in it. There are literally NO OTHER OPTIONS (excepting the painful and scary prospect of suicide). There has to be some level of group think going on here. People can't just rebel against work, their employer, the country, and life itself. This will go to shit and we can't have that. People are put in a (practically) inescapable, and limited game. You accept or die. Yet this is overlooked because self-reporting to you is all that matters for what is right. And this is where our axioms will not go much further in debate.

And as I said previously, no one is obligated to bring happiness to people, so that part of life isn't what's in question. I see happiness-bringing as supererogatory.. It goes above and beyond, is nice to have, but not an obligation. Certainly, UNNECESSARILY creating pain to bring about happiness for SOMEONE ELSE is also wrong. The unnecessarily part there negates any ideas about cases of ameliorating greater harms with lesser harms as we already went through that.

Added some more information in the last post.

Yea but they don’t think the other side is valid (hence hardcore). And so they don’t agree to disagree. You keep saying “let’s agree to disagree” which implies you think the other side is just as valid. — khaled

How "hardcore" do you want me to be? I think that's the problem with people like "hardcore" anything.. People don't know when to stop when everyone's points are made and the dialogue can't go any further.

So you think they’re debatable but that there is no right answer? — khaled

I think there's a right answer based on the logic and evidence, but that not everyone is going to see it that way, and I accept that. Open dialogue with people who don't share the same view is not a bad thing. The problem is that no one is going to get 100% what they want. Even anti-abortionists in the US wouldn't get what they really want if Roe v. Wade was reversed because a majority of the states would allow it (as it would get thrown back to the states rather than being allowed on a federal basis). By the way, I am in no way siding with the anti-abortionists side, but giving an example. Certainly in a universe if anti-abortionists had their way, they would roughshod their point right through cause there would be no opposition (in their universe).

No I think what’s right and wrong is objective. I also think most of the time the majority view happens to coincide with that objectively correct thing or at worst, is indecisive. More so as time passes. — khaled

I think that's a slippery slope with aligning what is objective with the majority view. It took real effort and convincing- compelling arguments, to ensure things like "rights", "human rights", "women's rights", "minority rights", etc. Your profile says you live in Tokyo.. At one point Japan's majority thought it great to expand into China for things like resources and perhaps even racial reasons. After WWII and two atomic bombs, this view is largely replaced with anti-militaristic majority (albeit with a lot of force at the beginning). At one point actually, many people sided with the idea that Japan should be separate from Western powers and isolated to not get corrupted.. Then they went the complete opposite, copying (and often improving) Western-originated ideas. That only took 40-50 years for Japan's medieval economy to outmaneuver Russian forces (a more Westernized force) in the Russo-Japanese War..
Anyways, these changes from what was previous to what seems as self-evident weren't just "always there".. They took people's hard efforts to make it part of the mainstream. So my meta-ethical theory is more Hegelian.. Ethics is discovered over time, but has been true all along. It unfortunately takes a lot of tragedies, empathetic thinking, and the efforts of people who are able to convince, to change the current trend. So it isn't just that a majority happens to align with what is objective by happenstance, it was because of a slow march of historical dialectic. But, I have said too much that is a bit off topic so I will stop here.

Yes but as above: You don’t always mind impositions. You don’t mind surprise parties.

There is a loop going on here:

You: Actions of type X (impositions, things to which the asymmetry applies, etc) are wrong. (1)

Me: But surprise parties are of type X and you think they’re fine. (2)

You: Well surprise parties aren’t X enough. They’re not even comparable! (3)

Me: Define “X enough” such that you can make your position objective. Why is someone that thinks that life is not X enough either wrong? (4)

You: Well life is clearly X and actions of type X are wrong! (5)

Repeat. — khaled

So I think you are missing a crucial middle ground which is something I'll call type-extent arguments. That is to say, stealing is wrong no matter what. However, stealing a pencil from Walmart, while wrong would not be on the same level as stealing let's say your neighbor's car, or lifesaving medicine from a pharmacy because you can sell it on the black market. There are degrees of wrong. So I can very well say that surprise parties are wrong, but to such a minimal extent that its negligible. And indeed law often reflects this same reasoning. If some teenage punk says "Fuck Walmart!" and steals a pencil, he might get fined, maybe community service. If he breaks into a pharmacy and steals drugs to sell on the black market, that might be a much more major offense. It's a different degree of stealing. Your line of argument seems to try to push me against the wall to not notice any degrees at all. Why should I overlook degrees of wrong? I never said I was a full on Kantian or anything, so I am not being hypocritical here (though I sympathize with deontology more than other normative theories). Also, going back to your life guarding example (ugh), it may indeed be worse to wake up the life guard (for no reason!) causing the negligible harm compared to letting the drowning kid die. The degrees are so incommensurable that to not save the child would be the much greater wrong. And I have already said that in living, one of the downsides is the very fact that we must ameliorate greater harms (wrongs) with lesser harms (wrongs). Two wrongs can make a right if the wrong of one is to mitigate the worse wrong. So yes, Kant can be right in a way. .Lying to the perpetrator could be wrong, but it is necessary to overcome the greater wrong in contributing to your friend's death by telling him where he is.

Another point here.. So you seem to be fine with causing CONDITIONS of harm as long as those CONDITIONS lead to some form of happiness (which can then later be reported as good later on). But that is precisely the kind of utilitarian thinking that I am arguing against. The creation of the wrongs in the first place (unnecessarily I say) is the wrong part. There is no obligation to create happy people, but there is an obligation to prevent harm (when it is possible). This axiom prevents all sorts of utilitarian exchanges.. Such as making a person who will be harmed to prevent so X future event. That is like saying "I am going to cause there to be conditions of drowning, because X good might come about for some people as well". It is the conditions of drowning that matter here. Unfortunately, in the situation of being ALREADY BORN, the condition of drowning is already a factor (for him and the lifeguard). NOW ameliorations of all sorts take place. However, if the condition of drowning ITSELF could have been prevented, THAT was the right action (even though it meant the life guard couldn't work on his/her summer tan).

So to sum it up, you can have degrees of wrong. I would still say to the punk teenage kid, "Don't steal the pencil". I can still say to the surprise party committee, "Don't throw surprise parties".. but if they do, the degree of harm and imposition is so light that I wouldn't lose much sleep over it, let alone write numerous posts about it. My "convincing" is a bit different than what you are doing here with me. That is to say, I am usually appealing to our human experience holistically more or less. You seem to interpret my style as being much more condemning of actual individuals than it actually is.. So me trying to demonstrate some of the negatives of living (to the point that perhaps we shouldn't "foist" this situation on another), you seem to be taking as outright condemnation of individual people who have kids, which I am absolutely not doing.

So you’re saying the imposition of a surprise party is not big enough to make it wrong. (Step 3)

Why is someone that thinks the imposition of life is not enough to make procreation wrong, wrong? (Step 4)

Let’s see if we can make it to step 6 and not just go back to step 1 — khaled

So going back to what I said earlier, ALL I CAN DO, is show how indeed life DOES contain more suffering than they may at first realize. That's all I can do.. convince. So what if they are not convinced? So be it. I've been saying this the whole time. The convincing is trying to show how much suffering there really is compared to what they are taking into consideration. You keep saying things that I already know, that people don't INHERENTLY agree with this. It is also showing that perhaps there is an injustice here by foisting the inescapable, unnecessary imposition/harms. (see next paragraph)

We have to admit this.. Once born, there is a conundrum that one cannot be unborn. One can only commit suicide if one wants "out". But this is not the same thing. By being born, we exist to be harmed but if we didn't exist there is no us to know anything one way or another.

Again, does life have burdens and inconveniences for people? Is this something that someone would otherwise not want? Then it was indeed a burden, and it was indeed imposed by way of being born. You are saying that it only matters if someone minds that they are being imposed upon. I am saying, it is simply wrong to impose on another, despite if someone minds it or not post-facto. These positions are a difference to a point of not being reconciled through mere arguments. They are sort of axiomatic differences that are hard to "prove" other than explaining a perspective and seeing if that is compelling enough to the other person. You are pissed at me for having a certain viewpoint. Believe it or not, other people who are neutral or pro-procreation have a viewpoint too. I am not forcing my viewpoint, but perhaps giving people a perspective they haven't thought about. Maybe it isn't good to impose or cause harm for another person, period, without regard to the tendency for people to report that they okay being harmed. Well, that's something to consider perhaps. Can you have another viewpoint? Of course. There's always another viewpoint. The obvious "majority" viewpoint is that procreation is "fair game".. If people are harmed, so be it.. At the end of the day they say they are fine with being born, so therefore its justified. Yep, I get that this is the point that "most people" try to make when justifying the fact that another person will be harmed by being born and imposed upon. — schopenhauer1

And others may speak up to say why it's not problematic. — khaled

Absolutely, that is discourse, dialectic, debate, etc.

There is a pretty critical difference here. I'm not going around telling people "Y'all should have kids". You're going around telling them they shouldn't. So it's not simply enough that your values are "different". You can't agree to disagree here. When you put forward a position, you must justify why your values are "better" than the alternative, that's what convincing is. You haven't done so, instead it always ends on "let's agree to disagree". — khaled

I think I do, thank you very much. But as far as telling people "Y'all shouldn't have kids", that is a poor and uncharitable interpretation of what I'm doing. As I said before, I am debating the ethical implications of procreation, I am not personalizing it saying, "You, YOU, should not have kids". There is a difference between making something a personal condemnation and debating a philosophical principle. I don't go around shaming pregnant people or trying to make them feel bad.

To say "let's agree to disagree, our values are different and unprovable" seems to me to mean that you have failed to find a reason someone should take your values instead of the alternative. If so, starting new threads every time makes no sense. And will be met with the same response.

I'm not against convincing. I'm against trying to convince when the convincer knows that the opposing view is just as valid as his own without mentioning so. Because they're telling people they're right while knowing there is a perfectly reasonable alternative. It's intentional lying. — khaled

Oh you are being self-righteous here.. I'm glad you made it your duty to put me in my place with the other side :roll:. Even hardcore anti-abortionists knows that the otherside thinks their point of view is just as valid.. But again, different values leads to different ethical arguments. Different views on "life" in the case of abortion. Is a fetus of X months a "life"? What really makes it so? These are all debatable and highly contentious for some people. Is life "really" debatable? Same thing. To pretend like I thought that there is no argument just because I present my view of it, is to me suspicious. Like you are trying to paint me a certain way for some reason.

I'll give you that one — khaled

:up:

Oh so you failed to find a quote eh? A second ago I thought it was my main point. Huh, weird.

And I have made that argument on separate threads and we discussed it at length before so it makes no sense to say I haven't. — khaled

Ok. I just chose not to hunt for it it and paste it, I remembered it though.

But no the reason I don't make it isn't fear that someone would attack it, rather, it's that you don't find it convincing. I don't think you have a justified position even without making this argument. I'd be happy to discuss it later, but you seem to not have time for long posts. In fact, if you could somehow access comments before they were edited you would find that I had a pretty long paragraph critiquing the way you judge situation without taking into account the recipient's experiences or reports, but I deleted it out of fear you would dismiss everything again because it's too long. — khaled

Fair enough. But I am just saying that it is still just a viewpoint, similar to how I have a viewpoint. It can be debated as well.

That seems like the exact opposite of radical subjectivity..... I'm being humanist, not subjective. And I don't get what the point of the rest of the paragraph is sorry to say. — khaled

I mean to say that you take people's subjective view of what is right and wrong. Not sure where your distinction is here. If 51% of those views think the same thing it's right? Ok, then some sort of subjectivist-majoritarian thing going on. Either way, it's a viewpoint- one of various different epistemological ones regarding whether something is moral or not.

As for the rest of the paragraph it was to say that my particular epistemic view is that people may be imposed upon but they aren't aware how.. I mentioned how Marx and the Enlightenment brought ideas out people weren't really fully aware of and then once he put them in center stage people gained (you can almost say "grew") more awareness of some ethically problematic things (rights-violation, class consciousness and exploitation, etc.). They opened up paths for new understandings on ethics and politics that were not there previously (at least not in the concrete way that these formalized). Perhaps a "majority" of people simply weren't aware of certain ethical implications before the explanations of these thinkers and ideas being presented. So to quote myself again with this explanation in mind:

Think of things like Marx and "class consciousness" and historical dialectic. It opened up a new dialogue for how to talk about economic class relations in the world. Even things such as "human rights" or "universal rights" in the 1600s and 1700s opened up a way of discussing universality of humanity which really was not discussed other than perhaps in religious terms before this.. New theories and insights open up paths for "realizing" new ideas which then become so part of the culture it seems like it was always there. But no, before the Enlightenment, it would be very doubtful any person would be talking about their universal, or constitutionally-given rights, or anything like that, but a perspective of discourse was opened to them, and now it is like part of the water for most Westernized countries. Look at China's more communitarian value systems.. Perhaps individualistic rights are actually NOT something often quoted by those happy with government practices and who have limited access to Westernized political ideas and media, etc.etc. — schopenhauer1

So as usual the ways in which it fails are: Length and Percentage of negative experiences. And the latter you have yet to prove is sufficiently different to make it wrong despite being asked to do so around 8 times now. — khaled

I don't agree to the analogy as explained above, so doesn't matter. However, to keep indulging this, it has gotten bogged down from my initial reason for its disanalogy. That is because it is a discrete event that people generally like.. Life isn't a "discrete event people generally like". To me, its more of a container with various kinds of events/experiences. So, if you were to say to me life is like the someone giving the gift a bowl of chocolate ice cream (your favorite flavor let's say), then I would say that is wrong right off the bat. However, even if we were to keep your example, because the stakes are so low (dislike of surprise parties aren't a big deal to the person), the imposition becomes negligible as to not be equivalent to (literally), a lifetime of negative experiences of all degrees and kinds.

I.... Don't understand what this means. So you're saying surprise parties are wrong or right? — khaled

I'm saying that the harm doesn't matter to those who never experienced the surprise party (and didn't know about it), it matters to those who had to go through it and didn't like it (though it is seems very trivial even for them which is mainly why this is so disanalogous).

Well you certainly are saying it. Doesn't make it correct. Generally speaking when you make up psychological principles you need to be able to back them up. But ok. I already accepted that OB only applies to long experiences for the sake of argument. Still doesn't lead to "life is at best an inconvenience and at worst a terrible burden". You need to show this. — khaled

Right, because of how we view differences is impositions (something which you seem to have a hard time with). So I will ask again..

Does almost all life have some impositions?
As I said earlier:

Again, does life have burdens and inconveniences for people? Is this something that someone would otherwise not want? Then it was indeed a burden, and it was indeed imposed by way of being born. You are saying that it only matters if someone minds that they are being imposed upon. I am saying, it is simply wrong to impose on another, despite if someone minds it or not post-facto. These positions are a difference to a point of not being reconciled through mere arguments. They are sort of axiomatic differences that are hard to "prove" other than explaining a perspective and seeing if that is compelling enough to the other person. You are pissed at me for having a certain viewpoint. Believe it or not, other people who are neutral or pro-procreation have a viewpoint too. I am not forcing my viewpoint, but perhaps giving people a perspective they haven't thought about. Maybe it isn't good to impose or cause harm for another person, period, without regard to the tendency for people to report that they okay being harmed. Well, that's something to consider perhaps. Can you have another viewpoint? Of course. There's always another viewpoint. The obvious "majority" viewpoint is that procreation is "fair game".. If people are harmed, so be it.. At the end of the day they say they are fine with being born, so therefore its justified. Yep, I get that this is the point that "most people" try to make when justifying the fact that another person will be harmed by being born and imposed upon. — schopenhauer1

And

Sometimes people can overlook things that are going on (Exploited worker argument and Willy Wonka's Game). They have limited choices, and don't realize it etc.. Some people don't realize something is indeed bad for them.. — schopenhauer1

You seem to be valuing suffering much more than pleasure. — khaled

Now this is a very core part of the argument. Imposing unwanted and unnecessary burdens for someone else is the main axiom here. That is the wrong being done. 1) Working to get better circumstance = a necessary (evil/need/thing/event)
2) Creating the conditions where someone needs to get better circumstances (aka through working) = not necessary.

It is unnecessarily creating conditions of harm and impositions for others that is what matters here. It is not ameliorating anything, but unnecessarily creating it. So

You seem to be valuing suffering much more than pleasure. So although the quality of the experience hasn't changed one bit, one case has a higher quantity of suffering making it wrong. Is that it? — khaled

Yes, the surprise party becomes somewhat negligible when compared to the impositions of other harms of a whole lifetime. Again Willy Wonka's forced game (more limited options than people think), and other Exploited worker.. One is forced to play the game and but has no other choice but to play it, really. What other option is there? And suicide brings up a whole other issue.

Precisely because they think they’re right. You don’t see a politician saying “Ah well you see, this is just my opinion, but I think abortions may be wrong” — khaled

That's my point! How is that arguing against what I'm saying?? Procreation is wrong, ergo don't procreate. The point is when people think there is something problematic, they may speak up and explain why think think it's problematic.. Abortion, how much to restrict X, etc. By the way where do you address your circular logic of arguing that I should not try to convince people, when you are trying to convince me not to try to convince people yourself?

This implies that if people can agree on exactly what the consequences of building said shelter will be, they can agree whether it’s right or wrong yes? The only difference between the people is not holding different values here it is disagreement on what would happen. “Helping the homeless”, everyone agrees is good. “Promoting a culture where you get everything for no effort” everyone agrees is bad. The disagreement is how much of each is going to happen. — khaled

Not really. It is a difference of values how people prioritize things like what the government should fund, whether it's okay for it to be in their "backyard" (NIMBY), whether what they say and what they do is aligned, whether shelter matters more than other priorities, etc. Any number of issues can be about any number of viewpoints and usually people bring their values to this. If not this example that you are satisfied with there are literally hundreds of political issues you can choose from where people are going to differ in values- Immigration, recreational drugs, crime, military, etc. etc. etc. If you can't think of any, then you are not thinking hard enough and trivializing political differences as negligible for some sort of false picture. Just look at the political arguments even on this forum!!

Right but even if I argued this in this thread (which I’ve avoided doing on purpose), it still wouldn’t lead to “everything is subjective”. Shooting people for fun will be perceived as wrongdoing by any victim. That makes “shooting people for fun is wrong” objectively true. — khaled

Yes, of course you have purposely done so, because that would lead you to actually have an argument yourself which would make it easier for others to attack and you hate making claims yourself it seems, because you love being the one who attacks other claims and not leaving your own views exposed.. Quite a nice tactic to be dodgy like that and never be the one to say a statement others can debate.. You can be perfect khaled whose views are some how flawlessly never left open for debate :lol:.

But anyways, you are still being radically subjective in the fact that it has to be perceived as such by a majority.. but instead of majority you say "everyone" which by the way is never always the case. And yes you have said your view that you are subjectivist way back, but yes you are not saying it outright throughout this debate.. Anyways, I take your quote as saying, "If everyone thinks it (most people), then it is right". It is the case that people can be imposed upon but haven't put it together just how.. Hence I like to elucidate on exactly that.. Think of things like Marx and "class consciousness" and historical dialectic. It opened up a new dialogue for how to talk about economic class relations in the world. Even things such as "human rights" or "universal rights" in the 1600s and 1700s opened up a way of discussing universality of humanity which really was not discussed other than perhaps in religious terms before this.. New theories and insights open up paths for "realizing" new ideas which then become so part of the culture it seems like it was always there. But no, before the Enlightenment, it would be very doubtful any person would be talking about their universal, or constitutionally-given rights, or anything like that, but a perspective of discourse was opened to them, and now it is like part of the water for most Westernized countries. Look at China's more communitarian value systems.. Perhaps individualistic rights are actually NOT something often quoted by those happy with government practices and who have limited access to Westernized political ideas and media, etc.etc.

Surprise parties also. Can we just skip this? Before you make an argument relating to birth could you ask yourself “does this also apply to surprise parties?” And only state the argument when it doesn’t? — khaled

Honestly, so F'n tired of your surprise party disanalogy. Honestly, almost all your strategy is to falsely equivocate bad analogies to the main argument. I go along with it for argument's sake, but I really don't even agree to the analogy.. I humor you in other words, but I think you unfairly pigeon hole arguments into bad analogies and steer the argument around the so-called hypocrisy you have conjured by wielding it that isn't even taking place because the analogy itself is only shallowly similar. Can we just drop the analogy or is that your main one trick pony you learned in khaled debate class (i.e. get people to agree to some sort of analogy and then bludgeon them over and over with it..life guards and surprise parties oh my!)? We are going to have to agree to disagree in a major way here if you can't see how surprise parties are different in too substantial a way from literally a lifetime of negative experiences itself. You have picked something that is imposed upon on others, but pretty much falls apart in all the other way in which life itself has negative experiences over someone's literal lifetime.

There is no downside to the recipient when it comes to the goods of the surprise party either. — khaled

Who cares.. Not the same anyways.. But even if I was to humor you (yet again I must be nice or something to agree to even indulge this bad analogy).. If there's no downside to no good of the surprise party, and those who would be harmed from the surprise party are not being harmed.. There ya go.

So should I start quoting all the professionals that disagree with him (all of them)? And you still haven’t shown how the Benetar quote is supposed to prove anything I asked you to prove. — khaled

See, I am NOT asking for that because as I have said repeatedly now, I am keeping this to a discussion on a philosophy forum not slinging scientific articles at each other. This isn't a science forum, and I don't intend to make it one. I have said that neither you nor I need to look up articles on this thread's dime.. you can entreat me to do so, but I'm not biting. Being that I don't even think your analogy holds, this whole line of arguing about the duration of the (fuckn) surprise party has become a waste-of-time rabbit hole that you have managed to steer here. AGAIN, to indulge your bad analogy (for the last time cause if you bring it up I am just not debating it now)... I am saying that summing up a (let's say) 4 hour event might be easier than summing up 90 years worth of experiences. That's all I'm saying. Even if I am wrong on this.. It doesn't change that one is summing up 90 years of experiences into a binary statement of "Is life good or bad?".

Any of the above. Prove that OB applies only to long events AND that OB completely ruins an accurate assessment of quality of an event. — khaled

In the words of Dana Carvey's George Bush impression.. "Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent".

This has 0 bearing on the argument no? The question was:

Isn’t it possible that an event can have inconveniences, and still be ok to inflict due to it overall being positive?
— khaled

When does duration of the event come into it?

You think it’s fundamentally ok for an event that is mostly positive to be inflicted correct? Let’s say a surprise party is 80% positive 20% negative (however you want to measure that since you seem to ignore people's reports and experiences….) and you find it acceptable to inflict. If we knew a particular child would enjoy a similar 80% positive 20% negative life experience, would it be wrong to have them? — khaled

Besides that fact that we don't "know" the experiences of any particular child (and the ones that will be affected negatively are what matter here if we go with my other argument we were discussing for never born vs born but negatively affected)..It is still a life time of pervasive inescapable negative experiences and that is not okay to impose on someone (this is a value statement...one that can definitely be debated which you seem to think it is not).

Well it becomes a problem when you try to convince others of something for which one of the main premises is not provable isn’t it? — khaled

There's a lot of things that are not "provable".. Are conservatives or liberals "right"? Why should politicians care to convince people? There is no "objectively" right, right? However, that's not quite the case either. It's about values and society. So, someone who thinks a homeless shelter should be built and funded with government money values this, and thinks this is generally good. Maybe the opposition says that it leads to other, unintended consequences, and this is actually not "good". Maybe anything government funded is always wrong to this person.. etc. etc. But see, these are views that they think are important and will try to convince others of their idea of justice, the right, the good, what is necessary, etc.

Now, I am not saying ethics is equivalent to politics, but it can function similarly in the idea that it is about making compelling arguments about what is right. For some weird reason, you think that no one should try to convince others unless its some sort of scientific law of gravity. Quite the opposite, gravity is gravity, it is what you do with that information that becomes where convincing comes in...It's the social aspects of human affairs that are where the grey areas are, and where debate occurs. In fact, your whole tenor to me wreaks of anti-debate in general.. DON'T TRY TO CONVINCE ANYBODY!! Which you are of course trying to convince me of.. A bit of a circular logic. And no, debating values like, "Not causing unnecessary harm and burdens on others if you can prevent it" or "Some things are wrong even if those wronged don't know it" is NOT the same as debating whether chocolate is better than vanilla. Tastes and values are different. Believe it or not, someone else's values affects us everyday.. Someone's preferences for vanilla or chocolate generally do not (unless somehow that is affecting values). So now it's a matter of which values.

Don’t know where you’re getting that from. — khaled

Your seeming insistence that wrong is only taking place when the person wronged perceives it as such. This seems an absolute rule for you.

Well if they don’t mind it I would say yes. But for the sake of argument I’ve been saying no so far. — khaled

Things like this prove the above.. You have been saying "no"? Your whole line of argument is "You can't say that there is wrong if others think there isn't".

Yes.

Now let me ask you this: If something that could contain unwanted burdens is pushed on someone is it automatically exploitative?

Because that would make everything you do to someone else exploitative. — khaled

I mean yeah, there's unavoidable harms we do to others all the time.. But that's more reason in my direction.. But wait, here is an instance where you actually can avoid burdening someone with unwanted harms. That's why I said earlier where other harms tend to be compromises and ameliorations, here is a place where you would be unnecessarily causing burdens, and not only "burdens" with a small "b" but ALL BURDENS, period. And yeah you don't like the asymmetry but look at it again.. There is no downside to anyone when it comes to the goods of life.

And are you seriously quoting David benetar in response to me asking you why OB only applies to long events? Talk about unbiased sources! — khaled

He is the one who is the main proponent of the theory so I think it is wise to quote a professional who spends their career studying how this bias affects perceptions. But I am not going down the scientific article route.. Which article would convince you? Nature? Psychology Journal? Cognitive Science Weekly? It will probably turn into justification regress.

Now, how do these two answers lead to “life is at best an inconvenience and at worst a terrible burden”

Isn’t it possible that an event can have inconveniences, and still be ok to inflict due to it overall being positive? (Hint: Surprise parties) — khaled

Right a minor event that is only slight isn't a big deal but is problematic. A major event (oh let's say a whole life time of negative experiences) is indeed problematic.. It's not a matter of apples to apples here. It's apples to grenades.

Yes but despite my annoyance at anyone who would throw me one I wouldn’t say they’re doing something ethically wrong. Because I know they had good reason for believing it would work (unless they knew me and were just being malicious) — khaled

See I think you think me more hostile than I am to those who have children. I think it is a wrong, and ethically problematic.. But I don't castigate people who have children.. I castigate procreation itself yes, but I do not personalize it.

Which you still haven’t shown actually meet the threshold. See, I wouldn’t mind you saying “I see life as too much of an imposition so I won’t have kids”. That’s reasonable. It’s saying “life is objectively bad or straight awful, and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong” that is the bold claim requiring support. It is not sufficient what you think of life but you need to show why you are more an expert on everyone else’s lives than they are without having met them. — khaled

There is no way to "prove" this. What you think is proof, isn't for someone else. Similar to what you accuse me, of course I can't say anything that someone doesn't think is proof enough. These are values. Values are hard to "prove". Yet you don't accept my meta-ethical stance that it's simply about what seems compelling. You don't find it compelling.. I am at peace with that. Not gonna make me cry myself to sleep worrying if Khaled finds "proof" that he needs to be satisfied.

I will say again the arguments that we have had...
Sometimes people can overlook things that are going on (Exploited worker argument and Willy Wonka's Game). They have limited choices, and don't realize it etc.. Some people don't realize something is indeed bad for them.. Look at anti-vaxers.. There's a lot of "proof" but they don't find it compelling. Is it bad for them? You can say that these people are living in ignorance and possibly negligence to others, but I guess everything is subjective right? If the majority of people are anti-vaxers, are they right? If a majority of people are exploited by a big boss smoking a cigar laughing his ass off in a backroom, is it right? You will say yes, I will say no. This is not about whether someone is exploited, but whether someone's reaction to the exploitation makes the exploitation non-existent or not harmful. Life has harms People are harmed.

I will ask again, does almost all life contain unwanted burdens, yes or no?

The error is confusing “negative experiences tend to be remembered more fondly” with “every experience you remember fondly was probably the result of OB”. The first is a statement of OB, and the second clearly doesn’t follow from it. Yet you pretend it does. — khaled

Some ideas to consider said perhaps more eloquently regarding OB:

Professor Smilansky tries some other moves to mitigate the implications of the evidence that self-assessments of well-being are unreliable. He says, for example, that insofar as “life tends to be quite good … illusion is much less needed”104. But that is not
a way to show that illusions are less operative. We have evidence that the illusion is
present. It is not a proper response to this to assume the antecedent – that life tends to
be quite good. And if Professor Smilansky responds that he is not assuming that life
tends to be quite good, but is instead drawing on conclusions for which he has argued
elsewhere in his paper, then it becomes clear that the argument of his that I am now
considering adds nothing to his other arguments.
He also says that Pollyannaism often “actually makes life better for those under its
influence”105. I am sure that that is true, but only to a limited degree. Thinking that
things are better than they actually are can actually make things better, but it does not
follow that things will actually be as good as one thinks they are. In other words, there
may well be a feedback loop, but this is not sufficient to obliterate the distinction between one’s perceptions of the quality of one’s life and one’s actual quality of life106.
Saul Smilansky also argues that “even where people are not very happy, they can be
filled with a sense of the significance of their lives”107. This is more grasping at straws.
All the arguments I provided for why self-assessments of well-being are unreliable,
apply equally to self-assessments of significance. Indeed, on some views, significance
is part of well-being. And the suggestion that the “potential for existential meaning in
one’s life is granted only when one has been brought into existence”108 invites the response that those who never exist have no need for existential meaning and are not
deprived by its absence.
In his concluding remarks, Saul Smilansky says that the reasonableness of reproductive risk is largely neglected in my discussion. His response is to note that people “take
upon themselves considerable physical and emotional risk” and thus that “the fact that
104 Ibid, pp. 74-5.
105 Ibid, p. 75.
106 I discuss this further in David Benatar, “Suicide: A Qualified Defense”, in James Stacey Taylor (Ed.),
The Ethics and Metaphysics of Death: New Essays, New York: Oxford University Press (forthcoming,
but pre-printed in David Benatar, Life, Death and Meaning (Second Edition), Lanham MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2010, pp. 307-31).
107 Saul Smilansky, “Life is Good” p. 75..
108 Ibid, p. 76.
life is full of risk … does not, in itself, prove much”109. He says that the matter requires further exploration. In exploring this further, it would be worth recalling that
the risks people take upon themselves are importantly different from the risks of procreation, for in the latter the person brought into existence does not decide to assume
the risks. Instead, the very considerable risks are thrust upon him by his parents. — David Benatar

You still can’t get “life is at best an inconvenience and at worst a terrible burden” out of OB. You’re committing a logical error as I show above. — khaled

Does almost all life encounter burdens and inconveniences, yes or no?
Do we disagree that something can be wrong, and people don't realize it, yes or no?

When you answer these, the debate comes to a standstill as we are at odds and "agree to disagree".

What do you mean “burdened by the surprise party”? As in I’m an organizer? If I didn’t organize a surprise party in the first place I’d be “burdened”? What?

Sorry I legitimately don’t get this. — khaled

You said earlier YOU don't like surprise parties.. It isn't the people who never had surprise parties that are negatively affected (obviously), just the ones that don't like them.. Those are the people that it is relevant as an ethical issue. In other words, no people = no missing out on surprise parties. There is no harm done to people not born, obviously.

I'm not a moderator, but I don't see why not. I'd be interested.

By this logic surprise parties are definitely wrong. You’re being inconsistent. — khaled

We've been through this. The caveat was large impositions, like the ones life "itself" imposes. Didn't think I had to put that caveat by now as we have been through it before.

Can you at least keep track of your own position? — khaled

Yes, but you can't. I said that impositions are unwanted burdens- something EVERYONE deals with, or are you going to argue with that? The debate is of course how much and to what extent its taking place, but that is the debate at hand so to reiterate that point is to just say that we are debating that point as we speak, well yeah.

No I’m pissed that you refuse to address: “You think life is at best an inconvenience and at worst a terrible burden, how did you come to that conclusion” despite being asked to do so 4? 5? Times now. I’ve lost count. Instead of addressing you bring it back to things we’ve discussed forever ago. — khaled

I addressed this. You think it is absolutely up to the person's report how much inconvenience there is and I think there is more than this straightforward account. The only thing I am refused to do thus far is start rattling off scientific papers. Just not interested. Other than that kind of evidence, I can only invite you to look up the phenomena and read up on OB. I also recommend Benatar's writings on it. Not too hard to search but I am not going to provide the links for you.. I know, I know, somehow your incredulity is my burden now. But see I can say the same for you.. You just bother not to look things up, etc. etc. But the difference is I am not entreating you to do this on this thread's dime. Simply put, we have two views of how this works, and then you want a justification regress that would require multiple scientific articles beyond the scope of this debate. Repeated ad nauseum now.

Yes you can. I’m doing so by pointing out yours isn’t even self consistent. You don’t think imposition is always wrong no matter how the recipient views it. First off, you don’t even count it as an imposition if they like it. Secondly, it would make surprise parties wrong, which is inconsistent with what you think. Now that doesn’t make my view correct, but that was never what I was arguing — khaled

Same same as above. It is an extent. But what if I were to bite the bullet and say surprise parties are wrong, but to a much lesser degree (like degrees of burglary and other crimes)? What does this really matter? It's the same as extent really.

Also, I'm proposing some psychological theories for how we deal with burdens and report them. There are a number of other ones too for how we cope. I guess you are a strong "NO" to anything being contrary to someone's report. But EVEN with all these contingencies, the major point is the perspective we are taking. You are taking a radical subjectivist view... EVERYTHING is ONLY up to the person, and ONLY on self-reports on evaluations of the events. I am taking a view of the event itself. As long as imposition has happened, that should be considered, despite evaluations. There is not much we can do at this point because there is not much to prove one way or the other.

Sometimes there is, though that’s not what I’m after here. I’m just after you addressing what I say. And eventually we’ll reach a point where have to agree to disagree probably. But it’s annoying when you keep trying to bring this point about prematurely, instead of actually addressing critiques. — khaled

I believe I am and have.

Another insignificant one. The only role non existing does in your argument is establish that no one is missing out. Well when a surprise party is cancelled, the recipient isn’t missing out either. — khaled

False. You can’t be missing out on a party when not knowing it was going to happen. Were you missing out on the 5 bucks I was totally about to give you a year ago but changed my mind and only told you about how? Were you suffering thinking “Damn, khaled hasn’t given me 5 bucks, this is painful despite the fact they I have no reason to believe he will give me 5 bucks”. Were you missing out on 5 bucks? — khaled

I guess then I am wondering then how this surprise analogy disproves the point, then? By not going through with the surprise party no "one" loses out (if the analogy is truly equivalent). If someone (maybe yourself) is burdened with the surprise party, it is THEY who lose out. The injustice still occurs for the burdenites, and that's the point.

Sure. But you need to do more than simply cover your position or make claims. You need to show that it is the case. You’re the one trying to argue for AN, starting a new thread every week on it. So you need to show that “life is an inconvenience or terrible burden” is true of everyone since you seem to think that everyone shouldn’t be having kids. It’s crucial to your position, yet you can’t show it’s the case despite being asked to do so 3 times now. — khaled

Again, does life have burdens and inconveniences for people? Is this something that someone would otherwise not want? Then it was indeed a burden, and it was indeed imposed by way of being born. You are saying that it only matters if someone minds that they are being imposed upon. I am saying, it is simply wrong to impose on another, despite if someone minds it or not post-facto. These positions are a difference to a point of not being reconciled through mere arguments. They are sort of axiomatic differences that are hard to "prove" other than explaining a perspective and seeing if that is compelling enough to the other person. You are pissed at me for having a certain viewpoint. Believe it or not, other people who are neutral or pro-procreation have a viewpoint too. I am not forcing my viewpoint, but perhaps giving people a perspective they haven't thought about. Maybe it isn't good to impose or cause harm for another person, period, without regard to the tendency for people to report that they okay being harmed. Well, that's something to consider perhaps. Can you have another viewpoint? Of course. There's always another viewpoint. The obvious "majority" viewpoint is that procreation is "fair game".. If people are harmed, so be it.. At the end of the day they say they are fine with being born, so therefore its justified. Yep, I get that this is the point that "most people" try to make when justifying the fact that another person will be harmed by being born and imposed upon.

I don’t understand why you’re going back to the asymmetry “argument” one I disagreed with even when I was AN. We addressed this so long ago. You seem to want to “reset the conversation” now that there is an argument you can’t address, hoping it’ll go in your favor this time. It’s tiring when I write responses that largely go ignored. You seem to have no trouble relentlessly debating people for days until you can’t respond anymore. Then it’s all “let’s agree to disagree” and willfully ignoring questions asked about your position 3 times in a row. — khaled

No dude, I am just getting tired arguing the same points. It has nothing to do with me not proving anything. I've addressed them throughout the conversation. You have to be charitable enough to just stop a conversation after a while. Not even other philosophers go on endless threads. They write their reposponsas and move on.. You are not respecting that this particular line of debate is for me, not interesting anymore. You then want to declare some sort of victory because I don't want to play. It's winning through attrition not winning by argument man. I'm just tired of this line of thought and want to move on.

This whole debate is pretty much back and forth on this:

My point was that imposing on others to a large extent is wrong.

Your point is that it is subjective to what extent.

My point was that often people under report the negatives.

Your point was either that people don't under report or that the report is just as accurate as the occurrence.

This just goes around and around now. We've said some interesting responses. Can't you accept that sometimes that's just the nature of arguments? There is no "winner" in these kind of arguments.

Moving to the other argument now..

I did address the argument by showing you that there are analogous actions that you find acceptable. So either you’re being a hypocrite or the argument doesn’t make sense.

If the recipient doesn’t expect the party, who is the injustice done to as far as “missing out” on the goods of the party? Same deal. Yet you find it ok here. — khaled

No person exists prior to existence, no? Another disanalogy. In this case, the party has someone who exists, who "is" indeed missing out. There is no injustice in the case of the not born. No one "is" missing out. No one has the injustice of "not living" applied to "them". This doesn't hold for the burdenites though.

Fair enough. Finally some attempt at proving that OB applies to longer events more. Anyways, as stated above, it still doesn’t lead to “life is at best an inconvenience and at worst an incredible burden”. OB makes us remember things we used to hate more fondly. However this doesn’t mean that people's reports of their quality of life are significantly altered by OB. It could just be that they have few memories where they’ve really suffered and so their report will be accurate overall, even if they forget some of said suffering. — khaled

Again, someone's day can be Negative, Negative, Negative ... Report = Good day or at least, "not bad". But it was clearly negative while living through it (versus the calm reporting thereafter). Now extend this to life itself, with its analog ups and downs and digital reporting on it. It's even that much more stark for a whole life versus a day. It's just the report that is misaligned with the occurrence itself. That is the claim. We said our positions on it. However, I think an event in a day, a day itself, a week ago, etc. can be more clearly assessed than a whole lifetime. However, I would definitely say that if the report about the one event happened 50 years after the event, I bet there would be some OB going on. So I guess, it's not only duration but time displacement as to when the report is being taken from the actual occurrence.

This is required for your position. Since you use an extent argument, you must show that life meets the threshold. And I’m willing to agree that something that is “at best an inconvenience and at worst a terrible burden” is indeed too much to impose. So, how do you know life meets those features? Because if you don’t then a required premise in your argument is unjustified and is just as valid as “Life is at worst a good experience and at best heaven”, now I don’t believe that, but it has just as much evidence to support it as your view does. — khaled

Are there any burdens "most people" incur in their life? Are there any inconveniences that most people have to endure in life? Surely, you would admit yes. Then it comes back to how many of those inconveniences we actually experience vs. an evaluative, summative, binary report of it. That is the crux of this current argument. I think we have covered our positions well enough. One thing I ask, is how are we going to have an end to the debate? For you, does one person have to say, "You are clearly the winner here?". Because obviously that isn't going to be the case. I think a thing to learn is how to gracefully and respectfully end a debate that clearly isn't going to be one side switching their position. There is much to be gained without one person declaring some sort of victory or whatnot.

However, moving to the other debate (the tangent), I'd actually like to focus on that because I think in the previous thread about "Most people", my argument was meant to revolve around that issue and I sort of digressed into the discrepancy of the report and the occurrence rather than simply about "Most people" vs. those who feel life is a burden. If you remember, "Most people' had multiple meanings. This debate is in regards to how "Most people" can possibly be wrong about their experiences vs. their reports on them later. However, the other "Most people" was simply about the position of the majority "liking being born" vs. those who think "life is a burden" or whatnot.. So there were multiple inter-related and intertwined threads of thought going on here. I want to delineate turning to this different argument now.

Going back to type arguments? Surprise parties are done simply because most people would want them and those who don’t have to deal with it, when the converse could be “The recipient didn’t know about a party they’re missing out on to even care”

Yet you find them acceptable despite them meeting all the features. So maybe it’s not so unjust? — khaled

You didn't seem to address my point. If no one exists, who is the injustice done to as far as "missing out" on the goods of life? However, an injustice is surely done to those who do think life is a burden. No one is "losing out" to the "burdenites" because no one exists to lose out to them. However, there is potential for someone to lose out who is born. Yet those people have to "deal" with it. How is that just? In one case, actual injustice is done. In another, it would be a category error to even apply injustice as there is no "one" to apply the injustice to.

Things to consider:
1.) The duration and the kinds of experiences matter here. Duration means there's a lot more experiences, which means memory can cherry-pick. The intensity and magnitude of the experiences in life are also that much more extreme, meaning the kind of pains being overlooked are that much more. Similarly, an event like, "Eating an ice cream cone" is a very limited event. The report can roughly match the experience being so short, and not being of a pervasive but always changing nature that characterizes life itself versus one very limited event within life.

2.) Similar to above, a single event is more of a subgenre of a subgenre of life itself. Life itself involves pervasive routines one has to fulfill to keep alive.. work, maintenance, etc. It is not one discrete event that one can analyze. Reporting on pervasive, yet constantly changing events that occur over a lifetime are just of a different kind than a discrete event that is not pervasive like a surprise party.

Anyone who thinks that life is either bad or awful will obviously not want kids. But you want more than that. You claim you know that life is bad or awful for everyone, despite the vast majority assuring you they don't think it is. What is your justification behind this belief. — khaled

On a separate tangent, why should the people who don't think life is a burden make such an all pervasive and controlling decision for the people who think that life is indeed a burden? Why should one have precedence? This goes back to the "Most people" argument. Most people want this, therefore those who don't want this must deal with it. That is unjust when the converse would be "No person exists to even care they don't exist". As you know, not existing people don't have "injustice" applied to them. Not existing doesn't matter to anyone. And this is a large point people overlook. Missing out only matters to those who exist to miss out.

But if you are energy and matter... why have agency? You are going to stick around regardless. It’s not like energy and matter are going anywhere - they hang about just as the asteroids and floating gas clouds do. What is different about this glob of matter where it puts itself through the almost insurmountable and tireless effort to be “living” - a constant state of struggle against the odds. — Benj96

Here comes negentropy posts!

Just to clarify before this progresses too much further, what you're describing is not Optimism Bias (as in the psychological phenomena). Optimism bias is about expectations, not recollections.

As I've already explained (to the wall it seems), there is no such thing as experience which is not constructed, it simply does not exist. You are comparing two falsely distinguished entities. The experience at the time and the recollection of it later are both constructed in the same way by the same regions of the brain, one has no primacy over the other in any ontological sense. — Isaac

I have seen it both future and past. I can agree about the brain constructing things. That idea actually favors my argument though. There is no "one" version, yet the one reported is given as accurate. All I am trying to explain is that what we "think" and what we "thought" and what we "hope" and what we "did" and what "happened" can all be different to a degree that the report, should not be taken as "this is the one to pick" just because it is a report.

There's no objective thing 'excitement', or 'anxiety'. They're both socially constructed models of physiological signals. — Isaac

Fair enough.

And my main point is that exact paragraph but replace “surprise party” with “life”. You disagree with this evaluation because you think life is “at best an inconvenience and at worst a terrible burden” while surprise parties are “full of elements people like”. Where is your evidence this is the case? — khaled

Your explanation of my reason for the difference is what is inaccurate here. First, I do believe there can be "good experiences". I do believe people can experience surprise parties as "good experiences". I do believe that right after the surprise party, if you asked them, "Was the surprise party good", they may say "yes" and it would be roughly accurate to what they experienced. I also believe you could have someone (like yourself maybe), who had some not pleasant experiences, and actually thought it was negative in its duration. I can someone asking, "Was the surprise party good" and the answer being "yes".. why? Cultural reasons (surprise parties are SUPPOSED to be good). Cognitive bias (well.. you saw your friends so that's what you will remember..). Anyways, the details aren't important as much as the illustration. Now, you will say, "This is like life!". What I am saying is because this is ONE event, it is very skewed, and skewed heavily in the case of alignment of lived experience and report. Life truly has multivarious events of all shapes and sizes in just one day, let alone, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. From here, is where I will stop my explanation because you will then ask for articles and I am just not interested in that in this setting. So if you want Dr. Von Nostrums latest trend on duration and Optimism Bias, sorry don't have the time or inclination to stat digging into peer review journals on this particular one. Perhaps if you want to start a thread and bring that into it, I will join. I think though, even on this theoretical scale, it is plain enough to see the difference in the two that the disanalogy is apparent.

Ok stop with this. Surprise parties also often last many hours and for an introvert like me are MOSTLY comprised of things other than I like. This “single event vs many events” distinction is not real. — khaled

I think this is another "We're going to have to agree to disagree" as we are repeating here and I am not interested in a large justification regress when I feel this is sufficiently apparent enough through simply its magnitudes of difference and my explanation thereof that the difference doesn't need to be explained much further.

For surprise parties, you choose to trust the reports, so when people say they liked it you believe they actually liked it. For life you choose not to trust the reports, so it must be bad given that everyone says it’s good.

This is an arbitrary inconsistency. What evidence do you have that most people are lying about life but not about surprise parties? What evidence do you have that surprise parties are actually pleasant while life is an inconvenience or terrible burden? — khaled

Yes we are repeating, what I was afraid of... I've said what I had to say. One more explanation..
1) Most people like chocolate ice cream.. a minority does not. You give them chocolate ice cream and have them report on it. Most say they like it.

YOU are saying this is analogous to ALL the events of life itself being like "Most people like chocolate ice cream". I am saying, that this analogy is not even comparable. A life time of events versus one event (one which indeed is pleasurable to many people), is not the same as experiencing a large time interval of events that were neutral to unpleasant, aggregating it over many years and reporting "Life is good". Just not the same.

I will say this.. Perhaps it is not JUST duration. The example you picked was pretty skewed. If you had provided a more neutral or ambiguous one then perhaps you would get closer to the idea of reporting on life itself.

Yes. But this doesn’t come into the debate yet. I could agree that there is fundamentally something wrong about serfdom and still make all the same arguments. — khaled

Not sure what you mean here.

Your position is inconsistent for you think that OB applies only to life and not surprise parties because of some unidentified psychological principle that you have no support for that you instead ask me to research and prove for you. Both are impositions. Either OB applies to both, or neither. Otherwise explain why it applies to one but not the other. — khaled

My main point here is that OB can obtain in a surprise party, but it wouldn't be a surprise to me if the actual experience matches the report because often surprise parties have elements people like in it and so may not be reporting wrong if they say, "I like it". It here being a very discrete event in their life versus many hours experiencing things other than they like and then asking to report on a summary of their whole life.

However, there very well could also be cases of reporting what was not experienced.. You don't want an event that is "supposed" to be good to be reported as bad, so you go along and say, "Yes, I liked it", but you didn't.. That starts looking more like when you combine multiple life events.. Because life has more than events that we just like in it going on in the lived experience. Because the vent is so discrete, it becomes harder to analogize and becomes much more specific to the preference of a person's attitude towards that particular event.

However, now that I think of it, it may very well be the case, the the even as lived could have been a 6 on the person's scale (let's just say in their experience at the time) but when they recalled it many years later, it was like a 10.. That would be OB.

No it’s more than that. it’s “Although I think X is unethical, I have no basis for telling someone who disagrees it is”. people can agree that too much imposition is wrong without being AN. — khaled

If they believe too much imposition is wrong, then why not be AN? I think you mean they don't think life has enough imposition to be an AN. So I think this really does get to the heart of our debate. I am claiming impositions are often underreported and that often people are mistaken as to how much imposition there is imposed on them. Think of it this way.. At one point, a serf could have no right to land. That's because they were born without a title of some kind or their parents also didn't have land. The serf accepted the arrangement because well, "that's how it is". But at some point, maybe after the Black Plague, there was a movement against serfdom. The economic situation made them realize that their work had value and the situation of perpetual landlessness was unjust. Wait, what changed? Was it really that the serf's view was the only thing that changed the unjustness of serfdom or is there something unjust about serfdom?

To the discussion about the morality of having children, the needs of the parent are irrelevant, since one's own needs are never sufficient to justify an action that involves other individuals. To argue otherwise would lead to a predictable slippery slope.

That isn't to say that the question isn't interesting. — Tzeentch

@darthbarracuda

So the only mitigation here is that amelioration of a greater harm with a lesser harm. A child getting a vaccination, for example. So procreation would be prefaced in my view as different than the vaccination scenario, because there is no amelioration. Procreation is a decision that was unnecessarily creating harmful scenarios where there were none. The vaccination is preventing a greater harm and imposition down the line from disease.

Another argument might retort that the child might lead to some sort of "greatest happiness overall in society" cause they would be a great scientist or something. That would mean that all that matters is the aggregate and like most AN, I don't think that ethical matters should be based on "because this will increase aggregate X". Overlooking the person this is being done to, because it can cause an increase in output, is overlooking the dignity of the person being affected for an impersonal thing. There has to be a ground at some point, and usually these are the grounds where its hard to go much further without simply shouting matches of "aggregate yes" and "person-affecting view yes" and just do this over and over.

There is an instinctual aspect to it. For what reason would a hunter-gatherer have offspring, their own material benefit? Hardly, because it's just another mouth to feed. Infanticide and presumably abortions were quite common back then.

Probably a more interesting question would be to ask why people have children, and whether there can be a substitute for doing so. I remain unconvinced that there is something that can fill that need for a child that so many people have. — darthbarracuda

Maybe it is instinctual, but doesn't that essentially mean people have children because they are incapable of reasoned thought in that regard? — Tzeentch

So not sure what Biology 101 would have to do with procreating ...
— schopenhauer1
:roll: wtf. — 180 Proof

So my deeper argument here is the claim of instinctual. I guess, what counts as "instinct"? The thought, "I want a baby because X" doesn't seem like an instinct. It does seem like a preference though. Because the preference is tied to a biological phenomenon it may be people are mixing up the preference for an instinct. An instinct to me involves things like automatic responses to stimuli. Many animals go through estrus, have sex, have offspring, and that is that. There was no thought from the animal, "I want a child so that I can fulfill a need" or "This child represents the love between me and my partner and I want a little version of the mix of the two". These are all complex thoughts that are combinations of ideas people patch together from preferences. It doesn't seem like something like an automatic response to certain ingrained stimuli. People also often throw around things like females' propensity to produce hormones after childbirth that might bring about general happy feelings towards the child or whatnot, but that is after childbirth not before and also mixed up as it does have to do with childbirth but not the before/during procreation part.

Finally, people often mix up the desire for pleasure with the desire for procreation. One leads to the other, but one is not the other. To engage in sexual activity I would not say is instinctual as much as it is pleasurable and that pleasure is often sought after because its pleasurable. Often this can stem from many things.. Boredom, it feels good, it's more preferable than other things that don't feel as good, etc. But that's not necessarily instinct either. If for example, when the full moon came out, people could not help but hump the next person who walked by once he/she smelled their pheromones, then you might have a case for instinct or something like that... I am purposely being provocative here to illustrate what I mean by "instinct" versus something else (simply wanting something, often because it feels good at the time or because its a preference based on personality-based wants and desires like other wants and desires).

I tried to make it a bit shorter this time. — khaled

Don't have time. Consolidate your thoughts please, and I will reply. Take the main arguments put them in a condensed paragraph. Every statement doesn't have to be parsed and I'm not into that right now. Call me what you will, but I don't need to do the tit-for-tat on every sentence. Let's just get our main arguments and stop repeating the same things.

Ah, so the longer the period, supposedly the less accurate the predictions. Where is your evidence for this? You can't just claim it out of the blue.

What if the party lasted a week, suddenly not accurate anymore? — khaled

I was agreeing with you that a surprise party is generally considered a good experience. So in this case (generally), the lived experience matches the reported experience. Like if someone had their favorite food, and right after you asked, "Did you like that food?". Believe it or not, I can believe the person is truly reporting they liked the food. However, the optimism bias would indeed be absurd if we only applied it to times when people are generally actually happy about something. It is about going through a series of events during a longer duration and cherry-picking the good ones, when it comes time to reporting for various reasons I have mentioned.

Not until you explain why you believe it does. Where is your evidence that the longer the period, the less accurate the predictions are? — khaled

It's just the function of studying the optimism bias.. It is over a long duration. It's not a poll of likes and dislikes right after an event. "Did you like this event that you prefer?" Well, shit, of course! I guess optimism bias is debunked, someone reported they liked a surprise party when they generally like parties and surprises by their friends who planned a party on their behalf!

OB is often pointed to as an evolutionary adaptation to cope with difficult situations, so is about a multitude of events that pass through a life and how one is filtering it.

Well, this would mean literally nothing is okay, and the fact that you're doing something right now shows you can't hold that position with your current beliefs. — khaled

I'm not. I am saying, I am being more nuanced than a rigid Kantian who would say something like, "If a murderer asks where the victim is hiding, I cannot lie". That lacks nuance.

This isn't any better. You have no reason to say that life is long enough and that its impositions are not minimal enough. You can't establish that objectively. One can easily consistently hold that life is not long enough and not a big enough imposition to be unacceptable in the general case.

You still have no objective basis to push your belief. — khaled

I believe this is like saying, "If I break someone's arm, someone MIGHT not mind it because I haven't surveyed everyone". There are some things which are known entities like that life contains a certain amount of lived experience that is harm, suffering, negative. It's like, I am even giving you the surprise party example as a given of something almost universally liked. I'm not going to ask you to "prove" it because it's a known. It would be uncharitable and in this kind of argument to even make you give me data on surprise parties. I will go with it. Hell I can even deny that people like surprise parties all together and will not concede this is a good example unless you get me surveys from certain scientific sources! Otherwise, I will not entertain it. Period!

You understand how analogies work right? I can't provide you with an example of an imposition that is lifelong, and just as much of an imposition as life, because that would just be life. All analogies will be different in magnitude from the originals but have the same properties. That's what an analogy is. — khaled

Yes, but when the analogy does not hold, it really can't be used as a counter-example, because it is not actually showing the case. Again, this is some sort of specific general fallacy. At time one, the football team is pumped.. Throughout the game, they get pummeled and frustrated and generally are not happy. At any point during that longer duration, they might have had various negative experiences. If you just interviewed the team at the beginning of the game, you would have thought their experience that game day was great.

Because you haven't shown how either affect predictions. You want to make a claim that longer durations make us see the experience through rose tinted glasses. You have provided no support for this. So it remains an arbitrary claim until you do. — khaled

Because you are picking one positive experience and saying, "This is like life" instead of a steady stream of a variety of daily experiences. I don't have to prove that that is the case which makes this disanalogous. Life isn't a stream of surprise party experiences. If I have to prove this, then I am done debating this. There is some sort of justification fallacy where every word I use can be asked for justification. At some point you have to have a foundation of agreement. Life has a variety of experiences. Yes.

I'm assuming this is what you mean we have to "agree to disagree on". I disagree. You've made a claim without evidence. That people generally embellish long experiences in a positive light and don't do so with shorter ones. You need to provide evidence for this. Then your position may have some objective legitimacy. — khaled

I mean, I don't get your gripe now. Are you trying to say that the events of the surprise party can have many negatives that people aren't reporting? That could be a possibility, but I am already telling you that most likely the events will be positive for events people generally like. I'm not sold that it works as an analogy. Perhaps if you want to elaborate what happens at a particular surprise party, we can analyze that as a case of possible optimism bias, but I am willing to say that generally the lived experience of things people like match their report.

Depends on the extent of the burden compared to how likely it is the "burden" is enjoyed. Slavery? Bad. Surprise parties? Good.

This is your position as well. — khaled

Indeed. So we agree on something and there is a basis for a real understanding. Our difference is that often there are negative events (maybe not conditions of slavery) that people encounter but do overlook because there is an optimism bias. The lived experience is disrupted from the reported one.

You think that the lived experience is what matters, but how do we get at what this lived experience was like? Well, only thing we can do is ask the experiencer correct? Except in one case (life) you think their reports should be dismissed and that life is objectively neutral to bad, but in the other (surprise parties) you think their reports are accurate. This is an arbitrary belief that you have to provide evidence for.

What we disagree on currently is how trustworthy the reports are. I say they're trustworthy, you seem to arbitrarily decide they are not when it fits your argument. — khaled

If you want me to say that even the surprise party recipient isn't trustworthy, I mean that may be the case. Maybe throughout the course of the day he had a bunch of negative experiences and then reported otherwise. However, I think that most experiences during a surprise party are already positive and thus would accurately be reporting that. However, I am not going to discount that if there were mostly negative experiences, it is a possibility that someone might report otherwise. That could happen, but since I believe the experiences in the party to already be of a positive nature, this doesn't happen much because the lived experiences are already positive. I am not trying to argue that.

(Note: again, I'm not arguing antinatalism is wrong. I'm arguing that you have no objective (true of everyone) way to show it's right) — khaled

I'm not going to throw you articles if that's what you want. It is a psychological claim that this is the case that I am saying I think has validity and further proves a case where humans have a tendency to overlook, under report, etc. If you don't find it compelling, then do some research and see. I don't have the time to go over every article and parse that with you.. Justification regress. If you want, let me block off the rest of my life to scour every article because khaled doesn't find my argument compelling on an internet forum.

Which is arbitrary. Why is it that in the case of life our reports are inaccurate while for surprise parties they're not? I agree they're dissimilar in many aspects, but you have to still show instead of arbitrarily claiming, that one of those aspects results in inaccurate reports in the one case and accurate ones in the other. — khaled

Over and over I am saying because that surprise parties generally is an experience people like. I can agree that someone who did not have a good time, could also do the same thing as people do for life in general but then, ok then, that is going on there as well. However, if someone likes ice cream, gets ice cream, and you ask, "how was the ice cream", and they say "good", I'm not going to argue he is wrong! However, if the person had ice cream, tripped, spilled it on himself, did a bunch of other things throughout the day positive and negative, he might report something different.. Then aggregated over a period of time.. All of a sudden someone asks "Binary answer, Yes/No life".. that is a difference and it does have to do with an aggregate of many experiences being crammed into a binary question.

False. I'm not arguing it's not right. I'm arguing you have no basis for thinking it will eventually be right. And so no reason to push it. It's on the same level as: "Eating white chocolate is bad" because it's too sweet. In other words, that the natalist position is just as valid.

This is the 3rd or 4th time I've made it clear I'm not arguing for natalism. I'm arguing that your belief that antinatalism is superior in any objective (again, universality of belief not whatever else you thought it was) sense is unfounded. — khaled

And I am saying for the 3rd of 4th time, I don't even believe ethics works like that! IT either convinces or doesn't', period. It doesn't have universality, not prima facie at least. It is compelling or not compelling.

There is no meaning to "It is indeed too much". You are claiming that there is some objective measure of the "right extent" of imposition. Is there an objective measure of the "right extent" of sweetness? — khaled

I am trying to figure out what exactly that extent is, but let me answer something you said here to elucidate in general:

Because what is "too much" is personal. It's again like "Eating things that are too sweet is bad". Everyone agrees, yet they eat different foods,and none think that they're more "correct" than the others in doing so. But you seem to for some reason.

Both "murder is wrong" and "having children is wrong" are not universally held. But the difference is for the first, if the premises are true the conclusion is true, giving a way to objectivity if you hold that the premises are true of everyone. For the second, even if the premise is true of everyone the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow. Meaning that those who believe in the the second, have no reason to think it applies to everyone. They will disagree with people that think "Imposing on people too much is wrong" is false, but outside of that, they have no justification to claim that they're right as long as that first premise is shared. — khaled

But this works on both arguments. So we both agree:
1) People can deny the premise and thus never universally hold an ethic.

The case of the premise of murder and antinatalism can be the same as well, you are just being very narrow in your degree/extent with murder. Murder is a set of things.. There's death, killing, accidental death, killing with intent, killing under some mitigating circumstance, 1st degree, 2nd degree, etc. etc. There are extents to even this event. One that gets it to being considered "murder" and one that defines to what degree the murder took. Only the process of law deems it as "agreed upon" and that is basically a social agreement. But see, now we are back to the majority argument that you claim not to be making. The universality devolves into social construction. I can imagine a society who values non-imposition as a very important rule and thus antinatalism becomes a principle constructed over time in a long process over many years and becomes ingrained where degrees are defined etc.

If imposing burdens on someone else is wrong, then there is a basis here. We are now arguing:
1) Are burdens underreported?
2) Are burdens okay to give to someone if someone accepts the burden?
3) Are all burdens of this nature in #2?
4) How much of the burdens are not of the nature of #2 and are unwanted (but possibly reported as wanted)?

As an aside, I cannot keep up these long conversations. I just don't have the time, so if we can consolidate these, it would be much appreciated as we are basically repeating the same things over and over anyways.

But you think it applies to one and not the other. Why? That's the question I'm asking you.

You trust people's reports when it comes to surprise parties but not life, why is that? — khaled

No, what I am saying that because a surprise party is one defined event, and not a course of day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a lifetime, it can indeed align more closely with the report.

A lifetime is a "certain duration with a set period of time". The only difference here is length. — khaled

Indeed and that makes a difference.

You can't just keep stating this, you have to explain why you cannot compare the two. So far the only difference you outlined is the length of imposition which shouldn't be relevant (see next paragraph). — khaled

Irrelevant. The point of the surprise party example isn't to say "Surprise parties are ok so life is ok". That would be a stupid argument. — khaled

Phew.

The point is to show that acts that don't relieve any harm, while having a chance of causing harm, can still be ok to do. That's all I'm trying to argue. — khaled

I can be a Kantian non-nuanced person and say that all things which might cause harm are not okay. I am willing to be more nuanced and say that an event with short duration with extremely minimal costs of imposition are acceptable, hence why this doesn't compare which you keep insisting it does. You have only shown a specific event with extremely minimal cost of imposition is not an imposition. That isn't saying much.

And SINCE this is the case (again, you agree that surprise parties are ok even though they don't relieve harm, and can cause it), you have no objective basis for arguing that life is too much of an imposition. That's what I'm arguing, not that "It's ok to impose life" but "You have no objective (true of everyone) justification to say that it's not ok to impose life". — khaled

It's not okay to impose a long duration of impositions on someone, despite the fact that discreet events of very minimal chance of impositions can occur in a lifetime of a person.

A surprise party is not a unitary experience. It's a duration full of experiences just like life is, just much shorter. This is not a real difference. Again, the only difference you pointed out is length. — khaled

I just don't accept this as analogous to all of life. The amount of impositions is so minimal and non-pervasive that it would be intellectually dishonest to claim it is. So disanalagous again. There must be some kind of fallacy here of mistaking the specific for the more general.

You are claiming that no, these reports can be wrong, and that life is objectively "a minor inconvenience or a terrible burden for everyone". That would be a tenable position, if you didn't also take people's word for it when it comes to surprise parties with no explanation as to why you treat them differently. Length is not a factor when it comes to the degree to which the reports align with the lived experience. — khaled

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this then because your argument revolves a lot on this analogy holding and I don't think they are the same due to the pervasive nature of a lifetime of possible and actual burdens.

Which one of those explains why the report is not to be trusted in the case of life? I don't see how either should be relevant (one isn't a real difference). It's like saying: "His report shouldn't be trusted because he has red hair while the other witnesses had black hair." — khaled

I'm not sure why longer duration with more perpetual, pervasive, and frequent impositions is not computing and is translated as arbitrary for you.

Irrelevant. Point I was making was purely about how extent arguments are not objective. Do you agree about that at least? — khaled

Forcing a burden on someone unnecessarily, do you think that is bad? That helps answer our disagreement perhaps. And you will say, not everyone will think "it" is bad. And then we will argue what "it" is. You will say report, I will say lived experience and we are back at square one. So where is this going to go but in circles with how we are arguing right now?

No it doesn't. Because I'm not saying "Surprise parties are ok so life is ok". I'm not arguing for natalism. I'm arguing you have no objective basis by which to push your belief. Yours is exactly as valid as natalism at best. For this argument to work, I would need to point out that you are making an extent argument. Which you are. And you haven't provided any basis for why your analysis of "bad enough" is any more "correct" than a natalist's. — khaled

Then this goes back to my meta-argument for ethics in the first place.

You can't just arbitrarily agree that in one case the lived and the reported experiences are aligned and in the other case they aren't. Why are they not aligned in the case of life? Duration? How is that relevant? — khaled

Because surprise parties are general happy experiences. And if it isn't.. then you are unintentionally arguing in my camp. I'm actually trying to placate your view here that surprise parties are almost universally seen as good. I can go along with this and perhaps the lived experience is aligned with the report in surprise parties. That to me doesn't have much relevance when discussing every experience of life itself, as I have said ad nauseum now.

Yes but those are all type arguments. Murder is wrong. Period. And murder is: Killing innocents. There is no "Too much murder is wrong". Every single instance is wrong. That's why you can make universal appeals like these. — khaled

Okay sure, but I have given various examples of things that were not seen as wrong in the past and have become considered wrong today. I think I have explained to you my meta-ethical idea that ethics can evolve over time. You seem to think that if it does not convince people AT THIS TIME, it must be not right. What is your foundation for this claim? And if it's not, then you have to bite the bullet and say murder and theft is not wrong unless a majority say it is, cause now you are truly just saying right and wrong is whatever the majority says it is.

But in your case you want to use: "Imposing on others is wrong" to make a universal appeal relating to childbirth. That would be fine. Except you don't think imposing on others is always wrong ex: Surprise parties. So it's more like "Imposing on others too much is wrong". Now you have no basis to make a universal appeal. Unless you can show that your estimation of "too much" is more correct than that of a natalist somehow. — khaled

Then the goal of the person who sees the extent as too much is to convince the other that it is indeed too much. If it is not convincing so be it. You are not convinced. For a sociopath, it would be impossible for him to perhaps see how it is wrong to murder, but he is still wrong to murder. I am not comparing the two but showing an example for how in so-called "universal" cases, people might not convinced its wrong. There was Hitler and Stalin etc. who thought of their own objectives more than millions of peoples lives as more important. The instinct to say "murder is universally wrong" is not held by everyone either.

Birth can be an accident. Should we limit sexual intercourse? — Wheatley

Not necessarily. Just the risk it leads to birth which is reasonably manageable for many people.

Your question only makes sense only if humans are individual organisms that can act unconstrained (though not wholly detrrmined by) by their species biology. And we can't. Biology 101. Thus, antinatality is mostly a pathological aberration like clinical depression or Tourett Syndrome; where it's a deliberate stance, such as in my case, it's (mostly) a matter of moral luck when one achieves it. — 180 Proof

I guess my response is the same as to darth's here:

I can maybe agree with that. What is your own justification for that? What I don't get is wanting a child is a discursive, deliberative thought. It is not an immediate need, nor even something as compelling as pleasure or the aversion/reflex away from pain. The statement, "I want a car" and "I want a baby" are absolutely the same as far as I see. One does not have any more unconscious pull than another. The wanting of something is simply the wanting of something.

I guess you can make the case that the "heat of the moment" outweighed the thought for whether or not to have a baby, but with the ubiquity of all sorts of birth control, this isn't as big a deal either.

So really, it is more of a cultural and personal want than a universal biological drive.. unless you want to argue that wanting anything is a drive itself, but then we are speaking about wants and not this specific wants.. Wants then can be mitigated like all other wants.. I want this Ferrari but I cannot afford it, best not try to buy it. I want X but... — schopenhauer1

So not sure what Biology 101 would have to do with procreating other than accidents which can be highly reduced in the modern world. Even then, we can still deliberate. There is no, reflexive, instinctual driven, no way to stop it, breeding season.

Limiting someone's freedom to just three options: x, y, and z. — Wheatley

So the point is with birth, there can never be an option to opt-out. Is this just?

It's not just to limit someone's freedom like that. — Wheatley

What is "It's" here?