I would like to publicly apologize for misunderstanding your intentions with our conversation. Now that I know that you were not trying to be rude, I feel better about having future conversations with you. I would like to invite you to continue the discussion if you still want to continue it.

Recently, I had attempted to address the problem that you posed with using the death note by suggesting that a good Kira should write a Death note constitution which describes the conditions under which Kira is allowed to kill. I believe this would serve as a psychological deterrent for Kira and would hold him somewhat accountable to public opinion. The draft copy of my Death Note Constitution goes as follows:

1. Kira shall not kill those who are not currently a threat to others or suffering immensely themselves.(so no killing benign criminals in prison or suicidal emo kids)

2. Kira shall only kill people painlessly in their sleep.

3. Among the suicidal people, Kira will only euthanize those who are dying of terminal illnesses.

4. Kira will only kill people without consent with the permission of the international courts and the United Nations.(that way the people killed are indisputably a current threat to other people's lives and well being. They are also all breaking international law)

5. Kira will give a public warning to the malevolent people he is about to kill. He will give a 3 day notice before killing them which will allow the malevolent people to turn themselves in to the lawful authorities.

6. Kira shall only allow the United Nations to amend his constitution.

I know that this doesn't completely mitigate the risks of the death note but it certainly lowers it quite a bit. I also think that the Death Note would be a better way of killing terrorists than drone strikes which often cause a lot of collateral damage and involve the death of many innocent civilians.

Did the lives of Iraqis improve when they killed Saddam Hussein? — andrewk

No, they have not. But, the death note bypasses many of the problems that the old fashioned ways of overthrowing a dictator possesses. For one thing, you can simply threaten to kill the dictator if he violates some international law again. This would still keep the dictator in power but would provide him with an incentive to behave better towards his people. Another option is that you can kill the dictator and threaten to kill any leader that violates human rights that comes in his place. Thereby causing the country to become at least somewhat of a republic. There are several problems that it cannot address though:
1. If there is a dictator who keeps his identity secret, he would pose a challenge for Kira.
2. If a dictator possesses nuclear weapons, he could threaten to use them if he gets killed. This would make killing him a foolish decision.

I thought it wasn't about you but about what it means to be responsible. If you could argue against his persuasive definition of responsible, then you'd probably open up the discussion again. He actually invites you to do that in the next sentence. — Benkei

It was a mistake on my part. I misunderstood his intention and that caused me judge him as rude too quickly. We have privately resolved things and I would be open to having a discussion with him again.

It reads a bit like your intention is a fail safe system to administer death penalties. You are skipping whether the death penalty is moral in itself and if so for what sort of crimes. Human justice, however, is fallible and any penalty system will invariable punish innocents. For that reason alone we should never impose the death penalty because it is irreversible and cannot in some sense be renumerated financially.

Additionally, you cannot take life when a life has been lost; that's revenge, not justice. — Benkei

Well, I'm assuming you might not have read my Death Note constitution post. It is not the case that my intention was to provide a death sentence. The first amendment of my Death Note constitution prohibits that. My intention was to stop people who are currently a serious threat to other people's lives and well being from harming people again. I'm not interested in killing bad people who were already captured but rather to kill mostly active terrorists. We are currently trying to kill active terrorists with drone strikes and air strikes which causes a lot of collateral damage to innocent civilians. I think the death note would be a better tool for taking out those terrorists. I also included in my constitution a requirement for permission from the United Nation to kill each criminal and a trial to determine the eligibility of each criminal killed. In addition, there is a 3 day warning to the criminal to allow them an opportunity to turn themselves in instead of being murdered.

Well, I would like to point out that it doesn't seem like having the parents decide is a particularly precise or objective method for figuring out the maturity of the child either. Some parents are unduly strict and other parents are unduly permissive in their judgement of their child's maturity. We have to take this into account. This is why I don't think it's so easy to come up with a better way of doing things. At the very least, if a 22 year old has his own place he should be allowed to purchase alcohol regardless of how reckless he is with the alcohol(that is because it seems silly to have the parents decide if he doesn't rely on them financially anymore). You probably agree with me on that restriction to having the parents decide on whether or not their child is mature enough to do various activities though. But I think when it comes to supposedly mature 14 year olds, we have to be careful. There are plenty of irresponsible parents who simply don't care and would let their 14 year olds have the freedom to purchase alcohol even if they aren't ready for it. Similarly, there are some strict parents that I know of who are not ok with their relatively mature 22 year olds doing various activities and would be more than happy to restrict their freedom to purchase alcohol. Another reason why setting an adult age can be important is that it lets the parents know when they are no longer responsible for the child. If the parent is no longer responsible for their child, then it is only fair that this child has adult freedoms to make a living for himself and to be allowed to buy booze.

Fair enough, but I think it would be reasonable to set a minimum and maximum age for adulthood at least. For example, no 14 year kid should be declared an adult by her parents(I think there are too few 14 year olds that are mature enough for that). Similarly, at 21 years of age, you should be automatically made into a legal adult.

I think that a slippery slope argument is possible. You imagine having an incredible power in your back pocket, but just using it completely justly and legitimately that one time, and then never again? It wouldn't be the case that using it would be easier each time, requiring less legitimacy, until you'd be exercising it because you can, it's easy, and you have nothing better to do. — All sight

I think that it's a fair critique you are making. Perhaps there is a real concern here about it leading to worse consequences. But, I also find it hard to believe that every person who uses the notebook would inevitably abuse it's power and that it would always lead to a major catastrophe. I do think that if you use the notebook for any purpose, you should write a constitution of sorts that describes rules that you must follow in order to ethically use the notebook. You also want to make this constitution known to the public so that the public opinion could hold you accountable to some extent. Maybe you could have some type of symbolic impeachment process too lol. You might think that writing a constitution would just be an empty promise but I believe it would have a powerful psychological effect. That is because when you promise not to do something, it is very painful to break that promise. So, here's a draft copy of what my death note constitution might look like:

1. Kira shall not kill those who are not currently a threat to others or suffering immensely themselves.(so no killing benign criminals in prison or suicidal emo kids)

2. Kira shall only kill people painlessly in their sleep.

3. Among the suicidal people, Kira will only euthanize those who are dying of terminal illnesses.

4. Kira will only kill people without consent with the permission of the international courts and United Nations.(that way the people killed are indisputably a current threat to other people's lives and well being. They are also all breaking international law)

5. Kira will give a public warning to the malevolent people he is about to kill. He will give a 3 day notice before killing them which will allow the malevolent people to turn themselves in to the lawful authorities.

I know I probably left some things out in that constitution but it's late at night and I'm kinda drunk right now lol. This is the best I can do for now.

well, the part where he(or she) called anyone he(or she) disagreed with "terminally illiterate" was the most impolite part. Also calling people he(or she) disagreed with "disconnected from reality" and "by definition irresponsible". These are unnecessary remarks for him(or her) to use when demonstrating his(or her) point and it shows his(or her) unwillingness to emphasize with those he(or she) disagrees with and actually ask them questions and listen before making preconceived judgements. I'm not trying to say he(or she) is especially impolite or immature since the type of discourse he(or she) is displaying is extremely common and it's easy for us to get desensitized to it and assume that this is an acceptable way of having a philosophical conversation. I also think he(or she) was being vague in his(or her) responses in the beginning especially and not giving me much to work with. Maybe I'm being too hard on him(or her), but I've had much better conversations than that on this forum in my brief time here and I don't want to get bogged down having a conversation with someone who doesn't seem to want to explore different possibilities or elaborate enough on his(or her) position.

Well, of course there are age based laws in place that protect minors and these laws don't apply once you become an adult. I think that these laws should be based on age and I agree with our current way of doing things(except I think they should lower the drinking age in the US to 18). But I think that Terrapin Station was making a suggestion that they should hinge on some other standard other than age. That is to say that instead being able to buy alcohol after you reach a certain age, there should be another standard by which we decide who can or can't buy alcohol. I'm trying to inquire the details from Terrapin Station about how we could make this work in our society without relying on age.

Ok so it sounds to me like you're choosing to reject P1 then. That is to say that you don't think that the presence of pleasure in humans is an advantage over the absence of pleasure in X Beings for the same reason you don't think that the presence of pleasure in humans is an advantage over the absence of pleasure for potential beings.(that is to say that there's no deprivation present in either one of these cases of pleasure absences.) In that case, I guess we will have to agree to disagree since I think rejecting P1 would be more counterintuitive than rejecting Benetar's asymmetry. Feel free to provide me with an argument or a thought experiment for why Benetar's asymmetry is more intuitive than P1 in your opinion if you have one though.

But what if you have parents that's ok with their 9 year old child drinking or what if you have parents that are not ok with their 30 year old child drinking. We obviously have to set a legal age or condition under which a person is old enough to override the judgement of his parents. We could allow a 9 year old to purchase alcohol if his parents are ok with it, but we do have to at least set a condition under which someone is allowed to purchase alcohol without the permission of his parents. So my question is at what age or under what condition should someone be allowed to purchase alcohol at the store?

Fair enough, but can you describe a legal procedure which a young person would have to undergo in order to obtain the freedom to do something? For example, if I'm a 17 year old, where would I be required to go or who would I have to talk to in order to be able to obtain the freedom to purchase alcohol? What questions would they ask me?

I was interested in having a mature and polite conversation with you about this topic. You have demonstrated an unwillingness to engage me on this topic in a polite and respectful manner. I don't think I could have a pleasant or productive conversation with you on this topic so I think I'll seek someone else to have a conversation with instead.

One thing I definitely wouldn't do is make it a "mature enough" metric. I'd be trying to avoid making it anything about value judgments as much as possible. — Terrapin Station

But, I'm interested to know how you would make it hinge on ability then.

We already have driving tests that you're required to pass before you can drive, by the way. — Terrapin Station

I'm aware of that, my suggestion was to give a hard driving test to teenagers not old enough to drive. I think it's a bad idea though.

Kind of, but a death note is worse. It's a far more detached way of doing something as significant as killing, which makes it more likely to be abused. And if people are willing to engage in so much bloodshed in ways that require getting your hands and your heart dirty, imagine how willing many would be to use the notebook. — Πετροκότσυφας

I think there are ways in which the notebook is better though. One thing to consider is that there would only be one notebook(belonging to you) and that you could destroy it after just killing a couple of people. Nuclear bombs, on the other hand, cannot be disarmed easily.

To me, someone who's willing to have absolute power over another or to grant absolute power to another is disconnected from reality and thus, by definition, neither responsible nor enlightened. — Πετροκότσυφας

Well, I don't think we should judge a person as unenlightened simply because they disagree with us on a particular issue. I imagine that there's probably at least a billion people who would be willing to use the notebook in the world. To say that all of them are unenlightened would be statistically unlikely. I imagine that there's at least one person who you would judge to be very enlightened prior to knowing about their opinion about the death note. I also would like to point out that it's inaccurate to say that the death note grants you absolute power over another. You can kill someone with the notebook and manipulate their actions before their death to some extent, but beyond that you are powerless. I suppose you could also use it to intimidate people into doing what you want but that might put you at risk for being taken down.

If no negative states were attached to the deprivation then the outcome is not bad. I would just like to see a human with no negative states due to deprivation. Perhaps these are the mystical enlightened ones. Buddhism is based on lessening attachment to desire. Schopenhauer's only salvation was to become an austere ascetic and possibly die due to starvation without care. — schopenhauer1

Ok, so what you just said seems to imply that you don't accept the following implications of accepting Benetar's argument and rejecting P2 of my X being argument:

1. It means that the harm of coming into existence extends far beyond the presence of bad things. The infinite deprivation of good things in life is also an infinite harm relative to non-existence. For example, there is an infinite amount of pleasure that I am deprived of(because I cannot experience an eternal orgasm, for example) and that is bad only because I am a being who is deprived of that pleasure. This seems highly counterintuitive to me.

2. It means that bringing a being into existence that can be deprived of some good things in life but is inflicted with no bad things in life would still be harmful. That is because the deprivation of pleasure is bad compared to the case of nonexistence where there's no one deprived and therefore no one harmed by the absence of pleasure. To me, this is even more counterintuitive than thinking that X beings are not worse off than humans by not being able to experience pleasure. It implies that bringing a child into existence is bad even if that child experiences nothing bad but simply doesn't have as many good things in life as she could have.

Because you think the presence of desire or deprivational suffering is a necessity for something to be called a "deprivation that qualifies as being bad", it cannot be the case that the badness of the deprivation is infinite(since I only have finite desires and experience a finite amount of deprivational suffering from the deprivation, thereby making the badness of the deprivation finite).

Now I would like to come back to my X Being argument:

P1: The presence of pleasure in human beings is an advantage over the absence of pleasure in X Beings.

P2: X Beings cannot be said to be deprived of pleasure because they never had a desire or appreciation for it in the first place. In addition, experiencing pleasure provides no instrumental benefit to them by alleviating deprivational or inflictional suffering. Furthermore, the absence of pleasure is necessary for an X Being to maintain its identity as an X Being(that means if a rare mutation makes a supposed X Being experience pleasure, scientists would reclassify the being as some other species rather than an X Being with good scientific justification)

C: Therefore, the presence of pleasure can be an advantage over the absence of pleasure even if there is no one for whom the absence is a deprivation.

Because there has to be some deprivational suffering occurring for the absence of pleasure to be a deprivation or there has to be a desire for pleasure at least, P2 must be true. Although X beings do experience deprivational suffering, the reason they experience it, is not because of an absence of pleasure(that is because they do not derive any pleasure from activities that alleviate their deprivational suffering). They also do not desire pleasure or comprehend the concept of pleasure, so they don't know what they are missing out on. Just like a dog cannot be deprived of intellectual pleasures(because they don't desire any), X beings cannot be deprived of pleasure in general.(because they don't desire or understand pleasure.)
If you accept that P2 is true, then you would either have to say that P1 is false or reject Benetar's asymmetry. I chose to reject Benetar's asymmetry because I don't think that the presence of desire or deprivational suffering could fully explain why it is bad to have an absence of pleasure.

Ok, so it sounds to me like your objection to using the death note is that we should treat something as deadly as the death note like we would treat a nuclear bomb. That is to say, that even if there are advantages to building nuclear bombs(let's say they might of prevented the Cold War from turning hot, for example), the disadvantages of having the existential threat that nuclear bombs pose makes the advantages not worth it. Therefore, it would be better if nuclear bombs didn't exist. Similarly, if you destroy the death note than you would prevent it from existing and that would avoid the existential threat that it poses.
Although I emphasize with this argument and I think it makes a good point, I think if the death note were to be used by the most enlightened and responsible people, the benefit might be worth the risk. Having said that, I think there might be a real danger in assuming that I am that enlightened or responsible person. That's why I don't know if I would use the notebook myself. There's also what I call the Raskolnikov Problem with using the notebook. This problem points out that the harm of murder is not only done to the person murdered but also the murderer.

So, are you afraid that you would abuse that power yourself or do you think that you should abstain from using it to ensure that no one would find out about the power so we could avoid the possibility of someone stealing the notebook from you and using it for their malevolent purposes?

I don't understand how your objection is relevant to my question. One could think it is permissible to kill a malevolent dictator to save and improve the lives of the people he oppresses, without thinking it's ok to murder someone because of their race, religion, or nationality. I feel like you're making a slippery slope argument here

So, you wouldn't be willing to use it to kill someone like Kim Jong Un?

It is relevant if you are arguing that "life is always suffering due to the deprivation of desires and wants which are endless." That is because you are implying that the fact that something is a deprivation makes it bad even if no one experiences negative mental states because of that deprivation. In addition, the deprivation seems to be infinitely bad on your view. That is because under your definition of deprivation, you don't even have to desire the thing you are supposedly deprived of, in order to be harmfully deprived. My question goes as follows: is it the case that, even if there's no one experiencing negative emotion or having desires violated because of an absence of pleasure, an absence of pleasure in a being could still be called a deprivation and the presence of that deprivation in a being is still a bad thing? Is the mere fact that it could be called a deprivation make the supposed outcome bad and why?

I don't believe that such things should at all hinge on age. They should hinge on ability. — Terrapin Station

Well, that would be ideal. But, it's not clear to me how we could make it hinge on ability. How do we figure out whether or not someone is mature enough to drink, drive, smoke, watch porn, become a stripper, gamble, get married, rent a car, or have a job or vote? We would have to have at least somewhat of an objective and accurate test to figure out if someone is mature enough for any of the above activities. The only activity that we could make a fairly objective and accurate test on is voting. We could allow minors to vote if they pass a political knowledge test. We could also prohibit adults who can't pass the test from voting. Although, the latter suggestion would be a bad idea I think. I suppose we could also make the driving test harder for teenagers to pass and remove the age limit although that wouldn't solve the problem of reckless driving by teenagers not mature enough to care about the consequences of it.

You did a great job bridging utilitarian antinatalism with philosophical pessimism/structural antinatalism. Structural antinatalists (like myself) would say that life is always suffering due to the deprivation of desires and wants which are endless. Satisfaction is short-lived, and similar to Heraclitus' idea that all is flux, we are never in a state of complete satisfaction, but always thrown upon the world in the pendulum swing of NOW needing to work to survive, NOW needing to maintain comfort levels (do laundry, clean our house, etc.), NOW needing to entertain our complex brains (we get bored and have to always look for more novelty, more flow states, etc. etc.). Indeed, even the pleasures may not really be so fully good as the flip side is the deprivation that it reveals in the human condition. — schopenhauer1

Suppose there is a being that is incapable of experiencing any kind of negative emotion that normally comes with deprivation and dissatisfaction. The experience of that being ranges from extreme pleasure to mild pleasure. Whenever the being experiences mild pleasure, he is deprived of extreme pleasure. But he doesn't care at all that he is deprived(that is because he can't experience any negative emotion or mental state at all). Despite that, you would still call that deprivation(even though I think that's a disputable definition of deprivation). But I'm not interested in arguing with you about the meaning of the word deprivation, rather I would like to know why you think that the deprivation is bad. It's hard for me to see how the deprivation could be bad if the deprived person doesn't experience any negative emotion from the deprivation or care that he's deprived.

It appears as though you are rejecting P2 of my argument by stating that X Beings are deprived of pleasure even though they don't feel as though they are deprived. I think there are some potentially worse implications that come with the claim that any being is deprived of any good thing it cannot acquire(since X beings cannot acquire pleasure, the lack of acquisitions counts as deprivation on your view.). I would like to point out that there appears to be a hidden premise in Benetar's argument that I never heard mentioned(although Benetar seems to believe in that hidden premise, especially since he thinks absence of knowledge is bad for an existent being but not a potential being that will never exist.). That hidden premise is that the absence of pleasure for existing beings is worse than the absence of pleasure for potential beings that are never born. We could derive this hidden premise as follows:

P1: The absence of pleasure for existing beings is worse than the presence of pleasure for existing beings.

P2: The absence of pleasure for potential beings is not worse than the presence of pleasure in existing beings.

C: Therefore, the absence of pleasure for potential beings is better than the absence of pleasure for existing beings.

This argument could be mathematically expressed as follows:

P1: A < B

P2: C = B

C: Therefore, C > A

There are 2 major counterintuitive implications of that hidden premise:

1. It means that the harm of coming into existence extends far beyond the presence of bad things. The infinite deprivation of good things in life is also an infinite harm relative to non-existence. For example, there is an infinite amount of pleasure that I am deprived of(because I cannot experience an eternal orgasm, for example) and that is bad only because I am a being who is deprived of that pleasure. This seems highly counterintuitive to me.

2. It means that bringing a being into existence that can be deprived of some good things in life but is inflicted with no bad things in life would still be harmful. That is because the deprivation of pleasure is bad compared to the case of nonexistence where there's no one deprived and therefore no one harmed by the absence of pleasure. To me, this is even more counterintuitive than thinking that X beings are not worse off than humans by not being able to experience pleasure. It implies that bringing a child into existence is bad even if that child experiences nothing bad but simply doesn't have as many good things in life as she could have.

I agree with you that the God that you are describing is benevolent. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm certainly not claiming that you're God is evil. My claim was simply that the God you are describing is not "all benevolent". I think you set the bar too low for all benevolence here. That is because, in order for a God to be all benevolent, you should have a hard time imagining a better God
Having said that, let me imagine an omnipotent God that I think is more benevolent than your conception of God:

1. While we are alive on Earth, God's love manifests itself as the most extreme good imaginable. We feel the most extreme pleasure and awe from the presence of God's love. The absence of God's love manifests itself as mild and unimpressive good that disappoints us just a little. Our lives on Earth are a trial run by which we decide if we would like to accept God's love.

2. When we die(a pleasurable death, of course), if we accept God's love, we will subsequently go to Heaven(which is the place made of God's love and it is as great as you described). If we do not accept God's love then we will go to Hell, a place where there is an absence of God's love. But instead of being a place of torture, Hell is kind of boring place with the most mild pleasure imaginable.

3. While God does not provide us with the need for his love, he provides us with a strong want for his love instead. This gives our lives purpose.(if you think that we can't derive genuine purpose from strong wants, then my God could change that fact with his omnipotence. Also note that an omnipotent God could technically make the "fake" love you were describing earlier be the most genuine love imaginable because he decides what is genuine and fake in the first place given his omnipotence.)

In conclusion, while I do think your God is admirable. I'm still having a hard time seeing how your God is better than the God I'm describing.

e difference being that we are not talking about X beings that already exist, but no being at all. It can be regrettable for X beings that they don't feel pleasure, because they exist and they are being deprived of something. However, even this is a moot point in your scenario as it seems like an impossibility they can derive pleasure in the first place, so it is not even regrettable, just an oddity of nature that happens. — schopenhauer1

Fair enough, I suppose we can agree to disagree at this point. To me rejecting P1 of my argument is more counterintuitive than rejecting what I will call Benetar's Regret Worthiness Requirement. I think the absence of pleasure for X Beings is bad even if it is not regretful. Feel free to provide me with a creative objection if you can come up with one though. I would be interested in knowing why I should accept the Regret Worthiness Requirement.

In contrast to this, we think that there is no
duty to bring happy people into existence because while their pleasure would be good for them, its absence would not be bad for them
(given that there would be nobody who would be deprived of it). — schopenhauer1

I can offer 3 alternative explanations for that asymmetry:
1. We have no duty to create happy people because it requires too much of a sacrifice to raise a happy child. It would not be reasonable to expect everyone to raise a happy child.
2. Any positive duty can be easily avoided by choosing to perform a different positive duty instead, thereby justifying the violation of duty. For example, instead of creating a happy person, I could make an already existent miserable person happy. It's not clear why the duty to procreate should be privileged over the near infinite amount of other positive duties we could perform instead.
3. Humans usually experience guilt and shame from harming people more strongly than pride for helping people. Thereby creating a bias towards wanting to avoid harming people while being relatively unmotivated to benefit them. The existence of this psychological bias does not mean that creating benefit cannot justify creating harm.

Whereas it is strange (if not incoherent) to give
as a reason for having a child that the child one has will thereby be
benefited,²⁷ it is not strange to cite a potential child’s interests as
a basis for avoiding bringing a child into existence. — schopenhauer1

I can also offer 2 alternative explanations for that asymmetry:
1. You don't have a duty to create a happy person but you do have a duty not to create an unhappy one.(Note that you don't have to accept Benetar's argument to explain this asymmetry)
2. Humans usually experience guilt and shame from harming people more strongly than pride for helping people. Thereby creating a bias towards wanting to avoid harming people while being relatively unmotivated to benefit them. The existence of this psychological bias does not mean that creating benefit cannot justify creating harm.

However, only
bringing people into existence can be regretted for the sake of
the person whose existence was contingent on our decision. This
is not because those who are not brought into existence are
indeterminate. Instead it is because they never exist. We can
regret, for the sake of an indeterminate but existent person that a
benefit was not bestowed on him or her, but we cannot regret, for
the sake of somebody who never exists and thus cannot thereby be
deprived, a good that this never existent person never experiences. — schopenhauer1

Once again, I can offer at least 2 alternative explanation for that asymmetry:
1. We can't regret for someone if we aren't aware of that person's existence. For example, I can't regret the suffering of a person I have never thought about because there is no conceptual manifestation of that person in my mind.
2. There's simply no person to regret if you don't create any, but our inability to regret a potential child not being brought into existence does not imply that there's nothing to regret. Rather, our psychology is flawed to have a hard time understanding the regret.

Similarly, nobody really mourns for those who
do not exist on Mars, feeling sorry for potential such beings that
they cannot enjoy life.²⁸ Yet, if we knew that there were sentient
life on Mars but that Martians were suffering, we would regret this
for them. — Benatar p 32-35

This asymmetry could be explained with similar explanations as the last one.

1. We can't morn for a hypothetical alien if we aren't aware of that alien's hypothetical existence. For example, I can't morn for the suffering of a Martian I have never thought about because there is no conceptual manifestation of that Martian in my mind.
2. There's simply no alien to morn about if there aren't any that existed, but our inability to morn for a hypothetical alien not existing does not imply that there's nothing to morn about . Rather, our psychology is flawed to have a hard time understanding why the absence of Martians is mornworthy.

For Christianity to work, a person has to believe those who are not Christians are bad people undeserving of heaven. But what if they are good people? How do they explain being a good person but not a saved person, if being good depends on being saved? — Athena

I agree completely. I sometimes feel Christianity provides an opportunity for easy virtue. It could also give you a sense of moral superiority even if all you do is sit on your ass and pray to your imaginary friend.

I recently thought about a new objection to Benetar's conclusion that the absence of pleasure is not worse than the presence of pleasure if there is no one for whom the absence is a deprivation. It goes something like this:

Imagine that scientists discover a new alien species on a distant planet that cannot experience nor appreciate or desire pleasure. We shall refer to these alien beings as "X Beings". X Beings cannot comprehend the concept of pleasure because they never experienced it and do not know what's so great about it. Explaining pleasure to them is like explaining the joys of music to a deaf person. Although they cannot experience pleasure, they can still experience deprivational suffering. For example, they can't derive pleasure from eating but they suffer from hunger if they don't eat. They also cannot derive pleasure from sex but being celibate will make them experience sexual frustration. They have to engage in recreational activities to avoid boredom but they derive no pleasure from them. They also can be alleviated from stress by drinking alcohol but the alcohol isn't pleasurable to them. Given the characteristics of X Beings, my argument goes as follows:

P1: The presence of pleasure in human beings is an advantage over the absence of pleasure in X Beings.

P2: X Beings cannot be said to be deprived of pleasure because they never had a desire or appreciation for it in the first place. In addition, experiencing pleasure provides no instrumental benefit to them by alleviating deprivational or inflictional suffering. Furthermore, the absence of pleasure is necessary for an X Being to maintain its identity as an X Being(that means if a rare mutation makes a supposed X Being experience pleasure, scientists would reclassify the being as some other species rather than an X Being with good scientific justification)

C: Therefore, the presence of pleasure can be an advantage over the absence of pleasure even if there is no one for whom the absence is a deprivation.

If you reject P1, you would have to accept the counterintuitive conclusion that the presence of pleasure in human beings is in no way better than the lack of pleasure and the lack of capacity to understand pleasure in X Beings.

If you reject P2, then you would have to explain how the X Beings are being deprived of pleasure. One possible explanation is to distinguish between "feeling deprived" and "being deprived". The objection goes that although X Beings are not "feeling deprived" they are "being deprived" of pleasure nonetheless. That is because the X Beings exist and all beings that exist can be deprived of something good even if they don't appreciate it or desire it. This would demonstrate that there is a clear difference between Benetar's Scenario B and my Scenario involving X Beings; that difference being the existence of a being in my X Being Scenario but there's no being existing in Benetar's Scenario B. If this is your objection to P2, then you would have to explain why "being deprived" is bad even if there's no one "feeling deprived".

Essentially what I'm trying to say is, yes, God could give us a love potion effectively giving us no choice in the matter, and we'd never be the wiser. And yes, that would ultimately be in our best interest. But I imagine, being that we are made in His image, God wants real love much in the same way that we want real love. — Belouie

You seem to be implying that God creates a possibility for suffering to satisfy his own interest in having genuine rather than fake love from people. That is not something a all-benevolent God would do, in my opinion(although it could be justified if the benefit for God outweighs the harm to people done).

I can name an absence of many things which would result in our imminent suffering. Let's start with the basics, how long could you go without food or water before you begin to suffer? How long could you go without sleep before beginning to suffer? How long could you go without human interaction before you end up suffering from insanity? — Belouie

The reason I suffer from hunger is not the absence of food but rather the biological need I have for food. If I didn't need to eat then the absence of food wouldn't cause any suffering. If God had created a need for his love, in order to have us not suffer, would he not be forcing us to love him on some level? If I caused you suffering for refusing to love me, you would certainly call that cheating and you would only be able to give me fake love. My point is that God had a malicious role to play in creating a need for us to love him in order to avoid suffering.

Ok, so the contention is over the use of absolute/relative or intrinsic/relative. The point that I think we both agree he is saying is that preventing pleasure only matters for those who already exit to be deprived; it is neutral to prevent pleasure for something that cannot be deprived (yet). Conversely in his argument, preventing pain is always good, even if there was no one there to witness this. Unlike preventing pleasure which is neutral in respects to no one existing, preventing pain is good, even if there is no one existing to know pain was prevented. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I think we were probably just bogged down on semantics. I disagreed with Benetar on this point because I don't think that the absence of pleasure without deprivation is "not worse" than the presence of pleasure is, in existence. That is because I think that it is good to create sentient life that experiences nothing bad but something good. Benetar, on the other hand, thinks it is neutral to create such lives. I find this highly counterintuitive since feeling pleasurable sensation seems to be a better state than experiencing no sensation is, even if there's no one to miss out on the pleasure. It's not clear to me why the lack of deprivation necessarily changes the outcome and it's also not clear if there isn't anyone deprived by not being born. The assumption being made is that someone has to have a physical identity in order to be deprived. But, we can think about a non-specific and hypothetical identity being deprived. Although, I'm honestly not sure if we should think about these identies or how we can think about these identities. But, I'm not willing to grant the assumption that if someone lacks a physical identity, they cannot be said to be "worse off". Having said that, I don't think we would have an obligation to create utopian beings and I think there's enough bad things in existence that it's reasonable to think that being born is undesirable and that one ought not to have children. I, myself, have no interest in having children and I think it would probably be better if I hadn't been born myself. But, Benetar's argument just doesn't sit well with my reasoning.

I found the following quote on page 41 of his book:

There I said that the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. The implication here is that where an absent pleasure is a deprivation it is bad. Now, obviously, when I say that it is bad, I do not mean that it is bad in the same way that the presence of pain is bad. What is meant is that the absent pleasure is relatively (rather than intrinsically) bad. In other words, it is worse than the presence of pleasure. But that is because X exists in Scenario A. It would have been better had X had the pleasure of which he is deprived. Instead of a pleasurable mental state, X has a neutral state. Absent pleasures in Scenario B, by contrast, are not neutral states of some person. They are no states of a person at all. Although the pleasures in A are better than the absent pleasures in A, the pleasures in A are not better than the absent pleasures in B.
The point may be made another way. Just as I am not talking about intrinsic badness when I say that absent pleasures that deprive are bad, so I am not speaking about intrinsic ‘not bad- ness’—neutrality—when I speak about absent pleasures that do not deprive. Just as absent pleasures that do deprive are ‘bad’ in the sense of ‘worse’, so absent pleasures that do not deprive are ‘not bad’ in the sense of ‘not worse’. They are not worse than the presence of pleasures. It follows that the presence of pleasures is not better, and therefore that the presence of pleasures is not an advantage over absent pleasures that do not deprive.

But, I couldn't find any textual evidence that he thinks the absence of pain is only relatively rather than intrinsically good. I assume that he judges both the absence of pain and the absence of pleasure both as only relatively good and not bad respectively. Otherwise, he would be judging this argument by 2 different standards and I don't recall him claiming that the absence of pain is intrinsically good. I honestly wish Benetar would make his arguments a little more clear thou lol.

Here's a link to the ebook:

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/5giu51/david_benatar_better_never_to_have_been_the_full/

Chapter 2 is the one where he talks about the main asymmetry argument. I'll try to see if I can find some quotes where he states that absence of pain is relatively good rather than intrinsically good

he weight is on the negative. What is good is that painful experiences did not occur for an individual. Pleasurable experiences not occurring does not hurt anyone, nor would anyone know they are missing out. There is an epistemological element to the pleasurable experiences but not for the painful ones. In other words, it is absolutely good that painful experiences were avoided. This is a strong metaphysical stance- a universe with the least pain is better off. A universe with no pleasurable experiences, is not bad, especially if the people that would have had pleasurable experiences do not know they are deprived of anything. Further, a universe with the least pain is certainly better in a universe where the people who were to experience pleasure otherwise if they were born, did not know they were deprived of any good — schopenhauer1

I want to point out first that your position seems different to that of David Benetar. Benetar has stated explicitly that his main axiological asymmetry is "axiological" rather than metaphysical(read his book or listen to his discussion with Sam Harris for more details). He also states in his book that the absence of pain is not literarily or absolutely good in his asymmetry. We are not deriving utility in our universe from all the beings that were never born, that is to say. Also, I don't understand how you stances could be a strong "metaphysical" stance since metaphysics refers to the study of what there is out there. Any metaphysical claim should begin with something like "There is".

Examples of metaphysical propositions:

1. X is the same person as Y.

2. "There is"(or isn't) an afterlife

3. "There is"(or isn't) free will

Your position is more of an axiological one since it deals with the question of what is good or bad, better or worse, valuable or disvaluable. If you believe that the absence of pain is absolutely good, then you would have to conclude that the absence of pain has intrinsic value. But, how can the absence of pain have intrinsic value if there isn't an extent to which it is valuable. In other words, in order for something to be "intrinsically"(note that the word intrinsic had root "in" as in "inside of something") valuable, it has to be valuable for someone. Since, the absence of pain is valuable for no one, in the case of nonexistence, then it cannot be "intrinsically" or "absolutely" valuable. It could only be "relatively" valuable, that is to say that the absence of pain in nonexistence is better than the presence of pain in existence. I argued that the same applies for pleasure thereby claiming that there is a symmetry rather than an asymmetry in Benetar's argument. That is because I think that a universe full of sentient beings that only experiences benefit is better than a universe without sentient beings.

Kidnap: high chance of pleasure(good), low chance of pain (bad)
Don’t kidnap: no chance of pain(good), no chance of pleasure(not bad)

So it’s clearly the case that the more moral option is not to kidnap, especially as the kid wouldn’t complain about not being kidnapped — khaled

You're pointing to David Benetar's axiological asymmetry argument here from his book "Better to Have Never Been". In which he states:
1. The presence of bad things is bad
2. The presence of good things is good
3. The absence of bad things is good, even if there's no one to enjoy the absence
4. The absence of good things is not bad unless there's someone whom this absence is a deprivation.

There are a few things that need to be clarified about his argument:
1. By "bad things" and "good things" he's referring to things that could be considered intrinsically good or bad. If you are a hedonist the good=pleasure and the bad=pain. If you prefer the preference satisfaction account(no pun intended lol) then good=satisfied preferences and bad=frustrated preferences. If you think there's something else that's good or bad intrinsically then you just add it to the list.
2. When he says that the absence of bad things is good, he means that it is relatively good rather than intrinsically good. So basically, the absence of bad things is better than the presence of bad things even if there's no one who enjoys the absence. Similarly, when he says that the absence of good things is not bad, he means that it is "not worse" than the presence of good things if there is no one to be deprived of those good things. This is where I would disagree with Benetar.

The reason why I disagree with his claim that the absence of good things in nonexistence is not worse than the presence of good things in existence is because it contradicts our intuition that pleasure has intrinsic value rather than just relative value. I use pleasure as an exemplar here because it is something that we have the greatest reason to think is intrinsically valuable. I'm aware that many negative utilitarians might argue that pleasure is only neutral intrinsically and it's only relatively good(compared to experiencing pain or neutral emotion). But, I would like to bring up a thought experiment I considered:

Imagine that a mad scientist managed to create an artificial sentient being that only has the capacity to experience mild pleasure. It cannot experience pain or negative emotion of any kind. It also has no intelligence, personality, perception, or memory. It's just a brain in a vat that only experiences a constant stream of vague and meaningless pleasure which it has no capacity to desire. While Benetar thinks we should be indifferent about bringing such a being into existence, I happen to think that it would be good to bring as many of these artificial beings into existence as possible(Assuming there's no chance they could evolve into a different being that might experience pain). Having said that, I don't think the mad scientist has an obligation to create more of these beings. Which brings me to the next part of Benetar's argument.
Benetar claims that his asymmetry argument offers the best explanation to the following additional asymmetry:
1. You have an obligation not to create an unhappy person.
2. You don't have an obligation to create a happy person.

Benetar's asymmetry would supposedly explain this asymmetry because if the presence of bad is bad and the absence of good is not bad in nonexistence then creating an unhappy person would be bad and neglecting to create a happy person would be not bad. But, I think there are 2 additional explanations that could be given for this asymmetry:
1. It's unreasonable to give people a duty to perform a specific positive obligation, in most cases. That is because there are nearly an infinite amount of benefits that a person could provide instead of reproducing a happy person. If someone refuses to reproduce, he might be called selfish unless he decides to donate his money to charity or adopt a child or help grannies cross the stress and so on. Because, the notion of duty is typically a simple rule based one(it would be too hard to add up all your good actions and subtract out all the bad actions.), it would hard to have, as a rule, an obligation to provide a specific benefit rather than some benefit in general. On the other hand, we could often easily make a moral rule that forbids a certain act.
2. Requiring someone to reproduce would require too much of a sacrifice. While, Benetar does mention this explanation in his book. His response is that it is counterintuitive to him to imagine that we would have an obligation to create a happy person if there wasn't any sacrifice that was required for that. But, it's hard to imagine how there could be no sacrifice since simply feeling icky about reproduction could be viewed as a sacrifice.

I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you:

1. If there is an all powerful and all loving God, then why would God not eliminate all the bad stuff(which you refer to as the absence of his love) since he has the power to do that(given that he is all powerful)? Couldn't and shouldn't God just make his love omnipresent? I suppose your response might be to argue that God gave us free will and that allows us to choose to reject his love. But since there are plenty of things that humans have no psychological capacity to think or desire(For example, I can't think of a single human being that has had a desire to go smell his toaster after work or count to 100 while flickering his light switch), I doubt that the possiblity to have a lack of desire for God's love would be requirement for free will. Even if it is a logical requirement for free will, because God is all powerful he can change logic so that he could give people free will while simultaneously making his love omnipresent.

2. If the bad stuff that happens in our lives is the result of the absence of God's love then how come it feels like something?(namely pain and suffering). What would be the source of the negative mental states that we experience? It's hard to imagine how an absence of something could produce something with a presence like that of suffering. Shouldn't the absence of God's love manifest itself as nothing, while the presence of God's love manifest itself as something good?

But he doesn't have any knowledge about death, nobody does. All we have is a circus of competing speculations. — Jake

I was using the word "knowledge" in that in my last comment as a synonym for "evidence". I'm sorry for not being 100% clear about that in my first comment. The difference between knowledge and evidence is that knowledge implies a certainty by which something is true while evidence implies a reasonable belief that something is true. My argument is that you don't need knowledge but rather just evidence to analyze and compare 2 possible value-relevant(by value-relevant, I mean that it falls on a spectrum of good and bad) configurations . In your earlier comment, you pointed out the problems of having empirical evidence being called factual knowledge by pointing out that we believed with what was considered good empirical evidence that the Earth was the center of the universe. Later we attained new empirical evidence that it is not the center of universe. You then used that example to make an analogy between my belief that there is no afterlife and the belief held by people in the past that the Earth was the Center of the Universe. Since, the suicidal person cannot have factual knowledge that there is no afterlife, he therefore cannot not make a reasonable decision is your next argument.
But, I want to point out the implications of the position that you hold. Under your view, no person could make a reasonable decision of any kind because there is no hard factual knowledge of any kind since every scientific/empirical theory or fact that we have could be falsified if we find what is called a "black swan". A black swan constitutes any empirical evidence that contradicts an existing scientific fact or theory. For example, we might believe that Earth is the 3rd planet from the Sun, but if scientists discover a new planet between Venus and Mercury, that scientific fact would no longer be true. Any scientific/empirical discovery we have made could be false and many of them will be false. But, if one cannot make a reasonable decision without knowledge(AKA something certain to be true), then one cannot make any decision in life reasonably. Some philosophers are willing to accept that conclusion. I, on the other hand, believe that there's a spectrum of reasonableness that could be discerned based on relevant evidence(AKA empirical observations and reasonable hypotheses on the basis of these observations) surrounding a particular decision-making case that allows us to conclude that some people have acted better than others in the decision-making case. For example, if a suicidal person decides not to commit suicide because he has no effective way of doing so, he would be making a wise decision. That is because we have good reason to think that the suicide attempt will fail and that he will suffer more because of that, even though we have no knowledge that his suicide attempt would fail or that he would suffer more.

I understand that some Christians do believe that the majority of people go to Hell. Though, many Christians find hope in Christianity and feel that it's all about love, sunshine, and rainbows. I'm really just trying whatever persuasive tactic I can to alleviate the concerns of my Christian friends because I'm really sick and tired of having to have a constant conversation with them about my atheism. The problem with some religious people is that they feel like they know that they are correct about their specific religious beliefs and so they will try to persuade you to death about "turning over your life to Jesus Christ". It's just one of the disadvantages of living in the Bible Belt as an atheist lol.

I agree that we can't know for sure if any fact is true. There's the black swan problem, of course. But unless we want to be skeptical about every decision we make in our lives, we have to take educated guesses. For example, I might ask, how can we compare your life if you decide to get a PH.D. in philosophy vs if you decide to become a nurse instead. If we have to have epistemological certainty about the outcomes of both decisions in order to be able to decide on the merits of each, then we can't make any decision in our lives. We might as well sit in a corner and rock in the fetal position obsessing about how we can't know anything lol. In the case of the suicidal person, the person has a decision to make and he has to rely on whatever knowledge he has to guess if it will be a good decision or not. Either way you're taking a risk though. If you commit suicide, you risk being put into a worse state. If you don't commit suicide, then you risk experiencing more suffering in life.

I used to think in the past that there could not be any comparison made between life and whatever comes after death also. But, now I think that while it's hard to imagine nonexistence, it could be understood in some capacity. Of course, before assuming that nonexistence comes after life, we have to ask ourselves how we know that this is the case. I think we have pretty good reason to think that our personality, memories, and sensory experiences are all localized somewhere in the brain. A person could lose his memories by a blow to the head, for example. Some people experiences massive personality changes after experiencing brain damage. What's also interesting is that we can lose our memories and alter our personality by taking certain types of chemical substances like LSD, alcohol, cocaine and so on. I think this gives us good reason to think that the source of our consciousness lies in our neurochemistry. A person could also lose his senses through blindness, deafness, paralysis, or smoking too much(in the case of taste senses lol). We don't deny that sensory experiences could be removed through physical means. So, why not think that all of our experiences would be removed if we died? If any individual aspect of our experience could be removed by physical injury or substance consumption, I think it's safe to say that all of our experience of anything would be gone if we died.
But, how can we know what nonexistence feels like, you might ask. Now, it's hard to imagine what feeling nonexistence would be like since it's almost like an infinite amount of time passing by infinitely fast. But, if you have ever been under general anesthesia you probably know what nonexistence is like at least temporarily. I know technically you couldn't know what general anesthesia feels like because it feels like nothing. But, I think it's imaginable what it's like to feel nothing. You have never been distressed before you were born, for example. You also don't recall feeling any joy prior to existing. These facts could be used to make a pretty relevant comparison between existence and nonexistence, in my opinion.

There's something around the corner that's really cool. If you wait for it, you'll be glad you did. — frank

But, what is that something? I don't think that argument is very convincing if you don't specify what that something is.