If you are alive and you know the event leads to X, then there is no reductio — schopenhauer1

Lmao. If you don't pursue the conclusion to its extremes then indeed, by definition, you don't have a reductio ad absurdum. Your reply to my reductio is "let's imagine it isn't".

educate yourself : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Yes, let's not engage the argument. See, that's the difference I ridicule your position but I still engage the argument ad nauseum. I get to pepper that with snarky comments precisely because your position is idiotic.

Yet as long as there are people around who know the consequence of the harm, this objection doesn't matter. — schopenhauer1

It's called a reductio ad absurdum, which demonstrates the idiocy of the position. But I see logic and language are lost arts to you.

So what. If even only half the time, or part of the time it was suffering, if you want to prevent any condition where suffering will occur for another person, and add to that the empirical part of knowing that there are known forms of inescapable suffering and unknown (to the parent) forms of suffering for what the child will suffer, that cannot be mitigated easily, then yes antinatalism would be the best claim. — schopenhauer1

As usual, I think you're not using language correctly.

If there wouldn't be any cars, it would be weird to talk about how the absence of those cars prevented car accidents. No such thing could exist because the existence of a car precedes the possibility of car accidents.

Or how happy we should be that the zombie virus of the Walking Dead doesn't exist so that zombies are prevented.

That simply isn't prevention.

There isn't one precise mechanism, but e.g. a loose money policy leads to more money going into speculative investments like futures, which affect global pricing / supply and demand. So if feed prices go up due to futures, the cost of producing milk goes up globally, affecting milk prices in the Netherlands. — Echarmion

OK, good, we've established you don't know what you're talking about. I can stop investing time in this.

Not directly, but the effects will travel through the interconnected real economy to the EU regardless. — Echarmion

Ok, explain the mechanism to me how monetary policy in the US affects the price of buying milk in the Netherlands. If you can say this with such conviction you certainly have this figured out.

Bitcoin is more sophisticated than trading postage stamps, but it's not in principle different as far as I can tell. — Echarmion

You can't divide post stamps to reflect the exact value you need to pay for something else. They're physical too. There's not enough of them to go around, they can be easily counterfeited. Etc.

It's affected because exchanging from one crypto to another asset class requires the currency managed by the relevant central bank. Monetary policy of the US doesn't directly affect the purchasing power of EUR in Europe though. So having a currency that would be unaffected by central bank policies would be of value to many.

Do you like the monetary policies currently enacted? If the answer is no, then that would be a good reason I think.

I know a lot of definitions...

I guess the question is: what are they important for, exactly. Sure the technology is interesting, and it's certainly useful if you want untraceable transactions. That's not purely a positive though. — Echarmion

Blockchain has its uses and there's certainly a few interesting applications out there. The intrinsic value of cryptocurrencies at this time seems low. Black market transactions, people who are principled against centralised government power, a store for value.

The idea that decentralised verification of the transaction resolves the necessity of trust in middlemen is replaced by people wanting ease of use like a regular exchange or bank. So we end up with custodians and exchanges that we again need to trust and the unauditable transaction trail of most cryptos makes it impossible to recover losses when something happens. For now, cryptos aren't going to fulfil the role of an alternative currency as envisaged but are just another asset class.

At least 97% of the funding for the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine has been identified as coming from taxpayers or charitable trusts, according to the first attempt to reconstruct who paid for the decades of research that led to the lifesaving formulation. — The Guardian

Oh good, I guess we can then tax any profit with 97% as well then since we paid for it? Wtf...

sweet.

Yes, 10%. I'm getting 12% actually, because I changed it in a term deposit of 3 months using fiat currency. It's not a lot of money so even if I lose it all it's fine.

Edit: I'll look into metamask. I actually wanted to train programming smart contracts in solidity using etherium but I have different priorities at my current job unfortunately.

Nexo.

The potential upside from the trade I'm doing is in the 4 digit apr with relatively low downside, compared to a carry trade. Plus I refuse to trade bitcoin due to the carbon footprint. :wink:

Well, I got into the crypto game as well but I'm funding loans and accepting cryptos as collateral for an 8% yearly return regardless of which way cryptos move. I don't want the market risk that is currently inherent in trading cryptos.

Interest is paid in crypto and thanks to positive market direction of the crypto I'm accepting, my RoI is 2.5% after a week. Biggest possible loss in my setup is 10% (if the crypto becomes valueless).

You are not addressing the argument that if Y always follows from X, then if you don't want Y, X. — schopenhauer1

Because this isn't true and I don't like to repeat myself. Restarting the same isn't a new argument. There's plenty of life happening right now where not only suffering is absent but entirely blissful. So Y does not always follow X, if it did, or would be a sufficient cause, which it isn't.

I'm not forcing anyone. Nobody exists when I make the decision.
Edit: this is in any case a tangent to my point that I still haven't caused suffering so there's still no moral obligation.

Of course you're not convinced, you've believed this nonsense for years.

If life doesn't cause suffering, then my decision to create life doesn't cause suffering, then there's no moral obligation against creating life because I don't cause any suffering.

Your complaint about the state of affairs is the same as complaining because I dealt the cards with poker, my dealing of the cards caused you to lose. We both know this isn't the case, while still acknowledging it's only possible to lose because I dealt the cards.

As I've repeatedly stated, you don't understand causality. That's really the only problem here.

Are you trying to make a case that, there is a possible world where Y is not accompanied by X? If so, is that really our world? Hence my emphasis on empirical evidence rather than simply possibilities. — schopenhauer1

Don't raise another straw man. That all life at some time experiences suffering is not the subject of debate and totally irrelevant. All games involve losing but the game doesn't cause you to lose.

Um, so how is that not an empirical question? — schopenhauer1

Because it's sufficient to establish that it isn't life and after that I don't care, because suffering is particular. And if life doesn't cause it, there's no moral case to be made against having babies.

Here's another analogy for you. Pollution is bad and terrible for nature but if there was no nature, no pollution, so let's get rid of nature.

My argument isn't addressing an empirical question. That's you just raising a straw man. The argument is about properly identifying what causes suffering and it isn't life.

Point 1. Irrelevant, doesn't change what causes suffering and what doesn't.
Point 2. Irrelevant, doesn't change what causes suffering and what doesn't. Also, at no point have I said all suffering could be prevented or ameliorated.
Point 3. Irrelevant, doesn't change what causes suffering and what doesn't.

So, no, at no point has any of your points addressed the fact that life is merely a necessary cause for suffering, not a sufficient cause and certainly not a proximate cause.

I continually demonstrate life doesn't cause suffering, so your rebuttals are irrelevant unless they specifically deal with issue of causality and prove that life causes suffering. If it doesn't cause suffering, then ending life to end suffering is an idiot move.

Here's another analogy for you. A painting has paint, therefore the painting causes paint.

Your rebuttals don't come into play until it is accepted life causes suffering so I don't need to address them because they're irrelevant.

I'm an antinatalist and I solve problems as follows.

I don't like getting wet, water causes me to be wet, so we should get rid of water.

I don't like car accidents, cars cause these accidents, so we should get rid of cars.

I don't like getting sun burnt, the sun causes sun burns, therefore we should get rid of the sun.

Idiots.

All cases of suffering stem from the big bang. To be consistent, you should be aiming higher and wipe out existence instead of just humans. It also makes the causes of climate change moral because it brings this state closer than trying to improve it. You're aiming too low because you're being entirely arbitrary about which necessary cause to intervene at.

My point is, nobody in their right mind and with a proper understanding of causality would agree "life causes suffering". When we say something causes something else, we're talking about sufficient and proximate causes. By abusing language and not familiarising you with how the words are actually used, you reach idiocy. But this had never penetrated your thick skull because you're not interested in challenging your own preconceived notions.

Schopenhauer1
I share your bleak diagnosis of Darwinian life:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#antinatal
But David Benatar and other “hard” antinatalists simply don’t get to grips with the argument from selection pressure. Antinatalists can’t hope to win:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/gods-little-rabbits-religious-people-out-reproduce-secular-ones-by-a-landslide/
See too my response to Down The Rabbit Hole above. — David Pearce

Not to derail the thread into an anti-natalist debate but I find that Benatar is just plain wrong because if suffering is intrinsic to life then life doesn't cause suffering, just like water doesn't cause itself to be wet. If suffering isn't intrinsic to life, then for ending all life to be the proper solution, life would have to be a sufficient cause for suffering. Yet I currently don't suffer, so life is merely a necessary cause for suffering and not sufficient. Since it's never a proximate cause, the statement "life causes suffering" means as little as "the big bang did it". Antinatalists are simply wrong because they don't understand causality and use words like "suffering" and "cause" in a way that's not commensurate with how they are understood in law, philosophy or ethics.

Also plugging my previous question about superintelligence: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/519298

Do you think super-intelligence will be achieved and enjoyed incrementally, or will this happen in a single exceptional leap? Is the present brain capable of being uplifted to super-intelligence, or will it be necessary to design a better biological brain-build before uplift can occur? A bigger, better frontal cortex; a less volatile limbic system, more memory, better sensory processing? Brains much smaller than ours manage remarkably complex behavior (but just skip over philosophy). Can our brains be made a more efficient structure, before we add a practice effect? — Bitter Crank

This ties in with what Bitter Crank is asking and @Noble Dust points out with his "human condition".

Apologies if this is a dumb question that can be easily researched but, @David Pearce, what is considered "superintelligence" within transhumanism? Some theories pose several types of intelligence and quite a few don't necessarily fit in the scientific positivist vibe of transhumanism. A list to illustrate:

Aesthetic intelligence
Collective intelligence (a result of social processes and communciation)
creativity
crystallized intelligence (abilities based on knowledge and experience)
existential intelligence (philosophical reasoning, abstraction)
fluid intelligence
intentionality
interpersonal intelligence
intrapersonal intelligence (together often "emotional intelligence")
kinesthetic intelligence
linguistic intelligence
musical intelligence
organizational intelligence
self awanreness
situational intelligence
spatial intelligence
logical-mathematical intelligence

For instance, how would being hypersensitive and aware of your own and other people's feelings affect our logical-mathematical intelligence at any given time? Even resolving whatever "bandwidth" issues we currently have, causing us to only focus on one thing at a time, what does it mean to simulatenously follow a law that requires a punishment and our compassion wanting to forgive the criminal?

In other words, given the various types of intelligence and there not being a clear hierarchy, what do you think it would in practice mean to be superintelligent?

How so? Run me the numbers. I don't believe you. Are you saying we should just mail a percentage of our GDP to the poor people? Lay out your scenario, not just a slogan. — fishfry

Sigh. Of course, you don't believe me because you already bought into the capitalism is good nonsense.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143036580/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=visofear03-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399381&creativeASIN=0143036580

175 billion USD.

And how exactly are you planning to feed, clothe, and shelter the seven billion? Be specific. Or are you one of these globalists who dreams of massive population reduction? Kill a few billion poor and the world's problems go away. That's the actual dream of many radical environmentalists. Is that where you're coming from? — fishfry

Be specific? Like how you say "capitalism alleviated poverty" without proof? You think spending 175 billion USD on poverty alleviations is going to bring the whole system down to the point where we'll have trouble feeding, clothing ahd sheltering people and then have the audacity to imply I'm in favour of murdering a cool billion. Not only does it demonstrate your complete lack of knowledge about the problem of poverty but also is just another asshole comment.

You liked it better when women stayed home and used scrub boards? You are not making rational sense. — fishfry

Read again. I pointed to the washing machine as one of the most important inventions that created wealth for ordinary people. My point is that specific inventions and specific policies alleviated poverty, where capitalism is only a system that transfers wealth from one place to another or from future times to now, without ethical considerations. As a result it can never be a cause of alleviating poverty, merely a possible instrument but most of the time it is put to use entirely differently by merely causing shifts in wealth thereby empoverishing the many for the benefit of the few.

I ask again: How are you going to feed, clothe, and shelter the seven billion? What system would you like to rule the world with. The trouble with "people like you" is that in the name of compassion you produce misery but feel good about yourselves.

And "people like you" are unable to hold an intellectual conversation without personalizing it You can have the last word. I'm out. Get some fucking manners and learn to argue with your mind and not your tantrums. I don't like personalized insult-fests and apparently that's all you've got. — fishfry

It's tiresome to argue with assholes who don't even take the effort to read what I actually wrote and just go off on a rant based on the bullshit he's drunk his entire life. You haven't at any point engaged with my initial comment that poverty was alleviated by other things than a capitalist system, when I explicitly named several causes and you just went "Stalin! Mao!". So yeah, fuck you. You're so intellectually incurious I have no clue what you're doing on this site.

You can start with your first baby steps here to educate yourself about "capitalism": https://dimosioshoros.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/23_things.pdf

So whose system do you prefer? Stalin's, or Mao's? Or is Castro's impoverishment of Cuba more to your liking? I'll give Castro one thing, he murdered orders of magnitude fewer people than Stalin or Mao. — fishfry

You're such a child at times. Red herring and all that.

It's extremely profitable to increase the economic well being of your potential customers. So you're factually wrong on this point. Postwar capitalism, Levittown, See the USA in your Chevrolet, all of that. Customers with money to buy stuff from corporations. Name a single country whose economic system works better. The problem with socialism is the truly awful economic and human rights record of every country that ever tried it. — fishfry

Alleviating world poverty would cost about 1% of GDP of Western countries. If it was profitable, it would've been done by now. It isn't profitable because the system of capitalism requires the exploitation of natural resources (hello climate crisis) and people. All capitalism provide a mechanism to move wealth from one place to another or from future times to present times, without any consideration for ethics.

Whatever positive developments arose while capitalism spread was a consequence of social policy (eg. wealth redistribution, healthcare, worker protections, minimum wages ,etc.) and industrial and technical developments specifically leading to increased personal wealth. The washing machine created time for women to be productive in other areas, the combustion and steam engine allowed you to travel larger distances to get better jobs etc. etc. Capitalism has zero to do with poverty reduction.

The problem with people like you is that they don't stand in the way of "more capitalism" at the expense of people and the environment because you actually believe capitalism solves social problems without realising it causes most of them.

Why should I remind you of the context when it's readily available above? If you would've read what I wrote instead of imagining what you think I said, we could have an actual conversation. So the argument you constructed in your head is clearly making several leaps of logic that cannot be derived from what I said.

I do take issue with the fairy tale that capitalism lifted people out of poverty. It's just propaganda, which tot apparently believe. I would argue that despite capitalism several social and industrial developments, and indeed policy decisions, caused a reduction in poverty. Simply put, it's not profitable to reduce poverty so capitalism doesn't cause it.

Walk me through the argument you constructed in your head where I point to other possible causes, without ever mentioning communism or socialism, as an argument for communism or socialism?

Or did the washing machine, steam engines, automation and the combustion engine, or indeed worker unions, cause this and these things merely coincided with capitalist production?

There's also a contradiction in your reply in that what you consider worthwhile appears to be the reduction of poverty but this is merely ancillary to a profit motive, even if it were the underlying cause, because the profit motive doesn't aim at reducing poverty whatsoever. The higher ideal then already seems to be reducing poverty, as opposed to a profit motive.

Considering Marx' work and his criticism of the consequences of the capitalist mode of production, I think your view of early 20th century capitalism is romanticised. The "late-stage" capitalism of today is as exploitive as it was back then.

Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant? — Bitter Crank

One can only hope. I mean that in the sense that if robots produce everything, and since they don't have needs, we can finally create the communist utopia where each receives in accordance with their needs. And we'll have all the time in the world to pursue our personal interests, which may include working, like pursuing arts and crafts, teaching others, studying, making music, dancing, hobbies, relationships...

Ah, I can smell true freedom on the air. If only we'll manage to distribute the wealth robots create properly among everyone.

This isn't about Marx missing anything (which quite frankly is a bullshit claim, since Marx was describing an existing economic system unlike fairytale antinatalism) but about the OP's framing of his questions. They're exploring two questions in relation to Marx' theories and those are:

Does this scheme invalidate Marx's theory of labor value?

Will automation render workers superfluous or irrelevant?

Nothing about antinatalism is even remotely relevant to these questions. So if you don't have anything to add, just read.

Sign off the times you think the profit motive is any kind of ideal, and a higher one at that.

Uhmmm... Is there a meaningful difference between whining and whinging?

Ah, those two articles basing themselves on a single opinion piece from the Netherlands. Fantastic. You're such a cunt, you know that? You have no clue about what was being said on social media as I've repeatedly said, but you refuse to look into and are too fucking arrogant to accept you simply don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Here's another opinion piece: https://www.parool.nl/columns-opinie/telkens-wordt-steekhoudende-kritiek-van-mensen-van-kleur-weggezet-als-identiteitspolitiek~b537371c7/

Gorman positioneert zich nadrukkelijk als iemand met een natuurlijk bewustzijn van haar plek in de voortdurende strijd van zwart Amerika. Een bewustzijn, geworteld in persoonlijke historie, ervaringsdeskundigheid en kennis, dat zij onmiskenbaar deelt met zwarte dichters overzee. Zaïre Krieger bijvoorbeeld, of Babs Gons, net als Gorman spokenwordartiesten, voor wie de geschreven tekst zich voegt naar het ritme en de cadans van het gesproken woord. Relevant, evenals hun tweetaligheid, aangezien Rijneveld zichzelf (oergeestig) ‘de Louis van Gaal van de letteren’ noemt qua beheersing van het Engels. Het is dus flauw de critici huidskleurobsessie te verwijten, terwijl zij overduidelijk doelen op zeer specifieke ervaring en vakkennis van zwarte dichters in relatie tot Gormans werk.

Dat besefte Meulenhoff zelf ook, want de uitgever wilde ‘sensitivityreaders’ inzetten. Een lachwekkende term, waarmee feitelijk werd erkend dat er (vermoedelijk zwarte) meelezers nodig zouden zijn die een grotere affiniteit hebben met de materie, om tot de beste vertaling te komen. Die mochten dan achterin de bus meekijken: gênant, maar ook peak ‘progressief’ Nederland. — Johan Fretz

Then any white person in America that knows Dutch should be able to translate it. — Harry Hindu

I never said that and again you're trying to make it about colour. I've made it very clear that experience with the subject matter is important. Learn to read. I'm done. Bye.