Ok let's take this slowly then. Why exactly is genetically modifying a baby to have 8 broken limbs on birth bad? And don't say "because it's unusual" I am asking why unusual is bad — khaled
I am trying to argue that it is bad according to the subjective values you set here a — khaled
You understand that I was simply reporting my personal ethical dispositions to you re the "unusual" bit, right? No fact can ground any ethical stance. So if you're looking for a fact to ground an ethical stance, you'll never find one. — Terrapin Station
And don't say "because it's unusual" I am asking why unusual is bad — khaled
Any moral stance is going to ultimately come down to "because that's the way I feel about it." This is true for everyone, for every moral stance. — Terrapin Station
For me "unusual" isn't bad but "harmful" is. — khaled
There is nothing I can do to convince you — khaled
You have shown that for some bizzare reason you think that whatever the social norms dictate is what is ethically correct concerning non consenting entities even when they will grow to be ones. — khaled
but it wouldn't be easy to change them and it would require pretty clever theorizing that's different than stuff I've heard over and over for decades, or it would take some novel insight on my own part. — Terrapin Station
There is no way to convince someone who believes social norms are the basis for what makes actions against non consenting entities (that will become consenting) of antinatalism. — khaled
My question was basically this: Why do you think it is permissable to cause someone so much suffering that they literally kill themselves? The fact that they can kill themselves to remove that suffering doesn't justify causing it does it? — khaled
For example: most people would say that modifications that risk harm are bad not that modifications that are "unusual" as you have defined them are bad. — khaled
However they will suffer and it will be experiened by them as harm. And this would be, if antinatalists were successful, an effect of your polemic, and one which might be, since you are fallible humans, based on values that are not prioritized correctly or the wrong ones, or based on some incorrect reasonsing, or based on false metaphysics.
But you take that risk because you are pretty dman sure you are right.
Which is what everyone does regarding their values.
You however seem to think you are taking no risks of causing harm on those who did not ask for it.
I think that is very confused. It would have to mean you assume you cannot possibly be mistaken and so risks are being taken. I don't know where this idea of your infallibility comes from. But we've covered this ground. — Coben
I'm going to address some arguments for antinatalism that were mentioned in the beginning of this thread. — leo
This argument assumes that avoiding harm is more important than having positive experiences, which many don't agree with. Also it doesn't take into account the fact that would-be parents are often deprived and harmed from not having a child. — leo
Many people don't see their life as being in "a constantly deprived state", they would rather describe it as full of experiences and feelings, so I don't agree that life is being in a constantly deprived state. — leo
Whether a particular experience is seen as a "challenge to overcome" or a "burden to deal with" is subjective. When you enjoy what you do, you don't see it as a challenge or a burden, it's when you don't enjoy what you do that you see it that way.
So again, you're focusing on the negative part (the unenjoyed experiences), and not the positive part (the enjoyed experiences). Whether you confer more weight to the negative part is a subjective view, not an objective one.
I could equally make the opposite argument and say that life presents wonders and joy. When putting a new person into the world, you are creating a situation where they will experience wonders and joy, ... — leo
Again, you don't know how much wonder and joy there will be in life for a certain person. I think we can agree that a given person can see their life as a net positive or as a net negative. You're not saying why it is more important to avoid a potential net negative than it is to create a potential net positive. Especially if the parents believe that they can give a happy life to their child.
This is not to say that people should have as many babies as possible, if the would-be parents feel like they couldn't take care of one or couldn't make him/her happy then better not to have one. — leo
Yes this is a problem, but it's separate from antinatalism. We are educated to become efficient cogs in a great industrial machine that progressively destroys nature and other species and cultures, and that's a huge problem, and a source of great suffering. Does that mean that to solve this problem the whole of humanity has to be thrown away and go extinct? No, some individuals are much more responsible for this state of affairs than others. That's what I see as the important fight, changing course, elevate consciousnesses, make people see this state of affairs and rise against it, against those who are responsible for it, for a great part of the suffering that antinatalists and people around the world experience, that's the important fight, not convincing people that life is fundamentally horrible and that it's better to put an end to it all, because then those who are destroying humanity and the world will have won and we will have lost. — leo
Again, my answer to this is that if pro-natalists are right, suffering will ensue for someone else- will be created wholesale for someone else. If antitnatalists are right, no new person will suffer anything. There is no "risk" in the antinatalist outcome, other then no people existing. But, what does that matter to anyone, literally? — schopenhauer1
What it is saying is that in the case of the procreational decision, no collateral damage of harm is done to someone else. Yes, at that point, all that matters is that harm is not foisted on someone else. — schopenhauer1
This brigs us to the bad argument of suffering of the parent for not having a child, the same thing that Terrapin Station uses. — schopenhauer1
That's only an argument against the claim that no one is harmed or no one suffers just in case someone is pressured or forced into not having kids, when they want to have kids. — Terrapin Station
You are assuming things like 'there is no God' 'there is no value in sentient beings per se' 'people's current interests in the future of the species are wrongheaded and need not be considered' 'the urge to procreate causes not harm if it is inhibited' 'reincarnation is not the case, there are no souls in line, so to speak ' 'precreation is natural and good' and likely many other values, some rather mundane, others involving belief systems other than yours. — Coben
You are lost in your own red herrings, that you have no argument against the actual antinatalist claims. — schopenhauer1
In any case what bearing does it have on or against the anti-natalist argument that being born will necessarily provide the causes or conditions that will occasion suffering? — Janus
Again, it's an ontological fact that you can't do anything to the entity in question prior to conception, because the entity doesn't exist prior to conception. — Terrapin Station
I've asked you a ton of times what's harmful about it. What consequences will hurt someone? Specify what you're talking about (not exhaustively--just via some examples).. And I'm saying childbirth is harmful — khaled
I'm not the cause of that, the monster is the cause — leo
The happiness and the suffering would have been prevented by not having the child, but the suffering alone would have been prevented by identifying that monster beforehand, by understanding what leads people to commit this kind of atrocities, and by taking preventive measures so that people never get to the point that they become monsters. — leo
it seems most antinatalists have also suffered a lot because of others — leo
I've asked you a ton of times what's harmful about it. What consequences will hurt someone? Specify what you're talking about. — Terrapin Station
Was the comment about whether there is suffering when people don't have children an argument against antinatalism? — Terrapin Station
Any harm you can think of can be causally linked to being born. In the same way that the specific harm of having 8 broken limbs can be linked to the genetic modification, so can ANY kind of harm be linked to the modification "birth" that allowed it. — khaled
That's one of them. — schopenhauer1
It's not an argument against antinatalism. — Terrapin Station
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