Do you want to convince people that life is a pain-ridden mistake or do you want people to not have babies? — Manuel

Isn't there a major connection to these two ideas?

If people don't share these intuitions, I don't understand why AN continue arguing so frequently on these points. — Manuel

Can't you say that about any philosophical point? Doesn't philosophy have lots of (seemingly) unintuitive points that on further reflection become more understandable?

As per your OP, is Willy Wonka the only option? Are there other jobs or hobbies that are meaningful? If there are other places outside Willy Wonka's factory, that may be worth pursuing. If Willy Wonka is all there is in the world, then people will have to see what works for them.

If it's the only posstible option in the world, the morality of Willy Wonka does not arise. — Manuel

No Willy Wonka has provided plenty of jobs.. it looks something like our world. Aren't I great for forcing my players into my awesome world?

I think there's plenty of Willys. I'm sure with your experience debating the matter, you've seen many people argue the 'option' as a defence for natalism. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Indeed. You expose people to your game, suffering occurs, and escape is not easy. That one can escape by self-harm does not make the making of playing the game moral. I do see a lot of free will answers which is interesting. So if people have free will in this world, that makes forcing the players into the world moral? Doesn't seem to add up.

I don't see what he does as proselytization. He just makes his philosophical point over and over. He's not promoting any ideology, organization, or business. — T Clark

Thanks for making that distinction. This is my response when accused of this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/521502

There's no real world equivalent for Willy. Like who does the forcing or creating? Not a single person, by a single action... how do you assign agency to something that happens over time compounding actions by many people? — ChatteringMonkey

How is birth not the same?

Now that he can’t stop it harmlessly*. If, for instance, the people in the world rely on the products and need a continuous supply of them.

Thing is, it’s a chocolate factory. Idk why Willy became a God all of a sudden. I’m assuming he has some purpose behind forcing all these people and is not doing it for shits and giggles.

Why would Willy consider creating that world in your example? What’s the motivation? — khaled

He wants to see people navigate the ups and downs of the challenges he has set the parameters for and see if people can improve on the parameters for new technologies, etc. He does not know how far it can be taken, he just has the initial conditions. He also likes seeing the people grow up and learn.. He thinks of them as his "children". He feels the joy of a kind of parent to a child..

But it seems like you are saying that he should keep forcing more people into the world to play his game because as more people are forced in, they will rely on the people to maintain the jobs and keep the economy going so that people that already exist in the world have more workers to survive, etc.

What circumstance? If creatures voluntarily leave the world you created, then most likely you are a bad creator. After all, you created a free world, and not just a theater for your own entertainment. Or theater? — SimpleUser

So what makes this world "free"? That people can escape by suicide? What makes forcing people into such a situation moral? I didn't quite get that from your response.

But you yourself created the conditions for the game. If the very creation of such a world is moral, then the creation of a pill for committing suicide in this world is also moral. The only thing the creator should do in this situation is not to punish the creature for the choice. Otherwise it will be immoral in itself. — SimpleUser

Is not putting people into this forced circumstance itself suspect or immoral?

The highest value is prevention of suffering. If said labor is needed (aka is preventing suffering) then it's fine. Because in that case not creating the factory is also harmful. — khaled

Ok, so this is then interesting. So Willy should not have started the game, but now that he has, it must keep going?

Then it cannot be something to be blamed for morally. Moral evaluations require some agency typically, the ability to do otherwise...

In any case, I take it you meant the thought experiment to shed some light on the real world. I don't think it does, because we indeed don't have the ability to create any world we want... and there is no one Willy that created this world to begin with. — ChatteringMonkey

Willy has the agency not to create the world or rather not to force others into the world in the first place, no?

What difference does it make? — frank

I mean, what difference does anything make, man?

It is quite moral. Because he gives free will and does not punish any choice. — SimpleUser

So that is all that matters here? So if I put someone in any X circumstance, as long as they have free choice, putting them in that circumstance itself makes no moral difference? That will lead to some weird conclusions...

If the fruits of these people's labor are needed somewhere then it's fine depending on how needed this labor is. Otherwise if you're doing it for no reason probably not. — khaled

Interesting.. Why are the fruits of the labor the summum bonum?

I think you are being too generous regarding the suicide pill. The reality is a lot more distressing for the person doing the act, and for the people left behind. — Down The Rabbit Hole

True true. It's not much of an "option B" is it? Willy's a bit cynical here. More of "Well, it's an 'option' (wink, wink)."

If Willy can create any world he wants, then no, creating this one doesn't seem particularly moral. — ChatteringMonkey

What happens if Willy can imagine other worlds that are better, but the best he can do is create the one described in the OP?

As expected — baker

I had something in here but not worth the time.

It all seems to be about reductive explanations, and I may be seen as ridiculous for thinking about peak experiences, as being of any significance. — Jack Cummins

It's about survival, comfort, and entertainment and how society mediates these for people. First you're thrown into the world, then you find yourself getting hungry, discomforted, and bored. Then you find justifications for various actions of daily activity in order to meet these broad needs of survival, discomfort, and boredom within your enculturated socioeconomic context. When you try to get good enough at an activity and your interest level is vey high, you might describe that as a "peak" experience.

However Schopenhauer's artistic "genius" is more akin to penetrating the everydayness of an object and seeing it for its form. Music was seen as akin to will itself and not just the form of an object, but the noumenal. So the artist sees peels back the layer of Plato's materiality (the shadows) reveals them in their Forms, and perhaps music is a form, but the Form of the essence of all Forms, the striving of the thing-in-itself.

Well, if you have too much time on your hands ... — baker

Don't get the point?

I have only offered a very brief summary of Colin Wilson's ideas for reflection. However, I will ask to what extent does the idea of an outsider, as a person who sees differently, make sense to you? Also, how might we think about peak experiences, and their value? — Jack Cummins

Genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world; and this not merely for moments, but with the necessary continuity and conscious thought to enable us to repeat by deliberate art what has been apprehended and "what in wavering apparition gleams fix in its place with thoughts that stand for ever! — Arthur Schopenhauer

I guess my point is, in a nutshell, that antinatalism exists as a well-reasoned philosophical position means that antinatalism can't be right. — TheMadFool

Not sure if any of this is correct. Can you not suffer and think of an argument? Even if that was true, can you not have some moments of clarity and some moments of suffering? Isn't thinking rationally and leading to AN, an indication that it is the rational answer?

If you, as an AN, care so much about future, potential people that you want for them not to suffer even one iota of harm, then how come you don't extend the same care to people who are already alive?

Your AN arguments are presumably based on empathy and compassion for people who don't even exist yet, but you don't muster the same empathy and compassion for existing people*. That's strange.


*Which you'd need in order to get through to them. — baker

Surely both can be employed no? Prevent it fullstop (what most people aren't doing) and also help the people already here. Unfortunately, for the already born the inherent conflict with working towards helping others and simply just "working with others" will be part of the "helping others" but that is the nature of man.. To essentially deal with the asshole qualities of other people and hopefully disregard, overcome, or change them to some extent. And everyone thinks it's the other.. and perhaps it is..

I think that the actual problem is that you're externalizing things that are, by their nature, private, personal. — baker

Yet procreation is not a private act. Quite the opposite, a whole other life is in play.

In other words, your own justification for not having children is your own thing. But if you care so much about the suffering of prospective as yet nonexisting humans, it would be wiser to start a political movement, or obtain some position of power in the government where you can actually influence people and make policy changes. — baker

This is the difference between ethics and politics. A majority of people nor a strongman has decided this is how things should be. And that is okay. Veganism should also not be forced but surely persuasion is fine.

Here's a thought experiment..

Let's say I am Willy Wonka..
I have created this world and will force others to enter it... My only rule is people have the options of either working at various occupations which I have lovingly created many varieties of, free-riding (which can only be done by a few and has to be done selectively lest one get caught, it is also considered no good in this world), or living day-to-day homelessly. The last option is a suicide pill if people don't like the arrangement. Is Willy Wonka moral? I mean he is giving many options for work, and even allowing you to test your luck at homelessness and free riding. Also, hey if you don't want to be in his arrangement, you can always kill yourself! See how beneficial and good I am to all my contestants?

There are lots of ways to feel strife and anxiety in my world.. There is generalized boredom, there are pressures from coworkers, there is pressure of joblessness, there are pressures of disease, disasters, mental illness, annoyances, malicious acts, accidents, and so much more that I have built into the world..

I have also created many people who will encourage everyone to also find my world loving so as to not have too many dropouts.

We should be appalled to see people suffer beyond our expected amount and want to do everything we can to help (including suffering more minor harms ourselves, and expecting others to do so too). — Isaac

Agreed, however to bring more people into the world in order to do this seems like a vicious circle. We bring people into the world who will suffer, but they are here to help people alleviate suffering.

I have an answer... Don't bring more people into the suffering to have their suffering alleviated in the first place.

So certainly the amelioration process is more of a bandaid and not the reason people should be born, lest the vicious circle. So rather, you may have some other content as the goal.. Technology, world utopia, etc. Transhumanism for example is thinking we should be working towards some overcoming of suffering. I don't necessarily agree, but it is trying to give a reason to being born. When I hear things like "flourishing" or "character-building" as the reason to have more people, it also seems like a vicious circle and still overlooking the person for an agenda, thus violating the dignity principle. Character-building is just "good" is close to saying: "Any current necessary task needed for survival like hard-work is what is needed".. So it is overlooking dignity and it is making a fallacy that what is needed to survive is why we need to be born in the first place. In the future if robots did all the work, then what? So this is obviously just relative to a certain cultural lifestyle that someone (perhaps yourself) wants to see out of other people because that is the current way of things or the value of things for a long while historically.

odd, even repugnant conclusions — Isaac

Odd yes. Rupugnant, no.

No, I think that typically, they don't "choose" their justifications. They just have them, end of story. — baker

Even if that is the "majority", we have the ability to access whether we still want to do something or not, and evaluate it negatively or positively. There are many times when what one is currently doing does not align with what one would rather be doing, and then there are a whole set of justifications why one wouldn't do otherwise. It's just that these justifications are more in the background.. You don't just quit your day job because that brings X, Y, and Z.. etc. Of course the limits of this thinking butts up against the reality of our mortal conditions.. We need survival, survival requires the necessity of social and historical contingency.. we must work through this to survive...etc.. But then what if we don't want these initial conditions? Well, too bad.

What you seem to describe is primary consciousness without any ability to self-reflect, evaluate, and judge in complex linguistic terms that we do. Or it could be explaining a highly habituated person like in a military setting. Follow orders, don't overthink, etc. No, we don't always just "do".. we often give ourselves reasons, motivations, stories, narratives, principles to work by, etc.

Of course, a lot of it IS neurotic in the sense that a general anxiety and angst often motivates us to want to alleviate that anxiety as well. "I don't want to think of X so I do Y" (eat food, go for a run, read a book, etc).

This makes no sense at all. The harms are the same in both cases. The harms brought about from procreation are exactly and only the "small violations that we balance with unnecessary suffering we must do once born". — Isaac

But all harm can be prevented in one case and not the other. That is why it is "unnecessary" at the point of procreation. Unless you want to die, all other harms are ameliorations, often by necessity of the facts of survival through balance of lesser harms with greater harms. This whole thing did not need to take place though in the first place.

Well yeah, that then is exactly what I'm talking about. You put all stuff that your have to do for others in terms of your own benefit. "I have to pay my taxes becasue it contributes to the general governance from which I benefit". I don't think anyone suggests neo-liberals are fanatically opposed to helping others even when it directly benefits them to do so. — Isaac

I don't have a problem looking at it in either way. But let's not kid ourselves, the reason for the survival is so that individuals in the society (like you and I and him and her) can benefit. Health care for all is health care for everyone in the community. Helping the poor is such that anyone who befalls the state of being poor can be helped which could be any X person. I am not saying we have to look at it in completely self-centered ways but simply recognizing it is at the level of individuals whereby benefits are being had. So I do not accept that interpretation or spin on it.

What I was trying to say with "every human needs a justification" is that humans are not just if/then creatures. The motivations are obviously complex and multicausational. We are a linguistic-based animal in a large degree. Thus linguistic-based concepts often (at least appear to ourselves) as our motivators for why we do any act. So the reason I do X is because.. (fill in the blank). However, these justifications/motivations are never just automatic. They are things we convince ourselves either out of habit, perceived losses from expectations, rationalizing, or simply expediency (can't think of a better way). So humans have to constantly buffer why they do anything. There is no automatic reason why we need to do anything at all. Thus we are an existential creature because there is never a set automatic response (outside of some basic stimuli perhaps). For the community, for this or that reason, are justifications we tell ourselves, sure. But it is never as easy as, "Society broadcasts X message (perhaps what Isaac thinks people should do), and people accept it". Rather, each and every decision is an existential decision to follow a course of action. Each person has to allow that X view to motivate them. It just doesn't motivate them. We can evaluate at any time, "I don't like this" and no longer go along with the program. The idea that these people need to be "recalibrated" like some member of the borg, is a bit dehumanizing at the least. It is at the most "bad faith" in not recognizing the fact that again, people choose justifications for why the do any task at all.

Well, for comparison, in Buddhism, they say that there is suffering, that it has a cause, and that there is a way to undo that cause; they also say that suffering is something to understand. — baker

Yes and Schopenhauer also emphasized and agreed with the suffering that Buddhism discusses. However, Schopenhauer definitely identified more with the Buddhist monk ideals and not simply Buddhist-light (laymen). That is to say, true salvation comes from denying the will completely.

Of course with antinatalism, it's just helping along other who don't have to be saved in the first place. Yes, this counters Buddhism's need to defend procreation so that people can be born to be saved by enlightenment. It presupposes a metaphysics of reincarnation which most antinatalists don't believe.

The problem is that a moral is about how we treat others and we consider them to apply to others, so the enacting of any moral, by definition, causes suffering. It either restrains someone from something they otherwise wanted to do, or it pushes someone to do something they otherwise would rather have not done. If it does neither, then it's not a moral, it's just 'whatever we wanted to do anyway'. Both of those consequences are a form of suffering (not being able to do something you want, having to do something you don't want). In fact they're basically the archetypes of suffering. So morality based solely on avoidance of suffering without any aggregation or weighing is simply not morality from the outset. — Isaac

I am not sure this is a definition of morality other than your definition. However, even if we are to judge it by those standards, certainly many people who would have wanted to procreate but didn't to prevent the potential person from suffering fits even this definition. In other situations the idea of preventing unnecessary suffering while also not violating someone's dignity can apply in a multitude of ways.. Wake a lifeguard (small violation) but don't force the lifeguard into a lifetime of lifeguarding school EVEN if you KNOW the best OUTCOME is this person being forced into teaching lifeguarding lessons for the rest of their life. There is something about caring TOO MUCH about greatest good that is nefarious in itself when balanced against individual dignity. An extreme example of this is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox.

Your neo-liberal philosophy is that no, that's not a reasonable expectation, some people may not care about the well-being of others enough to want to suffer some minor inconvenience for their benefit and it's not for us to interfere with that. I don't agree that we cannot have expectations of others which inform our actions toward them. — Isaac

No, not quite.

This is why I think dignity is violated after a certain threshold is met. This also has to be balanced with unnecessary suffering. So birth is a case where dignity would be violated and unnecessary suffering would be violated. However, when someone is born, things like taxes, making people go to school, etc. can be a consideration because as to survive, we live in a society and is necessary for the maintenance of that survival. If it isn't an industrialized form, it will simply take other forms, as in some way people will have to get together to get stuff done for survival's sake. So dignity not violated/unnecessary suffering in the case of the procreational decision looks like antinatalism. All harm and all dignity violation could have been prevented. Once born, it becomes ameliorating greater with lesser harms and thus looks more like balancing of smaller infractions with unnecessary future suffering, etc. The point of violation becomes different when an actual person has needs and wants and interests and ability to feel pain, etc. versus preventing a hypothetical person from dealing with any of it.

Dignity being violated is if in some sense a negative that will befall someone is being completely overlooked in an egregious manner (like unnecessary suffering, being put in the challenge game in the first place that is nearly inescapable). In the case of birth this is always the case the way I see it. However, once born, de facto choices are in play. We must work to survive, and work is learned through socialization, sharing experiences- essentially using language-based ways to convey meaning. This entails a social structure that keeps this going, etc.

And so I guess the straightforward case of procreation is like the lifeguard being condemned to lifeguarding school to me whereas..

The small violations that we balance with unnecessary suffering we must do once born is likened to lightly tapping on the lifeguard to wake him up to save the child...That is to say, it doesn't meet the threshold of egregiously overlooking the lifeguard, and certainly it is fulfilling the need not to overlook the drowning child.

Benkei might say if no person is there to not suffer, antinatalism is wrong on the account as there is no recipient to not suffer.

What does saying “Not having kids is not good for anyone” do here? It’s true but... irrelevant. — khaled

Agreed.

It is not known that we only have this one lifetime. You're making an assumption. — RogueAI

Based on what is known.. We can't know what we don't know..

How would anyone know the converse? I don't see the justification in assuming this is the only life we've ever lived. A popular interpretation of QM implies there are near infinite copies of me in other real universes. If this (possibly) happens spatially, why not temporally? — RogueAI

We work with what is known. We can imply anything.. QM theory says... (place any possibility because infinite multiverse).

What if one believed that people choose to come back again (reincarnation)? In that case, there wouldn't be a consent issue. — RogueAI

I guess so, but besides you telling me, how would anyone know that?

Maybe I misunderstood you when you claimed to disagree with what you quoted of me. Clarify, please. — 180 Proof

That Nietzsche's active nihilism supersedes Schop's metaphysical pessimism or that they are commensurate.

Edit: Meant the opposite.. you seem to be saying Nietzsche overtakes Schop's pessimism. This I disagree with if that's what you are saying.

Schop proposed ascetic living to cope with the ravages of "the will to live", which amounts to passivity (in N's sense) in the form of, in effect, withdrawal from most of social activities. — 180 Proof

Yes, where did I disagree with this based on my last posts?

And by all accounts, before the end, he was immensely pleased that the Maestro was a great admirer of his philosophy (though Schop wasn't much of fan of the "dbag's" operas). — 180 Proof

That's right. He didn't mind the admiration, but still wasn't a fan of his work. Good enough.

How sure are you that people are non-existent before they're born? Does your whole position rest on that? — RogueAI

Not sure where you're going with this.. The point in the comment you quoted was that starting an existence is unnecessary suffering started on someone else's behalf. Once someone is born, there is someone who has interests, etc.

If there was a soul beforehand, we wouldn't know it so doesn't make a difference. From the information we know, suffering is started unnecessarily.

And how has that been working out for you? — baker

Not sure your point...

metaphysical pessimism (succumbed to by passive nihilism) and cultural pessimism — 180 Proof

It's that right there that I don't agree with. But I generally see more sympathy for Nietzschean "pessimism" (more optimism to me with eternal return) and not much sympathy for Schopenhauer's philosophical pessimism.

I'm grateful to have outgrown their 'quasi-Wagnerian dialectic' years ago and also for their endlessly inspiring, often blackly hilarious, gorgeous writings. — 180 Proof

Wagner is (was) a dbag. I believe Schopenhauer didn't like him.. Good judge in that.