They both make the mistake of deciding the worth of the life of everyone, and everyone yet to be, rather than recognising that people have some say in the matter. — Sapientia

Recall this: it is nonsense to require that unborn, i.e. nonexistent people, could, as an alternative, be given 'some say' in the matter. Nonexistent people can't be given 'some say' in anything, because they do not exist.

Say it with me, children: you can't make a decision on behalf of non-existent people. So if you are in no way suggesting they are actual people, you have no point to make, since the anti-natalist is not making any sweeping decisions on behalf of anyone on the worth of their lives.

That conclusion is false and doesn't follow. Obviously, like I said, they decide the worth of life for everyone alive, and they also decide what the worth of life would be for everyone of a possible future generation, all else being equal. — Sapientia

No, they don't. They decide nothing for anyone, since there is no person they are making the decision for (the unborn are not people, i.e. do not exist). On the other hand the natalist does make that decision for a real person who is born. The opinions they have on the worth of the lives of living people have nothing to do with antinatalism, which is abut procreation (it's in the name). Your other comment evidences a kind of confusion -- that a 'possible future generation' is somehow an actual generation of people the worth of whose lives can be decided. Again, I reiterate, possible future generations of people do not exist, and so nothing can be decided on their behalf.

Please don't respond to this with just another 'nope,' it bewilders me how you can put so much text on a page w/o making a point.

That last sentence is false. They both make the mistake of deciding the worth of the life of everyone, and everyone yet to be, rather than recognising that people have some say in the matter. They are both guilty of a sweeping generalisation. — Sapientia

But the antinatalist decides the worth of the life of no one, since you cannot decide the worth of the life of someone who isn't born (i.e. doesn't exist).

Not if you're including passing moments and phases. If we all strongly and consistently wanted never to have been born, then that would change things, yes. — Sapientia

Okay, so is there some amount of people who have to not feel that way for birth to be justified? What is that amount?

But it is. How is that a strained use? That's the regular use of the word. As in, it would be false to deny that.

The only way I can make sense of your assertion is by assuming you don't know what the word 'cause' means.

No, one doesn't suffer because of being born, it isn't possible to suffer without being born, and it may not be possible to be born and not suffer -- but this still doesn't mean that birth itself causes suffering. — Wosret

Yes it does -- that is quite literally what it means.

No one says "I wish I was never born" because they just can't get over how horrible birth was, but because of this thing that is now happening that their life led up to. — Wosret

And the cause of that thing was their birth.

People don't suffer by virtue of being born — Wosret

Sure they do. It is not possible to be born and not suffer. Therefore, they suffer by virtue of being born.

Everyone suffers hardships, and feels terrible, maybe like dying, but yet, they then get over it. Nothing wrong with whining, and being at low points in life. I wouldn't attempting to lessen, or dismiss anyone's suffering, I was merely describing the fact that most people do feel those ways at times, but yeah, get over it. — Wosret

Everyone gets over everything in the end, because they die. I don't see how that makes the intermediate suffering worth going through or perpetuating.

So the suffering people experience in the world by virtue of being born is not a problem? Everyone is just whining and will get over it? I'm trying to understand your position.

And, given that most people, throughout multiple generations, would say that they are glad to be alive, and that they do not regret being born, there is reason to believe that the yet-to-be-born stand a good chance of reaping the rewards and arriving at the same conclusion. — Sapientia

How many people would have to not want to be born in order for it to be not a good idea to reproduce and possibly create such a person. Suppose to start it was 100%. Then would there be a problem, in your view?

Isn't the natalist, not the antinatalist, deciding for everyone how good life has to be in a sweeping generalization in order for it to be forced on people separate from them? The antinatalist literally decides nothing for anyone.

Think of it as therapy for people with Stockholm Syndrome.

Not that I'd ever expect a critic of a philosopher to read the philosopher they're criticizing. But anyone who sees Schopenhauer's project as only one of destruction and annihilation has not appreciated Book IV, which is a work of transcendent beauty in its own right. If Schop. is an enemy of humanity, it is because humanity is the enemy of the better.

Okay, I don't really find discussion with you productive, so it's probably for the best.

I never said babies have a will, nor do I see why that's required/relevant. Still not sure what your point is.

According to your logic, parents must be murderers because they condemn their children to death since every life form dies. It's a nifty, catchy, angsty little aphorism that you might see in the works of Cioran or Ligotti and co., but outside of that it's really just desperate special pleading. — darthbarracuda

Obviously one cause of death is being born -- though murder would probably not be an appropriate term, because it is a primarily moralistic or legalistic term that takes as a background assumption that someone is already alive. Though yes, deciding to have a child also means to make someone that you are forcing to confront death at some point, and they have no choice in the matter. I would question your sanity if you denied that.

In a magical time long past, and still in many places in the world today, having children is an economic investment: they provide labor, care for the elderly, the continuation of the family unit, and so on. When you're wealthy and don't need to have children to survive (and your culture does not value having them for any reason but personal choice/fulfillment, since the extended family is a weak institution), one of your major incentives goes away.

And the idea that sex is mostly a recreational activity for fun is hugely historically blind. Life was not always post-1965 America, and in many places it still is not.

I agree that when people have material circumstances that don't force them to have kids, they generally stop doing it: because having children is awful for everyone involved.

That's nonsense. As a necessary (though insufficient) precondition, there must be a will for it to be against. There were innumerable events which occurred without my consent and of which I could not have chosen, but it would be blatantly inappropriate to say that all of them happened against my will. You ought to take the connotations of that phrase into consideration. Consider, for example, "You cannot force me to come with you against my will!" and "Police searched my mother's bags against her will". — Sapientia

Not sure what your point is, there's nothing nonsense about what I said.

Not wanting to have children often accompanies being wealthy because there is no financial incentive to have them. To think that babies just pop mysteriously out of women, and that people don't understand that this is connected to the act of sex, and that knowing this they choose to have sex in order to produce children (for economic as well as for other reasons) is absurd. Additionally, even if a baby is conceived accidentally, one still has to deliberately forgo abortion where it is available in order for them to be born.

Like I said, building a house in Florida does not cause the destruction of the house. The hurricane causes it. Can it be a bad idea to build a house in Florida right in the middle of a hurricane red zone? Yes. But that does not cause the destruction of the house, it only enables it. — darthbarracuda

If you have alternatives as to where to build a house, and you intentionally build it somewhere where it is sure to be destroyed, I think it is perfectly appropriate to say of you, the person who made the stupid decision, that you (or your decision) is a cause of the house's destruction. Of course the hurricane is too.

Enabling can be just as bad, but it would be misleading to say that birth causes suffering because it conjures ideas that as soon as someone flies out of the womb, they being suffering when it's nothing like that. External happenings cause someone to feel suffering, which is ultimately enabled by birth. — darthbarracuda

One suffers just by virtue of being alive; there is no way to be alive without suffering or being threatened with suffering by that very fact. You would have to change very basic material circumstances, like ending the notion of hunger, to change this.

I don't think that's a far comparison. Tripping over a stick and scrapping one's knee isn't like being pushed maliciously to the ground by an asshole. We're social creatures, the emotion, and intention in their eyes, their cruel motivations are far more traumatic than the physical injury inflicted. — Wosret

But we are deliberately brought into the world by people, and those people know full well that we will be in circumstances that make it unavoidable that we will experience tremendous suffering. No person may deliberately cause the impetus toward starvation itself; but what they do is implicitly approve of it by continuing to place people deliberately in its path knowing full well how it works.

If you tortured someone by throwing them in a room full of swinging blades, and protested, 'but I don't push the blades!' that is obviously not a good objection. You knew that some blade or other would hit them, and so shoving them into the room is an expression of torture. The situation is analogous with deciding to birth people.

Okay, I don't see the relevant difference between perfection and an ideal. The point is not that life fails to meet some ideal, but that it's palpably and obviously awful. If you're being tortured, and someone asks you, 'what, so you think it's not worth going through this just because it doesn't reach some sort of ideal of not being horrible? Isn't that an impossible ideal to meet? It's torture, after all!' that person would be talking crazy.

But living is a lot like being tortured: for example, it forces you to go through a series of complicated and painful tasks in order to secure food, or be subject to a horrible pain of starvation. If some agent were likewise forcing you to go through those tasks or some equivalent, but inflicted the pain in a different way, say by whipping you to death rather than starving you to death, this would obviously be a case of torture.

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Birth is against one's will because one cannot choose to be born. By the time one is born (not before), it is something that has happened without consent.

It looks to me like you're the one playing word games -- your post all but admits that birth causes suffering and then special pleads to say it doesn't (i.e. the one who introduces a seeming non-distinction between 'causing' and 'enabling' is playing the word games). It's not relevant to the point, and drawing a terminological distinction, even if you could justify it (which I don't think you have) won't help.

I never said only a perfect life was worth living. It's not that life isn't perfect, but that it's (unacceptably) awful, and so it's not the right thing to do to bring people into it to force them to live through it against their will.

You say that we can't have the meaning that makes life worth living without a real risk, and then say that it is precisely because there is a risk that life isn't worth living. A catch 22 indeed, the justifications for living, and not living being identical. I'ma arbitrarily side with the living. — Wosret

It's not arbitrary though, that's what you've been told so you believe it (and you tell it to yourself, obviously quite a lot).

Besides that, wouldn't it be better to actually work on the causes of pain disease and unhappiness, and mitigate, and arrest them where they are in excess, rather than forgetting and dooming them in favor of a future "intelligently designed" eugenics project? — Wosret

The cause of all these is birth.

The future is not really unknown in an important sense with birth: namely you will suffer terribly, which is guaranteed. Given this I don't see any good justification for giving birth, it seems straightforwardly wrong.

It's of course not glorious to have lived though horrible traumas, but it is more glorious to have survived them, and not have been destroyed by them than to have lived a completely uneventful life, filled with bored and unappreciated pleasures and security. — Wosret

I don't even understand what you're trying to say. It sounds like you're just saying 'p, but not p.'

We can't make a perfect pie, so you conclude that it's not worth making. — Sapientia

As far as I can see I neither said nor implied this, so I don't know what you're on about.

I was charitable enough to answer that question in a different way the second time you asked it, I don't think I'll come up with a third answer. Just look at my previous two. — Wosret

I don't see anything in the previous answers that addresses the question.

So, going forward, if the 22 years of sickness were good for you, shouldn't you strive to make yourself sick for the next 22 years? If not, what's different about this time?

And that chronic illness made your life better? If you had to relive it, would you rather be healthy for 22 years or sick?

I don't think that there's any denying that it feels better returning to normal health after being sick than just always being normal health. There is a happiness there. There is a relief, and happiness in being delivered from a distressing circumstance. Every kind of food is fantastic when you're starving. — Wosret

So, shouldn't you be looking for ways to make yourself sick on purpose, so that you can recover from it, since that's better than just staying healthy?

Personally, nothing. I would just like to get out without too much hassle. I'm just trying to make sense of what a natalist expects/wants from life, and how misery ties into it. On its face it doesn't make much sense to me to say that misery is important for happiness. Misery is important for misery.

I think maybe people falsely equate accomplishment, growth and challenge with suffering or misery, but they're really different.

So you're saying, there is an ideal amount of misery a life should have in order to be happy, but that there can also be superfluous suffering? And that your life, maybe the ordinary person's life, has too much (or at least enough)?

Isn't boredom a kind of misery?

So why not purposefully look for ways to suffer? Doesn't that make life worth living? Won't it make you happy? Why not stab yourself in the foot or tear out your eyeballs?

Or is it only a specific kind of suffering/misery that makes you happy...?

Notice on its face how absurd the claim that misery makes you happy sounds. Maybe there's some reason you believe it, I don't know?

So, if you want your life to be great, you should look for ways to be miserable?

I mean, you should look for apples if you want to make a pie, right?

misery, and that is precisely what makes it so great, interesting, and worth living. — Wosret

Misery is not great. I's actually miserable.

The knots people put themselves in!

Life is hard, and often miserable, so why demonize one of its few pleasures? — Wosret

The issue is not sex per se or the pleasure that comes from it, but reproduction. It would be naive not to be wary of the connection between the two, but with the wonders of modern science, we're capable of having children without fucking (all the pain of childbirth with none of the pleasure, I suppose).

And the focus on reproduction is obvious: without it, there is no life, which even a natalist in his weaker (clearer?) moments will point out is miserable, as you just did.

Yeah, my bad, I was in the unfiltered list and didn't realize.