Anyway, you said you were interested in time. Would it have meant the same thing (to you) if you said you were interested in change? What is it about change that's interesting. I don't want to get too caught up in semantics, I just want to know more about the part you find interesting.

Sure, which supports my position that time is a specific type of change. Squares are rectangles, but squares and rectangles aren't the same thing.

I think words are whatever we want them to be insofar as they facilitate effective idea sharing. So, I don't like time=change because I find it limiting and maybe a touch disingenuous. Both words are useful, which hints that they aren't totally redundant. For example, how do you deal with the phrase/concept 'change over time'?

The part you're not saying anything about is the interesting part - the extent to which time is something about us. To me, that's more or less the distinction between time and change. Time is a specific category of change; changes we notice. How this mechanism of 'noticing' works, its thresholds, its limitations in either direction, seems like the key to understanding, and perhaps manipulating, time's "speed".

I think about time a lot too. Do you really think it's identical to change? If we were totally indifferent to change, would time still elapse?

Are there non-speculative metaphysics? In a nutshell, I just don't see the distinction between cause and correlation as crisply as I used to.

I have trouble explaining myself because 1) I'm not good with words and 2) I'm coming to believe that the verbal quest for truth culminates in a tip-of-the-tongue experience. The world is utterly strange and literally beyond words. I can feel that I'm making progress in understanding, but whenever I attempt to pin it down, something seems to dissipate. To say the attempt causes it to dissipate would be yet another such attempt. Thinking in terms of 'causes' is a good example of that sort of activity.

Real truth can only be held very gently. Or so it seems to me lately..

I'm with Andrewk on this. He's not merely being pedantic. I believe he has something coherent in mind, a perspective from which the concept is a distraction that just doesn't lend itself well to effective communication. That you can spin your wheels forever identifying 'causes' at any arbitrary level of scope is a symptom of dissonance between the paradigm and the world itself.

It's not that my inner world is more lucid than the external world. I'm saying I have experience (as I think most people do) with both kinds of inner states - (a)"life is obviously terrible" and (b)"everything is OK".

While experiencing (a) it feels undeniably true. If I only ever felt (a), the antinatalist arguments would be compelling. It's from the vantage point of (b) that (a) is clearly just a subset of a broader awareness (lucidity/richness) available to me.

Dreams can feel very real until you wake up. I'm wondering if Schop is stuck in a bad dream I've had before. I don't mean this in a patronizing way, like I know the truth about life's value and if you disagree you need to wake up. I'm saying the truth about life's value is fundamentally subjective and driven by your inner world, something primal and much more real than words and arguments. So, for example, I wouldn't try to convince Schop that life has value because I realize, no matter what combination of words I use, it won't take unless he already feels it.

The antinatalist argument, to the extent it's anything beyond preaching to the choir, is distastefully presumptuous about the ineffable inner worlds of others.

Schop, do you ever have days where you don't feel this way?

It's been really striking to me just how primary the 'way I feel' is. It seems to be what animates these otherwise hollow verbal exchanges. Sometimes it's obvious that life is fundamentally terrible. That seems to happen on its own from time to time, but there are some consistent ways to produce the outlook (e.g. opiate withdrawal). Anyway, for me, it's more common that I don't feel that way. And when I don't, there's something somehow more lucid about my inner world where it seems clear that the 'life is terrible' outlook is the dream to wake up from rather than vice versa.

The arguments, logic, words, are just byproducts. My view is that the anti-natalist simply overextends language beyond its context. The arguments are hollow when that's not your inner experience. You are doomed to only ever preach to the choir.

'everything' is a word.

Now, I haven't given my critique, I am answering your questions as if self-actualization is a reason to have children. I will just start off with the idea that why give a new person (inevitable) burdens to overcome, especially if achievement of the supposed ultimate goal (of some elusive self-actualization) is not achievable for many? — schopenhauer1

You're looking for someone to make the case that we should create more people purely for their own good, that good being the fuzzy notion of self-actualization. I think the problem is that this is not a position many (any?) people hold.

Sure, they want to have kids for any number of reasons. To experience the pleasant intensity of fatherly/motherly love, as one example.

The default position probably doesn't involve a positive reason for procreating. All things being equal, people will have sex. So, the absence of a compelling reason not to procreate is sufficient. I don't think many people have kids so the kids can experience self-actualization or whatever. They simply want to have kids and don't think it's wrong.

That the issue is framed as a pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy is already a sneaky move. The default position is of course to defer to the actual people involved and let them make this very personal decision. And the alternative is coercion, not life. Ironically, "pro-life" is the more deliberately chosen position - it's just a choice of meddlers .