By etymology, romance is the kind of love story described in the chivalry romance, a genre of ancient chicklit set in the middle age, with princes and knights and damsels in distress. There is a streak of wild exaggeration, particularly in idealising the loved woman.

Don Quixote is a parody of those novels. Centuries later, Madame Bovary also provides a warning to those who take this kind of literature too seriously.

Nowadays one can be in love and yet not flatter one's partner constantly.... Vice versa, not all flattery is sincere love. People do use exaggeration to make advances in others.

Mina - Parole Parole

Trump ought to be shunned wholly and solely on doings and sayings in the public domain, things that nobody can dispute — Wayfarer

Exposing someone’s dodgy past is an important journalistic function.

Trump is a traitor and a fool. Let's see if his Russian handlers let him live, now that he's useless to them.

The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

The KGB ‘played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality’, Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian

David Smith in Washington
Fri 29 Jan 2021 03.00 EST

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.....

Shvets, who has carried out his own investigation, said: “For me, the Mueller report was a big disappointment because people expected that it will be a thorough investigation of all ties between Trump and Moscow, when in fact what we got was an investigation of just crime-related issues. There were no counterintelligence aspects of the relationship between Trump and Moscow.”

He added: “This is what basically we decided to correct. So I did my investigation and then got together with Craig. So we believe that his book will pick up where Mueller left off.”

Unger, the author of seven books and a former contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.”

“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.”

↪Olivier5, I can heartily recommend the Bernie meme inauguration threads out there for a good laugh. — jorndoe

Bernie Sanders' inauguration memes help raise $1.8 million for charity
"We're glad we can use my internet fame to help Vermonters in need," Sanders said. "But even this amount of money is no substitute for action by Congress."

Jan. 27, 2021, 6:08 PM EST / Source: Associated Press
By The Associated Press

About those wooly mittens that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wore to the presidential inauguration, sparking endless quirky memes across social media? They've helped to raise $1.8 million in the last five days for charitable organizations in Sanders' home state of Vermont, the independent senator announced Wednesday.

The sum comes from the sale of merchandise with the Jan. 20 image of him sitting with his arms and legs crossed, clad in his brown parka and recycled wool mittens.

Sanders put the first of the so-called "Chairman Sanders" merchandise, including T-shirts, sweatshirts and stickers, on his website Thursday night and the first run sold out in less than 30 minutes, he said. More merchandise was added over the weekend and sold out by Monday morning, he said.

"Jane and I were amazed by all the creativity shown by so many people over the last week, and we're glad we can use my internet fame to help Vermonters in need," Sanders said in a written statement. "But even this amount of money is no substitute for action by Congress, and I will be doing everything I can in Washington to make sure working people in Vermont and across the country get the relief they need in the middle of the worst crisis we've faced since the Great Depression."

Sanders' mittens were made by Jen Ellis, a Vermont elementary school teacher who has a side business making mittens out of recycled wool. His inauguration look, also featuring the winter jacket made by Burton Snowboards, sparked countless memes from the photo taken by Agence France-Presse: The former presidential candidate could be found on social media timelines taking a seat on the subway, the moon and the couch with the cast of "Friends," among other creative locales. ....

The groups that will benefit from the proceeds of the "Chairman Sanders" items include area agencies on aging to fund Meals on Wheels throughout Vermont, Vermont community action agencies, Feeding Chittenden, Vermont Parent Child Network, The Chill Foundation, senior centers in Vermont and Bistate Primary Care for dental care improvements in the state, Sanders' office said.

Sanders' attire has also sparked other charitable endeavors. A crocheted doll of Sanders in his garb was auctioned off online and Burton Snowboards donated 50 jackets to the Burlington Department for Children and Families in Sanders' name, his office said.

Getty Images will donate its proceeds as part of the licensing agreement to put the photo on T-shirts, sweatshirts and stickers to Meals on Wheels of America, Sanders' office said.

But if you have examples of new qualities, new capabilities I would be very interested. Quantum computers are still hard to grasp for me. — Raul

You're asking the wrong guy. The only thing I've heard is that encoding algorithms into quanta and extracting the solution from the quantic level represent significant difficulties...

You can simulate in traditional computers probabilities and randomness that can simulate what you say, cases where the door is neither open or close. — Raul

That's true, although it may take a lot of 0 and 1 to decently replicate / map a fuzzy set, with brute electronic force it's doable.

Therefore, it ought to be possible to emulate a human brain on silicon but the question becomes indeed a quantitative one: How many transistors is a neuron worth? And how big a machine do you need to simulate a human brain? One of these big Craig? 2?, 10?...

I guess the answer will depend on the quality of the replication, like the mp3 format requires less bits per second of encoded music than other formats (due to data compression techniques) but it is less faithful to the originally recorded music than larger formats. Mp3 lacks in treble and bass for instance. Likewise, a crude replication of a human brain may require much less computation power than a finer, more complete and nuanced imitation.

and not that much the physical substrate. — Raul

The substrate likely constrains what the system can and cannot do. Like, we can think in terms of fuzy sets: sets that have a fuzy limit, where it is not quite clear if one is already in the set or out of it. In other words, human logic accepts borderline cases where the door is neither open nor close. Silicone is less good at doing this, apparently. It has to be a 0 or a 1, there's no middle ground there.

But then you are contradicting yourself as far as using people. — schopenhauer1

I never said anything about using people. People use one another constantly. It's called a society. What I object to is any materialist computation of the worth or desirability of a human being.

Rather, the people already born do have interests of to ameliorate and reduce harm for each other. — schopenhauer1

Among those interests figures the desire to perpetuate and transmit something, a culture, a way of life, a heritage, to leave something behind, rather than fade quietly into the night.

There is something fundamentally similar between AI and how our brain works — Raul

That would because we try to reproduce on silicone stuff that happen in the brain. So after decades we've made some (modest) progress.

I just wish Alexa could follow what I say and do what I ask more than half the time. Maybe AI is making some time in big labs, but practical, interactive AI is a long way from where I'm sitting now. — Pantagruel

Artificial intelligence is not there yet, agreed, but they are already reaching the level of artificial dumbness.

You may want to read The Measure of Time by Poincaré. It's a bit dated but still solid. Searches for the definition of simultaneity, and only finds rules of convenience.

don't mind it. If abortion is considered not harmful then why you do it shouldn't matter. — khaled

Because that's treating human life as a commodity. If the market values boys more than girls, the supply of girls is reduced until such a time when the market will reassess the value of girls due to their rarity compared to boys.

I guess my problem with that (and other forms of eugenism) is that I disagree with the view that the 'desirability' of a human life should be assessed purely based on its likely market or social worth, or any other material consideration of future consequences.

I don't think the market or society is a good judge of future genetic fitness, or future happiness levels for that matter. If you allow parents the choice of their children eye and skin color, many will chose 'perfect kids' with fair skin and blue eyes. And yet if ever the earth ozone layer rips off, even a little, the added UV will kill these 'perfect people' with fair skin and blue eyes faster than the rest... High levels of melamine is a genetic strength yet put you at a social disadvantage.

I think those sorts of judgments might even be pretty common: that wonderful couple is having a child, hurray; that awful couple is having a child, I feel sorry for that kid; and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

This sounds far more 'real' as a situation than a lot of the metaphors and wild computations evoked on this thread, lifeguard included.

Another real-case moral dilemma related to the consequentialist arguments put forth on this thread, is about a mother discovering that her fetus is suffering from a grave genetic disease or disability. Should she abort or proceed with the pregnancy? I don't know the correct answer, if there's one. But that is a real life question, unlike "Should Adam and Eve procreate?"

Similarly, in India many female fetuses get aborted because having a son is seen as leading to better consequences for the child and the family. Is abortion based on the sex of the fetus a moral course of action? I don't think so, even if the families doing so would be absolutely certain that a girl would suffer more than a boy.

And then a very long text, about Europe.

L'Europe - Noir Desir + Brigitte Fontaine

The wild boars are running free
I repeat
The wild boars are running free
Small bosses make big rivers of diamonds
Twice
The roses of Europe are the feast of Satan
I repeat
The roses of Europe are the feast of Satan…

We are currently working for Europe
If not the world

Dear old Europe, dear old continent
Authoritarian, aristocratic and libertarian whore
Bourgeois and working class, all purple and made-up like in past centuries
Staggering colossus, look at your hunched shoulders
No way to dust up in a single gesture
The old dandruff, the dead skin of yesterday
And tabula rasa
From here you'd think it's noble rot, in suspension
It still floats in the air
From that smell of sulfur
Dirty old Europe, who between two wars
And even during them caressed for his own good
The belly of his faraway lands elsewhere
And dick in hand sprinkled with his sperm the native sexes
We got up from this, we get up from everything
Even from bottomless falls
We know how to go up, we know how to go down
We can stop and we can start again

Europe of the Enlightenment or of Darkness
Barely fireflies in shadow theaters
Barely a spark in the night that settles and then recovers
And then the new dawn, after the crimes of childhood,
The errors of youth, one no longer tears off the wings
Of golden dragonflies

We are currently working for Europe
If not the world

Amnesty -- amnesty or amnesia?
What difference does it make?
In any case, we have to move forward
Let us press the step comrade, and then realize, realize, realize
There will always be something left, come on
Materialist, so at least we're sure
Not to be mistaken, and dwell in the tangible until indigestion
In the rational, until we die of it
Ruthless logic, but without meaning
Hey, Princess of History, in your forced march
We end up lost, passing under your centuries-old arches

We are currently working for Europe
If not the world

We've gone tired of your past arcana, tired of your past arcana
With technocratic charms
So then Europe, then Europe, so what Europe? Then Brussels, Schengen, Strasbourg, Maastricht, GDP, EEC, Euratom, OECD and GATT
Protect us, oh Market, from such a small world
Unique Euro-money, Nasdaq and CAC 40
Orgiastic, idyllic, make poetry, support culture
Produce shows and entertainment
As our brothers say across the Atlantic
Old Europeans, new masters of the world,
While the Asian dragon dreams
Stretches slowly
It is beautiful and powerful
Spits fire gently
While Ernest Antoine Seillière makes his appearance
And declares his flame to us, he loves us and tells us
"We are not like politicians
Subjected to the pressure of the street"
And in the distance you can hear the clamor of the crowd resounding
The beautiful overall movements, the glorious parades
And then, and then the class struggle
But now we're serious!
Hey baby, this is serious
We don't believe in anything anymore
We're building from scratch
This business and basta
We don't ride Pegasus
That was for ecstasy, and the ecstasy is gone

We are currently working for Europe
If not the world

Expansion, growth if possible, but no dreams please
Carry only dynamics
First the dough, baby and the rest will follow
That's what they say, I believe in those days
Blessed days of the globophagi
Dear old Europe, your head barely knows your legs
Who often don't understand your arms
How does it work again?
How does a body work when it is foreign to itself?
We don't know, we don't care, we still kiss each other
And we're right

Dirty old Europe, do you remember brute force?
The West got in a bad mood, made a burning war, then a cold war
And is finally weary of war, and finally weary of war

We are currently working for Europe
If not the world

Do you want some performance schools?
And here are the creative bosses of the global businesses
Dialogue on electronic commerce to sit and giggle
And spit on all exceptions, starting with this cultural thing
Stories of producers and consumers
From producer to consumer
And more middlemen than anyone cares to count
Your soul has worn out on this endless road
And on this constant coming and going, come on, let's go
Enjoy, why not? It’s gona be ok
There will be something for everyone, something for everyone.
We said for everyone, for everyone, for everyone
My ass

How high are you going to erect your ramparts?
Where are you going to build your new surrounding walls?
Something is stuck in the throat
And we want to spit it, that’s the least we can do
But you can, madam, you can talk to us
For all is not lost, no, all is not lost
From your dawn myths
Here the sun shines for everyone
And you’d better believe it

We are currently working for Europe
If not the world

Pox on your faces
I repeat
Pox on your faces
The saint's sighs and the fairy's cries are no longer heard at the bankers' banquet
One time
The hermit's pot is filled with rubies
I repeat
The hermit's pot is filled with rubies
Old Europe is the mackerel of the pink ballets
Twice
When the sirens fall silent, the birds of prey scream
I repeat
When the sirens fall silent, the birds of prey scream
The red and black of tortures are the flowers of evil
I repeat
The red and black of tortures are the flowers of evil
The day of the West is the night of the East
Twice
The day of the West is the night of the East
I am not chauvinistic but France is still the queen of cheeses
Tryphon Tournesol is a zouave
Six times
Spilled blood is the cup of tea of fairground giants
Twice
It's raining cats and dogs on the Concorde
It's raining cats and dogs on the Concorde
Model girls are Europe’s elected representatives
I repeat
Model girls are Europe’s elected representatives
Fuck security
Twice
Megalomania kills mockingbirds
I repeat
Megalomania kills mockingbirds
If you can't find anything, look for something else
Peace in Switzerland!
I repeat
Peace in Switzerland!
Blood weddings set the horizon on fire
Twice
Europe’s mascara is flowing on her dress
Twice
Life begins now
And now
And now
Europe is a small mortal goddess
Twice
The childhood of art is a sunrise
I repeat
The childhood of art is a sunrise

We are currently working for Europe
If not the world…

That's pretty good, thanks!

One without lyrics, purely meditative.

And for good measure...

As I am found to say....

ANs think that guessing that having children is fine is akin to that, is guessing ridiculously. — khaled

And I think that's ridiculous, as an absolute statement. I think sometimes it may be "guessing ridiculously" (whatever the threshold for that is), and sometimes not.

I know the story. However it is crazy to use it as a justification for stealing people's horses. There may not be a universal metric here but we can make pretty good guesses on which is more harmful, to steal or not to steal. — khaled

Depending on the circumstances, there may be cases where stealing a horse would be the right thing to do. But that's not what the tale means. It means (to me at least) that a joy or a harm are transient, and one can be intimately tied with the other in a cause to effect relationship. So don't count your beans too soon, or too often, like the neighbours keeping a tally day after day. These things go up and down, like a pendulum, or ying yang style.

In other words, you can't actually compute harms and joys because the story never ends, and is not predictable. One thing leading to another, an event that looks good as and when it happens may lead to unsavory consequences later, and vice versa something that feels wrong or painful can help cause a good (or harm reductive) consequence later, and nobody can tell for sure. We're all guessing. And even if you reduce the computation to the negative, any joy can be described as 'harm reduction' thus it doesn't help.

There's no universal metric to measure harm, and therefore one cannot actually compute harms.
— Olivier5

That's not the critique I'm talking about. I'm talking about the "Colosseum" argument. "How many spectators must there be in the Colosseum before their pleasure from watching someone get mauled by a lion justifies having someone get mauled by a lion". — khaled

In other words, how many spectators must there be in the Colosseum before their harm reduction from watching someone get mauled by a lion justifies having someone get mauled by a lion.

It's the same idea: one cannot measure the harm made to John and compare it with that made or avoided to Peter. That's what I mean when I say, in mathematical terms, that there's no metric there. One cannot measure and add up the feelings of several people.

It's one of the most classic critiques of utilitarianism, which negative utilitarianism doesn't suffer from. — khaled

The same critique does apply to negative utilitarianism. There's no universal metric to measure harm, and therefore one cannot actually compute harms. So the whole idea of 'bean counting life' like this is at best shoddy theory, at worse an illusion.

There's a story about a zen farmer whose horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "We'll see," the farmer replied.

A few days later, the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How lucky you are," the neighbors exclaimed. "We'll see," the farmer replied.

The following day, the farmer's son tried to tame one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "We'll see," the farmer replied.

The day after, a recruiting sergent came to the village to draft young men into the army for a war. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out for his family.

"We'll see," said the farmer.

life has suffering for everybody (it's not a paradise), — schopenhauer1

That's quite the understatement you got there. Life is unmitigated, absolute HELL. That's what it is. I can't wait for it to stop, personally.

I am accounting for both. — khaled

That is not true. It was not your position yesterday at least, which was that only harm should be accounted because your only moral imperative is to reduce harm. I can point you to the precise post if you don't remember.

But you are not able to understand anything I say right now, obviously. You just want to think of life as a sexually transmitted disease with a 100% mortality rate. Which it is, objectively. We all die in the end. Our children will die. The earth herself will die one day. And the sooner the better of course, from your point of view. Thanks for cheering me up!

A killjoy is someone who decreases people's joys as you defined it. That clearly doesn't apply here. As there are no people. — khaled

Okay so accounting for future harm of hypothetical generations is something you can do but not accounting for their future joy, for some mysterious reason. Therefore you take only the harm in consideration, and conclude that Adam and Eve should have known better than procreate.

The result of your computation is determined by your frame of accounting. Mine is different; unlike you I include future joys in my computations. Therefore if I were the last man on earth, and if you were the last woman, I would think it our moral duty to procreate. Even though I'm quite sure you're not my type.

We make duties about not decreasing other people's joy though. It's not okay to be a killjoy.
— Olivier5

Didn’t claim otherwise. — khaled

And yet you would want Adam and Eve to have killed all the joys ever to be had by the whole human race.

And we never make duties out of providing pleasure but we make duties out of not harming. — khaled

We make duties about not decreasing other people's joy though. It's not okay to be a killjoy.

But the point is: it is still not good enough. Compare the suffering that Adam and Eve would have had to endure due to childlessness to the suffering of all mankind thus far. It pales in comparison. Adam and Eve [...] decision to have children resulted in way more harm than they would have had to endure at step 1. — khaled

More harm, but also more joy. Why are you not counting the joys that life brings? If your only measure for life is the amount of tears shed, of course it's always going to be negative.

not knowing means you are taking a risk with another person and you have no right to; — Srap Tasmaner

And I have pointed out that living, at least in society, involves taking chances with other people's lives. By that I don't mean that it's okay to be reckless, so there should be limits, but one cannot live without taking a few risks for himself and others, therefore the injunction: "live without taking any risks with other people's lives" is simply not doable in practice. It sets an unrealistic standard.

schopenhauer1 seems to hold a position that, even if we knew for a fact that life is always and only pure bliss, it is a violation of that person's dignity (or perhaps "autonomy") to force them to lead such a blissful existence without so much as a "by your leave". — Srap Tasmaner

Technically, it is not true that one forces life on anyone. Life is a gift that can be and is sometimes rejected. A non-existing person has no dignity to lose, and as soon as she exists, her primary objective will be to stay alive. If her dignity does indeed require her annihilation, then there are many different options available to her, some as benign as social death by isolation.

We have sufficient information to conclude that not having children results in less harm than having them. So to go on to have children anyways is irresponsible and immoral. Is the argument. — khaled

Well, this being the AN argument, my argument is that life is far more important than a mere accounting of harm and joy, and that its complexity is beyond our capacity to predict. You cannot know in advance the amount of joy and harm a person will create in this world, you cannot even compute it post facto.

Were the lives of Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Emmanuel Kant and Alexander Fleming overall positive or negative? Did they generate more harm than joy? Even God doesn't know that.

That I need food or I’ll die. So I’m going to go buy it. — khaled

You have less harmful alternatives than driving a car: you could go shopping by foot or bicycle; you could order your groceries on the internet; heck, you could grow your own food. You could live as a hermit and eat grasshoppers. It may be less harmful than what you do now to procure your food, less convenient too though...

Moreover, you could assess the food you buy to make sure its production, processing, storage and transportation don't involve too high a health, social or environmental cost for you as well as for this and future generations to come... You could calculate the harm done or avoided by eating vegan, shopping local, buying only fair trade or organic, etc. etc. etc. Most people do a tiny little bit of that here or there, some people more than others, but most of us don't agonize over it. We do what seems right, and reasonably convenient.

Not everybody can buy all organic food, so we buy stuff that has pesticide residues in them, pesticides that are basically nerve gases and other niceties killing insects who happen to share a lot of our own biology... These pesticides are carcinogenetic but the dose is low so we consume them, and serve them to others. We take risks about other people's lives, all the time, without ever calculating them because it's impossible to do so accurately. We just figure it's gona be okay.

So all this talk about not risking it when it's about other people? It's BS. You and I do it all the time. Because we want a life too, and living involves appropriating and consuming stuff. It involves taking decisions with insufficient information. It involves taking the risk of harming others. And yet we go on living. Not many of us become hermits either.

But I can reasonably guess that I won't. The odds of this happening are so slim that the harm I bring to myself by not going to the store and doing that shopping is probably greater. — khaled

Key word: probably. What justifies taking the risk?

Again, we don't take risks with others unless the consequences of not doing so are worse.

How do you know what consequences you acts will have? You make a probability calculation?

If you can take chances with the lives of others because you need to do some shopping, you can take chances with having kids because you need kids.

In all these cases NOT doing these things is more harmful. That's why we do them. — khaled

That's not a fact. You don't know for sure when you take the wheel to go do some shopping, that you will not kill a dozen people in some horrible accident. People take chances with their life and the lives of others all the time.

. I am also grateful to be alive. — khaled

As would your kids, most probably...

What's your reaction to reading this: "We'll rip his eyes out and if he doesn't like it he can just kill himself". There is nothing that cannot be justified by this "argument". — khaled

My reaction -- as already posted -- is that destroying somebody's eyesight is an act of violence, of life destruction. It is not comparable to act that affirms life, it's the opposite.

Suicide is only a bad thing if life is conceived as inherently good (as I do).
— Olivier5

False. It is also a bad thing if death is conceived as bad. I never understood what "life is inherently good" even means. — khaled

Death is generally considered a bad thing because life is generally considered a good thing. Death if just the end of life. If life had no inherent positive value, why would death have any inherent negative value?

But if you truly disagree with that, if you can put the life of a future child in a balance and conclude it's not worth living, why can't you apply the same logic to your own life?
— Olivier5

For the same reason that I would not press the button for someone else even if I would press it for myself. It is irresponsible. Or so the argument goes. Because there is (supposedly) a safer alternative. — khaled

You misunderstood my argument. I am asking an hypothetical AN -- got it that you're not an AN anymore -- to do to herself what she does to others, not vice versa. More precisely, I am asking why she cannot apply to her own life the same analysis she applies to a hypothetical child. Certainly that is a reasonable demand.

IF an AN argues that the hypothetical life of a hypothetical child entails risks that are too great to take, why can't the same AN proponent conclude that her own life entails risks that are too great to take?

So if a demon told this hypothetical AN that he had the power to make her disappear in an instant, would she take the offer, or would she try and stick around a little longer? I bet the latter, for most. And this points to a logical contradiction, a fundamental dishonesty. Do as I say, not as I do.

You say that one IS MORALLY ENTITLED take a risk with one's own life, and I agree. I'm not saying AN are not morally entitled to live, God forbid. I am saying that all the AN proponents I know cherish their own life, and hold on to it hard enough. They'll keep living for as long as they can, and that says something about the REAL value they attach to life. They prefer it to the alternative, by far. They take all these risks in a heartbeat, without even thinking, and would not consider ending the game before the bitter end. They like this world of grief quite a lot, often, but they are not sure they are morally entitled to bring a new person into it.

My guess is that a hypothetical, yet unborn child, would most certainly feel exactly as this hypothetical AN proponent (and you and I) do about life. It would feel grateful to be alive, given the chance. Cause it's better to take chances than to have no chance at all.

It's more like "You shouldn't take the risk of harming others but do whatever with yourself". This is common sense. For example: If there is a button that has a 98% chance of giving you 1000 dollars and a 2% chance of killing you, is pressing it for yourself wrong? No, if you see the odds are worth it go ahead, none of my business. Is pressing it for others wrong? Absolutely. Because there is an almost perfectly harmless alternative called "Not pressing the button" — khaled

And yet we take decisions that affect the life of others all the time. You do it when you drive a car, you do it when you wear a mask in public (or not), when you teach others, when you take decisions for a collective (e.g. a general deciding to attack or something). It's called taking responsibility. I don't see it as always morally bad.

When I was a kid, one of the first philosophical idea that came to mind was: I could have been born elsewhere, in a different country, time, background... Then I realized that, had this been the case I would not be me, but somebody else, so the thought morphed into: I could not have been born; the world would just exist without me. And such a thought led me to a sense of gratefulness for being alive, for existing. And I haven't lived a blessed life but I'm still grateful my parents took this decision for me (or didn't, I mean my mother wasn't taking the pill back then, but that too was her decision I guess).

Your first argument against AN is basically "If you don't like it kill yourself". — khaled

You never responded to this argument though. Suicide is only a bad thing if life is conceived as inherently good (as I do). But if you truly disagree with that, if you can put the life of a future child in a balance and conclude it's not worth living, why can't you apply the same logic to your own life? What so wrong about it? And why is that such a horrible horrible argument, pray tell?

Your own shock at the suicide argument only proves that you agree that life has inherent value, and should not be weighted in a purely utilitarian way. To assess the value of life in terms of potential harm and non-harm like you guys do here is to belittle life, to show contempt to it.

Really it would be better if you just read the thread before rehashing the arguments from pages back. We don't need to go over them all again, the argument has very much moved on. — Isaac

If you don't find my posts of value, simply don't respond to them. Simplify your life. The reason I'm insisting is I don't think very highly of your intelligence. You could have missed something in your exploration of these matters. As I know you, you probably did.

The argument presented is that once living you may have reasons to take those later risks (the things you actually know that you're actively enjoying) whereas the potential child is not currently enjoying anything and so cannot be presumed to have any reasons of their own to take the risks associated with that enjoyment. — Isaac

These reasons might evaporate tomorrow. The people and things you like may be taken away from you. These reasons to love life may become reasons to hate it. Yet you and I are ready to take that risk. You and I prefer pain to inexistence. At least in some measure, and that says something about life and pain.

A life without pain is not a fancy of the imagination. It's doable: it's what you get when you take large amounts of morphine, and it can kill you. Pain exists for a reason: to keep us alive. Pain is 'pro-life'. It's not the definition of "morally wrong". It's an incentive to live better, and thus it's the price to pay to live. Total quietness = death.

We all know about this equation, and we all go by it when we chose to continue living a life of dreads and boredom and pain, in the hope it will get better. Life is better than the alternative, most of times. And there's no life without pain.

So the whole utilitarian idea of assessing the value of life based on pain and pleasure is misconceived, because pain and pleasure are an incentive system to try and make life better. It is just an indicator, a compass. You break your compass at your own risk.

Put in this (IMO biologically correct) framework, the fundamental idea of AN is absurd and contradicted by their own life choices. This idea is that, because any hypothetical child will be born with a (useful) pain compass, and it will be put to use during his life, therefore we have no right to give life to this child. Meanwhile we'll continue living, thank you very much!

Think about this a little bit more: just because life was bearable to you until now, it doesn't follow that it will stay that way. All the risks that may befall your child may still befall you in the future. Life is a bath which temperature keeps changing unpredictably.

False. They think life could be full of harm. Which is a fact. And it is wrong to bring in children because it risks them having a life full of harm, and there is a non-risky alternative (supposedly).... — khaled

If life could be full of harms, and if that risk justifies not giving life to a child, why should the lives of AN be an exception? Why should they opt to live, when "life could be full of harm"?

"Do as I say, don't do as I do. Children can't take the risk of living but I can."

Because they think that life is full of harm, that's why. They think it is better for a child not to be, and therefore, if they were presented with the possibility of erasing their own life (without harm), they should take it.

Yet I predict they won't. Because IMO their beef is not really philosophical. It's about their own personal fear of having kids, which is rationalized into some philosophical blah or another as a protection.

What is your position on suicide? If killing yourself prevents more suffering than it will cause, should you do so? — Pinprick

AN should be big suicide fans, in theory, but there's some unpleasantness about it. So let's remove the unpleasantness in this thought experiment:

One demon come to you and say: 'If you want I can erase you from this world. You won't feel anything. Your dear ones won't remember you and therefore they will not miss you at all". Would any AN here take the offer and chose inexistence over existence? :-)

While I may not be AN anymore, the number of people I would think have no business having children is probably greater than most. I definitely still think people in general take the decision too lightly. — khaled

I hear you, but some decisions cannot realy be taken based on facts or argument. They require a leap of faith.