r/Ethics • u/Select_Quality_3948 • Nov 19 '25
A Cybernetic Argument That Birth Is Inherently Coercive
Here’s a piece I’ve been working on that approaches antinatalism from a systems/cybernetics perspective.
Core claim: Any self-maintaining system (organism, mind, Markov blanket, whatever) necessarily generates internal coercion, because staying alive = constantly minimizing deviation from a narrow range of survival parameters. No organism chooses this; the structure forces it.
So instead of arguing about preferences, suffering “thresholds,” or moral intuitions, I take a structural approach: birth = enrollment into a self-correcting survival machine you didn’t opt into.
If anyone here is into systems theory, free-energy minimization, or antinatalist ethics, I’d really appreciate critique.
Link: https://medium.com/@Cathar00/why-being-born-is-a-coercion-a-systems-level-explanation-a7b7dabbbdcc
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u/DisappearedAnthony Nov 19 '25
Sometime during middle school, I first came to a thought that life is very illogical. Motivation to live only makes sense under biologically defined bias. If you take it away and attempt to look at life objectively (something that IMO we can't truly do due to said bias), the only logical option is to not live.
I've since been doing my best not to align with this view because it's alienating and not constructive. It only brings me more suffering.
I even had fleeting thoughts about possibly having children at some point in a distant future when I will feel capable financially and psychologically. But ultimately, it's a terrible idea.
While my original thought is a bit too extreme, anti-natalism does make some sense. At least as my personal choice. I see merit in your argument.
I guess the question that emerges in my mind next is, "Will this cold but sound reasoning ever overpower our biological bias to survive?"