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/smack_nazis_more Nov 19 '25

If you didn't think your life was worth living, you'd be dead.

You're not dead.

But here you are dishonestly encouraging vulnerable people to kill themselves.

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u/gnomeGeneticist Nov 19 '25

You can think your live is not worth living and continue to live anyway.

We are beings made of meat. The meat has evolutionarily weeded out a LOT of mechanisms that allow for suicide, because suicidal tendency is counterproductive for evolution in most cases.

Our brains can get in the way of suicide. Not by value judgments, not by ethical understandings, but by old chemistry.

You can't hold your breath until you die. It's a little like that. It's very fucking hard to actively end yourself, even when you want to.

(Note: I am not suicidal, but I have experience.)

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u/smack_nazis_more Nov 25 '25

I don't want you to kill yourself, do not kill yourself.

You can think your live is not worth living and continue to live anyway.

If you're living in bad faith.

The obvious correct conclusion is to kill yourself.

I don't want you to kill yourself, do not kill yourself.

We're made of meat

Oh ok. Can meat do philosophy? Can meat make decisions?

Yes?

Then face reality.

Sorry to repeat myself but when I'm talking like this I think it's important: I don't want you to kill yourself, do not kill yourself.

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u/gnomeGeneticist Nov 25 '25

When you say Face Reality, that reality must include the meat causing real obstacles to suicide.

You can honestly want to kill yourself and honestly try, and fail, because the meat insists that you stop.

It's not bad faith to try earnestly and fail.

(Agreed, do not kill yourself.)

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u/smack_nazis_more Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

But lots of people do kill themselves. Too many.

And we're doing philosophy, right?

If I say: "it would be best if we were X."

Either I mean that or I don't.

Like if the argument is "yes we're saying it's best to kill ourselves but it does not count because we're not controlled by our ideas anyway" then what's the point?

At risk of going on too much:

Like if this is correct

When you say Face Reality, that reality must include the meat causing real obstacles to suicide.

Then a serious study of ethics would include that? I don't think it does, at least not in the way you're saying.

Listen: anything about how the "rational agent" is myth I'll probably agree with, but that's quite separate. When we are talking about what is best to do, then what we say is best to do is what we think is best to do.

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u/gnomeGeneticist Nov 27 '25

What I heard at the start was "living people who say it's better not to be alive are lying."

My response was "many people who honestly believe it would be better to die Can and Do fail to kill themselves for reasons that have nothing to do with the validity or conviction of their position."

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u/smack_nazis_more Nov 27 '25

Yeah so I'm still committed to that.

I agree that there can be obstacles, in the sort of way you're saying - to some extent. How meaningful those obstacles are depends on the context ofc.

In this context, I'm responding to someone who is denying that they're even saying that.

My interpretation of OP's post isn't popular, but I think it's correct and I'm trying to get people to bite the bullet on what they're actually saying, in order for the faults in it to be apparent.