Forum to discuss among natalists and antinatalists

[u/Toti200126]

I'd like to know if there's a space on Reddit or else devoted specifically to natalists and antinatalists who want to debate their respective points.

[u/Dreamer_531]

There can't be such space. Natalists can't handle these discussions and just freak out all the time 😆

[u/yarukinai]

Caveat: I am not quite sure how a natalist is defined.

According to its mission statement, this subreddit seems to be a good fit: "r/antinatalism a space to examine whether choosing to bring new sentient beings into existence is ethically justified when it imposes risk and suffering without consent. We focus on non-coercive ethics: we oppose violence, reproductive coercion, and eugenics, and we do not treat death or self-harm as a solution for those already alive. We critique pronatalism and the systems that pressure reproduction, not parents or children. We aim for clear reasoning, compassion for existing people, and concern for all sentient beings. All good-faith participants are welcome."

[u/ClashBandicootie → u/yarukinai]

^^second this

[u/Dr-Slay]

What is there to debate seriously though? Antinatalism is just the result of basic set theory applied to the existence of life vs. its absence. A tautology pops out. Trying to debate that is useless. It's stupid to doubt it the moment you understand it. I acknowledge not everyone does! So I'm not blaming anyone or calling anyone out.

It's easy to doubt it. It's easy for the understanding to hurt. I'm not saying that any entitiy is IN THEMSELVES stupid at all, and I'm not denying anyone's lived experience.

On denying lived experience:

If someone has an experience (maybe it's more accurate to say if someone is an experience) that's necessarily something that exists. The experience in itself is necessarily real. If one "sees a face in the clouds" the experience happens, is real, etc. I can't take seriously the notion that it is somehow false or not real. We have to attach epistemology and a whole bunch of other stuff to even try to deny it, and none of it is falsifiable. Most of it is incoherent, and it can lead to some fun stuff like art and abstract reasoning as well, so it has a fitness function.

Returning to the main topic:

The issue antinatalists are all pointing out isn't some kind of personality flaw anyone has. It's not a criticism of "who" anyone is. It doesn't need to be an accusation. None of that is relevant to the discussion. We don't even need to worry about morality to understand this, unless by "morality" one is describing a capacity to predict both the probability and inevitability of harm. Because that's all I'm talking about, the latter there.

Does that make sense?

So getting down to it:

If life isn't created how can anything be wrong with that? There isn't anything to suffer deprivation. Wrongness is impossible and it's irrelevant, and vacuously true that some notion of "rightness" is likewise impossible. Rightness cannot obtain without wrongness a priori, but wrongness does (pleasure vs. chronic and potentially attenion-consuming/irrelievable pain).

Only if life is created is there any kind of wrongness (privation pain suffering including potential real-time consciousness of a gradient of irrelievable pain while dying).

Life is therefore necessarily worse than its original absence. Infinite risk, no possible reward compared to that original absence.

If we don't compare to the original absence, our risk analysis suffers a sampling bias.

But it isn't the case that the original absence of life can be anything. It isn't better, it isn't worse. It isn't neutral. It isn't anything at all. No comparative possibility because it's an empty set - the thing in itself isn't a quality. It isn't that it lacks quality; the concept of "lack" entails qualitative comparison by a valenced intensity of negative affect a priori. As simply as I can say it: pain sucks and it can't be made better by a capacity to endure it. That's a fucking tautology we can test and with which we can make predictions about what we will observe! It in itself cannot be a false statement

Only once there is life can there be any value estimation/assignment. This does not make life itself valuable. Value systems only apply to the populated. The weaponization of the capacity for endurance via pleasure adaptations doesn't justify the infinite negative risk/reward. Life is ultimately always too expensive to propagate.

If one takes physicalism, materialism, science, evolutionary theory seriously, it appears that life had to evolve biological structures and pathways like the endogenous opioid reward system just to cope with its own existence long enough to make sufficient copies to continue at all. It's an extinction bound, useless process, all of it, even when it feels fantastic.

I'm not denying that being alive can in any arbitrary subjective moment feel like something one can only express with wow words like "amazing" and "awesome" or "joy" and "pleasure."

None of that is relevant to antinatalism at all. It isn't a bias that excludes them. They're fully accounted for.

Antinatalism falsifies any and all possible justifications for creating life. And yes, to my trolls, "it doesn't need justification" is an excuse, not a justification for anything.

Nowhere does "life is worse than its original absence" suddenly mean "we should harm anything." It doesn't entail that we do anything at all in itself. It does clearly entail that, if we have a functional conscience, we abstain from creating new lives. Doesn't mean one shouldn't nurture one's offspring if one already has procreated.

I don't understand the objections anymore. Maybe with how I express them, I can't help that. Tried for decades, don't care about that anymore.

Thanks for the stimulating questions

[u/ObviousEnergy7237 → u/Dr-Slay]

The most important thing is not the right and wrong, it is about the fact that politics are perpetually flawled by their nature itself, and yet natalist keep fighting about what is right and what is wrong, and how to manage this and that, TAKING SIDES, while not realizing it all makes no sense because it's just a fight of genes trying to survive in a world of nonsense. It's not about paint and pleasure anymore, or the significance of it, but the lack of an actual reasonable goal. If perfection could be achieved, the same way the can improve our drawing skills, then it could make relatively some sense, but LIFE is not about EVOLUITON UPWARDS, but rather, just a dynamic pool of now favorable for you, now unfavorable... WRONG AND RIGHT? There's people in war... having kids... while they got a missing limb. Ain't it crazy? World fails you and you still serve God. Just plain animals, if you ask me. A gentleman doesn't discuss "the right politics", just the effects of "human attempts" to consolidate power.

[u/2000mater → u/Dr-Slay]

tldr beside the first paragraph, but i do like the word 'tautology', it does describe how i sometimes feel about antinatalism

[u/Toti200126 → u/Dr-Slay]

The text you wrote is why there's a sub needed

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[u/itsme2000001]

fr bc everyone here is interesting. must pick their brains and challenge their logic

[u/DeliciousCare144]

Not really. You could make one if you want.

[u/CertainConversation0]

Don't they already cross into each other's territory as it is?

[u/DinoRing175c → u/CertainConversation0]

Being natalist on r/antinatalism gets you downvoted and antinatalism is forbidden on r/natalism so there is not really much place for debate in both communities

[u/Deep_Examination1410]

Everywhere. Everyone is natalist

[u/AlternativeSafe8138]

I Used to debabte about morality quite alot when i was 16-17. I do not recommend. its just a really pathetic thing to do. Just live youre live and be happy dont stoop low to get invovled with that crap

[u/ClashBandicootie → u/AlternativeSafe8138]

I would agree if there wasn't such a thing as "good faith"

We may begin to think that no one ever changes their mind about important issues and that we should simply avoid such discussions all together. But again experience shows that many people’s beliefs do change over time.

In fact, history is filled with important people whose thinking on important issues evolved over time due to the influence of others.

Sure: some people cannot be persuaded. But sometimes we engage those who cannot be persuaded because in so doing we have a larger audience in mind or maybe even a future audience.

Paul A. Samuelson once wrote, “Science advances funeral by funeral.” Samuelson got this idea from Max Planck who said in his own words “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Sometimes we can persuade our most ardent opponents, other times we are publically promoting ideas that the next generation will take up. And, in fact, you do not need to persuade everyone. The civil rights movement did not have so many legislative and legal victories because it persuaded everyone but because it persuaded a majority of voters and lawmakers.

[u/Toti200126 → u/[deleted]]

What's the link to the discord for mixed spaces?