Do you think reproducing is morally/logically/ethically wrong?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do you think reproducing is morally/logically/ethically wrong?

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

OwlFancier posted:

Because we are proposing creating more lives, and I think perhaps creating lives that might reasonably want to die but which are also terrified of dying, seems bad!

That sort of thing is also why I suspect there is a cognitive bias towards existing, your instinctive mind doesn't care about the quality of your life, it just screams at you not to die, which is quite consistent with an evolution that does not select for quality of life, only quantity.

There absolutely is
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211011912

quote:

The ability to anticipate is a hallmark of cognition. Inferences about what will occur in the future are critical to decision making, enabling us to prepare our actions so as to avoid harm and gain reward. Given the importance of these future projections, one might expect the brain to possess accurate, unbiased foresight. Humans, however, exhibit a pervasive and surprising bias: when it comes to predicting what will happen to us tomorrow, next week, or fifty years from now, we overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. For example, we underrate our chances of getting divorced, being in a car accident, or suffering from cancer. We also expect to live longer than objective measures would warrant, overestimate our success in the job market, and believe that our children will be especially talented. This phenomenon is known as the optimism bias, and it is one of the most consistent, prevalent, and robust biases documented in psychology and behavioral economics.

The reason Darwin's theory of evolution is so radical is that our brains are not evolved to give us truth, they are evolved to keep us existing. Even before Darwin, Schopenhauer noted this:

quote:

It is at this point that the biological side to Schopenhauer's argument becomes relevant. From the biological point of view, Schopenhauer reminds us, the human brain is simply "the one great tool" (WR II p .280) by means of which a relatively weak and defenceless animal has managed to survive in a competitive environment (ibid., d. WN pp.272-3, WR II pp. 204-6).What follows from this is that at least the everyday representation of the world generated by the human brain will be one that is calculated to promote survival rather than truth: the intellect, says Schopenhauer, is "thoroughly practical in tendency", a "medium of motives" designed for comprehending those ends on the attainment of which depends individual life and its propagation" but ''by no means intended to present the true absolutely real inner nature of these things in the consciousness of the knower" (WR IIpp .284-6).

But surely, it might be said, comprehending the "true nature" of things is the way to survive. Creatures who habitually get things wrong about the character of their environment have, in W.V. Quine's words, a pathetic but praiseworthy habit of dying out before reproducing their kind. Truth is a survival-promoting attribute.

Initially, at least, Schopenhauer's point seems to be the denial, not that truth is survival-promoting, but that all of it is. In practical life, he points out (d. also Chapter VII � 2), consciousness is schematised, etiolated. To the traveller in a hurry, for example, a bridge over the Rhine appears as little more than a dash intersecting with a stroke (WR II p.381). We tend, he continues, to categorise objects in terms of roles determined by human needs and purposes and hence notice only as much of their intrinsic character as is necessary to fitting them into those categories. The chess-player, for example, does not have the time to see in the chess-piece anything save what is necessary to knowing its role in the game (PP II p.69).

Schopenhauer's point here is absolutely correct. Truth is not, invariably, a survival-promoting attribute. Many truths are irrelevant to our practical concerns and need to be discarded from a manageable representation of the world. If they are not it becomes too cumbersome, too demanding in the time and energy required for its operation.

Appealing to nature will get us nowhere because all nature cares about is making us procreate and if we are all miserable babymaking machines, oh well. We're still making babies so it's a win.

I am pretty pessimistic guy and it gets so frustrating when folks, smart or dumb, have this kneejerk reaction to questioning the value of life. Try to be a doomer or something and everyone becomes Steven Pinker.

Life absolutely has its benefits and pleasures. The act of having a child is not intrinsically wrong or selfish even if you believe your child will invariably have more suffering in his life than not. Because life isn't all just about us or our "freedoms." Your child, whatever pains they might suffer, could grow up to help a lot of people. Or just a few people. There is value in that.

So I don't think it's immoral to have children but you need to have the correct perspective on life to actually ensure you and your children can do the best for yourselves and the world that you can. Understanding the intrinsic suffering of existence should make you more emphatic and altruistic, I think.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2021 14:35

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 07:19

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

Beelzebufo posted:

Why doesn't the perverse conclusion apply to suffering though? Should killing people, thereby preventing all the future suffering they and their theoretically infinite offspring could have endured, be the most moral action then? This has always been my problem with the David Benatar school of thought, it posits a categorical imperative in terms of creating life, but doesn't follow it through to its logical conclusion, if it took itself seriously. Instead, it's just more mealymouthed nihilism that allows the argument that not having kids is somehow a principled moral action, instead of a personal choice.

Optimism bias isn't what he Owlfancier said, in fact people have shown that his theory, that you remember things better than they were and lessen pain and suffering, is the opposite of true. He then, twisting himself into pretzels, goes against his original premise to state that "well that just adds extra suffering doesn't it", even though his original premise is that suffering exists seperate and indepedent from recollection of it by an organism, that it has an inherent value that should be minimized. But only by personally not having kids, not by mass murder.

Now, this is not to say there are plenty of good reasosn to not have kids, including the state of the world and your own genetics! But, if the core argument, which this thread seems to have started with, is that reproducing is ethically wrong intrinsically, then it all becomes suspect. There's also no room in any of these discussions for the idea of continuity of culture. Yes, no one is sad over potential people who could have been born but were never conceived, but people mourn the loss of their culture and the continuity of their traditions and ideas. That is, in a sense, a mourning of the potential offspring that could have been. But, with a hyperfocus on individual suffering, there's not way to even argue for that, because it doesn't come into the reductive moral calculus being posited as the premise. That's why this entire debate, every time it comes up, is stupid, because it lures in people with a nihilistic outlook/untreated depression and have them rehash the same stupid arguments over and over again.

So I agree with this. Most antinatalists I know, at least the philosophically trained ones, are Kantians. Kantian fixations on individuals, autonomy and inviolable rules are all wrongheaded ways of understanding people.

I don' t intend to ever have children because I just wouldn't be a good parent and I don't think I'll ever find a partner who wants a child. But I agree wholeheartedly that folks do value things more than pleasure and pain. In an odd way, antinatalism is sort of hedonistic, just in the opposite way most people think. It's so fixated on the eradication of pain it ignores the higher values most people abide by; that a lot of people would gladly endure pain to continue their culture or whatnot.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2021 15:51

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

Whether we wonder at the hand of the divine or at the random chance that created us so we could wonder, I think it's probably the most natural thing humans are capable of.

That feeling of wonder keeps us from falling into existential angst.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2021 22:18

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

I think the Buddha's First Noble Truth is pretty much undeniable. Suffering is not the total meaning of dukkha but the idea that:
we want things
we will never get most things we want which leads to frustration
and the pleasure of the things we do obtain is ephemeral because everything is

Is all pretty undeniable. As humans never stop desiring things and every single desire is unsatisfactory in some way, life is suffering. Just the other day I had somebody try to gotcha me on this, comparing a cancer patient to somebody who can't get their Starbucks coffee. No, not all suffering is the same but the frustration of our wants and desires is absolutely a form of suffering. This sort of idea is hardly unique to Buddhism, either.. Plenty of thinkers have understood it in human history.

Now, just because life is suffering doesn't mean we shouldn't create new life. There are things more important than pain and disappointment. I think this is where some posters in here are going astray. I agree with the premise sort of and object to the solution/conclusion, I guess.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2021 14:50

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

Mulva posted:

"Death is rad", says person that hasn't killed themselves yet.

I never really liked this supposed argument. Just because life sucks doesn't mean one should kill themselves - quite the contrary. It means you should stay alive and strive to alleviate the suffering of others.

# ¿ May 7, 2021 01:17

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 07:19

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

DrSunshine posted:

This is blindly accepting primitivst rhetoric and "Noble Savage" myths at face-value. Evidence shows that we evolved and are continuing to evolve since the wide-spread adoption of agriculture. You can see another example in the evolution of lactose tolerance, which wouldn't have happened prior to settled agriculture.

It's plainly unscientific to claim a state of "optimal evolution", because evolution is a constant process.

What about the "fact" we care most about people close to us because we're just not designed to operate in a globalized world order where we are connected to people on the other side of the planet? We naturally care most for our family or community above all else because of evolution and that's how humans were for most of our existence?

I'm honestly curious since I see this a lot but I know nothing about science.

# ¿ May 15, 2021 21:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do you think reproducing is morally/logically/ethically wrong?