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Why does the suffering of others matter to me in this though experiment? Why should I care that my children will die eventually, or how they will die? I mean, that's a value judgement rooted in a utilitarian sort of calculation, but if the assertion is that the ultimate calculation that the continuation of human life is not a goal, then why should I care about minimizing suffering? Why shouldn't I reproduce for my own entertainment? It just seems to me that this attempt to logic out whether life is "worth it" starts from an apriori emotional judgement of empathy and a desire to avoid suffering, but why should we accept those as starting points if we're trying to argue that things like love or the preservation of culture or anything outside of a purely utilitarian individual suffering metric don't matter? Why shouldn't I adopt hard solipsism and live my life in hedonistic excess at the deliberate expense of others if my moral calculation is that human life is valueless? Who decided that the suffering of others should matter to me, other than the culture that apparently erred in allowing me to exist at all? To be clear, my personal viewpoint is that even with suffering and an eventual death, the experience of life is inherently superior to non-existence. I can't really logic that out, because by definition you can't experience non-existence, but I sort of accept it as a baseline for my morality, upon which I can add the minimization of suffering and the promotion of development of potential as things that enhance human existence. But I find that a lot of these though experiments contain implicit value judgements that predispose them to the conclusion the asker is leaning towards anyway.
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Apr 3, 2021 23:24
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Where does the idea that suffering should be avoided at all costs come from? Why does that calculation, literally born out of chemical triggers in a brain optimized for preserving life functions, deserve to be considered inherently true? If I state that the drive to reproduce, which is rooted in the same chemical/biological structures as "suffering" matters more, couldn't I argue that not reproducing is inherently immoral? E: I'm saying this because the argument is that the experience of suffering itself, not the memory of it, not the negative effects on the organism in question, is what we are calculating things off of. But why? Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 00:06
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OwlFancier posted:because when I experience suffering I don't like it and if it happens a lot it makes me want to die, op. So we use your subjective experience as the basis for morality? I also do not like to suffer, but my drive to keep existing is strong, after a suicide attempt earlier in my life. Just to lay it all out there. If I state that my fear of non-existence makes me not want to die yet (even as I know that I will eventually, but I keep wanting to experience things now), why is worth less in a dispassionate moral calculation than your desire to die. Granted, maybe I'll feel differently later in life, I don't know. Like you, all I have is my subjective mental state now. But, you yourself have argued that that's not something you can base a moral calculation on. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 00:21
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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! Why is that bias wrong? I think that the good parts of my life outweigh the negatives. You say this is because of a bias built into my brain by evolution. Why should I trust you over that bias?
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Apr 4, 2021 00:24
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E; you know what. Never mind.
Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 00:31
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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. NikkolasKing posted: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. 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 aren't plenty of good reasons 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. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 15:13
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NikkolasKing posted: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. Like you, I also do not intend to have children, but I will say that talking to people in indigenous movements (First Nations/Inuit/Metis is Canada in my case), I have learned to appreciate how choosing to have children and trying to ensure that continuity is itself an act of resistance for many, many people across the planet. And i've seen that dismissed out of hand by, let's face it, mostly white philosopher types who have decided that their moral outlook is the only possible one. There's also the question of what counts as suffering, that's inherent in the AI discussion too. Tardigrades have a neuronal network with a clearly defined brain! Does that mean that I, every time I boil water from an unflitered source, like when I'm camping, create enormous waves of pain for the microscopic life? Are our water treatment plants torture factories? It can't just be all negative stimulus, because I don't think anyone here would argue that microorganisms moving away from negative chemical/temperature stimulus would count as suffering. But then, is it a complexity thing? If so, at what threshold? who decides? This isn't to argue that there should be no limits, or that animals don't feel pain. The point is that suffering reduction is rooted in human morality and is based on human value judgements. It is inescapably linked to culture and society, and positing a valuation of pain and pleasure outside of that is, yes, wrongheaded and really solipsistic. It assumes the person's subjective experience (since really, that's the only thing you have to go on in terms of understanding how other being experience suffering) can be read as universal truth. E: Actually, here's a fun thought experiment. Is it morally right to allow a pregnant woman to starve to death, knowing that you are sparing the child a lifetime of suffering? In a pure utilitarian calculus sense, if you do believe that by definition suffering is assymetric to pleasure, then I don't see how you could argue that your moral obligation wouldn't be to do nothing and allow it to happen. In both cases, no action is required from you to do the moral thing. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 16:12
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Konomex posted:But is suffering wrong? Pain is an important tool to avoid harm. Creating a creature, biological or mechanical that can't suffer means it will harm itself, and rather quickly. Look at children who are genetically incapable of feeling pain, they come pretty close to killing themselves accidentally unless constantly watched. Suffering is a tool through which we can extend our lives. I guess the question is whether suffering is just any stimulus that the experiencer would classify as negative. Machine Learning uses that right now, but I'm not sure you would argue that deep dream neural nets are suffering when they are optimize away from something. I think you'd have to nail down how you even determine if an artificial lifeform is sapient before being able to determine if it's "suffering". But on a broader level I think your point stands. Any AI will have to have negative and positive valuations of things to function, so it the very act of giving it things it wants to avoid tantamount to causing suffering? If we program a little mars rover with a true AI and teach it to avoid shadows so it can keep charged, do the AI suffer if it needs to go through shadows? Does it experience less insolation on its solar panels as a type of suffering? Or is an organic sensation of pain required to meet the definition? Before you even get into programming an AI with existential questions or anything like that, it seems like there are basic questions as to what constitutes pain or suffering that need to be answered.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:27
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OwlFancier posted:If you believe life must be full of bad things in order to have a hope of being "good" overall then it seems smarter to simply not create it in the first place. They didn't say full of bad things, just that bad things are a thing that this hypothetical life could experience. Why are you equating the mere existence of negative qualia as meaning that this lifeform will experience it as the majority of its existence?
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Apr 6, 2021 18:46
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OwlFancier posted:I doubt your ability to ensure that bad experiences are doled out "fairly", the world is full of bad experiences and they just happen to people without thought as to whether they "deserve" it, if anything our society encourages stratification into groups that have all the bad experiences and groups of people who have none and are apparently also miserable about that fact. Don't move the goalposts. No one said anything about a fair distribution of negative qualia, or the idea of deserving it. The question is why the existence of suffering as a possibility is inherently bad, which is what you seem to be arguing. The question is whether creating a lifeform that can experience negative qualia (suffering) is inherently immoral. Hell, this is explicitly an AI lifeform we are talking about here, so the inputs are entirely controlled by us. Are you saying that if I could guarantee that at least 51% of this AI's experiences are pleasurable, then creating it is not immoral? Because your entire argument in this thread has been that suffering outweights pleasure axiomatically. If that's not your argument, then you have none.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:16
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OwlFancier posted:I was talking about actual humans that live on earth right now. No you weren't, but whatever. Do you still maintain that it is impossible for any individual human to experience a "good" life because they will have suffering it it? That's different that an argument about the fair distribution of suffering in society. E: The state of the world can be a reason you choose not to have a child. But that is different than arguing that any reproduction is axiomatically immoral because the new life will experience suffering. One of these is a personal choice, the other is a philosophical statement. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 20:22
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OwlFancier posted:I have no idea, I haven't sat down and done a bunch of testing with some method of objectively measuring the experiences of others to determine whether or not the externally induced suffering/internally created suffering dichotomy can ever average out to a point that is "good". Unhappiness and suffering are as chemically induced as happiness is. You are just as programmed to view negative qualia as "bad" as you are to desire to reproduce. They all come from the same place. Evolution determined that you would not like getting burned, or that you would mourn loved ones who die. The reasons why are to optimize for particular survival strategies. So what makes the existence of suffering inherently more important to consider as the existence of happiness? I personally don't think a hedonistic-utilitarian calculus of a life is a good way to determine it's value or worth, but that's basically the only way you can do it if you take as a premise that the very existence of suffering is a problem. We can work to minimize suffering in humans (and other lifeforms) while not accepting the idea that a total absence of suffering as a desirable outcome, especially if it would entail the absense of sentience at all. E: I feel like there's almost a dualist component to these arguments, where bad things exist inherently apart from organisms, but good things are just our grey matter tricking itself. It actually feels more like the black-white thinking of a depressive brain than anything else. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 20:35
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OwlFancier posted:We can also not start from the axiomatic assumption that life has a purpose for existing or that its existence is an unquestionable good or necessity, and if I do that I struggle to construct a justification for why it should exist, the fact that it does exist doesn't signify one way or the other, I can entirely acknowledge that life does exist and the reason it exists is because it is programmed to continue to exist, but that it has no inherent concern for its own actual experiential wellbeing. Why is it flawed? How did you "deduce" that suffering is something you should take into account? Did it involve an emotional element? If so, why should you trust that deduction more than a desire to procreate? What about existence as its own end, that life existing is all the purpose required? What makes your conclusion more logical than mine? E: The logical leap that all nihilists and antinatalists make is that because life has no purpose, it should not exist. But why is that the case? Who decided that? Where does that premise come from? There's always an emotional core to these ideas that sits unexamined, because that inherently entails subjectivity and it means you can't make universal pronouncements anymore. All it takes to refute the argument then is saying that I value existence. That's why there's this reach for "logic" and "objectivity", but the conclusions are built on the same emotional sand that they are trying desperately to pretend they have superseeded. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 20:50
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OwlFancier posted:Most of that is obviously impossible to answer because you're just asking how I know anything maaaaan, but specifically the argument that "existence is its own end" appears to just be a restatement of the, again, seemingly axiomatic belief that existence is necessary and/or good, which I already said does not appear to me to be a thing derived from observation, I can't argue with something that you take as the premise of all subsequent arguments. I'm saying that all you have to go on is your own experience of existence, which means that if someone else tells you that they think their life is worth living, you can't argue that "well actually, you're just deluding yourself because your meatbrain has programmed you to value living". Your arguments assume that you are a neutral observer, and that your conclusions have general applicability, but I'm arguing that they don't, and that your assessment is just as rooted in the flawed biological programming you claim to have "deduced" your way out of.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:58
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How about people try to answer my though experiment? - You believe that reproducing creates infinite pain, through the organism itself, the damage it will do, or the other organisms it will create - You see a pregnant woman starving in front of you, you have food that could save her - The moral choice, given the premise, is to let her starve, because that will cause less pain than the alternative - Do you agree? If not, why not? E: In fact, it doesn't even have to be starvation, which is to be fair a bad way to go. As an alternative, you see that a man is about to shoot her in the brain, giving her a relatively quick and painless death, but you know you have time to push her out of the way. The moral thing is to let her be shot, given the premise. Do you agree? Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 20:10
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OwlFancier posted:I did already point out that killing individual, or even quite a lot of people, doesn't really impact the preponderance of life in general, whereas technology and social atttitudes seemingly can, quite effectively. That's not the point. The point is whether you assume as a given that pain/suffering is the metric to determine the value (or valuelessness) of life. If you wouldn't kill the woman, than the arbitrary suffering metric you've chosen to judge not only your, but all other human's choice of reproduction, is inconsistent. My argument is that reproduction can't be reduced to a utilitarian calculus, and that (like my previous example of indigenous groups choosing to maintain their culture via reproduction in the face of oppresion) the moral calculus is complex and context based. Your retort is basically saying that since we can't end all suffering immediately, there's no point in ending it on a smaller scale. But again, that's because you've chosen to define life solely in terms of suffering, and define suffering minimization as the goal. This is pretty basic ethical philoshophy stuff. If you can't defend the core premise you're working from, the method you choose to execute it is irrelevant. Josef bugman posted:Can I ask why? We moralise most of the things that we do, and questioning why things are "like that" is a tad important. There are probably wasy to do it but for some reason whenever this question comes up on the internet, grognards come out of the woodwork to declare human life is intrinsically valueless and abloobloobloo nihilism. Unless you can agree on some core premises, ie. that life, human or otherwise, has value, then there's no point in debating because the positions are fundamentally irreconsilable. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 21:38
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OwlFancier posted:You aren't ending it on a small scale, I already said that killing people is bad because it just creates more suffering and does not appear to actually change the number of humans in the long run. If all human lives are of more or less equal value, which I think they are, then you achieve nothing by killing people, and killing people en masse usually leads to, and requires, extra lovely societies that people will be born into so I think you're actually just making things worse. How does it create more suffering? The suffering from the death is finite (assume she has no family or close friends) are your premise is that the potential suffering is infinite. This isn't a social policy, it's purely the outcome of your argument that a lives always amount to suffering. You're avoiding the question. You personally choosing not to have children will have the same effect, and unless you are planning to collapse the vaccuum and annhilate the unvierse personally, your actions will have exactly the same effect on the sum total of life in existence. E: A woman choosing to have a child is immoral, because that creates a lifetime of suffering for the child, etc. The suffering the woman feels from not being able to have child (which is significant) does not matter in this moral calculus. I choose to kill a pregnant woman. This is immoral because it causes suffering on a small finite scale, even though the suffering I prevented was infinite. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 21:51
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Josef bugman posted:
Not if you start from fudamentally opposed premises, which is what I'm arguing is happening in this thread. The only way out is for one side to be wrong or proven to be inconsistent in some way. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm not the one who stated that people are wrong/deluded to judge their own lives as on the balance good (in all cases!), or the one to declare that wanting to have kids is always selfish and immoral. If you're going to walk in with those premised, then defend them when people challenge you. Josef bugman posted:Also, when does nihilism become the correct response to things? Never? Why does it have to the correct response to something? If you are a nihilist, you hold other views of existence as being inherently incorrect. True nihilism doesn't recognize context as making other viewpoints valid, so why should it be ever be considered correct? Josef bugman posted:This doesn't actually answer anyones concerns though. The fact that suffering exists is bad, and it should be stopped. To say that "oh it's everywhere so why do anything" is far more churlish than to go "perhaps there are ways to not approach things". Do you believe that an indigenous woman choosing to have a child to resist colonial domination and pass on her culture is doing something selfish and immoral, yes or no? Don't just pass judgement in the abstract, tell me exactly why you get to decide the value of human life, why you are correct in a nihilistic viewpoint and she is wrong. We are talking about the inherent morality of reproduction, not individual contexts. Either it is inherently moral or immoral. If that's not the premise, if reproduction is value neutral without considering other factors, then we aren't debating the inherent ethics of it and the situation will vary wildly person to person, or organism to organism, and you won't be able to argue that life is inherently flawed and should be encouraged to end. E: A woman choosing to have a child is immoral, because that creates a lifetime of suffering for the child, etc. The suffering the woman feels from not being able to have child (which is significant) does not matter in this moral calculus. I choose to kill a pregnant woman. This is immoral because it causes suffering on a small finite scale, even though the suffering I prevented was infinite. Do you agree that this is a contradictory set of statements, Josef bugman? Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 22:56
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Josef bugman posted:Something can be bad for you to do, but you cannot understand other people doing though. For instance, I'd consider that someone who has lived a less advantaged life than my own is permitted some different and more morally flexible way of living life. In the same vein we should strive to uphold a higher standard for those among us who are more advantaged. Ok so without context actions are value neutral. So you're not actually arguing for nihilism at all then. You just don't understand moral philosophy. E: Or you're arguing that the action is still immoral, but condescendingly allowing more unfortunate people to keep being deluded, while you, educated and advantaged, know the truth. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 23:07
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Josef bugman posted:I can hold that a lot of points of view are incorrect for myself, or for any number of reasons. If you hold that life has value, or inherent meaning to it then that's great, but it is not obvious. And if you hold a position of course you will believe that other views are incorrect, but that could be due to any number of things, differing points of view need not be completely at odds. So you agree with me entirely then. E: My entire point is that you can't declare a categorical statement like "life brings suffering, suffering is bad, therefore reproduction is immoral", which is the argument at hand. My whole point is you can't judge others for choosing to reproduce because of your personal viewpoint on suffering. Therefore, reproduction cannot be inherently immoral, it is value neutral and context dependent. Versus the other viewpoint posited in this thread (the nihilistic one), which is that the woman in that example is acting immorally by choosing to bring a life into the world, no matter how she rationalized it. That is the core of this argument. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 00:05
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Josef bugman posted:I have no idea. To put it bluntly your examples don't make things simpler and I find your writing style hard to parse. I believe that is my error not yours though. That's not the position OwlFancier has. His stated belief is that people who think life has value are deluding themselves/"programmed by biology" to believe something false. That is the problem with this thread. I don't think his value system is universal, and I think people can have valid reasons to have children even if I do not share them. That is why I argue against his point.
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Apr 9, 2021 00:13
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Josef bugman posted:I would say that life is suffering, but I can more than understand why people have kids. You can still go "this may not be the best decision" whilst doing all you can to attempt to live differently to others. There is a difference between the silly buggers doing things like yelling "crotchspawn" and people who just plain don't have kids. Like the difference between PETA and actual vegans for instance. That's why my original though experiment allows a woman to die by non-action. In both cases, the argument is you are preventing suffering by choosing not to do something. Why is it moral in one case and not in the other? I'm asking a pure moral philosophy question. What is the moral system that says that choosing not to have kids is moral, but choosing not to save a pregnant woman is immoral, if you are basing the argument on lessening human suffering? I'm positing a situation where the lessening of "suffering" being caused is essentially identical, especially against the enormity of the world and all the people in it. If you really believe that by definition a human life is always more suffering than good, then you are sparing the woman and her child that suffering, which under the moral system posited is a net good, in fact a bigger net good then just not having children. Josef bugman posted:Do you think that it is impossible to respect people who you believe may be wrong about something? Lots of things we believe are false/fake though? I believe in justice, but I wouldn't be able to find it if you melted the universe down now would I? We are all stuck inside of our own contexts that are, mainly, informed by our societies and our biology. "I believe x", "well I believe y, and furthermore I believe you are deluded to believe x", "let's agree to disagree then" OwlFancier posted:That is how beliefs work, they are generally applied universally by the person who holds them, including your apparent belief in refraining from thinking about the actions of others. I don't believe in refraining from judging the actions of others, I'm questioning the moral framework and precepts you use to come to your conclusion. I am saying that your argument is reductive and that there are other things besides the net utility calculation you seem to be using, and that those reasons for living are valid alternatives to your framework.
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Apr 9, 2021 01:04
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It's actualy women in the labour force that causes a fall in childbearing, with a stabilization rate of around 1.7 currently. Financial crisis as well as women integrating into the economy due to development, which is an example of both societies "getting better" and "getting worse", both have caused dips in the birth rate in the past. If you were to lower the opportunity cost for having kids, say by switching to a true socialist system that didn't disincentivize reproduction, births would likely increase. Cuba as an example: Socialist system, but sluggish economy due to embargo and work force being predominantly women of child bearing age depresses births. Sweden on the other hand, was going up in birth rates until the financial crisis and has not recovered. The idea that development or "improved" societies automatically favours smaller families is actually more a capitalist talking point then it is truth. Vietnam: Birthrate stabilizing around replacement rate. Better get the reeducators there now.
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Apr 9, 2021 04:48
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Strawberry Pyramid posted:Why do people think declining birth rate is a bad thing? Yeah, the current cause might suck, but what if we just improve material conditions while instating policies to disincentivise births? I mena, births below replacement aren't good longterm for society or the species. Replacement rate is good though. On a moral level though, why should people not have more kids if they want them. If you remove economic coersion from society and found that birth rates trended up, what do you do? Coerce people in some other way not to have kids? How is that more just?
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Apr 9, 2021 05:08
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Soul_ posted:No, there is a negative correlation between improved living conditions and reduced birth rate even if you control for the variables you mentioned of economic uncertainty and female labor force participation. The remaining factors are probably contraception (big one), the decreased likelihood of your children dying so you can be confident some will survive even if you have fewer, and child labor being illegal so they don't contribute economically. Going down from lots of kids to around replacement rate sure, but there's a reason places with the lowest birthrates in the world, like Hong Kong, are also the msot economically unequal and where people face the most economic pressure. Women choose to have less kids on average as living conditions improve, but forgoing reproduction entirely seems to correlate to different factors. Ditto delaying having kids until later in life.
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Apr 9, 2021 05:12
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woozy pawsies posted:I have cummed into the gaping pussy. The pussy is gaping from me blasting my fuckrod, aka dick, into the pussy hard. From this I will breed, logically. I have used philosophy to have my jizz dribble out of my cock, and while normally I would let it ooze into a toilet, or the shower, yet, because of an ethical and biological duty, I instead flick my dick, sending the last little droplet of cum that I had squeezed out, starting at the base of the shaft and smushing my urethra like a nearly empty toothepaste tube, onto the folds on the vagina. I will use my finger to push it further in, like a fleshy toothbrush, in hopes to help stimulate the vaginal walls and make sure the breeding takes place. This is only makes sense, mathematically. This is actually the perfect way to end the thread.
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Apr 9, 2021 05:16
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Soul_ posted:Because we are biological organisms, and "disincentivizing" births is like "disincentivizing" an infection by only taking half of your antibiotic course. All you're doing is causing evolution by artificial selection. No that's fair, and I don't think some sort of population management is beyond the bounds of acceptable. But that's for population management, not ending reproduction by improving society. If your goal is 0 births then improving society alone isn't going to work, and if that doesn't work and you have to resort to coercion it makes the whole argument that "I am against birth but I'm not going to force people to not breed" sort of nonsensical, doesn't it.
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Apr 9, 2021 05:22
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Strawberry Pyramid posted:A transhumanist would say it would be more moral to try and figure out immortality rather than continue to rely on perpetuating a cycle of non-consenual existence and death. Why would immortals not want kids? Seems like it might make things worse unless you also introduced some coersive population controls. Or maybe cytrans are sterile and you program them to never think of literally making a baby by programming a new little digital transhuman. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 05:23
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Josef bugman posted:I'm very sorry but this is weird as all hell. I think other people have covered it, but let me state again that I am not "pro-child" as a general rule. I'm just using the stated premise that Owlfancier provides, which is that life is by definition just prolongued suffering, and that we should want to minimize suffering, to draw logical conclusions. Owlfancier has tried to get around these conclusions, which are monstrous, by reframing the issue as a macro one and claiming that he can be both against reproduction as a general rule, and purely for improving human conditions. But, as people have stated, these two goals are directly contradictory! It can't be both! There's no room for a "different strokes for different folks" argument here, the stated logic that Owlfancier uses implies that at some point coercion will have to be used to minimize the suffering, which is the thing we should all want to do. That's the point of my hypotheticals, it's the point of debating at all. If Owlfancier at least owned up to the eventual consequences of what he's advocating, then the debate would be different. But he avoids having to face up to the uncomfortable truth of his premises by couching it in talks of what's "practical" because the real outcome would be monstrous. E: I knew the response to the preservation of animals was going to be "well it makes the world better for those idiots who keep breeding so let's save the animals", even though that can only have as an effect bringing more lifeforms in total into existence to suffer for the sake of others, and in the case of certain animals (like the kakapo, which has already been extirpated from it's normal range), we are by Owlfancier's logic just helping little suffering machines be born to no general useful effect for the biosphere. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 14:24
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Josef bugman posted:But those conclusions are do not seem to be logical, they seem like extrapolations taken to an absurd end point. His argument is that no human life is worth living. My hypothetical of letting a pregnant woman die is an exact replication of the scenario he has set up for himself, not creating new life and lessening suffering, but removing his excuse for not commiting suicide, which his own biologically programmed drive to live (that he says is a flaw that is hard to overcome). If he really believes what he believes, he should feel that he is sparing that woman and her child of suffering, so he should be comfortable saying that he would let her die. If he isn't, he needs to tell me how he reconciles that with his own stated premises. Josef bugman posted:Sure, but does that mean that life is worth living if we have to make up our own reason for it? The concept of "worth" is made up. If you're looking for some objective measure of life outside of human brains, I don't know what to tell you. Philosophy has dealt with epistomology and the problem of the need for foundational beliefs for millenia and hasn't come up with a solution yet. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 15:46
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DrSunshine posted:Actually, if you extend your hypothetical to possibly existing organisms, and assuming that the pregnant woman's offspring N has some probability P>0 of being able to procreate N+1 successors, it would mean that for every pregnant woman we allow to alive, we are allowing the possibility of coming into existence uncountable multitudes of future beings that could suffer, if we accept the premise of the nonexistence of non-negative hedonic values. To be clear Josef, the above is not an absurd conclusion if you accept categorically that life is suffering, and that suffering should be lessened. That's why I used the term categorical imperative before. Whether at small or large scales, the conclusion is the same, and it has nothing to do with hatred or "crotchspawn" or anything like that. if you come at this problem with the 2 foundational beliefs above (life is suffering, less suffering is good), then you come out with these conclusions. If these seem monstrous, then the problem is with the premise, not the conclusion. E: You could layer on "but people should get to make their own choices", but then your position isn't coherent. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 16:35
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Josef bugman posted:Why not? You could say that you believe in voluntary human extinction, right? That's equivalent to saying that you are fine with endless suffering. By choosing that course of action (or non-action!), you are immoral, becuase you are allowing suffering to perpetuate, which is the sole metric that matters under the precepts set out. That's the core of the problem. E: It's the why, the justification, that matters. your proposition is this - minimizing suffering is good (by extension, no suffering is the most desirable outcome) - life is suffering, therefore no life means no suffering So - the moral course of action is any action that limits life, and thereby limits suffering. (corollary: Any lifeform that thinks otherwise is just being deluded by biology, because their lives are suffering by definition) You add on - however, life has the right to choose to suffer, and the right to beget more suffering on life without the choice to consent. Therefore the moral course of action is no longer to minimize suffering, because you also can't violate autonomy/consent. So, now, you have a moral system with directly contradictory premises. Both actions that increase or decrease suffering are now moral based on either of these foundational beliefs. So it's incoherent. It's a cop-out because on some level you realize that the hypothetical suffering of abstract potential people isn't a reason to justify harming existing people now. But if you accept that, then you moral certitude goes away and you feel lost and powerless again, which was the real problem in the first place. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 17:30
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Josef bugman posted:To argue the point, and bear in mind I don't personally believe this: That doesn't solve the problem. If human life is built on exploitation, and minimizing suffering from exploitation is your goal, then you should still do all you can to end human life! It's only if you accept the idea of human life in and of itself as valuable, versus the abstract problem of suffering minimization, that you can come to the conclusion that it should be voluntary. E; if all lives are exploitative, why should you respect the autonomy of others. Unless you believe that say, an indigenous person in Brazil might be living a less or even possibly non-exploitative life, in which case, you've violated your core premise. E: This then comes into the question as to what counts as exploitation, and why it is immoral. Is arresting the life cycle of plants to eat them immoral? what about bacteria, or jellyfish? Or is it only neurons capable of pain that matter? Is exploitation immoral only if it's outside of a human defined "natural" cycle? Is a sea turtle acting immorally? or it it human reasoning capabilities, in which case, are children held to the same standard? Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 17:43
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Josef bugman posted:Again, in this example of things I don't believe but would like to poke at: So this isn't a moral framework. It's not questioning why you believe certain things are moral or immoral. It's just failing to live up to a moral framework you have accepted. Veganim is the core framework here, everything else in the above is irrevelant to defining morality from a vegan perspective. Josef bugman posted:As a separate point, why do you think human life has value? Because it exists and I personally value existing and good experiences. This is a foundational belief because it can't be derived from priors, like the idea that minimizing suffering is an ultimate good is also a foundational belief. These are irreconsilable. I know this. I'm just taking your stated premises to their logical conclusion. Josef bugman posted:Because that's up to them to decide? Again it seems like you are just coming back to the GK Chesterton point of "A suicide is the worst of men because he murderers the whole world", which seems daft to me. Why is it up to them to decide? If you accept the logic being presented, then letting them decide is an immoral act. It produced much more suffering. That's what I meant when I said that your premises are contradictory. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 17:55
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Josef bugman posted:Depends on where you draw the line for different people? Say you draw the line at hurting people or animals is probably a big part of it but I errr more on the side of people being being exploited is worse than animals being exploited. Say someone else thinks that even stopping plant life growth is inherently bad. I mean jains inherently value life, a foundational belief I can agree with, and the compromises they make come from trying to balance between the different instances of life they inherently value. So no, I don't think that's hypocritical. It would be if they claimed life had no value and the only thing that mattered was not allowing suffering thought! And the question is why do you believe that exploiting people is worse than animals. What is that based on, why is there a difference. It's not in the precepts Owlfancier gave, and as soon as you start introducing exceptions and compromises, then you have to define why one life suffering is better or worse than another, and hence you are admitting that life has a value! It is being used to determine the relative value between two types of suffering in your own example!
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Apr 9, 2021 18:06
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Josef bugman posted:In that instance, sure, I suspect that there are lots of people who ultimately hold beliefs yet do not live up to them, does that mean that the values are wrong? If you can't defend them, yes, they are wrong. I don't care if you don't live up to your framework, I care whether you actually understand what you are arguing. I mean, if your aregument is that "people believe what they believe man, and don't always live up to it", then you're basically just giving up on the idea of moral reasoning entirely. What's the point if we aren't going to examine the precepts built into belief systems? Josef bugman posted:Wait, hang on, can I ask for clarification quickly? Do you not believe that minimizing suffering is a good? I belive that life has inherent value, and that the dignity of human life in particular is what is most important. Suffering minimization is important to that goal, but since I value life existing, and the right of peoples and cultures to perpetuate themselves (which I include in my definition of dignity for human life), I would not place suffering minimization as an absolute moral good. So yes, we can minimize suffering, but that is subsidiary to valuing human life, which is the core foundational difference between me and Owlfancier. I just think my beliefs through, while he would rather rationalize the conclusions of his premises away. Josef bugman posted:Sure, but so is living? It's a less immoral act to go "people can decide for themselves if they find meaning from the world. I do not agree with them, but it is not up to me to decide that for others". It produces more eventual suffering, potentially. Why isn't it up for you to decide? Why does their autonomy have value if life itself doesn't, if suffering is all that matters. Where does that come from as a belief, and how does it interact or conflict with the categorical statement that life is bad because it is suffering? Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 18:11
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Llamadeus posted:I don't think OwlFancier's position is as inconsistent or poorly thought through as you're making it out to be, eg Still doesn't explain why they'd save a pregnat woman. Like I said, if they're going to argue that their choice not to have kids is inherently moral because suffering blah blah, that this is always the case, then why is it different when it's someone other than them at hand. What's the difference, given that life is only defined by suffering and nothing else about it matters? The net suffering decrease in both cases is negligible on grand scales, but letting the woman die spares her the pain of childbirth, so it's actually more moral than just not having kids. It's exactly equivalent, based on the moral calculations being presented. The Omincide button is a cop-out, because it's a scenario so far out there that it doesn't really apply or matter, even if it is the logical endpoint of their beliefs. Also they wimp out and don't commit, even in what you quoted. E: VVV Yeah fair enough, there's really no point in continuing this, and there are other ideas in this topic that would be worth discussing. Bowing out. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 18:26
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Gumball Gumption posted:Are you talking about the question "is it moral for me to reproduce?" or "is it moral to reproduce?". The first one is a very long discussion humanity has been having forever. The second one is psudo-intellectual nonsense because we have no choice about it and arguing otherwise is like demanding the tide move out. We can make individual decisions, we have no control over a species need to reproduce. He's arguing for moral relativism, he just doesn't seem to realize it.
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Apr 10, 2021 18:14
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Josef bugman posted:But, at least according to how Beelzebufo reasons we can't just "opt out" of moral reasoning. The moral imperitive matters more than the view of our own interior view of the world. Or, to be fair it "should" matter more. You can if you're a moral relativist, which is what you are arguing for. Your arguments are commiting you to a moral relativist stance, which is that morality is not a subject that can be generally reasoned and explored, but is dependent on the individual. That's a valid position, but it's not the absense of a position, and it's also not the position Owlfancier was arguing. To loop back to your Jain example, under moral relativism, you can say that it works for them, and you can't judge. But you could also interogate why you think Jainism is a correct moral path, the correct moral path, or not the correct moral path, by looking at their tenets and saying whether or not they agree with the moral reasoning you're using. Moral reasoning doesn't have to be deontological, and there is absolutely room for morality neutral actions. That is in fact my entire argument, that only individual context matters to reproduction, and that you cannot declare it as broadly a "good" or "bad" thing. It just is, and your personal situation determines the rightness or wrongness of it. Though I think you have a somewhat superficial understanding of Jainism, it's a complex religion that also has for instance, a somewhat explicit hierarchy of the genders in one of its major sects, which argues that women can't achieve liberation/enlightenment without being reborn as men first. Notably, that's also the sect that is the one that goes naked and tries to affect the world the least. The other makes a lot more compromises, including the inclusion of women under their monastic path. It actually sort of pararllels some of the more hardcore Christian sects that view women as inherently impure. I don't think when trying to understand (or judge) a set of tenets, religious or otherwise, you should just pick and choose the good sounding ones, because a lot of this stuff evolves together, and realizing the way it originates out of or creates other social and moral structures tells you a lot. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 20:14
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Josef bugman posted:Well what would the absence of a position be? I'm also worried about holding a moral relativist stance as it seems to bleed very easily into "being a shithead" sort of stance. There's not such thing beyond not participating in the debate at all. Even a totally nihilists "morality is irrelevant" stance is a position.
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Apr 10, 2021 20:28
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