Friday, May 13, 2011
A New Forum Conversation on Antinatalism
Here. A rather poignant O.P., and the poster seems to be holding to his/her guns throughout the thread. By the time I have time to participate the thread will have probably run dry, but any non-weekend workers might give it a shot. The responses are for the most part standard and found wanting, but most of us here have probably come to expect that.:)
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30 comments:
I'm a weekend worker, too, but since I have just finished applying for a bunch of shitty part-time jobs to supplement my pitiful income, I figured I might as well reward myself by writing about something I actually care about.
I referred the OP to DB's list of reviews and to this blog. We'll see what happens.
You realize you've stumbled on Stefan Molyneux's forum. His ideology is a semi-cultish kind of Objectivism coupled with the belief that people should disconnect from their family of origin. It's a weird place. I used to participate years ago until I was banned by Molyneux himself (banned from his LIFE, he said) for questioning him on the issue of determinism.
Molyneux's doctrines hold that bad parenting is the cause of bad (i.e., in his view, unlibertarian) politics. And later he has had a child himself! Dammit, I had the idea of starting a thread on that forum (for the lulz), but someone beat me to it.
I see he argues from Benatar's utilitarian approach. Chip Smith's libertarian deontological approach would be better suited for that forum.
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I don't want to spread the idea. I despise it down to my very core. Yet it may be valid. Hence the cognitive dissonance and the depression I think. If the only moral option is to snuff out all life as quickly as possible I could gain no pleasure from spreading this. The thought of it makes me suicidal."
Interesting, maybe this explains the chement negative responses to antinatalism. Antinatalism didn't make me (more) suicidal than I already was, in fact the opposite.
[chement -> vehement]
I have to say that that guy's plight is one of the most poignant I've come across. Fair play to him for sticking to his guns and refusing to be browbeaten!
Hi. I'M the original poster. Thank you all for your comments and to Jim for linking to the forum thread.
I must say he does stick to equal opportunity in defending both sides of the argument. He did have some good objections to plague doctor towards the end. I think CM, and others with acute philosophical debating skills may be able to add a few more rebuttals that might quiet his arguments. Philosophy is an interesting idea...However, though argumentation can clarify points, I do not think human nature works like a mechanical clock...People's beliefs do not change with the whims of how well an argument on the internet or in real life went...We have more emotional attachment than that.. We have personal values and experiences that no amount of arguing will conquer (in most cases, and especially in regards to something as grandiose as world-view of life, purpose and procreation). This idea that debate and argument can be purely based on reason and ones views ill completely change because of it, is dubious. Unless one values good debaters and quick wit above all else, including personal values, debating is a good tool to clarifies ones point of view and make minor modifications, not a way to completely reset your worldview on life.
JamieO-
No problem. Always glad to explore the topic through conversation and debate. I was just running through the thread of your original O.P., and was curious about something you said early on:
"Since I heard about this idea and saw the logic I've fallen into a depression. I find it hard to eat or work or find joy in things. No one can give me a satisfactory rebuttal to the argument and I might have to accept it's true.
Unless I can respond to this argument I don't see how I can retain any substianial meaning or happiness in my life. I'm devastated."
Would you mind going into your feelings a bit? The argument seems to have hit you pretty hard. Specifically, what meaning has antinatalism removed, or threatened to remove, from your life? Why are you 'devastated'?
Thanks for visiting. As you can probably tell, most of us here are already sold on the validity of the AN position. It's nice to meet someone who's skeptical, and yet doesn't dismiss the idea out of hand. I hope you'll join in the discussion as you're able.
I give up. First he tells me to stick to the arguments rather than make it personal, and then ignores my questions and tells me I am despicable and a shitty person.
Aaso new "new" forum conversation on philosophy forums:End of Antinatalist Debate by none other than DerivedEnergy (who's on there as Ruminating Wanderer).
My first post is on Page 4 (post 39). It's a dry description of the life process, but I utterly de-lifed the process by describing the actions of the DNA, nervous system, and human body as if it were an inanimate object. I figure that (metaphorically) sucking the life from life will help reframe the debate so that people will be able to see humans and other living things as mere quasi-robots programmed to do and not to certain things.
We'll see how that goes
filrabat-
they've banned him already? That was fast.
They banned me alright. Benkei sees me as a threat - a kind of unintentional compliment - and he's damn right to do so. I had him by the balls and he knows it. Observe the following:
DE: ''Watch this four minute clip on YouTube ('Zargrag Needs Your Help!') and then stop wasting your time debating this and try to think about what we're going to do to clean up this horrid, POINTLESS and monstrous thing known as the human condition.''
Case 1: ''I don't get it. If Zargath or whatever can be amused with something so POINTLESS as searching for a square circle.....POINTLESS VIDEO.''
Case 2: ''Failes? Lies and self deception. Where have I lied? I just said people enjoy making and raising babies. There is aeons of human practice to support that assertion. So where did I lie and where did I did I deceive myself. This VIDEO is POINTLESS....''
This post you are about to read is the post Benkei strategically removed DURING the debate which I had made after quoting Case 2 quote above!
DE/RW: ''Unfortunately for you I studied psycholgy for three years and wrote my dissertation employing the use of discourse analysis. I see right throuh you!''
Case closed. I had to take two days off work this week with high blood pressure and dizzyness because the full horror of all this POINTLESS (used on purpose)madness and suffering is starting to fully dawn on me.
I JUST WANTED TO DRAW ATTENTION TO THE POST ABOVE!!!!
Sorry for shouting.
Derrived Energy AWKA (also WAS known as) Ruminating Wanderer
You're coming across as a frothing-at-the-mouth madman lately, DE. I hope everything's okay.
D.E., If you have high blood pressure, you very likely have a magnesium deficiency, which is quite common and underdiagnosed.
Magnesium deficiency is also known to cause mood problems such as depression, mania and psychosis (Google for more info).
Personally, I use at least 1 tablespoon daily of liquid magnesium chloride (which is the best absorbable form).
It's powerful stuff: a lot of magnesium can instantly put you to sleep.
Hi Everyone,
I don't quite know what to make of the 'frothing at the mouth madman' comment. I can see, however, that recently I've been putting too much of myself into this antinatalism philosophy. Making myself sick over this is not going to help anyone least of all myself. Despite this, I would really appreciate some comments on the discourse analysis work I've been doing recently.
I'm feeling a lot better now.
Thank you.
I know what it's like to have to deal with these pretend nihilists all the time. My comment was a combination of concern and self-deprecating black humor. I myself go mad at least twice daily over the smallest things... My sanity ends every time I crack an egg over my frying pan, accidentally drop a piece of the shell in the goo, and then spend an eternity cursing whilst trying in vain to remove it from the strange elastic world of egg white.
Back when I spent my days assembling computers, I sometimes had to drive screws into the most crazily inaccessible holes. The only way to do this was to put the screw on the screw driver and pray for the weak-ass magnetism of the screwdriver head to keep it stuck there as I brought the screw toward the hole. Invariably, my hand would start shaking for no good fucking reason and the screw would drop into the abyss -- that space between the motherboard and the wall it is mounted on. Sigh.
I hate the fact that there are many more ways things can be broken than ways they can be "good enough". Things have to be just right. And people secretly agree: when a good or service is "good enough", you don't hear anyone about it. When it is broken, people complain. (Although this will be denied furiously in the context of the to be or not to be question.)
More than that, I hate how people rationalize bad shit. A spring sticking out of a couch does not make sitting on it more meaningful, at least not in a way that you would pay more for it. Fuck.
So I complain a lot. I complain about having to get up at 6 in the morning for no good reason, and there will always be someone who triumphantly one-ups me in response saying they always have to get up at 3 in the morning. I complain about having to write some useless paper that no one will ever read for school, and I am warmly reassured that there will always be things I don't like but have to put up with anyway, and it's the same for them and *they* don't (read: aren't allowed to) complain so I shouldn't either.
What good do these people think they are doing??/ How do these people manage to love life in the face of cancer, AIDS and six million children starving to death yearly, when I can't even stomach the finer things in life? Well, I'm sure some snarky life-lover can readily provide me with a jumped-to conclusion to answer that question, so nevermind.
Sigh. Sigh, sigh, sigh. I guess I have to take the riling-up down a notch myself too. Sorry for failing to comment on your discourse analsysis again, I will look at it tomorrow if I can muster up the strength. The day won again.
Well, disregard all that... Almost all better now.
I have mixed feelings about your "psychologizing" the discussion (as someone on YouTube put it). What you say is plausible, but it will not help convince anyone of antinatalism. Neither will, if I may say so, the polarizing arrogance you've shown on the forum there. The "I see right through you" post was especially unsuitable. Although they were wrong in doing so, I'm not very surprised they banned you.
Truth is more important than politeness, but the spread of truth depends on politeness. Benkei's condescending dismissal of your thought experiment reinforces his belief that antinatalism is stoopid, and makes him less likely to take anything to do with it seriously later on, for fear of losing face. The same is true the other way around. Well, I'm sure you know the drill, having actually, you know, studied psychology.
I don't have much substantial to add to your discourse analysis; I think it is spot-on.
JamieO is smart.
Chip-
He(?)is either a really smart (and bored) troll, or you are giving him too much credit. He sounds perfectly reasonable while having a conversation with his fellow forumites, but as soon as some actual antinatalists show up, he starts acting like a complete asshole and having severe comprehension problems (and you must live up to his rudimentary understanding of what a worthwhile moral code is, or you are simply not worth talking to, apparently). He also chose not to engage with us here and, despite asking for a philosophical refutation of philanthropic antinatalism, completely ignored the list of philosophers' responses to BNtHB that I posted, asking lay people who are completely unfamiliar with the arguments to refute them, even though, by his own admission, the only responses he had seen are total BS. When I asked if he checked out the reviews, he ignored my question again.
All of this sort of makes me suspect that there is some double agent trolling going on. Feel free to prove me wrong, Jamie.
CM,
Perhaps. But then, I don't really understand Internet culture. What are trolls, really? Seems to me, either hecklers or Sophists. I can do without hecklers, but I think Sophistry, properly understood, can play an important role in low-rung discourse.
If it was a game, was it also some kind of (thwarted) set-up? And if it was a set-up, what was the endgame? I guess we'll never know.
CM,
Having read a bit deeper, it appears that (notwithstanding the "politics" of antinatalism) there are two central points of impasse: the first concerning the specter of promortalism (though I don't think the term is used), the second concerning the purported groundlessness of deep pessimism.
Ethical promortalism is understandably vexing for reasons that have been discussed here on numerous occasions. By his (I don't think "her") own account, Teabagger doesn't subscribe to a moral theory as such, but does strive for moral consistency. Fair enough. I'm a bit that way myself. But it is useful to recall that NU is a pedigreed and consistency-obsessed moral theory that, however arguably, can by logical route obtain this very conclusion. Other theories might get you there as well, but NU does it efficiently, and with the exclusive aim of abolishing pain. I think it is useful to emphasize this turn of repugnant logic, not because it's necessarily correct, but because it clarifies the true hue of "consistency" in moral reasoning and discourse. The deontologist has a ready objection by reference to axiomatic scripture, and I suppose a clever semanticist who lacks a moral theory will always have the option of redefining murder. That's just how the record spins. The point is that a little premise checking (Ayn Rand wasn't wrong about everything) can help to avoid the pitfalls that so often end in snark and fulmination. Thought I'm not sure it would have mattered.
As to the second (obviously related) point of difference, regarding pessimism, one has only to point out that the abolitionist project is ultimately and crucially doomed by physics. The cosmos will collapse one day. That's an implacable guarantee, according to five out of five astrophysicists who rechecked the math, and that fact alone is quite more than enough to ground deep pessimism without appeal to incredulity or whatever tsk-tsk fallacy. This is so even if we posit that the Singularity is somehow inevitable.
For what it's worth, I still don't sense that the guy was being insincere (not that it really matters); just as likely, he simply has yet to breathe it all the way down. Murder is always wrong, and things might get better. OK. Except when it's not. Except when things worse, as they will.
A Novel Deontological (!) Argument for Omnicide
The case for antinatalism crucially depends on the idea that the parent is responsible for the harm done to the child. For example, if person A begets person B, and person B is killed by person C, then person A shares responsibility for the death of person B. I.e., all parents are guilty of murder, as Chip has written about.
It is often remarked by deontologists that while some variants of consequentialism or negative utilitarianism (NU) logically lead to omnicide, deontlogy does not allow omnicide: while it might be defensible to kill procreators or would-be procreators for the reason above, such a thing supposedly does not hold for nonprocreators. As those that do not procreate are not guilty, killing them means initiating illegitimate force against innocent people, thus violating their rights, or so deontologists claim; it violates the consent of those innocent nonprocreators.
I recently came up with a novel and seemingly irrefutable deontological (!) argument for omnicide that circumvents this objection.
Consider the following scenario. A time bomb is constructed and set up today such that upon detonation is will instantly terminate all life on earth. A crucial requirement: the timer is set to 200 years, so that it will only go off, until after all people who presently exist will have long died (of natural causes, mostly).
The harm to the future generation is caused by the parents, as their decision to procreate will lead to their children's death. It is the parents, not the bomb maker who violate the consent and rights of the children. An analogy: this is like setting a runaway train in motion, and then the parents push their new-born children onto the tracks of the runaway train. The act of setting the train in motion is itself not necessarily a harm to anyone, and does not require the consent of anyone existing. Agains, the crucial requirement is for the time bomb to go off after everyone living today has died.
Conclusion: the person who created this bomb is not guilty of murder, because the persons who will be afflicted will not necessarily exist, therefore the mere act of setting up the time bomb does not necessarily cause harm.
Case closed.
NOTA BENE (1): This is NOT the nonidentity objection. The nonidentity objection against antinatalism is the claim that the child who is created is not harmed by the act of procreation because that child did not exist before he was born. This objection to antinatalism fails because birth necessarily causes existence, and existence necessarily causes harm and suffering. In my time bomb scenatio, however, the act of setting up the bomb is not a necessary condition for either the existence of the victim or the harm. This scenario is not the same as bombing existing people, because bombing existing people necessarily causes harm.
NOTA BENE (2): Such a time bomb would not be meant as a means of persuasion or of intimidating people into not procreating; the idea is that even if they did procreate, the harm (of their children) is being caused by the parents, not by the time bomb maker.
In other news, I'm feeling like crap.
Maybe I'm missing something,Plague Doctor, but what about those alive in 200 years who haven't procreated but will be killed by the bomb?
Please read again. Those deaths are the responsibility of their parents, not by the creator of the bomb. By itself, a bomb going off is not harmful. The parents push their kids into the parth of a speeding unmanned train, as it were.
PD,
I don't think you make it clear whether future generations (the ones who will be around at countdown) will be aware of existence of the timebomb. Do you think such knowledge is required in order to make the point about parental culpability?
Chip, I don't see how that influences the argument.
Stephan Molyneux on Antinatalism
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