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this is pure typical mind fallacy. antinatalists are people who are deeply, wildly unhappy and projecting that onto everybody else including future people who don't even exist yet. i'm grateful to be alive and even on my darkest days i knew i'd be grateful to be alive eventually
@QiaochuYuan I was so frustrated to read Benatar bc I wanted him to have a compelling/interesting argument. but he didn't! he just started with "the bad parts of life are worse than the good" as an axiom! if I wrote that as a college philosophy essay, I oughta flunk!
@QiaochuYuan Oh, I read his book some year ago. To Benatar's credit, he does put forward an actual kinda-metaphysical argument in there - something about an asymmetry between how it's not good to do good things for people that don't exist yet, but it is bad to do bad things to them or smth
@QiaochuYuan Anti-natalists don’t necessarily project that onto everyone else, and Benatar specifically does not. As summarized here: https://t.co/ZUXhJfhp6V
@QiaochuYuan People can be antinatalist personally, it’s when they ascribe it to others, esp in the extreme, that it becomes a problem. Most people are natal standardists, that agree with the idea that certain standards of living should be met before having children, esp many, is considered.
That’s not true. Your personal hedonic setpoint can be high and you can still recognize the grim reality of the rather low hedonic setpoint of the biosphere at large. Granted - people usually instinctively extrapolate from their experience and don’t do complex system 2 reasoning, so you are more likely to see a depressed anti-natalist than a hyperthymic one, but it is perfectly possible to be the latter.
he sucks unbelievable amounts of everything. it's a pure weasel move, milk depression for endless attention and sympathy, philosophizing an affectual problem. it's managing to be too much of a coward to be a pro mortalist and also too much of a coward to make life better. and the worst part is it captures neurotics to make them feel better about their own cowardice. writing that book did more to add suffering to the world than having children and getting over himself. certainly more than never writing it