Blog - Antinatalism Revisited

Page / - last modified by Victor Zhang on 02:44, 26/03/2025

Antinatalism Revisited

last modified by Victor Zhang

on 02:44, 26/03/2025

Table of Contents

Years has past since I noticed I'm not the only weirdo who think about whether sentient life is worth STARTGING.

A revisit of problem of asymmetry.

Condition	No Sentient Life	Sentient Life
Results	There's no suffering	There's suffering
There's no good	There's good

While I do not fully agree with Prof. David Benatar's asymmetry, to me it's symmetrical however the result is at least semi-plausible.

Condition	No Sentient Life	Sentient Life
Results	No one is relieved of suffering, it's not good (Benatar say it's good, because there's no suffering)	There's suffering
No one is deprived of good, it's not bad (This is still in agreement with Benatar)	There's good

Discussion:

On the good/bad macro-asymmetry

Benatar claims not creating suffering is good, good for who?

To the person yet to be/not to be born

A none-existing entity is not relieved of suffering for not born

If the claim that lack of suffering is good, then you have to say lack of good is bad, Benatar's rebuttal to the latter is "people make the mistake of thinking you exist and deprived of good", using the same logic, you have to say none-exist entity is not relieved of suffering for not existing.

To the whole collection

If the claim that preventing birth reduces collective suffering, then you have to be consistent in saying that collectively preventing birth reduces collective good.

To person alive

There's an argument to be made that living person needs new born to grow up to be in the labour force to take care of.

This is the worst argument for pro-natalism as those born, in a day will certainly needs care for more people, get sick, have accidents and certainly die.

The "living need more new people, and those new people will need even more new people", is definition of a Ponzi Scheme.

Micro -asymmetry seems to still stands

Doing nothing - the most neutral point is negative because there's something called "boredom"

We have evolved in a hostile environment that evolution keeps us always alert. Just like auto-immune disease, if the immune system do not find something external to attack, it start attacking the host itself. The same evolution trait that keeps us alert to predators gives us anxiety/depression in the modern day where no such threats are present.

Improved living condition does not always lead to improved happiness, or at least only does it in a very diminished way

In ancient days, it takes us months to travel, messages takes weeks to arrive, food-prep, chores like cleaning and washing takes up more than half of time awake.

Modern days automation and division of labour uses economy of scale to relieve us from such chores, however did we become less busy?

Good diminishes but Suffering persist

The greatest pain is far greater than the greatest pleasure.

Pleasure is diminishing (an extreme example is drug, however people don't notice other things does it as well)

Just imaging your favourate food now, have it for a week, do you still like it? Have it a month, do you still like it?

All the good we seek is actually escaping from suffering

We keep ourself busy because boredom is suffering

Eating relief of suffering of hunger, however try continue eating, it doesn't give you good, you just don't feel well again

We have to rely on drugs to avoid suffering - scandinavian countries have the highest happiness, correlates to the treatment they receive including drugs that alters the state of the mind.

Is it sufficient condition to start a sentient life if the good and suffering is 50-50?

Many thinks if there's a good chance to break even, then we should start the life.

However:

Would you go on a plane if it has a 5% chance of crashing?

Some time even for relieving suffering, would you be willing to take a surgery with a 80% chance of fixing your problem, but 15% chance of dying on the operating table?

I don't think there's a definite answer assigned to it, different people have different answered but one thing is sure, it's not 50-50.

The stake is very high for creating new sentient life.

The case for adopting:

Those who are already born, will have to suffer one way or another regardless

Therefore adopting did not become the source of the suffering.

The stake is much lower as per comparison point: the condition of the adopted child just need to be better than whatever adoption center (easy), abusive parents(even easier) or full abandonment(even much easier) for adoption to be doing net good.

State of the world argument against bringing new sentient being into life

The ideology of the people in power

They worry about "population collapse" purely in the sense that it translates to one drop in their wealth concentration

The google's whole business model is to get everyone to buy 0.3 pairs of shoes.

The contradiction:

They do not want to materially improve normal people's living condition

They hate "Free handouts" and want people to "pull themselves up by the bootstrap"

They are automating away all the jobs

The Survivor's bias and Optimism Bias

For every successful people, there are probably hundreds of people living mediocre boring life, and tens of thousands living struggling.

Most of them aren't lazy, they work hard and have nothing to show for it. They are not the ones getting Forbes interviews or TED talks, so people just don't think they exist.

Thus the "Optimism Bias", people think their children could become one of the lucky ones (technically true), basically buying into the Survivor's bias narrative.

Some people who are born into wealth realize that, it's actually the ones who "worked from the bottom" who usually doesn't understand the luck component to it. Like the actor for Tyrion Lannister - Peter Dinklage, basically the narrative become "I come from poor family, I worked hard, I succeeded, therefore if people don't succeed, it's their own problem there's no excuse". But it is understandable for successful people to grow a huge EGO, and people don't realize the luck element and how important it is as per famous monopoly experiment

Success ≠ happiness

Given that the richest man on earth has to constantly seek validation of other people, even by pretending to be good at video games, success/wealth ≠ happiness.

However we can't fall into the fallacy of "therefore other side good". Poor/powerless people have all the problem rich/powerful people have plus financial problem and access to option problem. Therefore the probability of being happy is even less than rich or powerful people.

The authoritarian shift of the world

It's understandable that people who gets bored of democratic system wants a "Strong leader".

This is where we see USA Chinafy/Russifying, and China DPRK-ifying.

Even Europe are start seeing anti-protest laws by forbidding filming the police(eg. France), and de-facto blasphemy laws in the name of security.

It is understandable as it's an easier way to government if you can solve the people who raise the issue rather than the issue.

However, in the long run, the suffering of the world will increase for most of the people.

Therefore not having children is a statistically sound choice, if the goal is to reduce suffering to good ratio (at least in the foreseeable future).

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