Antinatalism

[Danoff]

I'm making my way through the HBO show True Detective, which has some discussion of nihilism and antinatalist philosophy. My wife reminded me of this event:

FBI links California fertility clinic bombing to anti-natalist ideology

The attack killed one person Saturday and injured four other people.

www.nbcnews.com

From all appearances, this fertility clinic bombing was carried out by an antinatalist with the intent do prevent babies from being born, because creating humans is inherently immoral according to antinatalist philosophy (I suppose blowing people up can be justified by their desire to create people or something. That seems at odds with nihilistic or antinatalist philosophy though). For the uninitiated, here is an excerpt from wikipedia on antinatalism:

There are various reasons why antinatalists believe reproduction is problematic. The most common arguments for antinatalism include that life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent (that is to say, they cannot choose whether or not they come into existence). Additionally, although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person's suffering. There is also an axiological asymmetry between good and bad things in life, such that coming into existence is always a harm, which is known as Benatar's asymmetry argument.

If you've watched the Dune remake, you'll perhaps remember the scene where a sentient "pet" is present in the Harkonnen palace. And if you have some idea of the horror that may be implicated by the presence of that 6-legged pet, you have a good idea of what it means to say that it is immoral to create a living being into suffering. And it is difficult to distinguish the morality of creating a being whose entire life is suffering and subservience from creating a human, which will be known to suffer and die.

It is somewhat inescapable that we cannot get the consent of the unborn to bring them into the world, and they maintain that lack of consent for many years after birth. It is a significant philosophical and moral struggle, far more serious and difficult to wrestle with than something more trivial like Utilitarianism or a problem like the trolley problem or Sophie's choice. Antinatalists have a real point, which I think most people are biologically inclined not to wrestle with, and so their brains are turned off to these issues.

The first escape that I thought of for the antinatalist position is that suicide is the alternative. You bring someone into the world without their choice, but they have the choice to leave. But imagine that you cut someone's arm off, and when someone said that it was immoral because of the pain you caused them your response is that suicide is an alternative. Satisfying? Probably not. And while that's not a perfectly parallel example, it should help epxlain that the suffering experienced by a new creature cannot be undone, and was not its own free choice to endure.

There is another mostly unsatisfying attempt to get out of antinatalism, which is to fool yourself into believing that all new creatures would choose to exist. I think it's pretty clear that they would not all do so. In fact quite a few choose to opt out early for a wide variety of reasons.

I'm not an antinatalist, and I have a reason for it that many of you will find super unsatisfying. But I'll save it for later. I want to hear your thoughts.

 

[MeanElf]

The nature of any species is to survive and most animals will do their utmost to do so, unless very old. To state that no one has been consulted about being born as a reason is therefore a specious argument. Hardly surprising as many of these fringe cults are lock-ins with issues that their parents and the more cash obsessed societies just don't seem interested in helping to solve.

Maybe that's a simplistic interpretation of the situation but there is much that I don't understand about human behaviour this past half-century or so. Going backwards rather than forward into an inclusive future.

 

[Joey D]

This is the second time I've heard of antinatalism within a week. The first was having something linked on Reddit to a subreddit for people who subscribe to the belief, which was really unhinged.

I think a lot of the problem comes down to people having kids that shouldn't have kids. You should be financially stable with a good home situation and have reasonably good health before considering having children. People also have more kids than they should. If you can afford a larger family and want one, then go for it, but be aware of your situation before making a decision. My wife and I figured everything out and determined that we could comfortably afford one child. When we considered having a second, we laid out all the costs, our home situation, our work situation, and took into account any health problems we had. We determined that while we could afford a second kid, it might not be to the standard we would want to give it, and we worried it would take away from my son, so we stuck with one. We also worried about the off chance of twins since we'd then suddenly have three kids.

There's also a huge pressure from the older generation for the younger generation to have kids. Gen X parents are probably pushing it less, and Millennials are probably pushing it even less than them. Boomers, though, want you to have kids and have a lot of them because they still think women stay at home and raise children while the man is the breadwinner, or whatever outdated way of thinking they have. My mom was the only person out of my parents or my in-laws who didn't push us to have a bunch of kids, and that's likely because she was an executive when I was born and she didn't have the time for more than one kid (she barely had time for one). But my in-laws and my dad, who are all in their 70s, wanted us to have at least 2 but preferably 3-5. We shut them up by saying "if you want us to have more kids, then you pay for it."

People should have children, but only if they fully understand the investment it will be, both financially and emotionally, as well as the physical and temporal commitments.

With regards to the idea that we don't have a choice in whether or not we are born, that's true, or at least we believe it to be true. But if people just stopped having kids, the human race would be extinct in roughly 100 years and probably not be able to function very well in as little as 20 years. It doesn't make sense for us to just quit having babies, although I do think as a species we should probably have fewer kids and trim down the Earth's population a bit.

 

[Danoff]

The nature of any species is to survive and most animals will do their utmost to do so, unless very old. To state that no one has been consulted about being born as a reason is therefore a specious argument.

Animals do all kinds of awful things. They eat each other, they rape each other, they abandon, maim, even torture in some cases. The Ichneumonidae wasp is famous for basically having convinced Darwin that there can be no god that created beings, because no god would do something so horrible. So the idea that animals do it means we can do it with moral impunity falls flat.

Taking your argument to its fullest conclusion, that because animals do it we can do it, this ultimately argues that morality is non-existent. So antinatalsists are wrong, but rape and murder is always permissible. Basically, you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. It order to defeat the antinatalist argument you gave up all moral and ethical philosophy. I think that counts as a win in the antinatalist column actually.

 

[Danoff]

I think a lot of the problem comes down to people having kids that shouldn't have kids.

Even if you're financially stable and can provide for your children, they will still suffer and ultimately die. So the antinatalist position is basically that no matter how well your kids are taken care of, you didn't have the right to make them.

With regards to the idea that we don't have a choice in whether or not we are born, that's true, or at least we believe it to be true. But if people just stopped having kids, the human race would be extinct in roughly 100 years and probably not be able to function very well in as little as 20 years. It doesn't make sense for us to just quit having babies, although I do think as a species we should probably have fewer kids and trim down the Earth's population a bit.

This is a utilitarian argument, basically the ends justify the means. That essentially cannot work out (causally).

 

[05XR8]

It is interesting that some people(in the OP example) feel they’re making the choice for the sake of sparing possible future suffering for those that are not yet to make their own choices. Thereby, whether they understand or not, causing suffering for other fellow human beings bearing witness to those actions.

 

[Danoff]

It is interesting that some people(in the OP example) feel they’re making the choice for the sake of sparing possible future suffering for those that are not yet to make their own choices. Thereby, whether they understand or not, causing suffering for other fellow human beings bearing witness to those actions.

Playing devil's advocate here:

Do you think people are somehow entitled not to suffer in bearing witness to your actions? Do you think that an antinatalist could distinguish the kind of suffering they're preventing from the kind of suffering you're talking about?

 

[05XR8]

Playing devil's advocate here:

Do you think people are somehow entitled not to suffer in bearing witness to your actions? Do you think that an antinatalist could distinguish the kind of suffering they're preventing from the kind of suffering you're talking about?

I don’t know. That’s why it’s interesting. I wouldn’t know their level of understanding, even by the definition of their labelling. Not being silly, it’s as if I caused a fellow motorist to suffer because I cut them off in order not to miss my exit. How much of a ripple effect did that cause?

For myself, my eldest son did get the brunt of suffering from young parents that made the choice to have him. Not to mention the suffering my mother and her mother felt. We were both not mature enough to work together(finances, fortunately, wasn’t a problem), though my son did grow up with love from both of us and our extended families. He’s not grown up waking to seeing his parents love each other every morning. However, he’s made it clear he does not want children. At 31, he has a cat and an aquarium.

Today, for the past fourteen years, my fourteen year old daughter has awakened to seeing both her parents love each other every morning. Our choice to have her was about three years of thinking about it. My wife having two previous children. Knowing what we knew from our own children, our own well being and at the time, the state of the world we were living in, we made the choice.

To answer that first question, in a way. As parents, watching our child go through life changes and development. Living in a loving home and having to endure an at harsh times, cruel environment outside of that comfort, a few years ago we got the eternal question out of life’s frustration, “WHY WAS I EVEN BORN?!”. Then, her bedroom door slammed.

Beings on earth are nuts.

 

[Imari]

It's kinda interesting in that it's almost a reverse Roko's Basilisk argument.

For those not familiar, the argument suggests that at some point in the future there will be an AGI that is functionally God, the "basilisk". This AGI will commit to punishing anyone who at any point in history did not do their utmost to hasten the coming of the AGI, or at least those that were aware of it's potential existence. Therefore, performing the action of advancing AI tech avoids potential suffering in the future.

Compare to anti-natalism, where avoiding the action of having children avoids potential suffering in the future.

I find it all kind of misses the point. Suffering on some level seems to be pretty inherent to consciousness. It'd be nice if the ceiling of suffering was a bit lower than some of the heinous ******** humanity seems to come up with in it's neverending quest to one-up each other in being total dickheads, but an actual life without suffering is probably impossible both practically and because of how the human brain works. You can feed a brain morphine all day, as much as it wants, and it will still find ways to be unhappy eventually.

IMO, there are much better reasons to not have kids than "existence is suffering". I mean, have you seen the little *****? Filthy, disgusting animals.

The nature of any species is to survive and most animals will do their utmost to do so, unless very old. To state that no one has been consulted about being born as a reason is therefore a specious argument.

It's not a specious argument, just one that you don't want to engage with. You can choose to make an argument to justify the lack of consent based on survival of the species if you want. We choose to override the autonomy of the individual for the benefit of the greater society in other ways already. Whether that is good or appropriate is case by case, and you just attempting to hand wave it means that nobody is any wiser as to what the arguments for either side might be.

People should have children, but only if they fully understand the investment it will be, both financially and emotionally, as well as the physical and temporal commitments.

And if they want to, presumably. Some people don't want to, either because it's not for them or because they know that they cannot provide an appropriate upbringing for a child or children.

 

[Danoff]

I don’t know. That’s why it’s interesting. I wouldn’t know their level of understanding, even by the definition of their labelling. Not being silly, it’s as if I caused a fellow motorist to suffer because I cut them off in order not to miss my exit. How much of a ripple effect did that cause?

I think an antinatalist would say that you are 100% certain that your physical act of creating a human will result in that human's suffering at some point. That's not necessarily true of the motorist.

Beings on earth are nuts.

I think that one an antinatalist might agree with - beings on Earth should refuse to procreate and die out because they are indeed nuts.

It's kinda interesting in that it's almost a reverse Roko's Basilisk argument.

For those not familiar, the argument suggests that at some point in the future there will be an AGI that is functionally God, the "basilisk". This AGI will commit to punishing anyone who at any point in history did not do their utmost to hasten the coming of the AGI, or at least those that were aware of it's potential existence. Therefore, performing the action of advancing AI tech avoids potential suffering in the future.

Utilitarianism with a massive event correlated with the greatest good. I suppose there's a knowledge problem though, which is that nobody could be sure that AGI would work out that way. Especially if they've seen Terminator. I hope that the AGI spares people who saw Terminator.

I find it all kind of misses the point. Suffering on some level seems to be pretty inherent to consciousness. It'd be nice if the ceiling of suffering was a bit lower than some of the heinous ******** humanity seems to come up with in it's neverending quest to one-up each other in being total dickheads, but an actual life without suffering is probably impossible both practically and because of how the human brain works. You can feed a brain morphine all day, as much as it wants, and it will still find ways to be unhappy eventually.

I think that's the antinatalist point though. Suffering is inherent to conciousness, so how can you justify creating conciousness?

 

[Imari]

I think that's the antinatalist point though. Suffering is inherent to conciousness, so how can you justify creating conciousness?

They're combining the idea that suffering is bad (which is not a given), and that non-existence is preferable to any amount of suffering (also not a given). If you take those thoughts to their actual conclusion then you don't end up not having babies, you end up killing every conscious being on the planet. People who exist are also suffering, and while their brain chemistry may not make them inclined towards killing themselves it doesn't mean that minimising their suffering by ending their lives isn't the moral thing to do.

This is what I mean by missing the point. The point that actually needs discussion and argument is the premises of antinatalism, around suffering and it's interaction with consciousness. Antinatalists just say that suffering is a priori bad without bothering to argue for that, and we tend to just let it slide because suffering in the moment does legitimately feel bad. It's one of suffering's defining characteristics, it feels bad.

Now, I'm not arguing that there are net positive benefits to torture or child rape or Dr. Disrespect, but I do think it would be possible to construct an argument that there are net positives to some types of suffering, like working hard to improve yourself or achieve some goal under challenging conditions. Not always, but at least some of the time, which would imply then that some sort of "ideal" world in which it would (under the antinatalist logic) be morally acceptable to have children would not be entirely without suffering, but would instead only have certain types of suffering.

Hell, if you combine antinatalist ideas with solipsism, the idea that the only conscious mind that you can be absolutely sure exists is your own, then the only moral thing to do is kill yourself.


If I'm not being a nit-picking arsehole, I think antinatalism is the sort of thing that doesn't work as a general philosophy but that is interesting in how it can be applied to individuals. When considering if you will have a child, thinking about what that child's life is going to be like seems relevant. Are they going to inherit awful genetic diseases that will make their life a misery? Are they born to parents who are slaves, and will therefore be slaves themselves? Are they likely to die of starvation or disease before they have any chance to experience the positive aspects of living as a human? These are relevant considerations, but there's not some absolutely correct answer to these questions that applies to every situation without it devolving into some level of justifying mass murder.

Which may be the answer, but in the spirit of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I'd think that any logical claim that ended with mass murder being moral would need to be extremely detailed and airtight. You can't handwave any part of such a claim.