I’ve begun to seriously consider the anti-natalist views of philosophers like David Benatar. My two sisters recently each had their first child and while I’ve given thought to the idea of having my own children in the past, closely seeing the process play out from beginning to end has somehow updated my thoughts on the topic. I haven’t read much yet (I’m about a quarter through Better To Have Never Been and would relish some suggestions from LWers on the matter.
Currently my thinking is that as much as I would like the experience of raising a child who shares my own DNA, I am becoming more and more convinced that I can’t feel like I am making a morally-correct decision by bringing a new human into existence. If I had never been born I necessarily wouldn’t have been harmed in any way by not existing—and now that I am here I can enjoy life as much as possible (which is a lot, don’t get me wrong), but I still must endure some measure of suffering and I also must face mortality.
I was never interested in the idea of adopting children before, but in light of my updated viewpoint on conception I can see the benefit of adopting an already-born person.
Another part of it I think about: As far as utility to society goes, I already know that I have certain inclinations or aspirations towards rationality and a general motivation to attempt to better society in some small way if I can. There’s no guarantee that a new person I create will match or exceed the possible positive impacts on society that I make. That uncertainty-for-positive-change along with the fact that a new person will necessarily impose some negatives on society also makes me wonder how I could justify the decision to make a new person.
As I’m sure it is clear, I’m in the early stages of considering these topics and haven’t done much research at all into writings and analysis of the issues I’m raising. I am open to any and all suggestions of avenues of research.
A point that might be overlooked in discussions of adoption is that paternal/maternal love might be partially mediated by biological signals (pheromones? hormones? knowing that your partner is pregnant?) that are not present when you adopt. I don’t know what research has been done in this field, but it’s worth looking in to.
This is a sort of terrible analogy, but I’m going for it anyway: I recently adopted a cat and feel extremely powerful positive emotional feelings for him just by virtue of being around him and caring for him all the time, not to mention that he is incredibly cute and loving. But I don’t feel for him the way I would expect to feel for a biological child of mine. I imagine one’s feelings about an adopted child might be similar at first.
more: I’m not sure if you are saying parental love is a good thing or not, or merely factually stating that it could potentially be absent in an adoption scenario, but for the sake of conversation let’s say you (or some imaginary interlocutor) are suggesting there would be some net detriment to child-rearing if parental love is removed: I wonder if one couldn’t make more rational and intelligent decisions in the absence of the potentially-clouding fog of parental love. Is it necessarily a good thing for an established adult to want to die so that a 1-month-old infant could survive (insert imaginary scenario here)? Is it a good thing that parents see their children, the object of their overwhelming parental love, less objectively and with profound biases due to that love? Etc. - there are many examples of the biasing effects of biological love.
It’s an interesting topic I think… non-biased (or at least less-biased) child-rearing as a result of reduced instinctual biological parental love.
Nah, it’s not my place to tell you whether paternal/maternal love is good or not. People may find it intrinsically valuable, but maybe you don’t value it terminally.
Another reason to consider paternal/maternal love is that you’re probably more motivated to care for someone you love, other things being equal. Personally, I’d be willing to be responsible for a cat that I don’t love, but I wouldn’t want to have parental responsibility for a human I didn’t love.
Rationality seems more like an idea that can spread from person-to-person than an innate property you are born with. Rationality would be more like a communicable disease in this model (ignore the negative connotations of disease for a moment, and just consider the “doesn’t help the host reproduce, but spreads itself well enough that it doesn’t have to” part).
Rationality isn’t an innate property you’re born with, but it does -depend- upon innate properties you’re born with. If the meme is successful, which is precisely the goal we have in raising the sanity waterline, and is deleterious to those genes which enable it, it is doomed to destroy itself.
if the meme is successful, which is precisely the goal we have in raising the sanity waterline, and is deleterious to those genes which enable it, it is doomed to destroy itself.
I agree with you that rationality can be spread independent of genetics. In that sense, rationalists don’t have to fear their “kind” being wiped out by anti-natalism.
And: I’m not sure, but I think maybe the implied idea in OrphanWilde’s comment is that rationality is not dependent on genetics. If I am right though, then I don’t see the point he/she is making. Maybe OrphanWilde can clarify.
Clarified; the dependency isn’t upon a “rationality” gene, but rather on those genes which make rationality possible. To whit, if every human is rational, and it isn’t rational to reproduce, there will rapidly cease to be humans, and there will rapidly cease to be rationality.
That’s not “winning” by any definition I’d choose to use. It makes rationality dependent upon irrational people choosing to reproduce in spite of its irrationality.
To paraphrase Robin Hanson, rationality should exist.
Personally, in terms of utility functions, I’m inclined to give my own suffering positive utility (it’s just, y’know, substantially lower than the utility of pleasure). But then, I write poetry on the beauty of the meaningfulness of pain. It’s curious what a few years of systematically killing emotion will do to you when it reawakens with a vengeance.
Sure, if humans exist then rationality should exist.
But my question stands, why should humans exist? If I’m reading correctly your post assumes that a rapid cessation of humans would be somehow a bad thing.
Stop me if you feel this is entering into uselessly nihilistic territory and we can call it quits here.
Objectively, without reference to human perspective? No reason whatsoever, unless you count the fact that humans would generally prefer to exist than to not exist as an objective reason.
Subjectively? Because we, generally, prefer to exist, and more than that, prefer that other human beings continue to exist. Should we count the preferences of people who don’t exist yet? Doesn’t really matter. The preferences of people today are, cumulatively, that people exist tomorrow. We can of course ignore the general preference of people tomorrow to exist (as they’re functionally counterfactual in consideration of antinatalism) but then we don’t get to then selectively -fail to ignore- their potential suffering. Otherwise you’re just selecting what counterfactuals you include based on what conclusion you want to reach.
If their suffering doesn’t matter (ignoring counterfactuals) then their potential preference not to exist doesn’t matter. OR if their suffering DOES matter (accepting counterfactuals), then we have to also include the general preference of people to exist.
Or we could say preferences don’t matter whatsoever (full objectivity) inwhichcase there’s no argument -against- reproducing, even if there’s likely no argument for it.
that everyone feels the need to add this caveat when discussing topics like this, regardless of whether they are actually doing okay, always bothers me a lot. What if you’re not okay? To be cliche, why is it not okay for someone to not be okay? To paraphrase Bostrom: many people are walking around quietly leading desperately unhappy lives, and much of the improvements they could make don’t get talked about because it is low status to admit you are unhappy.
To paraphrase Bostrom: many people are walking around quietly leading desperately unhappy lives, and much of the improvements they could make don’t get talked about because it is low status to admit you are unhappy.
On the other hand, there do exist people with depression diagnoses who try to do something about it. Some folks are willing to ① admit that they are markedly unhappy, ② seek independent verification in the form of a depression diagnosis, and ③ attempt to stop being depressed through various forms of therapy, drugs, etc.
So even if it were “low status to admit you are unhappy,” that doesn’t stop some people.
Moreover, as regards status: “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (J. S. Mill); having high standards but being unhappy may be higher-status than having low standards and being happy.
Moreover, as regards status: “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (J. S. Mill); having high standards but being unhappy may be higher-status than having low standards and being happy.
My reasoning for adding the caveat in this particular instance was to fully disclose my stance. I’m inviting questions, and discussion is only aided when people have a better understanding of each other. If I had said that I am completely miserable and the negatives of being alive once already alive don’t outweigh the positives, I’d be of a completely different stance and I’d be understood completely differently.
I don’t think it lowers someone’s status to say they are not ok and I’m sorry that adding the above caveat bothered you. Clearly my comment was innocent and by more fully explaining my feelings I am I’m no way intentionally reinforcing anyone else’s lack of confidence.
I’ll kick it off:
I’ve begun to seriously consider the anti-natalist views of philosophers like David Benatar. My two sisters recently each had their first child and while I’ve given thought to the idea of having my own children in the past, closely seeing the process play out from beginning to end has somehow updated my thoughts on the topic. I haven’t read much yet (I’m about a quarter through Better To Have Never Been and would relish some suggestions from LWers on the matter.
Currently my thinking is that as much as I would like the experience of raising a child who shares my own DNA, I am becoming more and more convinced that I can’t feel like I am making a morally-correct decision by bringing a new human into existence. If I had never been born I necessarily wouldn’t have been harmed in any way by not existing—and now that I am here I can enjoy life as much as possible (which is a lot, don’t get me wrong), but I still must endure some measure of suffering and I also must face mortality.
I was never interested in the idea of adopting children before, but in light of my updated viewpoint on conception I can see the benefit of adopting an already-born person.
Another part of it I think about: As far as utility to society goes, I already know that I have certain inclinations or aspirations towards rationality and a general motivation to attempt to better society in some small way if I can. There’s no guarantee that a new person I create will match or exceed the possible positive impacts on society that I make. That uncertainty-for-positive-change along with the fact that a new person will necessarily impose some negatives on society also makes me wonder how I could justify the decision to make a new person.
As I’m sure it is clear, I’m in the early stages of considering these topics and haven’t done much research at all into writings and analysis of the issues I’m raising. I am open to any and all suggestions of avenues of research.
A point that might be overlooked in discussions of adoption is that paternal/maternal love might be partially mediated by biological signals (pheromones? hormones? knowing that your partner is pregnant?) that are not present when you adopt. I don’t know what research has been done in this field, but it’s worth looking in to.
This is a sort of terrible analogy, but I’m going for it anyway: I recently adopted a cat and feel extremely powerful positive emotional feelings for him just by virtue of being around him and caring for him all the time, not to mention that he is incredibly cute and loving. But I don’t feel for him the way I would expect to feel for a biological child of mine. I imagine one’s feelings about an adopted child might be similar at first.
more: I’m not sure if you are saying parental love is a good thing or not, or merely factually stating that it could potentially be absent in an adoption scenario, but for the sake of conversation let’s say you (or some imaginary interlocutor) are suggesting there would be some net detriment to child-rearing if parental love is removed: I wonder if one couldn’t make more rational and intelligent decisions in the absence of the potentially-clouding fog of parental love. Is it necessarily a good thing for an established adult to want to die so that a 1-month-old infant could survive (insert imaginary scenario here)? Is it a good thing that parents see their children, the object of their overwhelming parental love, less objectively and with profound biases due to that love? Etc. - there are many examples of the biasing effects of biological love.
It’s an interesting topic I think… non-biased (or at least less-biased) child-rearing as a result of reduced instinctual biological parental love.
Nah, it’s not my place to tell you whether paternal/maternal love is good or not. People may find it intrinsically valuable, but maybe you don’t value it terminally.
Another reason to consider paternal/maternal love is that you’re probably more motivated to care for someone you love, other things being equal. Personally, I’d be willing to be responsible for a cat that I don’t love, but I wouldn’t want to have parental responsibility for a human I didn’t love.
If not having children is rational, and rationality is dependent upon genetics, rationality won’t survive very long.
Rationality seems more like an idea that can spread from person-to-person than an innate property you are born with. Rationality would be more like a communicable disease in this model (ignore the negative connotations of disease for a moment, and just consider the “doesn’t help the host reproduce, but spreads itself well enough that it doesn’t have to” part).
Rationality isn’t an innate property you’re born with, but it does -depend- upon innate properties you’re born with. If the meme is successful, which is precisely the goal we have in raising the sanity waterline, and is deleterious to those genes which enable it, it is doomed to destroy itself.
Not necessarily. There have been celibate monks for a long time.
On a significant time scale?
I agree with you that rationality can be spread independent of genetics. In that sense, rationalists don’t have to fear their “kind” being wiped out by anti-natalism.
And: I’m not sure, but I think maybe the implied idea in OrphanWilde’s comment is that rationality is not dependent on genetics. If I am right though, then I don’t see the point he/she is making. Maybe OrphanWilde can clarify.
Clarified; the dependency isn’t upon a “rationality” gene, but rather on those genes which make rationality possible. To whit, if every human is rational, and it isn’t rational to reproduce, there will rapidly cease to be humans, and there will rapidly cease to be rationality.
That’s not “winning” by any definition I’d choose to use. It makes rationality dependent upon irrational people choosing to reproduce in spite of its irrationality.
What is the problem with that?
To paraphrase Robin Hanson, rationality should exist.
Personally, in terms of utility functions, I’m inclined to give my own suffering positive utility (it’s just, y’know, substantially lower than the utility of pleasure). But then, I write poetry on the beauty of the meaningfulness of pain. It’s curious what a few years of systematically killing emotion will do to you when it reawakens with a vengeance.
Sure, if humans exist then rationality should exist.
But my question stands, why should humans exist? If I’m reading correctly your post assumes that a rapid cessation of humans would be somehow a bad thing.
Stop me if you feel this is entering into uselessly nihilistic territory and we can call it quits here.
Objectively, without reference to human perspective? No reason whatsoever, unless you count the fact that humans would generally prefer to exist than to not exist as an objective reason.
Subjectively? Because we, generally, prefer to exist, and more than that, prefer that other human beings continue to exist. Should we count the preferences of people who don’t exist yet? Doesn’t really matter. The preferences of people today are, cumulatively, that people exist tomorrow. We can of course ignore the general preference of people tomorrow to exist (as they’re functionally counterfactual in consideration of antinatalism) but then we don’t get to then selectively -fail to ignore- their potential suffering. Otherwise you’re just selecting what counterfactuals you include based on what conclusion you want to reach.
If their suffering doesn’t matter (ignoring counterfactuals) then their potential preference not to exist doesn’t matter. OR if their suffering DOES matter (accepting counterfactuals), then we have to also include the general preference of people to exist.
Or we could say preferences don’t matter whatsoever (full objectivity) inwhichcase there’s no argument -against- reproducing, even if there’s likely no argument for it.
[Edited some grammatical mistakes.]
that everyone feels the need to add this caveat when discussing topics like this, regardless of whether they are actually doing okay, always bothers me a lot. What if you’re not okay? To be cliche, why is it not okay for someone to not be okay? To paraphrase Bostrom: many people are walking around quietly leading desperately unhappy lives, and much of the improvements they could make don’t get talked about because it is low status to admit you are unhappy.
On the other hand, there do exist people with depression diagnoses who try to do something about it. Some folks are willing to ① admit that they are markedly unhappy, ② seek independent verification in the form of a depression diagnosis, and ③ attempt to stop being depressed through various forms of therapy, drugs, etc.
So even if it were “low status to admit you are unhappy,” that doesn’t stop some people.
Moreover, as regards status: “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (J. S. Mill); having high standards but being unhappy may be higher-status than having low standards and being happy.
Mill was talking about utility, not status.
My reasoning for adding the caveat in this particular instance was to fully disclose my stance. I’m inviting questions, and discussion is only aided when people have a better understanding of each other. If I had said that I am completely miserable and the negatives of being alive once already alive don’t outweigh the positives, I’d be of a completely different stance and I’d be understood completely differently.
I don’t think it lowers someone’s status to say they are not ok and I’m sorry that adding the above caveat bothered you. Clearly my comment was innocent and by more fully explaining my feelings I am I’m no way intentionally reinforcing anyone else’s lack of confidence.
Are you saying you don’t personally believe this or that it is a general rule that it does not?
Sorry—personally.
And it’s a shame that as a general rule it does.