I am all for the transhumanist quest and the struggle for a friendly singularity, and I support the desire of people who are already alive to make the most of that life. But I would recommend against the creation of life, at least until the current historical drama has played itself out—until the singularity, if I must use that word.
If we stop making new people, who is it who will gain new powers, learn new things, figure out the unknowns, and create this singularity? Do you think it is so imminent that the current generation will do it?
“Don’t do anything until we have it all worked out” is a recipe for doing nothing, ever.
I see no prospect that a significant fraction of the human race will become avowed antinatalists any time soon. And even supposing that as much as half of the human race did so… under present conditions, that would mean that the reproducing population of the Earth was still 4 billion, which would just take us back to the mid-1970s, a cohort which was enough to get us to where we are today. So there’s no antinatalist threat to the singularity.
I don’t want to get provoked into arguing too strongly for antinatalism, because I do think it is futile to prioritize it. I am an antinatalist, but I am also a transhumanist, and the antinatalism definitely comes second, because there is no prospect of the human race just deciding to stop reproducing, whereas it would take a disaster to stop some sort of singularity from occurring, so efforts on that front have more meaning.
I will make one observation about arguing the merits of a “policy” that effectively has no chance of ever being implemented. Because ultra-low-probability outcomes require outlandish scenarios for their realization, such a dialogue is liable to be driven by the whims of the parties to the discussion, who will just conjure up whatever scenarios suit their current agenda. If I want to say that universal antinatalism is worth it, I will produce scenarios with a happy ending. If you want to say it’s a bad idea, you’ll produce scenarios where it turns out badly. If I want to make a show of considering both sides, I might produce my own bad scenarios. Consideration of outlandish possible worlds can have value as thought experiments and as a way to know one’s own preferences, but it doesn’t directly determine the merits of anything practical.
So, I could paint a picture of the human race adopting antinatalism and then still engineering a friendly singularity before it dies out, or I could even speak with passion of the evils of life and the very real perils that still lie ahead, and then I could paint a different picture where antinatalism triumphs and a singularity doesn’t occur, but where it’s still for the best because the human race, relieved of the burden of hope, manages to find some peace in its final days. But it would be easy enough to spin counter-scenarios where things remain bad, or even where there are new forms of badness brought on by the political and cultural triumph of antinatalism.
But what all these scenarios, good and bad, have in common, is that they are not going to happen. I expect the cultural profile of antinatalism to increase in the coming years, it may become a vigorously debated concept, especially given the population declines in some wealthy countries. I can imagine a posthuman world, cut loose from the old modes of life and death, taking the idea more seriously. But human beings, as they are, deciding en masse to end the cycle? I just don’t see it.
So the merit of recommending against reproduction is not to be decided by one’s attitude towards the possibility of everyone on Earth adopting this advice, regardless of whether one prefers to imagine this in happy or in sad terms, because all such scenarios are of vanishingly small probability. It should instead be judged by the consequences of antinatalism becoming part of the common cultural vocabulary, and the choice of many, but not all, people.
I don’t want to get provoked into arguing too strongly for antinatalism, because I do think it is futile to prioritize it. I am an antinatalist, but I am also a transhumanist, and the antinatalism definitely comes second, because there is no prospect of the human race just deciding to stop reproducing, whereas it would take a disaster to stop some sort of singularity from occurring, so efforts on that front have more meaning.
One interesting thought experiment I had, once, while contemplating antinatalism—depending on your estimate of when the singularity occurs, it’s very interesting to try and determine just how stringently antinatalism would have to be followed for the extinction of humanity to occur before the singularity happened.
Of course, how antinatalism spreads in the next century or so influences how many people are around to immanentize the eschaton, but the margin of error on your everyday singularity estimate is already too large to bother with second-order effects.
If we stop making new people, who is it who will gain new powers, learn new things, figure out the unknowns, and create this singularity? Do you think it is so imminent that the current generation will do it?
“Don’t do anything until we have it all worked out” is a recipe for doing nothing, ever.
I see no prospect that a significant fraction of the human race will become avowed antinatalists any time soon. And even supposing that as much as half of the human race did so… under present conditions, that would mean that the reproducing population of the Earth was still 4 billion, which would just take us back to the mid-1970s, a cohort which was enough to get us to where we are today. So there’s no antinatalist threat to the singularity.
Urging a bad policy is not excused by the unlikeihood of anyone taking it seriously. That only reduces the size of the step in the wrong direction.
I don’t want to get provoked into arguing too strongly for antinatalism, because I do think it is futile to prioritize it. I am an antinatalist, but I am also a transhumanist, and the antinatalism definitely comes second, because there is no prospect of the human race just deciding to stop reproducing, whereas it would take a disaster to stop some sort of singularity from occurring, so efforts on that front have more meaning.
I will make one observation about arguing the merits of a “policy” that effectively has no chance of ever being implemented. Because ultra-low-probability outcomes require outlandish scenarios for their realization, such a dialogue is liable to be driven by the whims of the parties to the discussion, who will just conjure up whatever scenarios suit their current agenda. If I want to say that universal antinatalism is worth it, I will produce scenarios with a happy ending. If you want to say it’s a bad idea, you’ll produce scenarios where it turns out badly. If I want to make a show of considering both sides, I might produce my own bad scenarios. Consideration of outlandish possible worlds can have value as thought experiments and as a way to know one’s own preferences, but it doesn’t directly determine the merits of anything practical.
So, I could paint a picture of the human race adopting antinatalism and then still engineering a friendly singularity before it dies out, or I could even speak with passion of the evils of life and the very real perils that still lie ahead, and then I could paint a different picture where antinatalism triumphs and a singularity doesn’t occur, but where it’s still for the best because the human race, relieved of the burden of hope, manages to find some peace in its final days. But it would be easy enough to spin counter-scenarios where things remain bad, or even where there are new forms of badness brought on by the political and cultural triumph of antinatalism.
But what all these scenarios, good and bad, have in common, is that they are not going to happen. I expect the cultural profile of antinatalism to increase in the coming years, it may become a vigorously debated concept, especially given the population declines in some wealthy countries. I can imagine a posthuman world, cut loose from the old modes of life and death, taking the idea more seriously. But human beings, as they are, deciding en masse to end the cycle? I just don’t see it.
So the merit of recommending against reproduction is not to be decided by one’s attitude towards the possibility of everyone on Earth adopting this advice, regardless of whether one prefers to imagine this in happy or in sad terms, because all such scenarios are of vanishingly small probability. It should instead be judged by the consequences of antinatalism becoming part of the common cultural vocabulary, and the choice of many, but not all, people.
One interesting thought experiment I had, once, while contemplating antinatalism—depending on your estimate of when the singularity occurs, it’s very interesting to try and determine just how stringently antinatalism would have to be followed for the extinction of humanity to occur before the singularity happened.
Of course, how antinatalism spreads in the next century or so influences how many people are around to immanentize the eschaton, but the margin of error on your everyday singularity estimate is already too large to bother with second-order effects.