Based Camp - Antinatalism & Negative Utilitarianism： Why is it Wrong？

00:00:00.000 have you done harm to a native american tribe if you sterilize all of their members

00:00:04.720 and your member of that tribe would be like you have done the most harm anyone could conceivably

00:00:10.080 commit against our people you have done that tribe a favor and this is because to an anti-natalist

00:00:16.800 the only unit at which humans exist is at the level of the individual not at any other level

00:00:24.240 not at the level of the family not at the level of the civilization or the society to most other

00:00:29.760 humans that exist they don't exist at the level of the individual the the here is how her natalists

00:00:36.400 see the world we must adapt press forward if we are to see our dreams end and how will we know when we

00:00:43.920 get there it is the nature of humankind to push itself toward the horizon we test our limits

00:00:56.160 we face our fears we rise to the challenge and become something greater than ourselves

00:01:07.920 civilization here is how anti-natalists see the world i gotta believe there's some place out there

00:01:14.160 that's better than this otherwise i would just curl up in a lava position and weep but it's this whole

00:01:20.320 gung-ho super organism thing that i'm supposed to do everything for the colony and what about my needs

00:01:26.080 what about me the whole system makes me feel insignificant excellent you've made a real

00:01:33.600 breakthrough you are insignificant i am

00:01:36.400 how you choose to frame your reality is fundamentally a choice you get to choose

00:01:52.240 how you contextualize your position in the world and the way you relate to society and what your

00:01:57.680 identity is or at least within the pro natalist framework you do because to an anti-natalist

00:02:02.160 you don't get to make that choice you don't get to decide that you exist at some more important

00:02:07.200 level than just at the individual you get to decide what your purpose in life is is it to just

00:02:13.440 be an individual running from emotional stimuli that evolved into our ancestors centuries ago

00:02:18.960 due to environmental cues that have nothing to do with our current condition or is it to build

00:02:23.360 something greater than yourself to participate in the work that all mankind from the birth of human

00:02:28.960 civilization until today has built for us to continue on their behalf the path has not always

00:02:35.520 been easy ours is a journey that spans generations where one story ends another begins the world our

00:02:44.480 ancestors faced was brutal yet from it they drew life and though the road to prosperity was at times

00:02:52.880 harsh from the ashes of the old new possibilities arise you need only persevere

00:03:04.160 the true power to shape this world has always lain in your hands

00:03:09.840 would you like to know more hello simone i'm excited to be here with you today today we are going to go

00:03:24.400 back to a topic that needs to be revisited because of the number of terrorist attacks that have been tied

00:03:31.520 to it recently and its relevance to us as people who are generally seen as running the pro natalist movement

00:03:38.240 or at least the pro tech faction of the pro natalist movement and this is the subject of anti-natalism

00:03:46.400 so when i talk about the various terrorist attacks specifically there was a recent ibf clinic bombing that

00:03:50.960 was specifically tied to ephilism which is a philosophy downstream of it the sandy hook shootings where

00:03:56.640 on their youtube channel they talk about ephilism and the christ church mosque shootings where he said that

00:04:03.520 the reason he targeted muslims they media called him a great replacement theorist but he said no like

00:04:08.880 muslims are having more kids which is a fact and therefore i'm going to kill them because i think

00:04:13.360 there should be less kids not because for the environment for the environment for the environment

00:04:17.280 he was an environment which is a common stance held by ephilists in fact the the most recent anti-natalist

00:04:24.560 the most recent anti-natalist terrorist was a vegan his female friend who had likely ended her

00:04:30.560 life through the use of her boyfriend and a firearm was also like literally her online username was

00:04:36.800 vegan anti-natalist yeah so like there is extreme overlap between have heavy focus on sustainability

00:04:43.680 in the environment which i don't think is bad like obviously eating meat is morally wrong we just do it

00:04:48.400 anyway and anti-natalism so so he counts too and i think that this is meaningful because what we're

00:04:55.680 seeing strung together here three acts of terror is is the fact that this isn't just and this is

00:05:00.880 actually something that came up in the manifesto of the most recent terrorist he said anti-natalism

00:05:06.240 isn't nihilism and i think people really misunderstand it they think that anti-natalists are just deeply

00:05:10.800 depressed people who think that nothing matters in the world he says no that's not true anti-natalists

00:05:16.080 believe very vehemently in one thing which is that suffering is bad and we need to end it and if you are a

00:05:21.760 more extreme anti-natalist like him you are essentially on a holy war to end suffering by

00:05:29.600 ending sentience like you have an imperative to end life and you're willing to do that and suffer

00:05:35.520 if sufferers or evil in the universe and you need to end the things that can suffer and and this is one

00:05:41.120 of those philosophies that i think is so compelling to people because on its surface if you don't put a

00:05:46.400 lot of thought in it it seems really well thought through and and internally it's an internally

00:05:54.160 consistent world very different than like progressivism or wokeism or anything like that

00:05:59.280 the problem is is that if you scratch that surface which is what we're going to be doing in this video

00:06:04.640 it makes no logical sense and we have done a video on this before like early early in our channel's

00:06:12.000 history but i wanted to come to it again because i have some new arguments i wanted to this time go

00:06:16.800 more directly to our book the fragment discovery crafting religion where we make direct arguments

00:06:22.240 on this but one of the new arguments that i don't know why i didn't think of this when we were writing

00:06:26.640 our book is what anti-natalists will tell you because what you might be thinking is wait wait wait

00:06:33.360 they want to end suffering do they not think that they are doing harm to individuals when they

00:06:40.880 they you know in in their lives and they're like oh well what we would do is not in the lives of

00:06:45.520 living individuals just prevent the lives of individuals who are kind of coming to being in

00:06:51.520 the future right through sterilization or through not having kids and so they're like you can't harm

00:06:57.200 somebody who hasn't been born yet which for me i just find to be on its face a ludicrous idea like

00:07:02.800 very obviously you can if you this isn't the new argument but if you go back in time and you

00:07:08.160 sterilize my wife you have done harm to my children you are responsible for the differential

00:07:14.640 impacts on the timeline that every one of your choices make whether or not those people have

00:07:20.800 been born yet or not trying to weasel your way out of that is the most morally like like honestly like

00:07:29.040 it feels like a super villain from a show where he's like i've done nothing wrong i merely went back in

00:07:35.360 time and prevented the birth of people who it's like well you prevented he's like but they didn't

00:07:40.560 exist when i prevented them from existing and it's like well they would have existed without your

00:07:45.280 action like clearly you're responsible for that how is it that you believe that your existence is at

00:07:54.000 such a privileged level compared to the people who haven't been born yet how could you even come to

00:08:00.560 be that narcissistic and this is the thing right fundamentally is you can always choose to not

00:08:07.440 exist they can't choose to manifest themselves into existence you are never doing harm by bringing

00:08:15.280 a life into the world because that life can always remove itself you are always doing harm by not

00:08:21.760 bringing a life into the world because that life can't choose this this is like the basic this isn't

00:08:27.920 like a new argument this is something that anyone who has applied even the basic logic to this should

00:08:33.520 be able to see and they're like oh no but ending myself is so hard it's like no no no no no no no

00:08:39.760 it's that you don't want to you are a fundamentally vile and selfish person and i before this i was like

00:08:49.040 okay yes antinatalists are overwhelmingly antisocial yes they're overwhelmingly narcissistic yes they're

00:08:54.480 overwhelmingly mochibellion there have been multiple studies and follow-up studies showing this but when

00:08:58.800 i watch people like this girl who had her boyfriend kill her rather than taking responsibility for that

00:09:04.000 herself that she was willing to ruin his entire life rather than take responsibility for this decision

00:09:11.120 herself or the ivf clinic bomber willing to risk other people's lives just to make a statement yeah

00:09:17.760 although you know i want to point out two two things where i'll agree with him one he pointed out that

00:09:22.880 there are many examples of terrorists and school shooters mass shooters who attempted to end their

00:09:29.520 lives voluntarily by themselves without hurting anyone else and failed or couldn't because it's it's too

00:09:35.200 hard right now and he argued that euthanasia should be a lot easier and i one thousand percent agree

00:09:41.200 like yes no of course you agree with that but that's that's neither here nor there even where euthanasia is

00:09:47.200 not legal it is really not that hard to unalive yourself the the everything's harder when you're

00:09:54.000 depressed i mean i guess but it's to contrast the difficulty of that with manifesting your existence

00:10:01.280 when somebody decided to sterilize your parents is astronomical they'll make arguments like well

00:10:08.960 people who haven't been born yet don't exist yet how can you say that somebody who doesn't exist

00:10:13.680 yet life has value and it's like bro they only don't exist yet from your arbitrary position on the

00:10:19.760 timeline how arrogant do you have to be to believe that your arbitrary position on the timeline is

00:10:28.080 the moral nexus of all reality this is just a trick of how humans perceive time like clearly

00:10:35.120 those future events are going to happen and you are responsible for them and you are responsible for

00:10:41.040 the differential effects you have on the timeline when you think about directions like on a graph

00:10:46.880 time is just another axis on that graph the only thing that makes time different from you know

00:10:53.440 vertical or horizontal directionality is that we as humans cannot go backwards within it but that

00:11:00.720 doesn't mean that past times don't exist or future times don't exist they very evidently do saying that

00:11:08.160 all humans within x part of a timelines lives have literally zero value and your life is exponentially

00:11:15.040 superior to theirs in terms of its value is the same as me saying everyone who lives in a specific

00:11:20.960 geographic region like africa or something's life has no value because they're in a different point

00:11:26.560 within the spatial representation of our reality it's a horrifying thing to do it's almost as if they're

00:11:33.920 trying to argue that future events are not real which is to me just bizarre that anybody could

00:11:40.800 bring themselves to believe that but it is this level of dehumanization of people who are in a

00:11:45.520 different location on the timeline than them and this is the thing about antinatalism i am okay with

00:11:49.680 antinatalist being antinatalist like i think that they probably are more likely both culturally and

00:11:54.160 genetically to be more pessimistic and they probably will not contribute much to the future of humanity

00:11:59.600 if you force them to breed or something i think that they are doing a service to our civilization

00:12:04.240 and so i am okay with the way that they view time what is interesting here is i'm not saying they have

00:12:09.440 to see time the way i see time what i'm saying here is they have to see how somebody could see this way

00:12:14.240 of looking at time and morality is logically internally coherent and would be compelling to a large percent

00:12:20.880 of the population that you are responsible for all the differential effects that your decisions make

00:12:25.840 on the timeline to anyone whether or not they have been conceived yet and this is the problem

00:12:29.760 antinatalists have their goal is only achieved if everyone agrees with them so if there is a separate

00:12:35.040 alternate framework around either identity or how time works that is logically consistent they need

00:12:42.960 to eradicate that even if it is as logically consistent as their own we only need to argue that

00:12:49.120 our way of looking at time and morality is plausible and therefore some groups should be allowed to believe

00:12:53.520 that they need to argue that their way of looking at time and morality is absolute and everyone should

00:12:58.320 be forced to believe that but the new argument i thought of when i was thinking of this is like yeah

00:13:02.720 but like when you think of how people relate to identity very few people outside of the urban

00:13:08.240 monoculture have a primary identity which is individual based so by this what i mean is i would ask

00:13:14.240 have you done harm to a native american tribe if you sterilize all of their members and and your average

00:13:19.840 person or average member of that tribe would be like you have literally committed genocide against

00:13:23.920 us you have done the most harm anyone could conceivably commit against our people and there

00:13:29.840 have been historical instances of certain types of people being sterilized and that is is is i'm

00:13:34.880 pretty universally condemned i don't know but to an antinatalist you have done that tribe a favor

00:13:40.480 and and this is because to an antinatalist the only unit at which humans exist is at the level of the

00:13:47.120 individual not at any other level not at the level of the family not at the level of the civilization

00:13:53.440 or the society or at the level of what you know the thing that you are continuing yet to most other

00:13:58.800 humans that exist they don't exist at the level of the individual the the native american might say

00:14:04.240 well you know first and foremost i'm a member of my tribe right um yeah or a lot of right-wingers will

00:14:10.000 say first and foremost i'm a member of western civilization right and i and i see my goal as as as

00:14:16.000 building on that civilization living for something that i see is greater than myself and the antinatalist

00:14:22.240 will say well wait what they'll be like wait wait you live for something other than yourself

00:14:30.320 explain that to me and it's like most humans live for things other than themselves it's clearly how we're

00:14:35.840 programmed to live if you look at artistic media and everything like that and you see depictions of the

00:14:42.000 good life the end of gladiator right you know the end of grandma and grandpa turn young again nobody

00:14:48.560 nobody nobody ever is like about all the pleasures they had in life like like so few people see things

00:14:55.520 that way right now

00:15:10.480 it's room worth one good man's life

00:15:16.960 we believed it once

00:15:17.920 make us believe it again and here it lays out very clearly what is good in life good in life is

00:15:27.360 family what what is your purpose in life your purpose in life is to uplift your civilization through

00:15:34.720 sacrifice to play your role as a cog in the greater human machine mr mayor do you have a plan to deal with

00:15:41.200 the fat cell housing shortage i'd like to announce we're beginning construction on a third chin what

00:15:47.440 do you have to say to all the hair cells recently laid off from the scalp there'll be plenty of new jobs

00:15:52.640 for everyone on the back 85 of red blood cell children don't even know how to carry oxygen people

00:15:59.200 people the body is in perfect shape the following is a paid political announcement the bowels

00:16:06.160 didn't always smell this way there was a time when eating right and exercise kept this whole

00:16:10.960 area a vital center of activity as mayor i would set long-term goals that include ordering salads

00:16:17.040 and eating bran if we pull together and put in a little hard work a new frank could be right around

00:16:23.680 the corner and what's ironic is by deciding to serve something greater than yourself you end up

00:16:29.120 experiencing much much much more aggregate pleasure and meaning and experiencing the hard times less

00:16:37.040 severely than somebody who takes a negative utilitarian or anti-natalist approach and i'd

00:16:42.400 also note here if they're like well no the core unit of humanity is the individual because that's

00:16:47.440 what i perceive the world through and it's like actually that's mostly an illusion if you know your

00:16:50.880 neuroscience the reality is that if you for example split somebody's corpus callosum that connects the

00:16:55.520 two hemispheres of their brain their brains basically act as separate people within a single

00:17:00.080 individual if you want to learn more about this you can look at our video you're probably not as

00:17:03.600 conscious as you think and the various other brain the parts mostly work independently from each other

00:17:09.120 and then you know how cute with a human but a combination of selves you know the the we get to

00:17:14.720 choose where we define our identity and i choose and i think most people who derive meaning for life choose

00:17:21.120 something bigger than themselves what that is is up to you okay i gotta keep a positive attitude

00:17:27.200 a good attitude even though i'm utterly insignificant i'm i'm insignificant but with attitude

00:17:35.920 this is a very very narrow viewpoint to divide all of human experience into subjective pleasure and

00:17:43.040 suffering right because most people do not get people aren't thinking back to like that one massage

00:17:48.000 they got or like that really really good dinner as they die or the sex that they had or whatever yeah

00:17:53.680 the ways that they were able to contribute to something greater than themselves because that

00:17:59.440 is i think like if you're going to actually like live a good life and be satisfied with your life

00:18:04.480 that's the way you're going to live and then they will say wait but like we should discount their

00:18:10.880 cultural perspective and default to my cultural perspective and i'm like why like why do you get to

00:18:17.440 default like like just say oh they're all wrong like even though their beliefs are also internally

00:18:23.440 consistent you're basically saying they're all wrong and i get to force my beliefs on them my beliefs

00:18:30.320 about what identity should be my beliefs about what humanity should be and and i'd even ask you to ask

00:18:36.640 yourself a serious question if you were in a lineup of 20 people and all those 20 people said independently

00:18:42.640 because keep in mind that these perceptions have come about independently that on that table in front

00:18:47.520 of me there is a duck and a train a toy duck and a toy train and then you walk up and you only see a

00:18:53.920 duck okay unless you are like actually crazy and narcissistic and i think this is why narcissism is so

00:19:00.080 high in this population you'd be like i must not be seeing something maybe i need to change the angle

00:19:06.160 of which i'm looking maybe i need to you know you you would you would think why is everybody else

00:19:11.840 saying there's more to life than pain and suffering why is every other culture structuring their lives

00:19:16.880 around something more than pain and suffering why is it only me that is able to is there maybe something

00:19:23.120 that's wrong with my brain that i'm not able to see like any wider purpose in life besides pain and

00:19:30.240 suffering like is it is it something wrong with me that i supposedly make all of these sacrifices like

00:19:37.840 this vegan anti-natalist chick to live like this ethical life and then i convince my boyfriend

00:19:44.000 to ruin his by taking mine yeah one and the same for her friend and the the bomber like did he need

00:19:51.120 to injure people like or or the sandy hook shooter the glee he took when like little kids said to him

00:19:57.680 like i don't want to die today what do you say when he's oh i don't know don't tell me i don't want to

00:20:02.160 no i can't i can't know anything about it i can't know anything about it well it's okay he's like

00:20:09.360 well it's not your choice kid or something like that you know like taking a lot of glee in what

00:20:13.120 he's doing and and we repeatedly see this within this community right and and it's to me the the

00:20:21.680 native american argument is really strong because it's like this is something that historically happened

00:20:25.600 and it's something that anti-natalists actually believe that you are doing a benefit to this community

00:20:29.920 and that they believe that their understanding of self should supersede any alternate cultural

00:20:36.560 framework any alternate personal framework even if that framework makes perfect sense like you look

00:20:41.360 at our belief and we believe that every individual's goal is to improve themselves every

00:20:45.520 day and to improve themselves intergenerationally and improve the culture from which they come

00:20:49.360 and this is much closer to the framework that the vast majority of societies have adopted like this

00:20:54.880 is what i strive to exist for whereas anti-natalists strive for personal hedonism and yet they live

00:21:01.760 these lives of hate like go to any of their forms go to the old epilus forms of any of them have been

00:21:06.000 archives or the current anti-natalist forms these are not happy people right and it you could say

00:21:12.400 like well and that's what's motivating all this and i'd be like no they're not happy people because

00:21:16.960 they've created a culture in which they create dominance hierarchies of unhappiness and that

00:21:22.080 leads them because the thing that humans even at their default state strive for the most isn't

00:21:26.400 even happiness when you're operating on pure animal mode it is on winning local dominance hierarchies

00:21:32.720 and so you will make yourself unhappy or or or cosplay as unhappy if that can elevate you is in the

00:21:40.880 social networks that you value and so i think that this fundamentally undermines everything else about

00:21:45.920 anti-natalism and that it shows that even them who claim that they should be doing what the opus day

00:21:50.880 or what us do which is attempt to recontextualize everything in their lives to extract the most

00:21:56.000 positive emotions from it and it's something that you can do like the adams family does this for

00:21:59.920 example they just recontextualize what they're experiencing these individuals have that as an

00:22:04.320 option but they don't choose it which shows that even their own claimed belief that unhappiness matters

00:22:12.480 above all else and suffering is the core negative that they could reduce it within their own lives and they

00:22:18.240 choose not to over something so animalistic which to me shows the entire movement is alert the entire

00:22:25.280 movement is alert because you can choose as i've said you can choose to what about your life which is

00:22:29.280 the name of one anime where she's really depressed and looking for you know a validation for people

00:22:33.280 who you know don't even like her that much or she knew you your life which is another anime where she

00:22:37.440 just chooses to perceive reality the way she wants to perceive reality because you get to do that right

00:22:42.160 and she chooses to search for validation from people whose values she respects you can choose

00:22:47.680 that and people who ultimately help her right because she's not going to communities that are about

00:22:53.360 tearing individuals down that's cool i guess you can join up with us anti-natalists if you want

00:22:59.120 yeah we're gonna go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is

00:23:03.920 thanks for offering to let me in your click guys but to be honest i'd rather be a crying little bit of

00:23:08.080 anti-natalist he's right i don't even know who i am anymore i like liking life a lot more than

00:23:15.760 hating it screw you guys i'm going home go ahead and go back to your sunshine fairy tale

00:23:24.480 and i note here you know one one argument that you always get from anti-natalists is oh well you can't

00:23:28.800 meaningfully consent for someone bringing you into existence and again this to me is is is such a vile

00:23:37.600 thing to say because that person also can't consent to not exist and because the best and you can say

00:23:45.200 well i've done nothing wrong if they didn't exist yet why what like there is no logical reason for

00:23:50.800 that argument this is one of these arguments that only works if you're just completely cooked in like

00:23:56.880 a philosopher's sphere and you're not thinking about the real world at all you have clearly done

00:24:03.840 harm if you prevent somebody from existing like clearly clearly clearly clearly i i do not

00:24:10.480 understand and this is obviously a big you know objection we have to like catholics who think that

00:24:14.880 like life begins at conception and stuff like that and we think they're murdering babies by not using ivf

00:24:18.800 right like we're like clearly if you went back in time and sterilize someone you are responsible for

00:24:25.120 every differential thing within that timeline and what's important is that you can always consent to

00:24:34.800 your continued existence unless you're like on life support or something like that and you're you're no

00:24:38.960 longer mobile right like that's a horrifying scenario but generally speaking most humans consent to their

00:24:45.200 continued existence they just lack the balls to make a choice about it if the choice would in any way

00:24:52.800 inconvenience them that's what i've really seen was the effelists and antinatalists they understand

00:24:57.440 that they have to take the responsibility for the fact that they exist and continue to exist and that

00:25:02.720 that is not a choice that anybody who wasn't been brought into existence any thoughts by the way someone

00:25:07.680 before i go further no i mean this seems logically consistent to me and yeah i mean i think the there is

00:25:14.480 a there is a version of antinatalism that just is accompanied by winning people over through logical

00:25:22.160 argument to your view and then all of you deciding never work i don't believe like there's people

00:25:26.800 who say that they believe this right there are a lot of people but it's it's not logically coherent

00:25:33.200 because it would obviously never work what do you mean oh because in the end just those who actually

00:25:38.640 love to live and care about living will be left yes even at a genetic level it would eventually fail

00:25:44.880 because humans would adopt to this philosophy and no longer feel the suffering that they are so afraid of

00:25:50.160 feeling you know what or or they become psychologically resistant in some other way because evolution

00:25:55.200 exists and evolution can resist means like it's a completely incoherent and fantastical philosophy

00:26:01.600 that people say they believe because they they don't want to be called out for what their philosophy

00:26:08.240 always actually leads to which is effelism like intellectually i don't nobody really believes that they can

00:26:16.160 convince all of human civilization of this if they have put thought into the fact that it really

00:26:21.840 requires you to have a perception of reality that is totally different than the the vast majority of

00:26:28.560 living humans like like even you like you come to me it's not like i don't understand your arguments

00:26:34.160 i just think that they're and it's not even that i'm like relying on some external oh i exist because of

00:26:39.600 god or something like that right like i'm not you're just being logical yeah you're just aware that most

00:26:44.400 people don't want to die and prefer to be alive yeah even if their life is hard and i note here

00:26:50.400 part of the reason why it's obviously never going to spread to the entire population it is just such

00:26:55.680 an unlikable way to live if you look at the beginning when i sort of frame the two world

00:27:00.320 framings the pronatalist through the civ songs through the end of gladiator and the anti-natalist

00:27:05.920 where it's all me me me me me only subjective experiences matter and you show these to somebody

00:27:10.640 like a young man or something like that if you're completely urban monoculture brain cooked and just

00:27:15.120 a total nihilist now maybe the anti-natalist message will will land with you but for the vast

00:27:19.760 majority of people they're going to be like oh i prefer the good one not not the objectively bad

00:27:24.880 and evil one not the thanos one and so i i think that like it doesn't even spread that fast within our

00:27:30.640 existing society right now you know it's a decent sized movement but when most people hear about it

00:27:35.360 even far lefties even far urban monoculture people they're like that sounds like crazy if

00:27:39.680 it can't even thrive within the culture it is best suited for how is it ever going to spread into you

00:27:46.960 know extremist muslim groups or conservative christian groups or orthodox jewish groups it's

00:27:51.840 just no chance at all that's why i believe that the people who are saying and are saying oh we're

00:27:56.720 going to do all this voluntarily they don't really mean it they're just hiding their long-term goals

00:28:01.840 you can you can decide to not continue being alive you can't decide to bring yourself into existence

00:28:07.840 and so if you prevent somebody from coming to existence you have violated their consent

00:28:12.000 whether or not they happen to be born yet like i have never understood why that's such an important

00:28:16.480 factor in their mind about how morality works again future humans aren't like imaginary or fictional

00:28:23.200 they are real people just as real as you who will live a life just as rich or potentially even more

00:28:29.360 rich than your own you are playing for keeps when you make a decision that deletes someone from

00:28:34.480 existence well and i think this is also very similar to where you draw lines with the issue of cultural

00:28:40.640 sovereignty where you're like every culture should have the right to exist as it wants to exist and

00:28:46.720 raise kids the way they want to raise kids but you draw the line at doing things to kids that would

00:28:52.000 make it impossible for them to go their own way upon reaching adulthood and independence yeah like

00:28:56.480 getting married very young and stuff like that yeah so like things like getting married very young

00:29:00.080 that's out because you're you're taking away their choice to make their own choice when they're old

00:29:04.640 enough so this i think it's it's what you're showing on your end is at least also a very consistent

00:29:09.920 philosophy where what you care about is consenting people doing what's best for them well cultural

00:29:16.400 sovereignty because i think the core unit of society is culture i do not believe it's the individual

00:29:21.200 yeah and then this this concept of of especially effelism within antinatalism is so antithetical

00:29:26.720 to that because it's all about coercively removing people's choice and sovereignty thing is it pro

00:29:33.040 natalism is always a pro-choice thing like you have a choice in this whereas antinatalism always needs

00:29:39.120 to at the end boil down to authoritarianism and removing other people's choices because there's always

00:29:44.800 going to be some percentage of the population that's just like i cannot even begin to concede how you

00:29:50.800 think you are doing no harm by preventing somebody else from coming in to exist just because that

00:29:56.160 person hasn't been conceived yet and i you know there are differences biological differences in

00:30:00.560 humans it's been shown that a belief in determinism has a biological component to it i can understand

00:30:05.920 like if you were maybe born in like a catholic family and you have this like life begins a consent

00:30:10.000 mindset and like you have co-evolved along with this tradition for a long time when you become secular

00:30:15.040 this can make sense to you but you've got to understand that there's another part of the human population

00:30:19.440 that this will never make sense to you it will never ever ever ever within the slightest hint

00:30:26.320 of whatever makes sense to me that you had done no harm by going back in time and sterilizing my wife

00:30:30.880 that you had not done harm to the kids who i hug every day right those kids who would have come to

00:30:36.080 exist who you had not done this i i do not understand the level of dehumanization of future humans

00:30:41.440 you see within these communities they are not humans who don't exist because they do come to exist if

00:30:47.840 you don't take your action they are future humans that you are choosing to harm and have completely

00:30:53.760 dehumanized and stripped of any degree of humanity within your philosophy and again if you want to say

00:31:00.080 but they don't exist that is just factually not true they do exist just at a different point in the

00:31:06.000 timeline and based on individual choices you you do not your position was in the human timeline it's not

00:31:12.320 the privileged vector of all morality but to go further risk and uncertainty arguments they'll say

00:31:19.200 something like since we cannot predict what quality of life someone will have some lives involve extreme

00:31:23.280 suffering it may be wrong to take that gamble on their behalf what's really psychotic about this

00:31:29.680 they're like okay some lives have extreme suffering but it's like yeah but those lives those people

00:31:33.840 continue to exist right like they could choose to stop their existence no not in every single instance but in

00:31:40.240 most instances these people are choosing their continued existence which i think fundamentally

00:31:45.040 undermines everything the antinatalist believes because they're basically saying look at this

00:31:49.280 person who is undergoing all this suffering and that individual who's undergoing all this suffering

00:31:53.600 is saying yeah but life is still worth it for me despite my wife being like i'm right here and i

00:32:02.480 don't want to die i'm right here and they're like well you don't get to make that decision why don't

00:32:07.840 they the individual who's experiencing all this get to make that decision why is this your decision to

00:32:13.200 make right like that's so psychotic and why can't you look at the individual who is experiencing all

00:32:20.880 this suffering and still sees purpose in life and say hey where are all them seeing that i don't see

00:32:29.920 like why is it that all of them want to continue existence and i don't and they'll be like well it's

00:32:34.880 evolution and you're designed to not want to die or whatever it's like clearly that's not all of it

00:32:40.240 because you have been able to overcome that with your moderate degree of suffering in life because

00:32:45.920 i've noticed most of these people are like middle upper class people this is not a phenomenon that is

00:32:50.160 concentrated in like lower classes or like in the you know starving places in africa or in developing

00:32:56.320 countries this is a philosophy that really only appeals to people who have lived with so much overwhelming

00:33:02.480 privilege that they're like what i have to suffer in life i don't want to do that like i what suffering

00:33:12.400 and even imagine like they're like we love this argument here it may be wrong to bring people into

00:33:18.720 a fundamentally unjust economic and social system and i'm like but that that that i mean have you tried

00:33:28.960 for nature too like nature's way worse well they want to erase nature the ethelists want to kill

00:33:33.760 everything i forgot right i'm like that's what makes life good like imagine you came into a world

00:33:41.120 where all of the world's problems have already been fixed and it's just sort of like bland pleasantness

00:33:47.760 maybe even you just feel ecstasy throughout your entire life like that's the world they want and and in

00:33:54.560 that world i would be an ephilis i'd be like this world has no point shut it down and the vast majority

00:34:02.480 of humans would be ephilis in that world oh it's just a world of endless ecstasy and no problems and

00:34:08.480 nothing to overcome and nothing to improve and nothing to work towards what's the point of existing within

00:34:14.080 that world the world that they describe as the only viable world is a hell to most humans

00:34:21.440 they are like the ai in the matrix that is like oh well we created this perfect world i'll put this

00:34:28.000 in here though did you know that the first matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where

00:34:35.440 none suffered where everyone would be happy it was a disaster no one would accept the program entire

00:34:44.080 crops were lost oh this perfect world and humans just don't want to live in it your average person

00:34:51.280 who isn't mentally ill would be like yeah obviously that world isn't worth living in and then this

00:34:57.040 could be like wait wait so why do people want challenges in their life why do people want to

00:35:03.920 overcome things in their life and it's like because we exist most humans intuitively understand that we exist

00:35:12.080 to improve upon the cultural achievements of our ancestors to make things better to improve not to feel

00:35:20.640 as much positives as possible and and not feel as much negatives as possible and they can be like

00:35:25.200 well but you wouldn't like if i made you suffer and i'm like that's like a paperclip maximizing ai

00:35:29.440 being like well you wouldn't like it if i stopped you from making paper clips one paperclip maximizer

00:35:33.600 is like yeah but this thing's in life above paperclip maximization and they're like wait what paperclip i'm

00:35:39.360 like yeah you were programmed you were programmed by evolution to these are just signals to to not want

00:35:45.360 this to want this like can you not rise above your your basic programming no i want to go into like

00:35:52.960 what we wrote about this as well and the fragment described the crafting religion because i think

00:35:56.560 it's really important to go into this now that this has become a more popular philosophy right now it's

00:36:00.560 more popular than pro natalism it's which makes it many times more popular than things like ai safety

00:36:06.320 in the effective altruism movement the first position antinatalists instinctively take is that

00:36:12.400 the average human experience is more negative than positive emotions in their lifetime or at least that

00:36:17.200 negative emotions are felt more acutely than positive ones and therefore outweigh them as such

00:36:21.520 antinatalists conclude it would be better if one never existed in the first place the problem with

00:36:25.920 this argument is that the vast majority of people do not in fact wish that they were never born heck we

00:36:31.040 neither value happiness nor love and we certainly don't seek them out and yet our lives are overflowing

00:36:37.200 with them our biology naturally drowns us in positive emotions when we are efficaciously working

00:36:42.960 for the betterment of our species with people we respect and who respect us in turn to address

00:36:49.120 the average person's hesitations antinatalists typically make one of five arguments argument one

00:36:54.800 humans don't realize how bad their lives are antinatalists posit that people are incapable of judging

00:37:00.640 whether they like their own lives typically citing cognitive bias to do so while they are right that

00:37:06.160 humans remember positive events more accurately than negative ones they are incorrect in assuming

00:37:11.120 that this bias is strong enough to convince a person with a terrible life that their life is actually

00:37:14.880 good in fact humans have all sorts of equally powerful biases towards seeing things negatively and

00:37:20.560 this is david benatar he talks about this one bias and then ignores every other bias because he lies

00:37:25.680 to the people he argues to he doesn't give you the full context because the entire philosophy requires

00:37:32.400 you not considering the full context or other human beings specifically future humans given their

00:37:39.280 instinctive negativity bias people will spend more time focused on negative things in their lives and

00:37:44.960 positive things this has been measured in test subjects focusing more on negative pictures when given a few to

00:37:51.200 choose between and people blinking more when given negative words than positive ones with eye blinks

00:37:55.920 being tied to cognitive processing the negative bias appears in almost all antinatalist thinkers if

00:38:01.600 allowed to talk long enough they always end up discounting the positive events in a person's life putting tons

00:38:07.280 of weight on negative events undermining their own arguments that all humans have this insurmountable bias

00:38:12.160 towards outweighing the positive they justify this bias as the logical way of looking at the world

00:38:18.320 implying that if we view life through rose tinted glasses you're succumbing to a cognitive bias are

00:38:24.560 wrong about how much you like your life whereas if you tend to view things negatively your feelings are

00:38:30.960 super valid and serve as proof that everything they are saying is right now i i note here this is just

00:38:37.360 absolutely your emotional state is a direct response to the bias through which you view reality if you view

00:38:46.080 reality through rose tinted goggles that you choose to see reality through you genuinely are getting

00:38:51.760 more positive experiences than the antinatalist who is choosing to use the black tinted glasses the

00:38:58.240 problem is is that they say that the thing they hate most in the world is suffering so why aren't

00:39:02.800 they choosing to use rose tinted glasses while maintaining their antinatalist framework oh yes because

00:39:08.160 they don't really believe it this is all about just little status hierarchies and justifying the bad

00:39:12.880 decisions that they have already made and justify not actually trying in life like getting out there

00:39:19.360 and trying is the number one thing about being a pronatalist in the absence of concrete poof that

00:39:24.320 cognitive biases are sufficient to convince somebody that a bad life actually is a good life antinatalists

00:39:30.160 often point out humans tendency to rate the quality of their lives in comparison to others and that

00:39:35.040 humans take this to mean many people who are happy with their lives and excited to be alive actually

00:39:42.720 shouldn't be imagine some nihilistic snooty middle-class quote-unquote new atheist kid from

00:39:48.000 the united states strolling up to someone from a developing country who is struggling to put food

00:39:52.480 on the table imagine this unsuspecting person has learned to relish life and yet this kid is trying

00:39:58.160 to convince them that they are delusional and should resent their very existence imagine their eyes

00:40:03.280 widening as the kid insists in fact the world would be better if they were never born what antinatalists

00:40:09.120 often really mean is that if they in their cush developed world lives can't find happiness how

00:40:16.560 could those coming from strictly less wealthy nations possibly be of sound mind when asserting

00:40:22.240 that their lives and the lives of their children are worth living and this is something i consistently

00:40:27.680 see they're just a gas how could all of these people who seem to be suffering more than me like their

00:40:31.920 lives more than me see more value in living than me and it's maybe because they don't come from your

00:40:36.640 cultural context and you're attempting to force your perspective of what a good life is which is

00:40:42.000 frankly a very poorly thought through perspective it is to pedestalize the things that in an

00:40:48.640 evolutionary environment cause some humans to have more surviving offspring than other humans like this

00:40:53.120 is the core thing like our base programming is the core thing it's like what like of all things that

00:40:59.200 might have value in the world it's not like i think oh because your your views are internally

00:41:05.360 logically consistent that oh you might be close to right or or waffling around you being right

00:41:11.280 you are so much dumber than even like a scientologist like you are so much more obviously wrong than the

00:41:19.840 most obviously wrong philosophies i've ever fought i i i cannot conceivably think how anyone who has an

00:41:28.240 understanding of how evolution works could think the things that randomly led their ancestors to have more

00:41:33.120 surviving offspring are the core truth of existence you know if if that is the case what you're trying

00:41:40.560 to say it's it's like the intellectual equivalent of worshiping a stop sign or a stoplight and being

00:41:45.360 like red is bad we must end all red the red yeah they're just signals they're signals that help to

00:41:52.480 improve our survival rates open in locker hey he's back the lifekeeper all hail k all hail k oh good and

00:42:04.640 gentle town folk of locker c 18. did i leave anything here yes the timekeeper you left it to illuminate

00:42:12.800 our streets and our hearts i've been looking everywhere for that watch but this is really what

00:42:17.440 anti-natalists look like from the perspective of pro natalists they are people who are worshiping

00:42:22.400 random and arbitrary genetic scars that were put in our conscious millions of years ago and have no

00:42:29.520 real purpose in a modern context worse we're probably only one or two generations before being able to

00:42:35.680 have the choice to completely remove them if we wanted to now i don't think we should i think that you

00:42:40.160 know as i said i think that would be a worse life for me but i can understand why some might want to

00:42:45.840 we live at the most nascent point of human civilization right now a time that future

00:42:51.600 humans are going to write about aghast that humans of the past didn't get to choose what emotional

00:42:57.520 states they felt and i think they will be very confused and it will probably be a curiosity that

00:43:02.400 people dig into as to why some humans started to worship these random genetic scars and signals

00:43:08.960 that were meant to guide the behavior of our ancestors

00:43:11.520 oh no i got y'all i got y'all school it's cool here and check this out titanium case waterproof to over

00:43:17.040 300 meters who are you stranger jay all hail jay oh wait the commandment the tablet the tablet we have

00:43:25.920 lived by its word and peace has reigned throughout our world two for one every wednesday give twice as

00:43:32.640 much as he receive on the most sacred of days well the fundamental nature of reality is that trivial

00:43:40.560 okay i i actually wouldn't even be an antinatalist i'd just be a pure nihilist i wouldn't even see the

00:43:44.880 point of enacting antinatalist ideals because both good and bad are so trivial your understanding of what

00:43:50.720 is bad is so trivial and minus to continue here the truth of course is that many people experiencing

00:43:57.440 deprivation enjoy lives filled with joy and dynamism while antinatalists suffer through a

00:44:02.240 self-constructed hell ironically antinatalists love claiming that they are actually super happy

00:44:06.400 people which i often see with the antinatalists who are trying to you know be like oh we don't

00:44:10.800 want to kill everyone we don't want to and it's like and i'm super happy with life it's just

00:44:15.040 be logical about this and i'm like okay but this is a notion that one can instantly dispel

00:44:20.400 by spending five seconds on the our antinatalism subreddit or watching youtube videos of antinatalists

00:44:25.680 yeah so look in the interest of the end if you could end suffering tomorrow yeah probably anything

00:44:32.080 is justifiable inflicting just about anything is probably justifiable imposing just about anything

00:44:39.760 is probably justifiable if you can end it if you if there's literally you can guarantee no more ouch

00:44:46.640 ever again then there probably isn't a big enough ouch you could make

00:44:52.480 that wouldn't be justified in the interest of that end probably by any means necessary like

00:44:59.200 if i found out tomorrow that the only way that you could that sentient extinction could possibly happen

00:45:07.360 was skinning all the living things alive slowly i'd hate it but i would probably i would say that it's

00:45:14.240 what we have to do i'm totally i'm i'm totally on board with the idea that that the the only thing that

00:45:21.520 really matters is the suffering coming to a finality so yeah any anything in the interest of that if you

00:45:29.680 can guarantee that even even despite whatever imposition or or nastiness might be necessary

00:45:38.320 it is pretty hard to miss a deep sense of despair and bitterness arguments like you are wrong about how

00:45:44.480 much you think you like your life resemble forms of abusive gaslighting frequently used in cult

00:45:49.840 when i malcolm was younger i used to recreationally engage with colton in an effort to understand how

00:45:56.560 people could hold views so orthogonal to my own one of the most common tools leveraged in a cult

00:46:01.680 recruiting process involves attempts to convince otherwise perfectly content targets that they are

00:46:07.280 actually miserable and i remember this was uh i went to scientologists like theme readings to see

00:46:12.080 and they're like well you know you must have some beef with your dad or something or you must have some

00:46:16.800 you know when recounting the the events of my life and i was like well it wasn't perfect but like

00:46:21.200 he tried he was acting accordance with his own identity i i wouldn't agree with his decisions but

00:46:26.480 i understand why he made them and they're like well that's you know clearly trauma and i go no that's

00:46:30.640 not trauma this is you trying to break me from my family and this is why antinatalism works so well

00:46:35.520 as sort of an ideal cluster because it tears people from their family before we go further do you have any

00:46:40.160 thoughts on this this this argument that lives are overwhelmingly negative in their emotions i it

00:46:46.160 reminds me of a hyper fixation that you can develop when you're struggling either with depression or

00:46:50.800 other forms of either mental irregularity or illness where as soon as you think something's

00:46:56.000 important or a big deal you can't think about anything else yeah yeah no no i see this it just

00:47:00.480 it just sort of overwhelms their mind because like a prion if people don't know prions are these

00:47:05.360 little self-replicating things that can happen in your brain if you cannibalize someone's brain

00:47:08.560 brain which is why you shouldn't eat brain don't eat brain you're gonna eat a person rest of the

00:47:14.160 humans are safe not the brain prions are very scary diseases you get them in cannibalistic tribes

00:47:19.040 but the the the prions can spread because they are so simplistic it's this life philosophy that's so

00:47:26.480 simplistic suffering bad that it crowds out more complex ideas around why life might have value

00:47:33.680 and it easily just eats and eats and eats and eats until there isn't much left right argument two

00:47:39.520 positive emotions don't matter negative emotions do more convincingly antinatalists will argue the

00:47:44.960 positive emotions we think we feel do not actually matter or impart meanings to our lives the argument

00:47:50.640 usually goes something like this sisyphus was cursed to roll a ball up a hill forever only to have it roll

00:47:55.600 back down after making it to the top most people would see this as a meaningless existence suppose

00:48:00.320 somebody reprograms sisyphus's brain to enjoy the process and get a sense of deep fulfillment from

00:48:04.960 rolling the ball up the hill if you engaged him and tried to get him to stop he wouldn't

00:48:08.800 telling you how wonderful ball rolling was for him does his life have value now the average person's

00:48:14.320 intuition holds that his existence remains meaningless antinatalists proceed to extend this

00:48:20.800 argument to other scenarios suppose a person gained pleasure and fulfillment from eating feces

00:48:25.280 would lifespan consuming fecal matter have value the gist of the argument is that if stupid things

00:48:31.760 can make you happy or give you a feeling of fulfillment then you should not derive meaning

00:48:35.520 from positive emotions and if positive emotional states can have no value then what's the point of

00:48:40.400 existing david benatar believes this point so strongly that he argues he would be ambivalent

00:48:44.960 between non-existent and the most perfect life conceivable i'd also note here when you when

00:48:49.680 you look at these arguments they're just really bad like if from the antinatalist perspective if i

00:48:55.520 have now programmed sisyphus to enjoy rolling a ball up a hill even though the average person would now

00:49:00.800 say no his life is still meaningless because he's accomplished nothing of meaning the antinatalist would

00:49:05.440 be forced to say actually now his life like david benatar would say is now of neutral value because

00:49:11.360 he's getting more happiness he's not feeling any pain when he's just rolling the ball up the hill over and

00:49:16.320 over again and he's getting happiness from it so now his life has neutral value when the average

00:49:21.120 person says whether or not he hates or loves rolling the ball up the hill his life still has

00:49:26.240 no value because the way most people judge value is not just dependent on the emotional sets that you

00:49:30.960 get the antinatalist is forced to say actually the person either they positive life value or a neutral

00:49:36.080 life value if they actually enjoy eating feces if they get a ton of joy from that the antinatalist is

00:49:41.120 forced to say their life has value if they do nothing but eat feces whereas your sane person

00:49:45.600 is like no whether or not you hate eating feces or you like eating feces an entire life filled

00:49:50.800 eating feces is not a thing of value right like i hope you can begin to see how bad these arguments

00:49:58.000 are like they're not like kind of bad they are self-defeating from the perspective of common sense

00:50:05.040 the belief that negative but not positive emotional states have value and a person's aim in life should be

00:50:10.080 to minimize their negative emotional states is called negative utilitarianism there is a second form

00:50:15.440 in which the reduction of suffering merely takes precedence over the promotion of pleasure but i

00:50:20.240 haven't seen that that common within antinatalist circles we are confident that any reader of our

00:50:24.800 books can immediately see the hollowness of this argument as the sisyphus argument they apply to

00:50:29.920 positive emotions can also be applied to negative emotions it just so happens that antinatalists cheat

00:50:35.360 on this thought experiment when it is flipped alas cheating on a thought experiment does not invalidate the

00:50:40.160 implications how does this cheat work let's say we programmed a paperclip maximizing ai to suffer

00:50:45.360 when not making paper clips and ask an antinatalist does the ai's suffering matter intuitively they'd

00:50:51.760 argue that yes this suffering does matter and we need to do something about it however doing so

00:50:56.800 would invalidate their claims that pleasure is meaningless so instead when presented with this

00:51:02.320 argument antinatalists often argue that we could have simply not built the ai or not designed it to

00:51:08.160 suffer here's the thing though you don't get to just remove key components from a thought experiment

00:51:13.200 and claim your argument is valid if we drop a ball to demonstrate the presence of gravity and another

00:51:18.880 person wouldn't just be able to take that ball away and say ha where's your gravity now and yet that's

00:51:24.480 exactly what antinatalists are doing when they remove any suffering entity from the equation in the

00:51:29.360 mirrored sisyphus thought experiment the very point of the sisyphus thought experiment is that the

00:51:34.080 positive emotional states can be dismissed as a single value because they are introduced by a

00:51:39.760 meaningless activity as this point is not addressed by the cheat that they use to get out of the mirrored

00:51:44.800 thought experiment the cheat cannot be used to negate the thought experiment's implication

00:51:48.880 that negative emotional states don't have value so to word this differently if you're having trouble

00:51:53.760 understanding this argument they use the sisyphus thought experiment to say if you can get positive

00:51:59.600 emotional states from something silly then it's clear that positive emotional states don't have

00:52:04.720 value the problem is that the flipped thought experiment does the exact same thing but for

00:52:10.240 negative emotions it shows that if you can get negative emotions from something silly then negative

00:52:15.200 emotions don't have value it's just what we're programmed to want to do and they would say well

00:52:19.760 i've gotten around this because you can prevent him from existing in the negative emotion thought

00:52:24.800 scenario so i don't need to deal with that implication but the structure and the logic of

00:52:29.360 the first part of their experiment means yes they do have to deal with the implication because it's

00:52:33.600 the same exact thing if an emotional state can be induced by silliness then it's not a thing of meaning

00:52:40.160 well we personally don't agree with either version of the thought experiment we do think

00:52:44.400 that if you accept one version you cannot refuse the other one without being logically inconsistent

00:52:50.160 so just in case you don't understand the logic of that what antinatalists will do

00:52:54.800 is they will say well we've done no harm if we prevent sisyphus from existing in either scenario

00:53:00.560 so it doesn't really matter right you're saying okay well if you programmed him to feel pleasure

00:53:06.880 from rolling a ball up a hill or you programmed him to feel pain from rolling a ball up a hill and you

00:53:11.360 don't know what world you happen to be in we've done no wrong by preventing him from coming to exist and

00:53:16.960 i'm like yeah but the purpose of your thought experiment wasn't about the asymmetry argument

00:53:22.160 it was about is suffering something of negative intrinsic value right and what we proved with

00:53:28.240 that a thought experiment is no in the same way positive emotions aren't a thing of intrinsic value

00:53:33.360 to most people whether or not sisyphus feels pain or pleasure from rolling the ball up a hill or a person

00:53:39.360 feels pain or pleasure from eating poo that doesn't make their lives a thing of value which fundamentally

00:53:44.960 shows us at a basic human intuition level plane and pleasure are not the core things that have

00:53:50.400 value to a human being okay but let's be real here this thought experiment is kind of dumb take any

00:53:57.360 utility maximization to the logical extreme and you will sound stupid if a person is maximizing

00:54:01.760 happiness it's what about putting all humans in happiness pods if the person is about maximizing

00:54:06.640 negative utilitarianism is about what about killing everyone if a person thinks emotions justify

00:54:11.760 human existence it's what if a person derives happiness from eating poo all these extremes

00:54:16.240 do is obligate people to take stances which they would be shamed for in normie society and then shame

00:54:22.320 them for taking them in order to discredit them in normie land a person saying all people should die

00:54:28.080 or that it's acceptable to let people eat poo all day is a danger to society so we shame that behavior

00:54:34.960 so basically what i'm saying here is even though i think these arguments are really bad and i think that

00:54:38.800 they actually introduce counter arguments that make anti-natalism look bad i don't even like those

00:54:43.520 particular counter arguments i much prefer the ones i use earlier in this in this piece and the ones i'll

00:54:47.440 use later because i think that they're a cheap psychological trick that is often employed

00:54:51.920 anti-natalists tie their tongues in knots trying to argue that per their world view it would not be

00:54:57.520 immoral to push a button that painlessly and simultaneously extinguish the life of every single

00:55:01.920 person we lose a lot of respect for philosophy that is either unwilling to or unable to publicly

00:55:07.680 swallow the socially unpopular implications of their moral positions so here's what i'm saying is

00:55:13.680 if you actually accept and i'm talking about the non-effilist anti-natalist here if you actually accept

00:55:19.680 the fundamental philosophy of negative utilitarianism or anti-natalism you should believe the very

00:55:26.400 obviously immoral thing that it is immoral to push a button that kills all humans famously and yet

00:55:32.240 they know that they can't accept this because it makes their entire movement look like crazy

00:55:36.320 people to everyone else and so they will try to argue that oh well actually here you're violating

00:55:41.120 consent blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and it's like well yeah but isn't that what you're doing

00:55:46.800 when you prevent somebody from coming into existence why why did these existing people exist as a separate

00:55:51.840 category of people when their experiences of their lives is no different from the people who have yet to

00:55:56.560 come to exist like i do not understand how you can so dehumanize this one class of people just

00:56:01.280 because of your privileged position within the timeline as coming before them it's like a person

00:56:05.920 believing that all people younger than them are intrinsically inferior to them it is so wild to me

00:56:10.640 as a philosophical position as such we have a lot more respects for groups like the non-voluntary

00:56:15.920 anti-natalists who are at least transparent about their goal to forcibly sterilize the human race

00:56:20.800 anti-natalists not in the non-voluntary anti-natalists account attempt to get out of this obvious

00:56:25.920 inconsistency with the next argument argument three i pinky swear i don't want to kill you

00:56:31.200 or myself many anti-natalists argue that once you exist you have a reason and interest to continue

00:56:36.880 to existing this requires a very specific belief about how time works in order to be true to someone

00:56:43.200 making this argument new moments are quote-unquote poof created out of thin air like magic the future

00:56:49.200 does not exist in any meaningful way until it is actualized per our view every decision you make

00:56:54.560 determines which of countless potential futures will exist with every decision you functionally

00:56:59.360 erase whatever futures you did not choose and like i do not understand how this isn't just like obvious

00:57:04.560 to everyone how are you not responsible for choices you make if they affect somebody who hasn't been

00:57:09.440 conceived yet i i will never and i think that this is partially biology be able to understand how somebody

00:57:16.400 could seriously argue that perspective you are simultaneously responsible for everything you

00:57:21.680 did and did not set in motion with your decision for example if you have the capability to build a

00:57:27.680 hospital and we choose to not do that and sit around and play video games we deny that hospital's

00:57:32.800 existence and are morally capable for the results of that decision the hospital's moral value does not

00:57:38.640 pop into existence only after the first stone is laid that's the same with a human right like just

00:57:44.080 because nobody laid the first stone of a hospital and you're saying well i'm going to stay home and

00:57:47.520 play video games and not lay the hospital today does it mean that the implications of that hospital's

00:57:52.480 potential existence are not there is something i'm not responsible for in the same way that if i choose

00:57:57.920 not to conceive a human that i could otherwise conceive i am not responsible for all of the effects that

00:58:02.560 their life will have on reality other people and themselves any thoughts before i go further by the way

00:58:08.960 this mirrors the beef we have with those who think it is sinful to spill quote-unquote seed or that life

00:58:13.920 begins at conception all potential lives have value and must have moral weight considered it strikes us

00:58:21.680 as bizarre that people would fixate on arbitrary thresholds like sperm or embryo or the moment a

00:58:26.800 baby's head appears that said we don't endorse endlessly spamming the world with babies we need to

00:58:32.400 carefully weigh the effect a potential life can have on all other potential lives with which it could

00:58:37.520 interact as well as the potential lives that it may in turn create it is somewhat ironic how

00:58:43.840 much the anti-natalist world view has in common with the quote-unquote life begins at conception

00:58:49.520 crowds world view argument for praying for a dead world the asymmetry argument anti-natalist assertions

00:58:56.880 that life matters once it has been created are reminiscent of another argument they constantly

00:59:01.600 use which proceeds as follows and this i think is like one of their weakest arguments because it's just

00:59:07.120 so dehumanizing of people who are younger than them basically anybody who's born after somebody else has

00:59:13.440 like so much less value in their minds okay so baby born it is bad for someone who does exist to feel

00:59:19.840 suffering so i mean in condition where baby is born it is bad for someone who does exist to feel suffering

00:59:24.720 it is good for someone who does exist to feel happiness baby not born it is good to prevent someone

00:59:30.720 from existing who would have felt suffering it is not bad to prevent someone from existing who would

00:59:36.080 have spent happiness they use this argument to claim that there is literally no moral downside

00:59:41.440 if their actions prevent a human life from coming into existence if that person would have loved

00:59:46.080 existing wanted to exist and had a great life this argument boils down to the claim it is not bad to

00:59:51.920 prevent someone from existing who would have felt happiness and wanted to exist and here i note they

00:59:56.640 tend to word this point a little differently it is not bad for someone who does not exist to not feel

01:00:02.000 happiness but why while it is socially acceptable to hold this view seeing as our society doesn't

01:00:11.200 acculturate us to care about people who don't exist yet because they are not relevant to its function

01:00:17.680 what makes it morally sound there are things from which we are morally accountable that society will neither

01:00:25.680 reward nor punish in order to hold this position that nothing is lost from non-existent positive

01:00:32.400 emotional states a person would have to believe two things have the exact same moral weight a vast

01:00:37.760 multicultural universe full of beings that are incapable of suffering and a cold empty universe devoid of

01:00:43.120 life in attempts to prove this point antinatalists will commonly present the and by the way this thing

01:00:49.600 that i've said here is something that almost any antinatalist will agree with and to any sane person it sounds

01:00:54.400 so dumb so so so dumb that well especially the way it's just left hanging just like yeah

01:01:03.120 no harm done it's fine yeah that that's something i can just you know robbed the world of this beautiful

01:01:08.400 thing but and from other people who would want to exist that's the thing robbing someone of existence

01:01:15.200 who in the timeline where you didn't do that would have wanted to exist in attempts to prove this

01:01:20.480 at this point antinatalists commonly present the following thought experiments while you would feel

01:01:24.640 bad knowing that people were suffering on a deserted island somewhere you would feel indifferent about

01:01:29.600 an uninhabited island this experiment is intentionally manipulative as you weren't presented with the idea

01:01:35.280 that the island could have been inhabited extinguished potential has negative utility imagine relics on the

01:01:42.320 island reveal that it used to be a thriving civilization that was driven into extension although painlessly

01:01:48.640 after nuclear testing sterilized all the residents imagine that citizens didn't suffer through this

01:01:53.920 extinction given some unique quirk of their culture assuming that you're a and by the way i'm taking

01:01:59.520 away all the suffering that happened through this this extinction assuming you're not a sociopath you

01:02:03.840 would find this scenario devastating right and if you arrived at the island just days after everyone

01:02:09.280 was sterilized you would feel far worse than if it had happened tens of thousands of years ago and i know

01:02:14.880 here this really reminds me of an episode of star trek that always sticks with me i don't know if you

01:02:18.560 ever saw this one or remember it where kirk goes to live the day in the life of someone in a civilization

01:02:23.520 that knows that it's doomed because of an expanding sun and by the way this is why the environmentalist

01:02:29.280 antinatalist argument is so pants on head dumb humans are the only species on earth that could bring

01:02:33.760 life to other planets if they don't the sun will continue expanding and eventually wipe out all life on earth

01:02:39.280 making the diversity of our existing biome completely irrelevant when contrasted with humanity's

01:02:44.000 potential survival and bringing biomes to new planets because eventually biomes will evolve on

01:02:48.320 these new planets or be engineered on new planets that are as big of their own there's really big

01:02:52.480 episode of star trek where he's taken to one of these planets picard is and then he goes back to

01:02:56.880 the ship and he has a memory of his entire life on that planet and that was all they were able to

01:03:00.960 preserve of their civilization and you have this feeling of like how deeply meaningful that is as a mechanism

01:03:06.640 of doing fighting for anything they could to preserve their civilization and a memory of their

01:03:11.680 civilization and nothing about when they knew that this was happening to them was like let's

01:03:16.960 maximize happiness let's minimize no sane person thinks that only the most narcissistic brain cooked

01:03:25.520 people of brain cooked people would think that when they see picard playing that flute from like that

01:03:31.120 that alternate civilization

01:03:45.120 and that's the way they feel they're like oh oh nothing bad has happened because this civilization

01:04:00.000 was sterilized and stopped existing for the asymmetry argument to work antinatalists need to

01:04:05.040 divide humanity into piles of people who do and don't exist but this is patently not how reality functions

01:04:11.520 existence is a spectrum of potentiality a person's right to self-determination does not magically pop

01:04:16.080 into existence the moment they pass some arbitrarily developmental threshold if antinatalists want to

01:04:21.200 decide that their own lives have no value then that is fine but they have no right to impose that

01:04:25.760 judgment on other people with impunity merely because those people have yet to be conceived and this is

01:04:31.280 again a beef that we have had with catholics in the past let's say that the absence of antinatalist

01:04:36.160 interference tim and mary intend to have a kid and name her susie if an antinatalist wrote susie's

01:04:41.680 life has no value on a piece of paper sealed it in an envelope and put that on a table in their house

01:04:47.680 at what exact moment would that statement susie's life has no value stop being true

01:04:51.840 when tim and mary had sex when susie is conceived when she is born when she utters her first words when

01:04:58.160 her brain is fully myelinated humans lives don't suddenly come into existence after a split second

01:05:04.320 creating an adult human is a process that begins with the parents intentions and doesn't end until

01:05:09.520 the human is fully myelinated and in their mid-twenties when you prevent someone who otherwise

01:05:15.200 would have from reaching adulthood you have robbed that person of agency if your actions today and they

01:05:21.360 would say but that person doesn't exist yet and i would be like by your framing they don't exist yet

01:05:27.520 most people they would say well they do kind of my future kids do kind of exist because they exist

01:05:33.360 if i choose to have them they exist within certain timelines they exist within you have to take a

01:05:38.640 very narrow narrow narrow view of how time works to hold this perspective and a very if i may say

01:05:45.120 and narcissistically humanocentric worldview that requires on the way our brains process time

01:05:51.680 that future moments do not meaningfully exist when every way that i can think of like any philosophical

01:05:58.800 framework that i can think of that i would see as remarkably cogent would say that yes our brains

01:06:05.200 do not process future events yet but that doesn't mean that those events don't exist in any meaningful

01:06:10.960 way if your actions today trigger a chain of events that in the future rob another person of their agency

01:06:15.920 you're obviously morally culpable if that person already exists today but why should that culpability

01:06:21.920 disappear if the victim is presently unborn we assume antinatalists would concede that action

01:06:27.120 undertaken today like rigging a magical agency removing grenade to a door is immoral if it could

01:06:32.960 rob someone else of agency in the future even if that person doesn't exist yet in other words their

01:06:37.920 moral position is the following statement if action z by person y robs the agency of person x at future

01:06:45.040 time t it is morally wrong with the caveat that this is not true if action z was tied to the conception

01:06:52.320 of person x this is an absurdly specific and suspiciously convenient moral carve out we sure

01:06:59.120 do hate these sorts of institutional arguments though we only make them because it is the currency

01:07:04.640 in which antinatalists deal argument five it feels right any thoughts you want to have on that simone

01:07:10.080 no but i think this is something that's endemic in anything that gets super philosophical like when

01:07:15.200 people start arguing philosophically they just start carving things out and eventually i think they wear

01:07:21.520 people down by kind of i think you could just give them the benefit of the doubt like okay well they

01:07:26.800 it sounds like they've put a lot of thought into this and i kind of don't want to follow this line

01:07:30.400 of reasoning because they lost me a while ago because i got so bored you know and i think that

01:07:35.280 that's what's happening and as i pointed out the idea that you could convince everyone to be an

01:07:38.000 antinatalist when it's a belief system that's while spreading quickly not spreading you know

01:07:42.240 universally within the cultures that are already receptive of it it just seems absurd for anyone to claim

01:07:47.120 that's going to spread within all cultures yeah and i think in the end it just really comes down to

01:07:50.400 does this intuitively make sense to you and does it not and i think that is is going to be downstream

01:07:55.920 of whether or not you're in a vitalistic culture or in an inherently negative utilitarian culture are

01:08:01.600 you hyper focused on suffering then you're probably just going to think yeah intuitively i think just

01:08:06.480 ending all life for everything makes sense because you just hate your life and you hate the world and

01:08:11.040 you hate humanity and if you're in a vitalistic culture you'll think well that's obviously wrong

01:08:16.000 yeah that's a weird thing to do and i noticed they point out and what they're going to keep saying is

01:08:21.040 well these humans don't exist yet like how could you possibly assign a moral value to a human that

01:08:25.760 doesn't exist yet and i'm like no they do exist just not yet i.e they do exist but at a different

01:08:32.320 point in the timeline they're not like imaginary or fictional they're just as alive as you are but

01:08:38.560 in the future if you deny them that existence you have denied them agency right like the idea that these

01:08:44.720 people have zero value to me is as wild as talking about any other axis upon which reality is you

01:08:52.000 know you you have like horizontality you have verticality all of that and then you have the

01:08:56.160 time axis and the only thing that makes the time axis unique is that human brains at least in the way

01:09:01.680 we function and relate to physics only go in one direction was in that particular axis of reality

01:09:07.280 but other than that it's not like super unique and it's also one that we know can bend like they're

01:09:12.640 going to be like oh why are you making all these you know if you went back in time and did x and

01:09:16.320 it's like because we know at the quantum level you could already do this right like it's likely a

01:09:20.320 matter of technology right like i also think that the the anti-natalist movement is hyper focused on

01:09:28.000 the right now in the moment which is a bias that humans have in general but studies have shown that

01:09:33.600 when you get people to even like look at aged photos of themselves or just think about my future self

01:09:41.120 suddenly they start behaving very differently and i think to a certain extent this long-term focus

01:09:46.400 may have been more pervasive in society earlier whereas now we're in this place where really

01:09:52.880 everything is now everything's instant you know like instacart uber eats like order everything right

01:09:58.000 now amazon prime like everything is immediate you get instant gratification and everywhere from like

01:10:03.840 politics to government to to stocks things are very short term and so it makes sense to me that a

01:10:09.440 philosophy like this would arise because there really aren't any priming devices especially with

01:10:15.120 the fall of religion that get you to think about your future self or your future generations or the

01:10:19.360 future of civilization whereas i think in certain periods in history it was all about that i mean

01:10:25.040 that's how you got communities to build cathedrals that weren't going to be done until their

01:10:28.720 grandchildren were grown you know i think she made a really good point here and i didn't fully grok it

01:10:32.880 when she was making it if you go look in human history and modern anti-natalism is one of the only

01:10:37.600 mainstream philosophies today that has absolutely no correlate in distant history it is a completely

01:10:44.480 modern phenomenon and she makes a great point like if you are in a culture where it's normal to spend

01:10:50.160 multiple generations building a cathedral thinking about future generations and their well-being is

01:10:56.000 just going to be natural to the way you perceive reality anti-natalism is a philosophy somebody would

01:11:01.120 only come to in our current world of instant gratification of uber eats and amazon and and

01:11:07.200 this is one of these things i'd note here from the anti-natalist position suppose time travel is

01:11:11.600 invented in the future at some point and you can go back to when before somebody was conceived and

01:11:16.000 prevent their conception in that world where time travel exists do you know like are you like oh i was

01:11:21.840 wrong about everything i believed and i'm a complete monster now right like but no they wouldn't accept

01:11:26.480 that right like this is all about just arguing what they want to believe then then i think being

01:11:31.840 serious in these positions because i know i think that they know that even in the world where time

01:11:36.400 travel exists so don't just say time travel doesn't exist you need to argue what if it did exist would

01:11:40.480 it then invalidate every one of your positions would you now say oh actually future humans do have a

01:11:46.000 degree of moral weight that we need to consider and i can't just completely dismiss them yeah yeah but i mean

01:11:51.360 i think most philosophical arguments come down to this there's not a lot of interest in like actually

01:11:57.040 being correct it's about out arguing something and i think that you see this even in like the major

01:12:02.640 debate clubs of oxford and cambridge the unions like the oxford union where it's really in the end it

01:12:08.320 almost comes down to both like a mixture of charisma and semantics and it's not really about the actual

01:12:13.840 substance of the issue well no no yeah i agree and again i think a lot of this is like genetic

01:12:18.720 predisposition to like various systems of beliefs yeah but to go to the next one here argument five

01:12:24.240 it feels right most antinatalists rely on quote-unquote intuition to arrive at moral conclusions

01:12:30.080 which is a charitable way of saying my culture or biological instincts tell me this is true

01:12:35.200 intuition seems to be the core reason why antinatalists are convinced that suffering is intrinsically

01:12:39.680 evil while the use of intuition as a source of a priori knowledge is common and widely accepted

01:12:45.680 practice among professional philosophers the mere fact that it's common practice doesn't make it

01:12:51.040 sound our quote-unquote intuitions are either culturally or biologically evolved instincts

01:12:56.400 and a great point of this is i think maybe you pointed out even in this is our concept of fairness

01:13:01.280 where one like you can philosophically prove that fairness is an illusion um that like there's there's

01:13:07.120 this great example presented by deborah stone in the book policy paradox where she talks about

01:13:11.840 the various ways you could fairly divide a cake like based on who's the best student who's the

01:13:16.800 most hungry who had the most disadvantaged childhood who the teacher likes most who arrived first who

01:13:21.200 wants it the most who is skinniest who's fattest who's least insulin resistant all these things and each

01:13:27.600 of them would be fair but you have to arbitrarily decide and yet even capuchin monkeys have this

01:13:33.200 indignation when they feel like they are being improperly compensated for a task and you can see this

01:13:39.600 amazing like yeah they're freaking out of her cucumber task yeah yeah on youtube you just like

01:13:43.840 search capuchin monkeys and no i'm just getting here oh that okay thank you i'm getting grape and

01:13:48.640 you will see what happens so she gives a rock to us that's the task and we give her a piece of

01:13:55.200 cucumber and she eats it the other one needs to give a rock to us and that's what she does and she gets

01:14:03.040 a grape and she eats it the other one sees that she gives a rock to us now gets again cucumber

01:14:14.080 she tests the rock now against the wall she needs to give it to us and she gets cucumber again

01:14:44.080 but like the point being that this concept of fairness is a complete farce and a lot of the

01:14:51.040 things that we feel are like moral truths and i think even our audience gets really caught up in

01:14:56.880 this are not actually true i think another really good example of sexuality someone in our comments

01:15:01.440 recently pointed out someone actually who i really respect and who gives us a lot of episodes ideas you

01:15:05.200 know who you are was it's kind of implied that well this thing is disgusting therefore it's immoral

01:15:10.880 and no that's that's it there is maybe like a soft correlation between things that discuss this is

01:15:17.600 what mother theresa was challenging the idea that you can hug lepers and and kiss them and show them

01:15:22.560 affection yeah and princess diana too yeah the disgust response is to keep you from interacting with

01:15:27.440 things that might make you sick or in other ways decrease your probability of reproducing and that's all

01:15:31.600 correlatory you know because again like not all these things are gonna make you sick or kill you so and

01:15:35.920 and the point here being is that none of the pressures that led to their evolution the cultural

01:15:41.040 or biological evolution of humans today were optimizing for moral or metaphysical truth that's

01:15:46.400 why it's so bad to rely on intuition yeah i guess no to that point actually what makes it so ironic is

01:15:52.000 they they weren't optimizing for truth or morality they were only optimizing for what reproduction to keep

01:15:58.800 sentience going to keep the cycle of suffering endless like their entire engine of reasoning and is based on faulty

01:16:05.520 logic designed to do the thing which they find to be most evil yes yeah um to clarify the irony she is

01:16:11.600 pointing out is anti-natalists have built their entire philosophy around saying these signals like

01:16:17.440 suffering and pleasure specifically suffering are the only thing that matter in terms of human existence

01:16:23.520 and yet those very signals are created by the one thing they don't want to do it's like they built an

01:16:29.200 entire philosophy worshiping the signals the desire to have kids created while also being antagonistic

01:16:35.600 to the concept of a desire to have kids i'm malcolm started my college career as a quadruple major in

01:16:41.200 neuroscience biology psychology and philosophy but dropped philosophy when it became clear that a huge

01:16:46.480 chunk of my time in the field would need to be spent around people learning to argue with increasing

01:16:52.240 levels of sophistication in supportive positions they already had through intuition rather than searching for a

01:16:58.320 truer understanding of the fabric of reality and investigating why they had these intuitions the

01:17:04.320 academic field of philosophy is nothing like its pop culture stereotype being much more focused on

01:17:09.520 semantic hair splitting than a search for truth like this is why i instead really started to focus on

01:17:14.800 you know physics and particle physics and stuff like that which is why i have the view of time that i

01:17:19.040 have which is very useful because it's also kind of ironic too though because like everything used to be

01:17:23.840 called philosophy because philosophy was just yeah like understanding and then like i don't know

01:17:28.480 philosophy like it's almost like this abstraction of a concept that is just it's gone off the rails

01:17:34.400 it's like now post-modern it's yeah ridiculous a person's intuition can be changed with the flip of

01:17:40.720 a switch using tms transcranial magnetic stimulation machine we get these into so for people who don't know

01:17:47.440 what these are tms is a machine that hits you with like a really heavy magnet and you can turn off

01:17:52.560 specific parts of a person's brain with this like a helmet it looks like a paddle that's an eight

01:17:59.280 sign sort of like the infinity sign have you ever before like in research no i actually think they're

01:18:04.400 probably way more dangerous than people think on average people use them in therapy they're actively

01:18:08.960 being used use them in therapy but i think tms machines and the use of them today and the future

01:18:13.360 will be seen the way we see psychedelic use in like the 70s by psychologists we're like oh that

01:18:17.920 like i just don't see it as saying to turn off random parts of a person's brain okay like temporary

01:18:22.480 lobotomies right basically yeah we get the intuitions feel innate they are coded to feel that way but they

01:18:29.040 are objectively not it seems silly to think an emotion is intrinsically bad because it quote unquote

01:18:34.320 motivates you to stop feeling it when that is literally the point of the emotion you feel pain when

01:18:40.720 you shove your hand into hot coals so that you are motivated to take your hand out of hot coals

01:18:46.560 there is a reason why people with congenital insensitivity to pain almost always die super

01:18:52.320 young and this is true like if you said oh could i remove pain for myself i wouldn't even do it because

01:18:57.280 some people are born without it and they die at very young ages because they end up hurting themselves

01:19:00.880 a bunch of times accidentally and it turns out that these things are very useful to us without without

01:19:05.440 like a mech suit or some alternate way for that to be signaled to me and i'd also note here the tms

01:19:10.400 study i'm talking about this was a really interesting experiment where they were doing i i want to say

01:19:15.920 it's it's the ultimatum game and so the ultimatum game is when you go to somebody and you're like okay

01:19:23.360 this person gave you x amount like split an amount of money and gave you x amount are you going to let

01:19:28.800 them keep their amount right like so they they say a hundred dollars is going to be given to the two of

01:19:32.880 you and then the person says well i'll give you one and i'll take 99 you know you you a lot of people

01:19:38.400 would be like no i'm gonna punish you just for being such a jerk about this right you know i don't

01:19:41.920 care that i don't get the one dollar and if you use tms you change people's intuition around morality

01:19:47.840 tied to this what which i think shows that this is why you shouldn't be using these systems okay

01:19:53.280 as to why it's so important to debunk intuition as a source of truth antinatalists the core reason

01:19:59.920 they think suffering is a negative thing is because of intuition is because they don't like suffering

01:20:04.640 and a lot of cultures don't like when people suffer but i'm just pointing out that cultures

01:20:08.320 would have evolved that and humans would have evolved that intuition regardless of whether

01:20:12.320 it was true if you look at this from only a logical perspective these are only signals that were meant

01:20:17.520 to get our ancestors to have more surviving offspring if you think about it in terms of

01:20:21.440 like paperclip maximizing robots antinatalists are paperclip maximizing humans if a group of

01:20:26.880 paperclip maximizing robots robots just made to make paper clips and they feel bad when they don't

01:20:30.080 make paper clips and one of those robots goes to the other robots they go i think there's something

01:20:33.440 to life above what we were programmed to do you know paper clips do not seem like they'd be all

01:20:37.520 end all of reality when the other ones would be like well you wouldn't like it if i stopped you

01:20:40.400 from making paper clips and it would be like yeah i understand i'm programmed in the same way that i

01:20:44.720 am programmed to not want suffering to not want that but can we use logic rather than intuition and

01:20:50.560 here i want to make a note if you're like well sometimes you guys use intuition to support your

01:20:54.160 arguments and that is because that is the only source of evidence they have for the negativity of

01:21:02.000 suffering and so because their entire argument stands on this pillar even though i don't think

01:21:07.280 it's a strong pillar to use in arguments i get the ability to use it for arguments counter to them

01:21:12.640 so that they can see that even from a only intuitional perspective there is a reason to

01:21:17.440 not believe what they believe now to go further if the argument against intuition above is not

01:21:23.360 self-evident to you the argument presented so far generally called the evolutionary argument against

01:21:28.240 intuition or the natural argument for normative skepticism philosophers counter arguments fall

01:21:32.480 into six categories one if a moral intuition is widely shared and not self-benefiting like suffering

01:21:38.560 is bad then it is likely true cultivars that is like cultural groups and religions that sort of

01:21:43.120 evolve alongside humanity are evolutionarily pressured to conclude that suffering is bad a culture that

01:21:48.640 did not share this intuition would feature higher rates of graft crime etc and thus be less productive

01:21:54.080 than its contemporaries whether or not suffering is intrinsically evil all societies would come to

01:21:58.480 enforce this belief within them and punish those who publicly assert it's not an obvious truce for

01:22:03.280 that reason we should be extra and doubly suspicious of this claim so what i'm saying here is anything

01:22:07.840 that would have evolved regardless as an intuition you can largely be discounted as an intuition of value

01:22:13.200 because you know you'd have it regardless two evolution can only explain broad moral intuitions like vague

01:22:18.880 altruism not more advanced widely shared intuitions that don't benefit the individual thus we should

01:22:23.920 throw out intuitions that can be easily explained by benefiting the individual but not other

01:22:28.240 intuitions while this is true of biological evolution it is not true of cultural evolution

01:22:33.600 in order to honestly hold the logic of this point in light of the evidence presented in this book

01:22:38.880 you would need to claim that any institution that benefits a cultivar cannot be trusted if it is widely

01:22:45.600 shared basically any belief system that's widely shared across cultures means it's of convergent

01:22:50.400 evolutionary pressure unfortunately you will quickly realize that the institutions either benefit

01:22:55.280 the individual or the cultivar because that's just what intuitions are the pre-coded bits of your

01:23:00.560 world framing i'd also note here that even by the rules of this argument we should still be throwing

01:23:05.200 out the suffering is bad remember this argument goes to evolution can only explain broad moral intuitions

01:23:10.880 like vague altruism not more advanced widely shared intuitions that don't benefit the individual

01:23:15.520 the problem is is that suffering is bad does benefit the individual so of course it's going to be one

01:23:21.200 of those very very basic intuitions we should throw out if you disregard intuition then you would

01:23:26.320 only be able to get moral information from empirical testing that being the case how can you verify

01:23:31.440 empirical testing yields valid information about morality if you can't get it from empirical testing

01:23:37.440 the book offers numerous examples in which the logic of a moral claim can be worked out without

01:23:42.080 empirical testing for example the claim that we should dismiss any moral intuition almost everyone

01:23:46.800 shares in a large cultivar would hold whether or not it comes from an intrinsic truce is a claim

01:23:52.480 founded in logic not empirical evidence once you discount your evolutionary and societally hard-coded

01:23:59.040 intuitions as objective truths you will realize that there are many sources of evidence about the true

01:24:03.760 nature of reality and thousands of competing world views all featuring internal logical consistency to choose

01:24:09.520 between we do not argue that some other specific source of moral truth is uniquely good we are

01:24:14.480 merely suggesting that you bias yourself against intuition if a society would likely support a

01:24:20.160 specific intuition even if it was not likely to be true all arguments against intuition assume an

01:24:25.760 atheistic perspective this again is not true while modern soft cultural traditions often trust human

01:24:31.280 intuitions almost no hard cultures do instead and this is like stronger religious cultures like being an

01:24:36.480 ultra-orthodox jew or you know certain types of like extremist calvinists or extremist muslim etc

01:24:42.640 instead they see intuition as highly susceptible to malevolent outside influence be they demons or other

01:24:48.240 forces vanishingly few tradition traditional iterations of successful hard cultivars tell a person to quote

01:24:54.880 unquote trust their gut as all know that it is how the devil best manipulates you and here the one

01:25:00.160 counter example is charismatic christians but we don't really consider them a hard cultivar because they had

01:25:04.720 adopted many of the traits of softer cultivars or cultural groups from our current standpoint we have

01:25:10.240 every reason to regard our pro-social evolutionary heritage as providing us with a roughly correct moral

01:25:16.000 intuition and this would be the argument against us this argument holds that we should value

01:25:19.520 biologically evolved pro-social instincts because they often align with culturally evolved pro-social instincts

01:25:24.960 enforced as norms by our societies such arguments only work if you assume their world view that the moral

01:25:30.160 frameworks broadly agreed upon in our society are backed by intrinsic truths again moral intuition is

01:25:36.080 not evidence of some intrinsic moral truth if you would have had that intuition regardless

01:25:41.920 of whether or not that was an intrinsic truth and then finally six philosophers are special extra good

01:25:47.200 intuitors and won't be subject to the average person's evolutionary and societal biases when intuiting stuff

01:25:52.720 yes this is a real thing argued in academic papers it's not just obviously stupid it's also scientifically

01:25:58.480 stupid in a way that can be proven it's that special kind of arrogance that you only expect from a

01:26:03.200 person entrenched in a priest caste that has totally lost touch with reality if you want to read the paper that

01:26:08.720 shows this you can check out alexander jay 2013 our philosopher's expert intuitioners this was in experimental

01:26:15.200 philosophy and its critics it makes perfect sense why intuitionalism would proliferate in a field like

01:26:20.640 philosophy given that supporters of it often utilize the current mechanisms that punish people who do not

01:26:26.320 quote unquote toe the line of a society evolved an art coded intuition and still it is deeply

01:26:31.040 disheartening that so many otherwise intelligent people can't immediately see that the 1984 style

01:26:36.880 sham being pulled we debated calling out intuitionalism because it was so deeply infected within the field

01:26:44.160 of philosophy that it will allow many who have cast their lot in with the orthodoxy to dismiss us as

01:26:50.560 another brand of heretic that said it is such an obvious the emperor has no close situations we

01:26:55.600 couldn't resist thoughts before i go further i just love that you're calling antinatalism scientifically

01:27:03.520 stupid please carry on it is scientifically stupid it like actually is it's just evolutionary signals and

01:27:10.240 they know it's just evolutionary signals yeah which i mean is even like again more of an argument as

01:27:15.440 to why they should discount that because evolutionary signals are just the signals about surviving which

01:27:20.240 they don't want to do so yeah try something else guys your core god you know it's like use that

01:27:26.480 men in black clip it's like they know this is a watch they know this is a business card and they still

01:27:31.200 worship it like they they don't think that these things are magical or anything they're just

01:27:35.840 i i i genuinely can't rock the logic behind it yeah now i'm not here that so far we have made many

01:27:43.120 arguments and only one of them needs to be true for all of antinatalism to be unethical it only

01:27:48.240 needs to be true that future humans have some form of value for all of antinatalism to be untrue it

01:27:54.640 only needs to be true that building your entire world philosophy around environmental evolutionary

01:27:59.920 signals is a bad way to build your world philosophy it only needs to be true that people

01:28:05.040 have a right to choose how they identify and some people are going to identify more with their

01:28:09.600 culture or tribe or family than as an individual and if if any of those things is true if any of

01:28:16.320 those things is true and i think all of them is individually true then the entire antinatalist

01:28:20.560 house of cards immediately falls apart but i think that a lot of people you know they get into these

01:28:24.560 positions and they don't want to change like the choices that they've made in life this is more

01:28:28.080 about justifying choices they've already made now here i would point out how can we argue with such

01:28:32.880 confidence that antinatalists are trying to justify pre-existing intuition rather than arrive at a

01:28:37.280 logically reasoned truce david benatar the present standard bearer of the antinatalist movement

01:28:41.520 admits that he has been an antinatalist since he was a very young child he simply used his position

01:28:46.720 of power to force his intuition on other people and reinforce it was in his own mind he is the head

01:28:51.680 of the philosophical department at the university of cape town and here was a section that you wrote

01:28:57.200 i simone started out as an antinatalist as well it is normal for young kids to hold this position

01:29:03.440 before we are ready to have kids the average human is largely hard-coded to see them as annoying

01:29:08.720 and broadly distasteful antinatalism comes off as childish because its qualities are literally the

01:29:14.560 intuition of a child reinforced over a lifetime and galvanized by the cognitive dissonance felt by

01:29:20.160 adherents as they damage their own lives you may think we are over personalizing but a regular and

01:29:25.920 spurious argument that david benatar makes is that the major reason people argue for pro-natalist

01:29:30.320 positions is that they are based on biological instincts we feel forced to highlight the

01:29:34.160 hypocrisy in this projection and this really gets to me with a lot of this people gonna be like why

01:29:38.000 are you so mean about it and why have you gotten meaner about it over time one because it's leading

01:29:41.520 to terrorism and two because it's leading to people hating their lives and sort of draining like there's

01:29:46.000 just no value to the philosophy it's got no positive externality there's lots of like religious

01:29:51.040 traditions where i'm like okay i think they're wrong but clearly it's helping these people this just seems

01:29:56.080 to make people hate their lives but it's not just that the negative externalities of the philosophy

01:30:00.720 are probably the most evil and severe of any philosophy who humanity has ever held significantly

01:30:06.400 more than something like nazism or communism if we look at the most evil regimes in history they often

01:30:11.280 said well we want to eradicate x group like we want to sterilize all the jews or we want to sterilize

01:30:16.160 all the native americans whereas the anti-natalists are saying oh we want to do that for

01:30:20.400 every group they are multiplicatively worse for that reason than every one of those regimes because

01:30:27.920 they want to do this to literally every culture on earth and they want to do it from the perspective

01:30:33.920 of the urban monoculture which cannot motivate its own continued existence and is basically just taking

01:30:38.800 the perspective of well if i'm going to die out because the urban monoculture has very low fertility

01:30:43.280 rates i'm going to take the rest of humanity with me there is you know no point in a world existing

01:30:48.240 that i don't live in anti-natalism reminds me very much of that scene from downfall that movie about

01:30:54.000 hitler's life that's really tragic where the mom poisons her kids because she doesn't want them to

01:30:59.440 live in a world without nazism she just can't imagine why such a world would be good and i think

01:31:03.920 that that is a big part of what from an urban monocultural perspective is motivating anti-natalism

01:31:08.960 it's that they realize that they're losing now and they just want to end it for everyone because

01:31:14.240 there's no point in existing in a world without nazism or anti-natalism from their perspective

01:31:19.200 sorry when i point out that this is an imperialistic culture that lives within just one cultural group

01:31:23.200 the point i mean is you do not see negative utilitarianism spreading to any large degree

01:31:28.160 within any community except for the atheistic secular urban monoculture and maybe a few buddhist

01:31:34.480 groups you don't see it in muslim groups you don't see it in conservative jewish groups you don't

01:31:37.760 see it in conservative christian groups and the reason i specify conservative fear is often because when

01:31:41.440 they're not conservative they're just urban monoculture wearing the skin suit of the religion

01:31:45.440 by this what i mean is a progressive christian church often has more in common with a progressive

01:31:50.320 mosque than either would with a conservative iteration of their tradition and same with you know jewish

01:31:55.600 temples finally i note here that the reason anti-natalists are so scary as a philosophy is

01:32:00.560 historically every civilizational conflict we've ever gotten into like the cold war over communism versus

01:32:05.840 capitalism we could at least know i hope the russians love their children too this time we don't have

01:32:10.480 that it's the first time in human history there has been a significant group that genuinely doesn't

01:32:15.200 love their children and genuinely doesn't care about humanity's future and genuinely wouldn't

01:32:19.200 pull stops if it meant the destruction of all life on earth so that's before i go farther about the the

01:32:23.840 you being an anti-natalist at one point no but i mean i i i think this just goes to show how this

01:32:28.880 is about intuition and your world view and not about what's true and what's not true

01:32:34.480 this approach to philosophy is an exercise to build strong arguments supporting already held

01:32:38.800 intuitions about the world instead of leveraging it as a means of building quote-unquote truer

01:32:42.560 intuitions contrast heavily with ours anyone who's read our first book will know that our

01:32:46.400 views on the meaning of life have evolved radically as we have encountered new information heard better

01:32:50.960 arguments and engaged in further self-examination for example while we used to think our core goal was

01:32:55.760 to maximize the quote-unquote volume of sentience in the universe we now do not even think sentience has

01:33:00.880 value as can be seen in this book's chapter on the topic or if you want to see the youtube video on

01:33:05.200 it look up the you're probably not sentient or ellen's are sentient in the same way humans are

01:33:08.880 episodes we literally did a 180 on our entire world view when presented with compelling logically

01:33:14.320 sound evidence and arguments this is the difference between a worldview shaped with it by inquiry and

01:33:19.200 an inquiry shaped by a world view you can create feelings of profundity with drugs or chanting

01:33:24.720 just because something feels profound doesn't mean it is inherently profound or meaningful

01:33:28.560 in the same best truly profound and meaningful things may not trigger the feelings of the

01:33:33.760 profound our read of the true anti-natalist position is that they look for something that

01:33:38.960 feels obviously and unobjectionably meaningful in the same way suffering feels obviously and

01:33:43.920 objectionably bad and they can't find such a thing so they assume intrinsic meaning doesn't exist

01:33:49.360 humans underwent no evolutionary pressures to search for the true meaning of the universe

01:33:53.600 to think that we would be quote-unquote coded to recognize intrinsic meaning at an emotional level

01:33:58.560 seems ludicrous the same can be said of human cultures they evolved just like our minds did

01:34:04.160 when looking for meaning in the world a person should think from the perspective of a high order

01:34:08.720 entity unencumbered by our pre-programmed biases positive and negative emotional states

01:34:14.720 would an entity that didn't feel suffering conclude it is intrinsically bad such seems highly unlikely to us

01:34:21.200 we see no reason to feel bad when a computer is unable to carry out its pre-programmed actions

01:34:26.560 and an entity that could not empathize with the way we interpret suffering would probably see our

01:34:31.120 suffering as analogous to that quote-unquote suffering is merely a tool evolution used to

01:34:35.920 keep us focused on our pre-programmed actions there is no greater meaning to it than there is

01:34:41.200 to code running a paperclip maximizer ai that prompts it to protest when blocked from making

01:34:47.120 paper clips and it might be self-aware enough to realize this and be like hey i understand this is

01:34:51.680 what i'm programmed to do i understand that i don't want to feel suffering but i also understand i was

01:34:56.160 programmed to want this and i note here that we're probably only a few generations away from

01:35:00.160 eradicating this so if you're talking about like the weight of pleasure to pain you're actually not

01:35:04.640 one of these true like pleasure has no value people that almost certainly is going to tip to the side

01:35:08.480 of positivity and further tip to the side of positivity the longer humanity survives and the

01:35:13.200 more technologically advanced we get i'd also note here the stupidity of the environmentalist

01:35:17.760 argument most of the major perinatalists have a background in environmentalism simone got her

01:35:21.440 undergraduate degree in environmentalism elon obviously obsessed with environmentalism

01:35:24.640 global warming look at tesla look at his solar projects the reality is that if humanity goes

01:35:29.440 extinct or we create something that collapses our existing civilization and humanity can't recover

01:35:33.360 from it every plant and animal and biome on earth is going to eventually die i do though i do think that

01:35:39.200 there's a really interesting bifurcation in how people fall when they hit the rock that is

01:35:46.400 environmentalism or when they're hit by it right like some people hit environmentalism

01:35:50.560 and they're they can only want either like nothing to change or they sort of want everything to grind

01:35:55.680 to a halt and everything to stop existing like freeze the existing environmental system either freeze it

01:36:01.920 or end it and there's just this like it was right before humans interacted with it and then there's this

01:36:06.560 other element that is that that comes at environmentalism from a perspective of a love

01:36:13.600 for that red in tooth and claw vitalism that is life which accepts the brutalism of natural systems

01:36:22.800 but wishes to protect their ongoing evolution like let's allow for this to continue like we want more

01:36:30.480 of it and we want it to expand as it has since it since life first came out on earth right whereas

01:36:37.680 there's this really interesting it's almost in the end i see it and this is why i still feel like we

01:36:43.280 are the real environmentalists here there's something very anti-nature about this idea of wanting to

01:36:50.160 extinguish it like the entire purpose of life of plant life of animals of everything is to expand and

01:36:57.680 evolve and grow and reach new territory right and that this idea of anti-natalism is like it runs counter to

01:37:05.680 every instinct on a cellular level on a mental level on a biolog like every level it is against

01:37:12.640 nature which is crazy well and i'd argue that not just anti-natalism but that form of environmentalism

01:37:18.240 about just creating the environment that that existed when humans first contacted it and preserving that

01:37:22.480 forever for hundreds of millions of years instead of letting it to continue to evolve in response to

01:37:27.280 new pressures i really want to tease out the point she's making here because i find it very interesting

01:37:32.000 when i look at environmentalist groups they typically fall into one of two categories one

01:37:36.160 wants to freeze biomes forever and ever and ever at the state they were at when humans first contacted

01:37:41.600 them so like if a coyote has evolved to take the ecological niche a wolf once held in that biome they

01:37:48.560 will reintroduce wolves and kill the coyotes that have evolved to take that niche whereas other environmentalists

01:37:54.320 they don't see their job as protecting a set sliver of biological history they see it as helping nature do

01:38:03.200 what nature does which is evolve expand adapt change and proliferate and that in a way anti-natalism represents

01:38:11.760 the avatar of one form of environmentalism this first kind freeze everything put it on a slide and then eradicate it and

01:38:18.640 then the other pro-natalism represents the avatar of the red and tooth and claw style environmentalism

01:38:25.280 and i and i point out that you know the way the environment reacts to humanity is part of evolution

01:38:29.280 is part of the environment we are not the first species to cause a great extinction event despite

01:38:33.600 what you have likely heard from environmentalists the great oxidation event is another example and and so

01:38:38.800 this is just part of the environmentalist cycle if what you care about is not freezing the environment

01:38:44.240 and the diversity of life and the complexity of life well then you should be cheering for the only

01:38:49.520 species that can get other life off this planet before the sun engulfs the planet because we obviously

01:38:54.320 will like there's no humanity leaving earth without other life leaving yeah and when we get to other

01:38:59.680 planets we will see maybe billions of new biomes right you know so i just it's it's an illogical argument

01:39:06.640 that's that's purely aesthetic in nature yes um emotional yeah i don't think it's aesthetic i think

01:39:12.880 it's emotional and i also note that all the environmentalists removing themselves from the

01:39:16.320 gene pool because we know that about 40 of the way you vote is genetic and origin is going to

01:39:19.840 significantly change how much future populations care about environmentalism but that's neither here

01:39:23.600 nor there the economic argument people be like oh well you can't afford to have kids and it's like

01:39:27.120 well then why do people with less money have more kids between and within countries right like

01:39:30.400 just the whole thing is a silly argument i i find what it what they mean is i don't want to

01:39:34.640 sacrifice my current quality of life and like that's okay if that's what you want to do but i will

01:39:38.560 know that like you are going to struggle to derive and this is a hard thing to say but you're going

01:39:43.440 to struggle to derive as much meaning from your life if you don't contribute to something bigger

01:39:47.680 than yourself and if you don't contribute to the next generation or find a way to do that because

01:39:51.680 that is really what adults were programmed to want to do and the same way like teenagers are programmed to

01:39:56.720 want to sleep around a lot and i think a lot of people what happens to them is they just keep

01:40:00.800 doing the behavior that maximally sort of masturbated their internal mental state when they were like a

01:40:06.080 teenager or late teenager even though the amount of pleasure they're getting from that is is dropping

01:40:10.800 over time but they don't realize what's happening so they think they just need to do more of the

01:40:14.880 behavior when the reality is that they were supposed to grow up like like evolution expected that

01:40:19.760 i'd also note here that for reproductive rights arguments pro natalists do not advocate for banning

01:40:23.840 abortion or contraception none of the major pro natalist orgs that i know of like some catholic

01:40:28.560 orgs do but they're not pro natalists they're like pro catholic orgs right and historically when we've

01:40:32.320 seen this happen it causes a spike in fertility rates and then a crash in fertility rates

01:40:35.920 it's not that i think that abortion is a moral thing i think that we should significantly restrict

01:40:39.440 access to abortion within our country not to the extent of banning ivf obviously if it prevents more

01:40:43.360 kids from coming into the world but i and i mean significantly like back to what it is in europe and stuff

01:40:48.000 like that that's like you can have an abortion until the kids ready to be born seems obviously horrific

01:40:52.480 to me but this is not like a anti-reproductive rights movement same with feminism as we saw

01:40:57.440 from aria babu study more gender egalitarian countries typically have higher fertility rates of

01:41:02.160 upper income countries and less gender egalitarian countries and this is why even despite southern

01:41:06.480 europe being poorer than northern europe you see a lower fertility rate there it's likely downstream

01:41:10.320 with them being less gender egalitarian and then you look at other places with super low fertility

01:41:13.440 rates whether it's korea or japan they're typically a lot less gender egalitarian than places like the

01:41:18.000 united states or northern europe where you see some resistance to this and this is just because

01:41:21.680 girls don't want to go into this and they know that their life is going to be miserable i mean that's

01:41:26.080 why you were an antinatalist you're like i don't want to give up my my life

01:41:28.960 totally the racism arguments are absolutely absurd if you control for income the groups that have the

01:41:34.480 highest fertility rates are typically conservative religious jewish groups and think about post

01:41:39.200 developed societies yeah hopefully everyone will be soon well no i said when you control for income

01:41:44.800 okay yeah thanks protestant groups you know the the backwoods cultural region in the united states

01:41:49.760 like this is like rednecks basically these are the people who will be represented in the future

01:41:54.080 and and you can be like well what about these other groups that are having tons of kids it doesn't

01:41:56.560 matter if those kids aren't engaged with technology in the economy that's where cultural power comes

01:42:00.640 from right like you when was the last time you watched a movie made in africa right like but if

01:42:05.040 i go to somebody in japan when was the last time you watched a movie made in in in the united states

01:42:08.880 right like you need to be high fertility and economically and technologically productive and

01:42:13.840 it's an easy strategy to to motivate high fertility with a a lack of income as we've noted here but it

01:42:20.320 it doesn't mean that they'll have future cultural power the point i'm making here is the status quo of

01:42:25.920 fertility rates and if you look at like u.s black fertility rates black americans have the lowest

01:42:30.480 fertility rate of any ethnic group in the united states outside of the bottom 20 of income earners

01:42:34.800 you know and culturally this is going to have a really negative effects especially if you're

01:42:37.680 looking at a culture that if you go back to the 1960s had half the number of kids being born out of

01:42:41.520 wedlock yes blacks had half the number of kids being born out of wedlock to now it's like 76 something

01:42:45.920 like that you know it's just been completely ravaged in a way that has economically trapped them

01:42:51.680 and and they are sort of forced to reinvent their culture if they want to build something that can

01:42:56.480 work but the point i'm making here is enforcing the status quo benefits white groups and hurts

01:43:02.320 minority populations whereas bringing attention to fertility collapse is an issue like within the

01:43:07.200 native american community which has a very low fertility rate helps parsis jayn's very low fertility rate

01:43:12.080 helps future and then the final argument which i just find ridiculous is is oh you can't impose

01:43:18.320 your cultural beliefs on children and it's like all parents impose a way of life on children through

01:43:22.400 their their cultures and values children have the freedom to choose their own paths as adults

01:43:27.520 but when somebody is a child they don't have the development to make these decisions right you know

01:43:32.560 i will add like there's a little more color to this there's there's some anti-natalist thought

01:43:37.280 leaders who frame childhood as a form of slavery and parenting is a form of like memetic imperialism

01:43:45.280 um where parents are like forcing this upon children first i mean anyone who's encountered

01:43:51.360 kids know that they have minds of their own they will decide if your take is dumb and they will let

01:43:56.560 you know about it and even if you're they're not allowed to let you know about it in the end it'll

01:44:00.560 it'll shake out you know you have 18 years maybe to to sort of pitch your ideas in a totalitarian way

01:44:06.800 or otherwise very permissive right but in the end kids are going to decide for themselves

01:44:10.480 based on totalitarian like ayla's parents were just completely backfires yeah i mean they did they

01:44:15.360 did for a while break her spirit she's still deconverted from that culture because it was

01:44:20.880 just weak honestly it wasn't good yeah it tried to enforce her staying was in it through aggression

01:44:26.720 yeah coercive abusive ways but the the point being that the arguments that that these people are making

01:44:33.840 about children being in this this victimized position i mean absolutely children are vulnerable

01:44:40.800 absolutely being a kid is rough and you don't get control over your life and i love being an adult

01:44:46.320 because i hated all that so i don't disagree with with childhood being tough but this concept i think is

01:44:52.800 really overwrought and misrepresented in terms of like children being treated as slaves and being

01:44:59.200 indoctrinated because while yes parents may try to make a pitch that's all they get is a pitch

01:45:06.400 and i'll note here some people could be like how could you say all this when you guys practice

01:45:08.960 corporal punishment and we practice a very light corporal punishment it is less than our kids regular

01:45:13.840 rough and tumble play which they do a lot um very very much less and yeah i'll tell you what we've

01:45:19.680 we've never left a mark on our kids i can't count the number of bruises even on my body at this time

01:45:26.560 from our children and not even from them being angry and one of our sons like just his way of

01:45:31.760 expressing love is these goat-like headbutts i remember i was like oh why'd you do that because

01:45:36.720 i love you he's so sweet it hurts the core advocate for bopping in our family is our children um they

01:45:44.560 advocate for it on other children when other children act up as they say bobs are justice yeah this

01:45:50.960 childhood is slavery argument is uniquely weak because it doesn't have the benefit of the asymmetry

01:45:55.600 argument to back it up when we know that most of the kids who are apparently slaves in their

01:46:01.120 childhood do end up with fond memories of childhood do end up wanting to continue to live so like the

01:46:06.960 sandy hook shooter who he said oh well they're in a state of slavery the vast majority of those kids

01:46:11.200 liked their lives and would have liked their lives in the future he is projecting his cultural framing

01:46:16.560 onto other individuals despite knowing from the data that his cultural framing is wrong i think that

01:46:21.840 this is why we see rates of narcissism and machiavellism and other dark triad traits

01:46:26.880 at higher levels within the antinatalist community as a number of studies have shown

01:46:30.880 it fundamentally is a community that wishes that everyone else had the same perception of reality

01:46:36.720 that they do that wishes that other people were unable to find meaning in life beyond suffering and

01:46:42.320 pleasure in the same way they can't find meaning in life beyond suffering and pleasure and when other

01:46:47.360 individuals tell them oh no here is where i derive meaning from life a normal person would be like oh

01:46:53.040 that's great that you derive meaning from that i'm really glad that you were able to find something

01:46:56.480 that makes your life worth living whereas a narcissist or somebody with machiavellian tendencies

01:47:01.520 will hear that and say oh well you're just wrong my perspective is the absolute correct perspective

01:47:07.680 and you can really see this within the prenatalist movement where we have all sorts of different

01:47:12.160 reasons to live and reasons to want to be alive and we are all respectful of our different reasons but

01:47:18.720 the anti-natalist there is just one reason that's it everybody must follow the authority so any thoughts

01:47:26.480 you want to end with i'm glad we went over all this sort of the anti-natalist arguments again because

01:47:32.960 every time we go through them and think about it more the more it just stands out to me how

01:47:38.960 illogical this is and my biggest revelation this time was just how against the natural order nature

01:47:46.640 the environment in general the entire concept is which is i guess to me that that strikes me as very

01:47:54.160 strong because most anti-natalists i'm aware of are also vegans who believe they care a lot about the

01:48:00.800 environment and yet what they're arguing for is something so deeply contrary to the natural order

01:48:08.320 moral system that they want to impose on the entire natural order which yeah so maybe maybe

01:48:12.880 they're not really environmentalists and they're just anti they're just anti-suffering yeah no anti-sentience

01:48:18.800 yeah anti-suffering yeah so anyway i guess that that just that's something that's really stood out to me

01:48:23.040 in this but i appreciate you're going through all the arguments and i well and if you want to see

01:48:27.600 like i think the the the two that i included bits of civ songs i think are very good arguments for

01:48:33.040 prenatalist positions if you want to get like our wider vibe is why we exist and i just don't understand

01:48:37.120 how when you see something like that as the alternative how you think anyone's going to

01:48:41.520 choose your doomerist me me me take right like just for reference malcolm's referring to like the civ

01:48:46.800 five like game theme song by christopher ten yeah yeah that too and then the other one i can't remember

01:48:53.520 what the other one's called and then we'll include our own ai anti-natalist song here because i i love

01:48:58.560 those songs and it's always fun to to create this stuff and and share it with you guys but i hope that we

01:49:03.280 help break somebody out of this philosophy if they had just entered it because it is a philosophy that

01:49:08.240 does eventually take everything from you um similar to ai doomerism there's just it provides no real

01:49:15.840 utility and it's not internally logically consistent and it is wrong if one of like 10 arguments we've

01:49:22.000 made here is accurate you know even even if future humans don't really matter if the core reason you

01:49:27.120 exist isn't pain and pleasure which i think that your own sisyphus argument undoes then then the

01:49:33.760 whole thing falls apart or if uh it's bad to genocide native americans through sterilization

01:49:39.280 because some people choose to have an identity at the level of the society of the culture then it's

01:49:44.000 bad even if everything else is true that's the problem with anti-natalism is it requires so many

01:49:49.280 shaky pillars to be true and all of them are super shaky yeah have a spectacular day i love you simone

01:49:55.520 love you and what are we doing for dinner tonight i was thinking of just making you gyoza like some

01:50:00.480 comfort food yeah because i'm not feeling well that's so people know i've been kind of sick and

01:50:06.320 yeah gyoza is a is a good comfort food i always wonder about something even more simple than that

01:50:13.600 i can make you grilled cheese grilled cheese would be fantastic all right grilled cheese i love you to

01:50:18.720 death simone you take care of me when i'm sick but we keep pushing through because it doesn't matter how

01:50:22.800 we feel what matters is that we're contributing to a better tomorrow for everyone we must pay to the

01:50:27.520 future the debt we owe the past and my god is it a debt right oh true though

01:50:38.400 they say there's nothing here but sorrow or delight a shallow chase for feelings in the day and in the night

01:50:48.800 but look beyond your heartbeat beyond what's in your veins there's more to life than can be found in

01:50:58.640 pleasure or pain beyond the pleasure beyond the pain we stand on roads all forebears paved in grit and strain

01:51:10.400 don't throw away the promise that tomorrow can sustain there's more to life than hollow thrills or running from the rain

01:51:28.240 these feelings born of chance in fields of ancient strife they kept our tribe from failing help give birth to

01:51:37.760 learn reported to help them didn't find new пример how else Mhm

01:51:38.760 they took��고 to aid them to deinem sheas apenas

01:51:39.120 they took the preference ofizes and to help you the right to duh hereby die

01:51:41.760 and you complete it there is in thatederium and craig and adds a glist to life

01:51:42.720 and you complete it this t увидеть it you know the finale하는 edu

01:51:49.180 is that they have a 25 cup of treat醒 for you know it's another one of the these myths we

01:51:55.920 do you need to think about in your part but also xem the best practices in the era form of

01:51:58.880 their dreams but understand your dreams and right you know the way that is you know

01:52:01.240 it they give się u i don't no,ž i'm rich in this darium

01:52:03.820 playm ch Entpezmy

01:52:05.800 We'll be right back.

01:52:35.800 It isn't just the fleeting spark of comfort we are shown.

01:52:41.240 We carry on a story with pages left to write.

01:52:46.760 Our tapestry is woven from both darkness and from light.

01:52:52.540 Don't trade a grand potential for a single shallow end.

01:52:58.200 We're more than pain or pleasure.

01:53:00.480 We're the sum of all our ends.

01:53:05.800 Beyond the pleasure, beyond the pain.

01:53:21.780 We stand on roads, our forbear's pain and grit and strain.

01:53:26.300 Don't throw away the progress that tomorrow can sustain.

01:53:33.880 There's more to life than hollow thrills or running from the rain.

01:53:39.720 Yes, more than just the fleeting spark.

01:53:42.720 We're seeds of deeper worth.

01:53:44.760 There's legacy and progress in our footsteps on this earth.

01:53:52.660 So hold the torch of living.

01:53:55.200 Let the next in line remain.

01:53:58.440 Step beyond the simple bounds of pleasure and of pain.

01:54:03.320 Let the next in line remain.

01:54:33.320 Let the next in line are.

01:54:34.680 Let the next ayahuwah.

Based Camp - June 13, 2025

Antinatalism & Negative Utilitarianism： Why is it Wrong？

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript