Making Sense - Sam Harris - #107 — Is Life Actually Worth Living？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.820 Today I'm speaking with David Benatar.

00:00:49.660 David is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

00:00:53.640 He's the author of a few books, Better Never to Have Been, The Harm of Coming Into

00:00:59.600 Existence, and most recently, The Human Predicament, A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions.

00:01:06.480 And he's a philosopher who many of you have wanted me to speak with.

00:01:11.060 I've been getting emails and tweets about him for quite some time.

00:01:15.320 He is perhaps the most prominent exponent of a philosophy called antinatalism, and you

00:01:22.080 will hear much more about that in today's episode.

00:01:25.300 The question for David, really, is whether or not existence is worth the trouble.

00:01:30.700 And he answers that question with an emphatic no.

00:01:34.240 And this makes for an interesting conversation.

00:01:36.860 As you'll hear, there are a couple of places where our intuitions diverge, and I think you

00:01:40.760 just have to pick which intuition you find most compelling there.

00:01:44.460 But we talk about many interesting things.

00:01:46.180 We talk about the asymmetry between the good and bad things in life, the ethics of existential

00:01:52.080 risk, the difference between starting and continuing a life.

00:01:56.860 He sees those as very different.

00:01:59.320 Our built-in bias towards existence and how that may confuse us.

00:02:04.720 The relationship between antinatalism and another position called pro-mortalism, the idea

00:02:11.280 that it would be a good thing if we all died in our sleep tonight.

00:02:13.800 I talk for a few minutes about my notion of the moral landscape, and we also talk about

00:02:20.240 the limits and paradoxes of introspection, how viewing your life in a certain way can

00:02:27.020 actually change what there is to notice about your life.

00:02:31.220 And there are many other topics here.

00:02:32.820 Population ethics is a very rich conversation for those of you who like moral philosophy.

00:02:38.980 And it got me to realize at least one thing that resolves for me at least one of the

00:02:43.440 troubling paradoxes in Derek Parfit's philosophy.

00:02:47.360 So I found it a very valuable conversation, and I hope you do as well.

00:02:52.860 And now I bring you David Benatar.

00:03:01.500 I'm here with David Benatar.

00:03:03.000 David, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:03:04.580 Thank you.

00:03:05.660 Nice to be with you.

00:03:06.900 So I've been hearing about you for at least a year.

00:03:10.600 I plead unfamiliarity with your books, but people have been emailing me about you.

00:03:17.720 I think they have read some of your articles, and some undoubtedly have read your books.

00:03:23.340 But you have been laying out a philosophy that is quite novel and quite pessimistic and quite

00:03:31.820 interesting.

00:03:32.340 It really strikes to the very core of the question, is life worth living?

00:03:39.020 And your answer to that is a resounding no, at least for those who don't yet exist. 0.96

00:03:45.140 And no doubt, most of what is interesting in moral philosophy can be brought to bear on this

00:03:51.520 question.

00:03:52.440 Before we dive into your philosophy, give us just a kind of a potted history of what you've

00:03:58.860 been doing intellectually and the kinds of questions you've focused on.

00:04:03.540 Well, this is one question that I've revisited on multiple occasions and also examined issues

00:04:10.980 related to it.

00:04:12.460 I suppose my broad interests are in moral philosophy, more specifically in practical ethical questions.

00:04:19.320 But often when I look at the practical ethical questions, I'm interested in the theoretical

00:04:23.640 issues that lie behind them.

00:04:26.320 And I suppose in this area of prokered of ethics, those two come together quite well.

00:04:31.160 But I have written about other topics as well.

00:04:33.820 Another book that I wrote is called The Second Sexism, which is about discrimination against

00:04:38.820 men and boys.

00:04:40.160 And then I've written on a range of practical ethical questions.

00:04:43.660 And you're currently a professor of philosophy.

00:04:46.960 That's correct, in Cape Town.

00:04:48.640 So let's just jump in because this really is fascinating.

00:04:54.260 You describe your view as antinatalism.

00:04:57.880 Is that a coinage from you or did that view exist before you started working in this area?

00:05:03.020 I've been asked that question and quite frankly, I don't know the answer whether I coined the

00:05:06.820 term or whether I heard it somewhere.

00:05:08.160 Anyway, I've tried to do some sort of intellectual archaeology to find out whether I did hear it

00:05:13.400 from somewhere else and I've been unsuccessful.

00:05:15.680 But the idea itself, I think, dates back to much earlier times.

00:05:20.460 One hears it even in ancient times, the idea that it would have been better never to have

00:05:24.200 been born.

00:05:25.240 And a more recent exponent, of course, was Arthur Schopenhauer.

00:05:29.440 So these ideas have been around for a long time and that doesn't surprise me.

00:05:33.880 Yeah, it's interesting.

00:05:35.040 There's quite a convergence between your view and Buddhism.

00:05:39.040 I'm sure someone must have pointed that out to you at some point.

00:05:42.020 Yes, exactly.

00:05:43.080 They have.

00:05:44.000 Perhaps we'll touch on that because I have a longstanding interest in Buddhism and related

00:05:48.940 practices like meditation.

00:05:51.060 So just lay out the argument for antinatalism.

00:05:54.740 Make the case for us at the outset here.

00:05:58.120 Well, perhaps I should clarify what the view is first.

00:06:00.200 So it's the view that we ought not to bring new people into existence.

00:06:05.260 But I think the view is broader that we ought not to bring new sentient beings into existence.

00:06:10.760 Right.

00:06:11.140 So it's not just the view that it's harmful to come into existence, but a further view that

00:06:15.600 it's also wrong to bring beings into existence.

00:06:19.040 And I think there are a range of arguments for this position.

00:06:22.260 Some of them I characterize as philanthropic arguments.

00:06:25.040 And others, I think, are misanthropic arguments.

00:06:28.220 And here, of course, I'm restricting the scope to bringing human beings into existence, although 0.81

00:06:32.440 I think that parallel points might be able to be made about other sentient beings.

00:06:37.620 The original arguments that are advanced are the philanthropic ones.

00:06:41.560 And those really are concerned about the being that you'll bring into existence.

00:06:45.800 And my view is not only that it's always a harm for that being, but that it's also a very

00:06:50.880 serious harm.

00:06:52.000 And given the seriousness of that harm, I think that it's always going to be wrong to create

00:06:56.120 a new being.

00:06:57.760 More recently, I've developed some misanthropic arguments.

00:07:01.320 And those have to do with the harm that the being you're bringing into existence will do

00:07:05.860 to others.

00:07:06.860 And by others, I mean other human beings, but also other sentient beings on the planet.

00:07:12.100 So those are two broad kinds of arguments.

00:07:14.020 And although one's philanthropic and the other is misanthropic, I don't think that these two

00:07:18.560 are incompatible with one another.

00:07:20.880 So just to revisit a few of those utterances, lest they blow by and their significance be

00:07:27.240 lost on some of the audience here.

00:07:29.340 So one of the consequences of your view is that it really is a monstrous crime to have

00:07:36.460 children.

00:07:37.280 At a minimum, it's a colossal act of negligence on the part of people who haven't really thought

00:07:42.020 about these issues clearly enough.

00:07:43.840 And I mean, it's really, it's kind of analogous on your view to ushering souls into hell because

00:07:52.800 existence is either that bad or there's a high enough probability that it will be that

00:07:58.840 bad that it's just irresponsible to consign people to the fate of existing.

00:08:04.680 That's correct.

00:08:07.200 Of course, hell comes in degrees.

00:08:09.120 So as bad as it is, it can always be worse.

00:08:11.860 And so we need to be careful about that analogy of ushering somebody into hell.

00:08:15.160 But it's a kind of hell.

00:08:16.140 I love this topic, and I think this will be fun to get into the details here and hear

00:08:21.420 some more of your specific arguments.

00:08:23.660 But what has been your experience promulgating this idea or set of ideas?

00:08:29.640 I can imagine the thesis provokes anger in some people.

00:08:32.880 That's for sure.

00:08:34.840 A lot of angry people.

00:08:36.740 Fortunately, not too many of those have made direct contact with me.

00:08:40.480 But one does see a lot of hate mail of a certain kind and, of course, a lot of hate

00:08:46.500 comments on the web.

00:08:48.660 But the people who've contacted me tend to be those who have been more sympathetic to

00:08:52.980 my views.

00:08:54.220 And one very common kind of response I've received is from people who've had these sorts of thoughts

00:08:59.200 and felt that they were entirely alone in the world.

00:09:01.660 They thought that they were the only people who thought this.

00:09:04.940 And they've drawn a measure of comfort from knowing that there are others who shared that

00:09:08.620 idea.

00:09:09.820 One distinction to make here is between pessimism of the sort that you're expressing and nihilism.

00:09:15.980 Your view really isn't nihilistic.

00:09:18.360 Do you want to tease those apart?

00:09:20.120 Yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:09:21.320 Many people, I think, mischaracterize the position as a nihilistic position.

00:09:25.860 And I'm not a nihilist.

00:09:28.100 I think that suffering, for example, is bad.

00:09:31.660 And that's one of the reasons why I think it's wrong to bring new beings into existence, 1.00

00:09:35.540 because they're going to suffer, and they're going to suffer pretty unspeakably.

00:09:38.580 Nihilism here would be that basically nothing matters, right?

00:09:42.620 In the scheme of things, good and bad are just things we make up, and the universe doesn't

00:09:48.320 care about us.

00:09:49.500 And therefore, it doesn't really matter if conscious minds get ground up in some inferno

00:09:56.140 interminably.

00:09:57.460 That's not your view at all.

00:09:58.600 You want to avoid the inferno, and you want to avoid committing the moral wrong of consigning

00:10:04.280 people to it.

00:10:05.820 That's exactly right.

00:10:07.540 Look, I am a nihilist of some kind.

00:10:10.280 So if you ask me about whether our lives have cosmic meaning, I'm a nihilist about that.

00:10:15.560 I don't think that they do.

00:10:17.100 But I just don't think that it follows from that, that it's okay to inflict suffering on

00:10:21.460 others.

00:10:21.780 I can imagine that people also try to psychologize you.

00:10:28.740 They must think that this view is really not so much the product of a valid chain of reasoning,

00:10:36.520 it's the product of a likely mood disorder.

00:10:41.460 Are you depressed?

00:10:42.380 Is that a diagnosis you must get hurled at you?

00:10:44.940 Yeah, there are lots of people who do exactly that.

00:10:46.540 They try to psychologize it.

00:10:47.760 And I think that's exactly the wrong attitude to have.

00:10:51.800 I think one should look at the arguments, examine them on their merits, and see whether

00:10:55.040 they stand or fall.

00:10:57.300 But I guess that both things could be true.

00:10:59.980 I mean, I find the arguments very interesting, and we will definitely get into those.

00:11:05.100 But when I heard about you and your emphasis on this position, I did think that your just

00:11:14.140 experience of the world moment to moment, and that would include your mood and everything

00:11:20.420 else about you that can be brought to bear on experience, must be coloring the arguments

00:11:26.180 or could be coloring your sense of their veracity or moral import.

00:11:32.400 And I guess I'll tell you about an experience I had, and I'm just wondering if there's anything

00:11:37.380 about it that could be relevant to your case.

00:11:40.100 So I had a friend, not a close friend, but someone who I had met many, many times, and

00:11:46.800 this was a person who would email me periodically, who was suicidal.

00:11:52.180 And he had been suicidal for quite some time.

00:11:54.820 At one point, he sent an email to everyone in his life saying, I'm going to commit suicide,

00:11:59.380 and, you know, here's your last chance to talk me out of it.

00:12:03.280 Put that way, it sounds like a kind of macabre and gratuitous appeal for attention, but it

00:12:12.120 was more, he was actually just being scrupulous to not kill himself so impulsively that he

00:12:21.360 would leave everyone in his life feeling like, you know, if only they had known, they might

00:12:24.840 have been able to do something.

00:12:25.920 And so he just, he was going to give everyone in his life a chance to reason with him.

00:12:30.320 And it was kind of of a piece with the reasons why he thought he was killing himself.

00:12:35.220 He really thought he had reasoned himself to a position where suicide was not only acceptable,

00:12:42.100 but was really his best decision.

00:12:45.320 And, you know, he had a very philosophical, he wasn't a professional philosopher, but he had

00:12:49.200 a very philosophical cast of mind, and he was quite smart.

00:12:52.400 And, you know, I went back and forth with him a little bit over email, mostly, and the

00:12:59.240 experience was one of seeing someone, in my view, mistake his anhedonia, you know, his

00:13:07.140 lack of joy in living moment to moment for a kind of philosophical epiphany, which is to

00:13:15.000 say if he felt better, if he was feeling more joy, if he was feeling more of a connection to

00:13:20.140 other people, he would feel, he would have felt that the results of his reasoning on each

00:13:26.940 of those points were less compelling.

00:13:30.540 And I know your argument is not an argument for suicide, I mean, we'll differentiate antinatalism

00:13:35.820 from that.

00:13:36.420 But I'm just wondering if you feel that if the character of your experience were significantly

00:13:42.700 better moment to moment, if you feel like this philosophical conviction would just kind of

00:13:48.620 evaporate or become so uninteresting to you that it would sort of evaporate?

00:13:53.100 Well, I don't like to talk about myself, so I'm probably just not going to answer that

00:13:57.220 question.

00:13:58.220 But I'll make a few observations.

00:14:00.100 And one is that one ought not to make the assumption that somebody who holds the sort

00:14:04.320 of view that I do is thinking about themselves.

00:14:06.940 They may be thinking about themselves as well, but they might be just thinking about everything

00:14:10.300 they see around them in the world.

00:14:11.640 So just if you think about the amount of suffering that's going on in the world at any moment,

00:14:18.460 you have to be pretty coarse and callous to not take that seriously.

00:14:24.060 So it needn't be about one's own experiences, it needn't be about one's own attitudes, it might

00:14:30.460 be a sort of sensitivity or an expression of what's going on in the world.

00:14:34.460 So you sort of gave an example that's very self-oriented.

00:14:39.040 And what I'm suggesting is that's not the only possible way of looking at things.

00:14:43.340 It's also possible to arrive at these sorts of views by looking outward and looking and

00:14:47.640 seeing what you see around you.

00:14:49.540 Yeah, no doubt.

00:14:50.300 No doubt.

00:14:51.260 And then, of course, the other point is that you spoke about him being anidonic, but there 0.92

00:14:56.440 are plenty of manic people out there, and their views might be colored by their mania.

00:15:02.420 They may be deriving too much pleasure to actually see the world for what it is.

00:15:06.240 Yeah, it's hard to know what is normal here, or what is an uncolored lens through which to

00:15:12.880 look at these questions.

00:15:14.000 And there may, in fact, be no uncolored lens.

00:15:16.620 It may just be lenses all the way in.

00:15:19.400 So let's get into the details of your argument.

00:15:22.100 Run through the asymmetry argument for me.

00:15:25.640 So there's actually more than one asymmetry argument, but there is an kind of axiological

00:15:31.760 asymmetry, I think, between benefits and harms, between the good things and the bad things.

00:15:37.340 And obviously, if we're speaking with inner life, the pains that you have, the other harms

00:15:42.360 that you have, these are bad.

00:15:44.520 And the good things that you have, those are good.

00:15:47.020 But if we're considering the scenario in which somebody is going to be brought into existence,

00:15:51.400 we have to compare the outcome in which they do from the outcome in which they don't exist.

00:15:58.120 And in the outcome in which they don't exist, we have to consider the absent harms and the

00:16:03.820 absent benefits.

00:16:05.940 And I think that the absence of the harms is good, even though that person won't exist.

00:16:11.360 Whereas the absence of the good things in that life is not going to be bad.

00:16:16.440 And that's because there's going to be nobody who's going to be deprived of those good things.

00:16:21.820 And so the asymmetry is really between the bad and the good in the scenario in which somebody

00:16:27.400 doesn't exist.

00:16:29.580 Okay.

00:16:29.900 So it strikes me, I kind of want to run through each piece of that again, so that to make sure

00:16:35.380 that I'm not making a mistake here in reasoning.

00:16:38.600 But it strikes me that you're, there's kind of an imbalance here in how you're presenting

00:16:44.300 that.

00:16:44.900 And you could be conjuring the asymmetry in a way.

00:16:48.600 So you're saying, and just point out where I go wrong here, you're saying that the absence

00:16:54.680 of a good life can't be a harm because there's no one who is harmed.

00:17:00.180 There's no person who is deprived of this life.

00:17:02.700 So the absence of goods is not a bad thing.

00:17:06.240 But the absence of a bad life is a good.

00:17:11.360 Here, you, in my view, you're, you're, you're kind of smuggling the absence of existence in

00:17:17.140 as part of the good.

00:17:18.860 You're saying that the prevention of harm is a positive good, even though there is no one

00:17:23.760 who enjoys this absence of harm.

00:17:26.580 Is that where you, you're kind of putting the rabbit in the hat?

00:17:29.800 Well, a lot of people have suggested that I'm doing that, but the point I'm making here

00:17:36.440 is not so much a metaphysical one as, as I say, an axiological one.

00:17:40.080 It's about an asymmetry in, of values between the good things and the bad things in life.

00:17:45.380 And one of the reasons why I think, first of all, I think this asymmetry is actually

00:17:49.240 pretty intuitive.

00:17:49.880 And I think large numbers of people would accept it if, until they see where it leads.

00:17:55.260 But this basic asymmetry, I think, explains some other asymmetries that, that many people

00:18:00.640 would, would endorse.

00:18:01.960 So here's a, here's an example.

00:18:05.160 The large parts of the universe that are uninhabited, there aren't beings there, certainly not sentient

00:18:11.620 beings.

00:18:12.040 And if we think about those uninhabited parts of the, of the universe, we're not filled

00:18:18.120 with, and nor do I think we should be filled with remorse for the absent goods that they

00:18:22.420 are there.

00:18:23.300 So if we think about Mars, for example, where there could be Martians, but they aren't, we

00:18:28.540 don't think, gee, think about all that pleasure that those absent Martians could have. 1.00

00:18:32.980 Isn't that a terrible thing?

00:18:34.800 We don't think that at all.

00:18:35.840 Um, whereas I think if we think about the absence of, let's say, Martian wars, uh, just

00:18:44.580 like we have wars on earth, and we think about the absence of all the suffering there, I think

00:18:48.340 we'd say that's a pretty good thing.

00:18:49.620 It's pretty good that they don't have that there, that there's, that there's nothing like

00:18:52.780 that on Mars.

00:18:53.620 That's a, that's an advantage that Mars has over earth.

00:18:57.120 But there's no one who doesn't have those harms.

00:19:00.000 Exactly.

00:19:00.900 Exactly.

00:19:01.340 But, uh, I still think that it's a, it's a good thing that there's the absence of that

00:19:06.840 suffering on Mars.

00:19:08.460 Now, I'll grant you that there are many other possible asymmetries here that we should be

00:19:12.620 concerned about.

00:19:13.220 So, for instance, one thing you claim, or at least I think it's implicit in some of your

00:19:17.900 claims, is that there's much more suffering or possible suffering than there is, you know,

00:19:24.820 possible happiness, or the, or the, the, the depth of it is, is far greater.

00:19:28.800 And so there's, there's an asymmetry between suffering and happiness that is also just,

00:19:33.860 just swings the balance here.

00:19:35.120 So we'll talk about that.

00:19:36.140 But here, I feel like you, you're, you're running afoul of my intuitions here.

00:19:41.320 So, and what you just said about the moral significance of canceling possible goods definitely

00:19:48.740 stands in opposition to the work of every philosopher who is, who is working on what is called existential

00:19:54.840 risk now.

00:19:55.840 So you can have philosophers like, you know, Will McCaskill, who will say that the greatest

00:20:02.220 possible wrong would be to do something which put our species on track for, you know, self-annihilation.

00:20:10.940 And that would be, in large measure, not because of all the suffering that would be caused, because,

00:20:15.380 you know, if we're annihilated in, in the right way, it could be completely painless.

00:20:18.800 It would be wrong because it would close the door to all of the, the untold goods that

00:20:26.060 could come from a billion years of creative involvement with the cosmos.

00:20:31.080 If you knew that there was some decision you took today that not only deprived your grandchildren

00:20:37.580 from living the most glorious possible life, they just have a, you know, a sort of glorious

00:20:43.860 life, but you deprived all of their descendants from even existing and discovering greater depths

00:20:52.400 of beauty, people are persuaded, and I'm one of them, that those hypothetical losses are as real

00:21:01.060 as the hypothetical gain of, of not suffering if you don't exist.

00:21:08.180 So I think that when we think about human extinction, there's something that clouds people's

00:21:12.040 thinking. And that's why the moment you think about the application of this asymmetry to human

00:21:16.460 extinction, all these other intuitions of the kind of describing come up. That's why the example I

00:21:22.080 gave wasn't about human extinction. It was a base of some other species, let's say, on another planet

00:21:26.900 that could have been there and isn't there. And we don't spend any time worrying about that,

00:21:31.620 nor do I think we should spend any time worrying about the absent pleasures over there.

00:21:35.320 When we think about human extinction, there are some confounding variables. The one is

00:21:39.460 the mechanism whereby the extinction takes place. So there's a distinction between whether people

00:21:45.820 sort of die out or whether they're killed off. And so one way in which we could go extinct is

00:21:51.560 through people meeting an untimely end and being killed. But another way is for everybody to die 0.72

00:21:59.960 peacefully in their beds and for the human species to have come to an end because there was no more

00:22:04.480 reproduction. And I think a lot of what's going on with people's intuitions is a mixing up of those

00:22:09.400 things. And then I think there's a lot of sentimentality about the human species.

00:22:15.480 There's this idea that it's a wonderful species and we'd like it to be around for a long time and

00:22:20.480 haven't we discovered and done all sorts of wonderful things and wouldn't be good if that

00:22:24.500 whole trajectory of scientific discovery went on. And there's a kind of sentimentality about

00:22:29.120 having humans around. And so I think that those sorts of factors confound our thinking about cases

00:22:34.440 of human extinction. So I would like to move away from those to think of the application of the

00:22:38.880 asymmetry to other cases and see how it works. Granted, some people might be confounded. I don't think

00:22:44.600 I am here. In fact, I think there are a few more things to say about just canceling the human career

00:22:50.880 that are relevant here. But before we do, I just want to linger on this, what strikes me as a kind of an

00:22:59.080 asymmetry that is giving you your first asymmetry here, which is you're accruing a good to non-existent

00:23:08.280 beings on one side of your equation where you're not on the other. Do you not see it that way or you

00:23:15.720 just think it's justified? No, I do see it that way, but I think it's justified. There is this

00:23:21.660 axiological asymmetry. And I think when you do the calculation that follow from that, the cards are

00:23:28.740 stacked against bringing somebody into existence. But it's not an artificial stacking. It's one that

00:23:33.620 makes eminent sense. I guess it's still not making sense to me. So let's just spend a few more minutes

00:23:38.540 on this. So we have a person who could have existed but doesn't. And undoubtedly, there are philosophical

00:23:46.300 problems with thinking about possibility as well. I mean, are there these possible things or are there

00:23:55.000 simply actual things? And we're actually just misled by our notion of possibility. But leaving

00:24:02.220 that aside, I might have had a... I have two children, which already convicts me of a monstrous

00:24:09.100 ethical lapse on your account, but we'll leave that aside. But I have decided not to have a third child,

00:24:14.520 you'll be happy to know. So this third child will not experience anything good or anything bad.

00:24:22.680 And on your account, there's no deprivation to him or her for not being brought into existence

00:24:30.560 on account of not getting to do all the good things there are to do. But there is a benefit

00:24:37.720 to not suffering all of the inevitable pains of existence. But that benefit doesn't accrue to

00:24:46.460 anyone because no one by this description exists. That's correct. And it's impossible,

00:24:52.780 of course, if the person doesn't exist for them to enjoy the benefit. But when we're looking at

00:24:57.500 scenarios of bringing somebody into existence or not, we're having to compare those two cases,

00:25:03.480 one scenario in which they do exist and one in which they don't. And if we want to know what's

00:25:07.940 better for that potential person, we need to compare the situation in which they do and the

00:25:13.120 situation in which they don't. And we have to compare, obviously, the scenario in which they

00:25:17.360 don't exist to the one in which they do and make the interest judgments relative to the world in which

00:25:23.840 the person does exist. How would this calculation run for you if existence was on balance, more

00:25:31.760 pleasant and wonderful and creative and beautiful, so that every person who comes into existence

00:25:37.980 runs a better than even chance of having a life worth living. But still, there are many lives that

00:25:47.100 are not worth living. And they come up quite frequently. They just don't overwhelm the lives that

00:25:53.720 are worth living. Then how would you think about it? Well, that very phrase, a life worth living,

00:25:58.360 I think is ambiguous. And I think it's ambiguous between a life worth starting and a life worth

00:26:04.220 continuing. And I think one mistake people make is to not see that ambiguity, because I think different

00:26:09.660 standards ought to apply to those two cases. So if at a given time, there's more good in your life

00:26:15.580 than bad, then your life may indeed be worth continuing. I say may indeed, because there's some

00:26:21.120 complexities there that we could revisit later. But I think the bar for starting a life is going to be

00:26:26.800 much higher. Let's stick with the starting of life, because we'll get on to whether life is worth

00:26:31.960 continuing. Let's just say that we lived in a world where at birth, every human being could expect

00:26:39.940 to have a slightly better than even chance. I mean, basically, they're like the house in a casino

00:26:46.200 playing blackjack, right? They have whatever it is, a 52% chance of winning. And winning, in this case,

00:26:52.820 really is winning, right? There's no downside to winning. It's just the 52% of people who have good

00:26:58.360 lives on balance really do have good lives on balance any way you look at them. And then, you know,

00:27:04.260 the 48% of people who don't have negative lives to one or another degree, then how would you think

00:27:11.220 about it? Well, I think even the lives that are good on balance, there's going to be plenty of bad.

00:27:15.800 But let's just stipulate that we live in a world that's kind of like a coin toss. And if the right

00:27:20.160 side of the coin comes up, that is a life on balance, however you want to aggregate benefits and injuries.

00:27:28.160 So I'm not quite understanding the question here, because if the analogy is sort of winning

00:27:33.200 at blackjack, well, when you win, you win. There's no downside to the winning. Whereas when you win in this

00:27:40.000 life lottery that you're speaking about, what I want to get clarity on is, is there no downside?

00:27:44.580 Is this a life of unmitigated good? Or is there some negative as well? And from what you said,

00:27:49.440 I was understanding you ought to be saying that there is some bad as well. It's just that on balance,

00:27:53.960 it's good. I guess there could be some bad, but it is, in the case of the lucky life, it is outweighed

00:28:00.640 by the good. So that each of your pains are manageable enough that when your pleasure comes around,

00:28:06.860 you always feel that it was worth it. And let's just say that you're right to feel that. We've

00:28:12.920 tuned the luck of lucky minds in such a way that life is really good and pain does not overwhelm

00:28:22.380 pleasure.

00:28:23.720 Okay. You see, when you say that you think it's worth it, are you saying it's worth it to have

00:28:29.660 come into existence or that it's worth it to continue existing?

00:28:32.760 I am, without granting you that distinction, because I'm not sure I agree that exists, but

00:28:38.660 we'll get there. For the purposes of this point in the conversation, I'm talking about coming into

00:28:46.340 existence. So you don't exist and I give you the opportunity to exist. And if you could, if you were

00:28:53.440 one of the lucky ones, you would find yourself in a circumstance that was well worth your time.

00:28:58.580 Well, that I think is a confusion. I grant you that there are many people who say,

00:29:03.600 I'm glad I was brought into existence because I think on balance, it's better

00:29:06.700 that I'm around. I think I'm getting more good than I am getting bad. But I just think that people

00:29:12.140 who hold that view have not thought carefully enough about what the question is. I think that

00:29:17.340 because they already exist, they're biased towards the condition in which they already exist. And so what

00:29:23.180 they're actually asking themselves without realizing it is, is my life worth continuing?

00:29:27.340 But I don't think there's any life that's worth starting. And I think there's no life that's

00:29:31.940 worth starting because of this asymmetry.

00:29:36.300 Surely you would grant that if existence were much, much better than it is, in fact,

00:29:42.980 you could imagine a life worth living, right? I mean, what if existence just had no suffering at all

00:29:49.940 in it, right? It was just one leap from creative height to another, and every moment was more

00:29:56.920 interesting than the last.

00:29:58.600 So I've considered that possibility. And I think in that scenario, we should be indifferent between

00:30:02.960 coming into existence and not. But I've got to say that that scenario you've imagined is actually

00:30:08.100 pretty hard to imagine in practice. Hard to imagine any real such life. But yes, if we imagine,

00:30:13.280 if you're thinking about hypothetically, a hypothetical life where you come into existence,

00:30:16.340 and there's nothing bad about that, then I would say we are being indifferent between that. And I

00:30:21.740 think we should be indifferent between coming into existence in that condition and not coming into

00:30:25.100 existence at all.

00:30:26.480 That is a novel view that I have never considered. I'm wondering whether to focus there for a moment

00:30:33.140 before going on to capture some of these loose threads. Let's spend a moment on that.

00:30:38.380 If I posit a kind of godlike paradise for all conscious beings, right? So there really is just,

00:30:47.260 there's nothing wrong in the universe by anything that you can say is wrong, you know, like there's a

00:30:52.920 little ache and pain over here, there's a little dissatisfaction over here. I will just cancel that by

00:30:58.880 saying, no, no, these, those are moments where there's more pleasure flooding in there and more,

00:31:05.500 even deeper sense of meaning, even deeper gratification of one's intellectual life. And

00:31:12.860 these are, these are beings who are far more competent than you and I are to judge the character

00:31:19.860 of their experience. They've had a billion years to consider the matter, and they're still happy to be

00:31:25.000 here. Imagine minds constituted like that. Why should we be indifferent to that and the primordial

00:31:34.280 dial tone of non-existent? See, I think what's dividing us here is the asymmetry, because if you,

00:31:40.380 if you think there is the asymmetry that I'm, that I'm defending, then you'll say, well, there's nothing

00:31:45.740 bad in that Edenic life that you're speaking about, but there's also nothing bad in the situation of

00:31:51.880 non-existence. So that, there they're equal. Now you'll say, but in Eden, there are all these

00:31:58.320 pleasures. And I say, that's great. Because if you, if you're in Eden, it's good that you have those

00:32:03.700 pleasures because your life would be worse without them. But if you've never existed, the absence of

00:32:08.620 those pleasures is going to mean nothing to you. You won't be there. You won't care about it. It

00:32:12.200 doesn't matter that there's, that there's not a being that's having those pleasures. So if you think

00:32:17.100 about, I don't know, Adam and Eve, and then some third character that could have been there, and this is

00:32:22.220 before the fall, obviously, and you say, well, is it, is it a pity that there's not some additional

00:32:27.060 being here that's not enjoying Eden? No, I don't think there's anything bad about that. And I think

00:32:32.300 it's, there's an, there's an indifference, and there should be an indifference. I can see that

00:32:37.300 there's nothing bad about it because there's no one to suffer the absence of, of those pleasures and

00:32:42.720 insights. But again, by the same token, I, I'm, I'm not convinced that you can make the other move

00:32:48.880 you're making, which is to say that there's something good about not having the suffering

00:32:52.720 imposed on you if you don't exist. And if you don't exist, you can't feel the relief of not being

00:32:57.240 tortured because you don't exist. So I feel like that's the, there's a symmetry there of just

00:33:02.620 non-being. Let's come back to your, if it's your third possible child. Let's imagine you were thinking

00:33:09.860 about having a third child and you did some genetic tests and you found out that this child that you

00:33:15.720 could have would lead a life that even by your standards is one of great suffering. And so you

00:33:22.560 decide, well, we're not going to go ahead with this third child. We're not going to have this third

00:33:25.860 child. Do you think that would be a good thing? Yes. And do you think you've got a reason to avoid

00:33:33.780 bringing that child into existence? But the reason is one which is predicated on the existence of the

00:33:43.220 child and therefore the existence of his or her suffering. We're talking here about the absence

00:33:49.000 of a wrong that I'm not committing by bringing this guaranteed to suffer person into existence. 0.99

00:33:56.000 So you're imagining some scenario in which this child does exist and is leading a life of suffering

00:34:00.200 and you say, well, I've got a reason to avoid that. Right.

00:34:03.840 Now, let's imagine that you're thinking of having this third child and you do the tests

00:34:10.540 and everything's fine. And so it could turn out like your other children are. And I don't know

00:34:15.120 your children. I hope they're doing well, as well as can be. But let's imagine they're doing,

00:34:19.000 they're doing well. And this third child, the probability is that it'll be like that.

00:34:23.640 Let's just say on their worst afternoons, they'll confirm everything you fear about the nature of

00:34:27.600 existence. On your children, most obviously. Yes. They can complain about the most insubstantial

00:34:34.220 things and you'd be amazed at how much anguish can be provoked by having the television turned

00:34:40.440 off prematurely. Right. But let's imagine that this third child would lead a happy life by your

00:34:46.740 standards. Right. Do you have a reason to bring that child into existence? Well, let's leave aside

00:34:52.000 all the other reasons that no doubt you've considered just, you know, their effect on other people,

00:34:56.400 their effect on me, all that. So just localizing the benefit to the person, yes, I think so. I think

00:35:05.700 that there's, I mean, this comes down to population ethics and topics that I hope we'll touch, but

00:35:12.340 there is a kind of more is better principle here when you're talking about good lives. These are all

00:35:19.060 fascinating questions and they connect to more or less everything that's fascinating. So I'm just trying

00:35:23.580 to resist the slide into philosophy here, but it seems to me that much of what you're saying about

00:35:30.440 bringing people into existence does in fact apply to the continuing existence of existing people.

00:35:39.580 I know you draw a clear line of demarcation there. I'm not so sure you can, and I think this is an

00:35:45.540 additional problem for me here. So how is it not analogous for me to say, well, I have a child,

00:35:51.400 and there was, there was something very, very good that could have happened to her. I could have

00:35:59.060 secured some benefit for her that she doesn't know about, but I declined to do that, right? So she has

00:36:06.980 the life she has, but I could have given her the super enhanced life with really very little effort on 0.94

00:36:14.480 my part. You're talking about an existing child. An existing child. But I declined to do that. So

00:36:19.760 now she has her life as it was and was going to be, but it could have been otherwise. And I, you know,

00:36:25.960 for quite capricious reasons of my own, you know, because I didn't want to spend 10 seconds to sign

00:36:31.940 a form or click a button on a website, she does not have this extraordinarily positive thing happen for

00:36:39.820 her. And she doesn't know about it, right? So has she been wronged in any way? And I think most

00:36:47.820 people's intuitions would be yes. And yet on your account, I'm wondering if I, if I could say that.

00:36:55.700 Well, we're talking about a case of an existing child here. And I think there, there are all kinds

00:36:59.520 of other complexities about, about this case. I mean, whether she had some entitlement to your

00:37:05.500 bestowing this benefit, there are all kinds of questions of that kind, but you, you are speaking

00:37:09.620 about an existing child. And so I would say that this child is worse off without this benefit having

00:37:15.220 been bestowed. So whether you've wronged her is another question, but she's worse off than she

00:37:20.800 would have been if you'd bestowed this benefit. But I don't think that a parallel claim can be made

00:37:25.960 about a child that you don't bring into existence. Although if it had come into, into existence,

00:37:31.940 it would have had certain benefits. I think the absence of those benefits because it doesn't come

00:37:37.140 into existence is not bad. And it's not bad because it's not deprived. Whereas your existing child will

00:37:43.440 be deprived of this benefit you could have, you could have given. Another point of confusion for me

00:37:48.580 here is that you acknowledge a spectrum of experience ranging from the very, very positive to the very,

00:37:55.760 very negative. But when you take the zero point of non-existence, you say that we should be indifferent

00:38:02.720 between zero and the very, very positive. Whereas we shouldn't be indifferent between zero and the

00:38:09.000 very, very negative. The very, very negative is worse, obviously, and we should avoid it. And we

00:38:13.620 should choose zero every time over the very, very negative. But we should be indifferent to zero over

00:38:19.860 the very, very positive. But I'm not quite sure how that, that would work in practice. So imagine if we,

00:38:26.000 you know, we're sliding down the ramp of a hedonic experience. We start at the very, very positive and

00:38:33.080 we start, life gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse until it gets truly neutral. And maybe

00:38:39.840 there's other forms of neutral beyond the lights going out. But for at least one form of neutral is

00:38:45.980 not having any discernible experience. And then we just keep on sliding and things get a little bit

00:38:53.260 bad and a little bit worse. And all of a sudden we're in hell. It seems to me that if you're going

00:38:57.760 to preserve the logical integrity of that spectrum, you'd have to acknowledge that better really is

00:39:05.340 better than nothing.

00:39:06.980 See, again, I don't think, I don't think that it is. Um, this assignment of, of zero that you're

00:39:12.900 proposing is something that I've anticipated before. And I've got an analogy to, to deal with

00:39:19.320 a case like, of course, it's an only an analogy. It, um, it can't be a like the case that we're

00:39:24.120 speaking about in every respect. But I imagine these two people, the one is, uh, we call him sick

00:39:29.780 and the other we call, uh, healthy and, uh, sick gets sick. Uh, but he's also got some attribute

00:39:37.200 whereby he recovers quickly from his sickness. Um, healthy never gets sick. I mean, never,

00:39:43.440 never, ever get sick, but he lacks the attribute of quick recovery. So if H were to, were to get sick,

00:39:50.160 he wouldn't quickly recover. It'd be a very slow, um, very slow recovery. Now, what I want to say

00:39:56.480 about sick is that that capacity for quick recovery, that that's good and it's good, uh, for

00:40:03.080 sick, but the absence of that capacity in the healthy person is not a, not a net disadvantage

00:40:11.500 over, uh, over sick because he never has any need for that. Right. And so I think we should say a

00:40:19.200 similar thing about these scenarios, about existing and non-existing and that these absent pleasures

00:40:26.480 are not bad relative to the other scenario. In other words, they're not a net disadvantage,

00:40:30.320 uh, in comparison with the scenario in which the person exists. So I want to resist that sort of

00:40:36.500 attribution of, let's say a zero to, uh, the absence of, uh, the, of the pleasures or the absence

00:40:43.340 of the good things in life. If they're the absent good things of a non-existent person.

00:40:48.560 So not all of my intuitions are being conserved here. I mean, I will say here on, on this point,

00:40:53.420 your, your view is especially Buddhist and for people who might be surprised by that. And I don't

00:41:00.060 know how familiar you are with, with Buddhist philosophy, but I'll just say that on the Buddhist

00:41:05.220 account, existence is the problem. And they have this, obviously this view of, of rebirth and,

00:41:11.740 and karma. And there's what's called a wheel of becoming, you know, life after life,

00:41:16.900 you just can't get off this wheel unless you become fully enlightened. Enlightenment consists

00:41:22.800 in no longer being subjected to this continuous cycle of rebirth. It was obviously a very good

00:41:31.440 reason to, to doubt that picture of existence scientifically, but the core of the ethical

00:41:37.660 view there and the soteriological view, the, the view of, of what it means to be free,

00:41:43.400 is that existence has this intrinsically unsatisfying character. And, you know, this is

00:41:50.760 for reasons that we really haven't gone into yet. It's just the fact that everything is impermanent.

00:41:55.060 You know, your, your pleasures, no matter how good, always fall away and you're left with more of a

00:41:59.580 search for pleasure. There's a kind of an intrinsic dissatisfaction, even in satisfaction.

00:42:05.120 It wouldn't be bad if no one existed. And the fact that people exist in a circumstance that is

00:42:13.520 perfect to frustrate the search for happiness and well-being is the problem. And enlightenment is the,

00:42:21.080 the act of canceling all of the, the kind of the mental properties that would cause one to continually

00:42:27.040 be reborn into existence. So your, your view is very Buddhist without offering the, the methodology

00:42:35.360 of enlightenment, or unless you, you do that. And I, I don't know about it.

00:42:39.400 Or the odd metaphysic of, of reincarnation.

00:42:42.040 Exactly. Yeah. But there are a few other wrinkles here in Buddhism. And one is that it's possible

00:42:48.000 through a really deep engagement in, you know, methods like meditation to come to a kind of

00:42:56.460 equanimity that equalizes pain and pleasure to a remarkable degree and to find a kind of intrinsic

00:43:03.100 well-being in just the nature of consciousness. And that does make some of this, some of the,

00:43:08.840 the Buddhist view that I, I just described somewhat paradoxical. I mean, it's not the problem of

00:43:14.560 existence can really go away to a remarkable degree on the Buddhist account. I mean, so that's all just 0.93

00:43:20.500 a long way of saying that your view is in, in very good standing with, with certain trends in,

00:43:26.840 in Eastern philosophy, and it just doesn't capture everything they say. But let's take this distinction

00:43:34.380 between the possible lives and the, the existing lives and their interests, because I'm not so sure

00:43:40.600 you're conserving my intuitions there. Why would it be a bad thing for everyone to die tonight

00:43:47.480 painlessly in their sleep? Let's just picture what this entails. So everyone goes to sleep,

00:43:53.700 none the wiser. They don't know this is their last day on earth. There's been no dread in anticipation

00:43:59.380 of the lights going out. But everyone, based on some bad luck or good luck, depending on your view,

00:44:05.980 dies painlessly in his or her sleep. So there's no bereavement. There's no experience of this.

00:44:12.280 There's just the lights going out in 7 billion brains all at once. What could be wrong with that?

00:44:20.420 Well, I think that those of us who do exist have an interest in continuing to exist.

00:44:25.440 We've got an interest in not being annihilated. And the scenario you are presenting is one in which

00:44:30.420 we are annihilated. Why do we have an interest in being reborn tomorrow from the womb of sleep

00:44:37.680 if existence is, as you say, such that bringing people into it is a terrible crime?

00:44:47.320 Well, I think the analogy is not correct. I don't think we are reborn. I mean, we're reborn in a

00:44:52.440 metaphorical sense, but not literally. I think there are all kinds of things that are going on in our

00:44:56.560 sleep. We're continuing to exist in a kind of dispositional state. Our interests in continuing

00:45:02.640 to live are surviving through that period of sleep, as are many of our desires and our preferences.

00:45:09.960 And I think if we die in our sleep, one of our interests is a very important interest, at least

00:45:14.840 one, if not many, have been thwarted. I can't see how we have any more interest

00:45:19.840 than a new being would. Again, you have to imagine just canceling all of the usual problems with

00:45:30.100 people dying, right? They don't know they're going to die, so there's no imposed suffering

00:45:35.240 in advance, and there's no one around to suffer their loss. There's no grief. There's not even a

00:45:41.280 single neuron in a single brain disposed to grieve about what's happened because no one knows that it

00:45:48.620 will happen and no one's around to know that it has happened. How is that not analogous to

00:45:53.840 someone not coming into existence on the next day? Because somebody who doesn't exist, I think,

00:45:59.520 has got no interest in coming into existence. But somebody who already exists has got an interest

00:46:04.700 in not ceasing to exist. Now, one thing I should add here is that I think these two uses are separable.

00:46:10.600 In other words, the asymmetry argument that I've given before and the argument that I'm giving you now,

00:46:14.700 these are two separate arguments. So it's possible for an antinatalist to also be a pro-mortalist of

00:46:20.440 the kind that you're suggesting. So if somebody thinks that a painless death, or let's say death

00:46:25.620 itself, is not bad for the person who dies, and then we add all the stipulations that you've added,

00:46:30.900 if somebody thinks that, then they'd say there's nothing wrong with the scenario. There's nothing bad

00:46:34.760 about the scenario you've described. But that's a separate view from the asymmetry that I've been

00:46:41.560 presenting. So you can have the asymmetry that I presented earlier, and then you can either

00:46:46.440 couple that with the view I'm offering now about ceasing to exist, or you needn't couple it with

00:46:52.120 that. That's precise to the point. I don't see how you can keep them apart. If existence has the

00:46:59.240 character that you say that it has, and I would grant you, you're on very firm ground thinking that

00:47:06.020 pains are worse than pleasures, and that there are more of them. And we can talk about that. But

00:47:10.720 if it really is bad to be brought into the world, and not just a little bad, it's really,

00:47:17.540 really bad, then I don't see how that doesn't extend to the moral character of waking up the

00:47:26.960 next day. And if I can give you a situation where there are no ancillary harms accrued by somebody

00:47:35.100 dying. And implicit in everything you're saying about existence is the claim that all of these

00:47:42.200 canceled goods of future people don't mean anything, right? I mean, there's no moral weight

00:47:48.700 to place on all the good things that could have happened had humanity continued, because these are

00:47:54.180 hypothetical goods that accrue to no one. How is it that having everyone die painlessly in their sleep

00:48:00.980 wouldn't be, on your account, a good thing? And in fact, perhaps the best possible thing we could

00:48:07.640 imagine having happened. Like, if you could do it, if you could push that button, you would be a moral

00:48:14.240 hero of this one. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

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00:48:50.020 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - December 06, 2017

#107 — Is Life Actually Worth Living？

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