User Controls
Regarding my son
-
2018-01-18 at 1:47 AM UTCThis thread got so deep it struck oil.
-
2018-01-18 at 1:47 AM UTCPeople are born happy and then they start thinking.
-
2018-01-18 at 1:54 AM UTC
-
2018-01-18 at 2:38 AM UTC
Originally posted by Malice So in accordance with your view, should people have as many children as possible?
No, not at all. Did you not read my post? Like do you think the only two options here are "have as many children as possible" and "end the human race"?
Originally posted by Malice Imagine a world where lives were born with equal levels of positive and negative utility. One life wholly worth living, one life that counters that. Would you want to prevent the child who suffers from coming into existence?
Obviously, as I've repeated multiple times.What if it increased so that the happy lives averaged out to +.1% net positive utility. At what point does it become immoral and is utility all that matters? Why should the happy lives be lamented if non-existent beings aren't harmed by not being brought into existence? There's no point where needlessly gambling with potential lives stops being immoral, there's always some level of risk.
I don't really get what you're trying to say here. I never said anything about lamenting happy lives.Aversion to death and the will to leave are both strongly biologically mediated and vary between individuals. The fear of death is one of the greatest fears there is. If people were modified so that it was even stronger, to the point where they may state they want to live regardless of how much suffering they experience and the probability of a positive outcome, when would it be considered inhumane to not intervene and cease their suffering?
Obviously we're biased towards survival when faced with a bad circumstances, even to the point of leading a life not worth living. That's exactly what I said in my last post. And that's why the "repugnant conclusion" argument seems convincing but isn't when we unpack what is meant by "life worth living". -
2018-01-18 at 2:44 AM UTCMalice, attempt reductio ad absurdum on utilitarian principles with examples focused on population and birth
-
2018-01-18 at 2:56 AM UTC
-
2018-01-18 at 3 AM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny No, not at all. Did you not read my post? Like do you think the only two options here are "have as many children as possible" and "end the human race"?
Obviously, as I've repeated multiple times.
I don't really get what you're trying to say here. I never said anything about lamenting happy lives.
Your ideology is too vague. By what metric do you decide whether a life is worth living. There are problems with self-reports, and the vast majority of people seem to consider their lives to be worth continuing, even the severely disabled. In alignment with this there would likely be a net increase in utility even if the poorest people continued to breed like rodents.
Well, we're already gambling with lives and the guaranteed way to prevent lives that produce net negative utility to be brought into existence is to cease from procreating.What if it increased so that the happy lives averaged out to +.1% net positive utility. At what point does it become immoral and is utility all that matters? Why should the happy lives be lamented if non-existent beings aren't harmed by not being brought into existence? There's no point where needlessly gambling with potential lives stops being immoral, there's always some level of risk.
If you add the utility of the positive and negative lives there's .1 percentile point positive utility. The point was to provide an example whether you begin to question whether it truly is justifiable to commit an act that is guaranteed to generate negative net utility for certain individuals. You could see them as a sacrifice for creating beings with needs, which I don't see any need for. -
2018-01-18 at 4:08 AM UTC
Originally posted by Daily You mean the boyfriends that you chose? You know, out of free will, the thing that women have as well? The boyfriends that you chose to open your legs to, when you could've kept them closed? You know, since women actually do the choosing more often than men do, since, you know, women have more options since, like, men would fuck even a 2/10 to bust a nut? You see how that works, you stupid responsibility denying cunt?
I'm not denying my responsibility to anything, but I dealt with a borderline and schizo boyfriend. Both mentally unstable fucks who one definitely was prone to lying about shit.
Originally posted by 哈哈你看不懂中文 The one whose career you recently threatened to ruin while fucked up on gabapentin, according to him anyway. Who am I to say what is true or not? I know only what I hear.
Oh wait, I get it. Not your boyfriend.
like seriously, what fucking shit are you on? I don't even know wtf you're talking about. 1337? Yeah, he absolutely is not my boyfriend, and threatened to ruin his career? why the fuck would I even do that in the first place Sure I haven't talked to him as much as I was, but goddamn, if he said that, he definitely is lying. -
2018-01-18 at 4:45 AM UTCDid you abort the 2nd baby?
-
2018-01-18 at 4:56 AM UTC
Originally posted by hydromorphone I'm not denying my responsibility to anything, but I dealt with a borderline and schizo boyfriend. Both mentally unstable fucks who one definitely was prone to lying about shit.
like seriously, what fucking shit are you on? I don't even know wtf you're talking about. 1337? Yeah, he absolutely is not my boyfriend, and threatened to ruin his career? why the fuck would I even do that in the first place Sure I haven't talked to him as much as I was, but goddamn, if he said that, he definitely is lying.
What misfortune you must have to have not one, not two, but THREE people lying about you and the crazy shit you do. What are the odds? -
2018-01-18 at 5:25 AM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
-
2018-01-18 at 5:31 AM UTC
-
2018-01-18 at 5:32 AM UTCAlthough I'm very understanding of the global extinction position it seems pretty cleart that most people must find their life worth living what with the 7 billion people and counting. I'm not sure the percentages of suicide vs population but it must certainly be under 1%.
Like I agree that it's not inherently fair to bring new lives into this world without their permission. I really do. But it just seems like... its sort of pretty obvious it's the thing we like to do, and we're gonna keep doing it obviously, so there's really almost no reason to mull over it and instead figure out how to make every person feel worthwhile, which is just as improbably as mass extinction, but it's still more possible.
OR SOMETHING.
I want to have at least one stupid fucking kid. Wanna try to make him cool. Or her. It's a neat project probably the highest risk/reward project you can undertake. May as well. But just one. The multiple kids are the real problem. -
2018-01-18 at 5:34 AM UTC
Originally posted by Malice By what metric do you decide whether a life is worth living. There are problems with self-reports, and the vast majority of people seem to consider their lives to be worth continuing, even the severely disabled. In alignment with this there would likely be a net increase in utility even if the poorest people continued to breed like rodents.
I already said like twice now that asking people "do you not want to die" is not an acceptable measure of whether a life is worth living or not. All one need to is propose a reasonably "objective" sufficiency criterion and this problem evaporates.Well, we're already gambling with lives and the guaranteed way to prevent lives that produce net negative utility to be brought into existence is to cease from procreating.
Also a guaranteed way to produce net positive utility from happening. You keep saying "gambling" but I've said multiple times that whether or not a birth is justified is contingent on the expected outcome. Sure it's possible for a person born with every advantage (not just monetary, but with every opportunity for happiness like the generally recognized precursors to happiness such as good relationships, leisure, rich environment to explore fulfilling human pursuits) and end up miserable but that doesn't mean we can't play the numbers game and generally produce, in aggregate, very happy and fulfilled populations.
Originally posted by Malice If you add the utility of the positive and negative lives there's .1 percentile point positive utility. The point was to provide an example whether you begin to question whether it truly is justifiable to commit an act that is guaranteed to generate negative net utility for certain individuals. You could see them as a sacrifice for creating beings with needs, which I don't see any need for.
When is the generation of lives connected in this kind of way? I guess there's like really edge cases of like "have a kid to be a bone marrow donor to your other kid with cancer" or something in which case we need to ask "is the suffering of the second child worse than ending the life of the first" and we get into issues of fairness but this isn't really fruitful territory since it's been covered at length. See like Mill or non-act-utilitarianism for common strategies for resolution. -
2018-01-18 at 5:42 AM UTC
Originally posted by Sophie This is the sentence to take away from that post. By what metric do we decide what "a life worth living" entails. Also, why is Malice or Lanny or anyone for that matter the grand arbiter of what it means.
I haven't given a specific rubric for what makes a life worth living, but I don't really think I need to. The "repugnant conclusion" argument is that utilitarianism gives justification for generating any life worth living, even if only marginally. We intuitively feel like this is bad because a bunch of people with lives just barely worth living sounds quite bad if our criteria for "life worth living" is self-assessment via not committing suicide.
This is a structural argument, all we need to do just propose that the "life worth living" bar is somewhat higher than not-committing-suicide" and our intuitive disdain for the utilitarian position evaporates. How exactly we set that bar isn't really relevant to the argument, although obviously it's essential if we want to set policy based on this utilitarian logic. But we're talking about a specific argument here, not policy. -
2018-01-18 at 5:44 AM UTC
Originally posted by 哈哈你看不懂中文 What misfortune you must have to have not one, not two, but THREE people lying about you and the crazy shit you do. What are the odds?
Do you have proof he said this? I fucking can't even figure a reason why he would say that as we've never even gotten pissy at one another, much less gotten hostile. Other than a friend, one I must say I've grown a bit distant from recently for no particular reason I've been busy, and pretty preoccupied, but he hits me up and we bullshit from time to time, I have had shit to do with 1337. I've never even fucking met the guy, don't even know where he works, most certainly not had sex with either, though weedsmoker seems to think so for whatever reason, I guess just because at one point I was pretty close to him when we both were going through a lot of shit. Why the fuck would I threaten his career even at that? 1337 is a good guy, and I wish him the best in life. -
2018-01-18 at 5:51 AM UTCI’m challenging the idea that creating beings that can experience happiness and pleasure is a positive act. It isn’t. Sentient existence is not a positive thing. It is needless and guarantees suffering. Those beings don’t exist.
-
2018-01-18 at 5:55 AM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny I haven't given a specific rubric for what makes a life worth living, but I don't really think I need to. The "repugnant conclusion" argument is that utilitarianism gives justification for generating any life worth living, even if only marginally. We intuitively feel like this is bad because a bunch of people with lives just barely worth living sounds quite bad if our criteria for "life worth living" is self-assessment via not committing suicide.
This is a structural argument, all we need to do just propose that the "life worth living" bar is somewhat higher than not-committing-suicide" and our intuitive disdain for the utilitarian position evaporates. How exactly we set that bar isn't really relevant to the argument, although obviously it's essential if we want to set policy based on this utilitarian logic. But we're talking about a specific argument here, not policy.
Ok but if it's not about policy it's certainly about adhering to a moral principle. That being whether it is good or bad to bring new life into this world. If we say it's good then that has to be the principle to adhere to but then we must define by what metric we decide what "good" entails. -
2018-01-18 at 6:16 AM UTCGhostemane, your son is going to have a fucked up upbringing and it's all your fault.
-
2018-01-18 at 6:16 AM UTC
Originally posted by hydromorphone Do you have proof he said this? I fucking can't even figure a reason why he would say that as we've never even gotten pissy at one another, much less gotten hostile. Other than a friend, one I must say I've grown a bit distant from recently for no particular reason I've been busy, and pretty preoccupied, but he hits me up and we bullshit from time to time, I have had shit to do with 1337. I've never even fucking met the guy, don't even know where he works, most certainly not had sex with either, though weedsmoker seems to think so for whatever reason, I guess just because at one point I was pretty close to him when we both were going through a lot of shit. Why the fuck would I threaten his career even at that? 1337 is a good guy, and I wish him the best in life.
1337 precummed like a Clydesdale...
