Wake Up!

Peggotty
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Wake Up!

Hi, I’m new here and I’d like to ask who determines what success is? Our own stupid society that’s what and the main concern of that society is to keep us sick. The sooner we take that on board the better.   Being rich and being the chairman of something or other hasn’t anything to do with being a success. You’re only a success when you WAKE UP!

After that you don’t have to apologise to anyone you don’t care if you’re not part of a group you don’t care what someone says to you or about you.  Then you don’t bother with your worries and how broken you feel at times - then you’re happy. That’s what I call being a success.

I’m an atheist I don’t believe there is anything out there (religion is just a metaphor for the inner life) and whether people believe in a god or not is not important to me, what’s important is whether you accept human fallibility as a given.  Then you’ve got something to work with.  Beliefs that science can be used to perfect human beings is as ridiculous as a belief in magic, angels or god’s intervention.

According to the four horsemen, reason and science, rather than religion will rid us of human conflicts and evil.  Since the Enlightenment we’ve heard that one so pull another.  No, there was a dark side to the Enlightenment as we’ve found, namely you can’t understand and control people with the rational mind. Knowledge may have increased but morally as a species we haven’t change at all, selfishness is our natural state but once you’re aware of that once you’ve OWNED it you’re not sleeping anymore you’ve become awake.


 

Oh, but Peggotty, you haven't given Mr. Barkis his proper answer, you know.
Charles Dickens


harleysportster
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Manageri

Manageri wrote:
harleysportster wrote:
So your arguing that the world would be better if everyone in it was dead ? How do you define that as being better ?
Creating a sentient being means creating need (food, sex, comfort blah blah...). Unless that need serves some pre-existing greater need, there's no logical reason to create it. Seeing as the only needs we serve are the ones created by our own existence, creating us is entirely without a constructive purpose. It's like shitting all over the floor just so you can clean the shit up and then calling yourself productive. Now if we could actually fulfill all these needs there wouldn't really be a problem. Unfortunately, we can't. About a million people kill themselves annually because their lives fucking suck. I don't even wanna guess how many want to kill themselves on some level but for whatever reason are unable or unwilling to take that risk (afterall, some asshole might "save" you just so you can wake up in a hospital paralyzed from the neck down making your life even more unbearable). Bringing a potential person to life, even if they find their life to be just peachy, is therefore not a good act. Unfortunately, bringing a person who will be miserable and hate their life into existence is still wrong. This is known in our antinatalist circles as the "Benatarian asymmetry" if you wanna do some googling on it on your own.

Well, I get where you are coming from in some areas. (I don't think I would want to live paralyzed or with 90% of my body burned away, but that would be my own personal choice.)

I agree we are an overcrowded planet and overpopulation is a major problem, this analogy demonstrated in Dr. Zhivago comes to mind : "One man stealing wood for fire is pathetic, five hundred thousand people stealing wood  for fire will destroy the whole entire city." ( paraphrase) 

 But are you advocating ending present life  or simply advocating not bringing more people into the world ?

I am not asking this question to be imply anything or be a smartass. I simply would really like to know what your position is on this.

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


ThunderJones
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Manageri, you've got some

Manageri, you've got some really weird ideas about the value of life. Animals are not equal to humans. The value of their lives are by no means zero, however humans are more important because we have far greater sentience, and sapience, as well as many many other features that distinguish us from other animals.

Now, how in the hell is it better for NO sentient life to exist, over a large number, some of which suffer, who do live, and do have wonderful experiences? You do realize that we humans have a shot at one day removing the need to ever hurt animals on a large scale again, right? Lab grown meat shows promise to replace animal meat in the next several decades. Not only that, but, partially from the sacrifice from all those who have lived before, our lives, and the lives of many creatures on this world who we associate with, are improving greatly.

You think it would be better and more humane for nothing sentient to have ever existed? Even if I had a bad life, I would vastly prefer that bad life to NO life. You will never convince me that it is better to make sure no suffering exists, by getting rid of all sentience, and what joy and goodness those sentient creatures did experience. Sure, we need to find a better way to sustain ourselves. But we have a chance to do these things, a chance that would never have existed had we never existed. Makes sense, right?

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Manageri
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harleysportster wrote: are

harleysportster wrote:
are you advocating ending present life  or simply advocating not bringing more people into the world

This question has different answers depending on whether you're asking me on an ideological or a practical level. Ideologically, I see no reason to end the lives of existing people. Those people can decide for themselves whether their life is worth continuing, seeing as they have infinitely better tools for judging what their life is worth to them than I do.

On a practical level however, humans are preposterous assholes and inflict far greater suffering on other sentient creatures than their lives are worth, and they unethically keep creating more life. This being the case, if I had to choose then I'd vote for ending the current horror show known as planet earth. Do note I didn't even bring nature into this which is an absolutely repugnant quagmire of ridicilous amounts of purposeless suffering.

ThunderJones wrote:

Manageri, you've got some really weird ideas about the value of life.

I don't recognize life to have any value, only the welfare of existing sentient life. If you'd like to make an argument as to why a coma patient has any value just because his heart is still operational then go ahead.

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Animals are not equal to humans. The value of their lives are by no means zero, however humans are more important because we have far greater sentience, and sapience, as well as many many other features that distinguish us from other animals.

I never claimed they are equal in every way, only that their welfare has equal value. There is absolutely no logical reason to assume kicking a pig in the balls hurts any less than kicking a human, and therefore assigning different values to those circumstances is just as unfounded and arbitrary as assigning less value to the pain of black people.

Animals clearly suffer profoundly in their factory farm conditions in exactly the same ways a human would suffer under similar conditions, and hence if you inflict that suffering on an animal you are just as big a motherfucking asshole and should be treated accordingly.

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Now, how in the hell is it better for NO sentient life to exist, over a large number, some of which suffer, who do live, and do have wonderful experiences?

I just made an argument why this shit doesn't matter in my last post, please address it.

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You do realize that we humans have a shot at one day removing the need to ever hurt animals on a large scale again, right? Lab grown meat shows promise to replace animal meat in the next several decades.

Even if the whole world was vegan there's still nothing altruistic about creating new life, nor is there any logical reason to do so.

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Even if I had a bad life, I would vastly prefer that bad life to NO life.

No, you wouldn't. You would not choose eternal suffering in hell over nonexistence. You don't even choose to endure relatively trivial suffering in your own life rather than not exist, unless you refuse to be put under anesthesia every time you undergo surgery.

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You will never convince me that it is better to make sure no suffering exists, by getting rid of all sentience, and what joy and goodness those sentient creatures did experience. Sure, we need to find a better way to sustain ourselves. But we have a chance to do these things, a chance that would never have existed had we never existed. Makes sense, right?

I never would have had the chance to beat my alcoholism had I not become addicted so YAY ADDICTION! Makes sense?


ThunderJones
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Quote:Quote:Manageri, you've

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Manageri, you've got some really weird ideas about the value of life.

I don't recognize life to have any value, only the welfare of existing sentient life. If you'd like to make an argument as to why a coma patient has any value just because his heart is still operational then go ahead.

You seem to be using the word life as the fact that something is alive. However the common usage is the potential of that life, that character and personality of the individual, and past actions of that life.

A patient in vegetative state has a low life value. They have no brain function, no character or personality, and no potential. They will merely sit there like a lump, doing absolutely nothing, and just draining resources. As it is today, because our medical knowledge cannot repair and reboot such a brain, the value of the life is zero to anyone who does not have a sentimental bias to this empty shell, and it is actually negative value. (Give the drain on a hospital's resources and zero prospect of this person being returned to any sort of function, as well as the possibility those resources can be used to save people who actually have a chance of recovering.)

Now, not all comas are created equal. Many comatose patients have some prospect of returning to their old selves, or, at least, a person with sentience and sapience. These people have greater than zero life-value, and it is important, if we can at all possible, to keep them alive in the hopes they may one day be functional once again, provided the resources can be spared from people who are in greater need (Mainly, have higher chance of recovery, but only with those resources).

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Animals are not equal to humans. The value of their lives are by no means zero, however humans are more important because we have far greater sentience, and sapience, as well as many many other features that distinguish us from other animals.

I never claimed they are equal in every way, only that their welfare has equal value. There is absolutely no logical reason to assume kicking a pig in the balls hurts any less than kicking a human, and therefore assigning different values to those circumstances is just as unfounded and arbitrary as assigning less value to the pain of black people. Animals clearly suffer profoundly in their factory farm conditions in exactly the same ways a human would suffer under similar conditions, and hence if you inflict that suffering on an animal you are just as big a motherfucking asshole and should be treated accordingly.

Who is giving an animals pain less of a value than a humans? Not me. I have already agreed that our current system of sustaining ourselves is far from perfect. I am excited for the prospect of no more killing or inducement of suffering in animals for our benefit. How are we to get there without a stage in our development that requires SOME of this? I agree with you that the level of suffering our current system causes is grossly inappropriate. We should strive to change this.

Your assertion of my statement being comparable to racist dehumanization of minorities is absurd. These are people, sentient, sapient, can feel the full range of human emotions,  can build, create, imagine. As a combination of these characteristics, they have a value that is abhorrent to try to disrupt or damage. Their lives have greater value than an animal's. Accepting this is not the same as saying animals are our playthings which we can inflict unlimited suffering upon.

We can say that a saving a human that is about to be hit by a care is more important to save than his dog. The human has more life value, for reasons I have outlined. Now, if that human is an psychopathic mass murderer, saving the dog is the better action, right? The mass murderer has less life value than an animal, because of his actions.

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Now, how in the hell is it better for NO sentient life to exist, over a large number, some of which suffer, who do live, and do have wonderful experiences?

I just made an argument why this shit doesn't matter in my last post, please address it.

Sorry, which post is this? I've skipped a few that seemed part of other lengthy discussions I haven't been involved with. Please don't dismiss my points in this post even if your response might be redundant. Just quote your old post which applies if you don't mind.

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You do realize that we humans have a shot at one day removing the need to ever hurt animals on a large scale again, right? Lab grown meat shows promise to replace animal meat in the next several decades.

Even if the whole world was vegan there's still nothing altruistic about creating new life, nor is there any logical reason to do so.

This is insane. Creating a life is creating potential. It is creating a person who can think and feel. They can do great things or horrible things. But with our advancing technology every day we decrease the bad and increase the good, at least on average.

Continuing our race is not the same as just creating more people until we all kill ourselves. Overpopulation is not a good thing, because it decrease everyone's prospects at a good life. How is bringing a person into the world to experience the good not a good thing? Of course their entire life is not going to be perfect, and might even be horrible. But how is this a basis for throwing the whole idea of sentience out the window? How is some people's pain justification for nonexistence? We should attempt to lessen everyone's pain, not attempt to eliminate everything that might suffer so they can't.

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Even if I had a bad life, I would vastly prefer that bad life to NO life.

No, you wouldn't. You would not choose eternal suffering in hell over nonexistence. You don't even choose to endure relatively trivial suffering in your own life rather than not exist, unless you refuse to be put under anesthesia every time you undergo surgery.

You are coming close to strawmanning here. Bad life is NOT equivalent to a horrible, agonizing life. You might remember that I have supported an individuals right to choose to end a horrific existence. If my life is bad, as in, on average less than 50% good, but not horrific, I would still want to live, because I can experience good, even great, things.

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You will never convince me that it is better to make sure no suffering exists, by getting rid of all sentience, and what joy and goodness those sentient creatures did experience. Sure, we need to find a better way to sustain ourselves. But we have a chance to do these things, a chance that would never have existed had we never existed. Makes sense, right?

I never would have had the chance to beat my alcoholism had I not become addicted so YAY ADDICTION! Makes sense?

I see what you are saying here, but it seems I did not communicate my point well enough.

Every animal causes suffering to itself, other animals of the same species, and all other animals. We have been evolved to the point where we have had the chance to apply our knowledge, and advance our morality. It is not OUR fault that this universe evolves creatures that must induce harm upon each-other to survive. This is something innate in our evolved way of life. When there was no other way, how is that a voluntary action or something that can be blamed on us?

We have the unique, at least for this planet, chance to eliminate the suffering our species inevitably causes to other animals. The greatness and goodness that may come from us can one day outweigh the negatives we have created in the past. Past abuses that we have caused is by no means a reason to eliminate our chance to to good, and eliminate bad. We can improve ourselves, and so much more.

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Manageri
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ThunderJones wrote:A patient

ThunderJones wrote:
A patient in vegetative state has a low life value. They have no brain function, no character or personality, and no potential. They will merely sit there like a lump, doing absolutely nothing, and just draining resources. As it is today, because our medical knowledge cannot repair and reboot such a brain, the value of the life is zero to anyone who does not have a sentimental bias to this empty shell, and it is actually negative value. (Give the drain on a hospital's resources and zero prospect of this person being returned to any sort of function, as well as the possibility those resources can be used to save people who actually have a chance of recovering.)

I agree, keeping a hopeless case "alive" for no benefit other than the irrational wishes of friends and family is an absolutely idiotic waste of resources.

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Who is giving an animals pain less of a value than a humans?

Every meat eater on the planet for starters?

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Not me. I have already agreed that our current system of sustaining ourselves is far from perfect. I am excited for the prospect of no more killing or inducement of suffering in animals for our benefit. How are we to get there without a stage in our development that requires SOME of this?

How can future potential justify atrocitities today if there is no harm done in leaving that future potential unrealized? What I mean is, if somehow I could improve the life of my potential but as of yet nonexistent child by torturing my neighbor today, how could I justify that if there is no equal or greater moral imperative to create that child?

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Your assertion of my statement being comparable to racist dehumanization of minorities is absurd. These are people, sentient, sapient, can feel the full range of human emotions,  can build, create, imagine. As a combination of these characteristics, they have a value that is abhorrent to try to disrupt or damage. Their lives have greater value than an animal's. Accepting this is not the same as saying animals are our playthings which we can inflict unlimited suffering upon.

I think you propably underestimate animal capacity for emotion but anyway, the point is that in many ways, though certainly not all, animals are just as harmable. Physical pain is perhaps the most important and most easily provable one. Like I already said, given that there's no reason to assume the pain of a pig feels any less bad than our pain does, if you think it's immoral to harm a human in a certain way to gain something, then it's just as immoral to harm an animal to gain the same thing if those harms are equal. If you wouldn't torture a human in the same ways they torture a pig in factory farms just so you can have some bacon, then it's inconsistent for you to eat bacon, and you are doing nothing differently than a racist.

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We can say that a saving a human that is about to be hit by a care is more important to save than his dog. The human has more life value, for reasons I have outlined.

Your reasons don't explain why a human's welfare has any more value, they're just random differences. Why would the fact people are better at building things or better at doing logic mean their survival is inherently more valuable?

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Now, if that human is an psychopathic mass murderer, saving the dog is the better action, right? The mass murderer has less life value than an animal, because of his actions.

The psychopath's welfare has no less value than any other person's. If you kick a psycho in the balls for no productive purpose whatsoever you're causing just as much harm as kicking anyone else and are just as big an asshole. Letting the car smash the psychopath is better if it creates a better outcome but that does nothing to strip his suffering from also having value.

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I just made an argument why this shit doesn't matter in my last post, please address it.

Sorry, which post is this?

Post #150.

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You are coming close to strawmanning here. Bad life is NOT equivalent to a horrible, agonizing life. You might remember that I have supported an individuals right to choose to end a horrific existence. If my life is bad, as in, on average less than 50% good, but not horrific, I would still want to live, because I can experience good, even great, things.

The hell example is simply there to point out everyone has a breaking point, not as any kind of accurate description of real life suffering. You know what the neat/sad thing is though? People don't need to get anywhere near that kind of absolute horror to kill themselves.

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You will never convince me that it is better to make sure no suffering exists, by getting rid of all sentience, and what joy and goodness those sentient creatures did experience.

So you won't even consider any arguments? Fine, be a closeminded fundie if that's your idea of intellectual integrity.

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Every animal causes suffering to itself, other animals of the same species, and all other animals. We have been evolved to the point where we have had the chance to apply our knowledge, and advance our morality. It is not OUR fault that this universe evolves creatures that must induce harm upon each-other to survive. This is something innate in our evolved way of life. When there was no other way, how is that a voluntary action or something that can be blamed on us?

It started being blamable on us when we got the intelligence to recognize how fucked up it is and the tools to do something about it. The universe started it but we make the concious decision to keep it going every day.

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We have the unique, at least for this planet, chance to eliminate the suffering our species inevitably causes to other animals.

No, we really really don't. We're entirely dependent on the ecosystem which requires animals to keep it going. Unless you have a way to make all the trillions of sentient creatures entirely suffering free then human existence necessarily requires imposing suffering on other species.


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I'll try to respond soon,

I'll try to respond soon, but my school just started up again. 


ThunderJones
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Quote:Quote:Who is giving an

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Who is giving an animals pain less of a value than a humans?
Every meat eater on the planet for starters?

Not nessecarily. I don't think the average meat-eater thinks animals suffer any less than humans. They may very well be in denial about the amount of suffering possibly goes into their meat's production, but the idea that every meat-eater automatically thinks animals don't suffer is absurd.

You are also painting some meat-eaters with a grossly unfair brush. Many smaller scale livestock companies treat their livestock quite well. I'm sure there are many meat-eaters who check very carefully where they get their meat from. The issue isn't everyone being meat-eaters,but meat-eaters becoming more aware of the issues surrounding meat-production. My family gets about half our meat from sources that I would assert are quite humane. Local cooperative goods distribution.

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Not me. I have already agreed that our current system of sustaining ourselves is far from perfect. I am excited for the prospect of no more killing or inducement of suffering in animals for our benefit. How are we to get there without a stage in our development that requires SOME of this?

How can future potential justify atrocitities today if there is no harm done in leaving that future potential unrealized? What I mean is, if somehow I could improve the life of my potential but as of yet nonexistent child by torturing my neighbor today, how could I justify that if there is no equal or greater moral imperative to create that child?

Who is justifying atrocities? I am saying that how we evolved forced us to induce suffering, just like any other animal. The fact that we perpetuated that suffering to a greater order of magnitude is regrettable, but we have a chance to change that with vitro meat, and more humane practices in the mean time.

Future potential is not justifying the mistakes of today. Future potential for the elimination of those mistakes in the future is an argument against the absurd notion we should remove ourselves from existence, to eliminate those mistakes. Why would you ever remove the source of a negative when that source could solve the negative completely on it's own, and creates many positives as well?

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Your assertion of my statement being comparable to racist dehumanization of minorities is absurd. These are people, sentient, sapient, can feel the full range of human emotions,  can build, create, imagine. As a combination of these characteristics, they have a value that is abhorrent to try to disrupt or damage. Their lives have greater value than an animal's. Accepting this is not the same as saying animals are our playthings which we can inflict unlimited suffering upon.

I think you propably underestimate animal capacity for emotion but anyway, the point is that in many ways, though certainly not all, animals are just as harmable. Physical pain is perhaps the most important and most easily provable one. Like I already said, given that there's no reason to assume the pain of a pig feels any less bad than our pain does, if you think it's immoral to harm a human in a certain way to gain something, then it's just as immoral to harm an animal to gain the same thing if those harms are equal. If you wouldn't torture a human in the same ways they torture a pig in factory farms just so you can have some bacon, then it's inconsistent for you to eat bacon, and you are doing nothing differently than a racist.

I wouldn't torture anyone for any reason I can think of. This is subjective, and not a absolute statement. You seem to be arguing against a point I haven't made. I applaud the long-term goal of eliminating of any type of animal torture. The issue is you seem to think that removing ourselves completely is preferable to getting rid of the problem ASAP.

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We can say that a saving a human that is about to be hit by a care is more important to save than his dog. The human has more life value, for reasons I have outlined.

Your reasons don't explain why a human's welfare has any more value, they're just random differences. Why would the fact people are better at building things or better at doing logic mean their survival is inherently more valuable?

You miss the point. I wasn't attempting to raise a human's pain as greater than an animal's pain, I was placing the value of that human's life above that of an animals. The reasons I gave for this remain unaddressed.

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Now, if that human is an psychopathic mass murderer, saving the dog is the better action, right? The mass murderer has less life value than an animal, because of his actions.

The psychopath's welfare has no less value than any other person's. If you kick a psycho in the balls for no productive purpose whatsoever you're causing just as much harm as kicking anyone else and are just as big an asshole. Letting the car smash the psychopath is better if it creates a better outcome but that does nothing to strip his suffering from also having value.

You are projecting I think. I never said a psychopath's suffering is less than a normal person's. What I will say, however, is that a psychopathic mass murder's suffering should not evoke the level of sympathy a normal person's or a innocent animal's should. The psychopath's life value is also less than that of a normal, non-mass-murdering person's.

Now, I do not condone the vigilante torture of a criminal as punishment for a crime. Nor do I condone unreasonable punishment, as do believer's of infinite torment in the afterlife.

We must strive as a society to devise the best morality, made from the best information we can find, and this is difficult.

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I just made an argument why this shit doesn't matter in my last post, please address it.

Sorry, which post is this?

Post #150.

You say in this post that it is not a good act to clean up a mess you have created.

However, I disagree with several things here.

It is hardly a mess we have created, if our evolution has predisposed us to act a certain way. Overcoming our evolved flaws is hardly analogous to cleaning up one's own mess.

In addition, cleaning up a mess you have created is quite obviously a good act, especially if the mess was unintentional or at least partially unavoidable in the first place.

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You are coming close to strawmanning here. Bad life is NOT equivalent to a horrible, agonizing life. You might remember that I have supported an individuals right to choose to end a horrific existence. If my life is bad, as in, on average less than 50% good, but not horrific, I would still want to live, because I can experience good, even great, things.

The hell example is simply there to point out everyone has a breaking point, not as any kind of accurate description of real life suffering. You know what the neat/sad thing is though? People don't need to get anywhere near that kind of absolute horror to kill themselves.

But my point is that even if one has a bad life, they, for the most part, want to live anyway. If someone suffers greatly, they may not want to live. Some people don't care how much they suffer, but desire life anyway. It is a complex issue.

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You will never convince me that it is better to make sure no suffering exists, by getting rid of all sentience, and what joy and goodness those sentient creatures did experience.

So you won't even consider any arguments? Fine, be a closeminded fundie if that's your idea of intellectual integrity.

Now, now, would I be having this discussion if I absolutely would not consider any arguments?

You have taken my exaggeration quite literally. I will rephrase.

I think it is extremely unlikely that you will convince me that it is better to remove all sentience from existence, rather than work to reduce the suffering of that sentience by the progress of our species.

I will, of course, not dismiss anything you say out of hand, which you can see plenty of evidence from my responses.

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Every animal causes suffering to itself, other animals of the same species, and all other animals. We have been evolved to the point where we have had the chance to apply our knowledge, and advance our morality. It is not OUR fault that this universe evolves creatures that must induce harm upon each-other to survive. This is something innate in our evolved way of life. When there was no other way, how is that a voluntary action or something that can be blamed on us?

It started being blamable on us when we got the intelligence to recognize how fucked up it is and the tools to do something about it. The universe started it but we make the concious decision to keep it going every day.

I disagree that we make a conscious decision. Our culture and race is mired in many controversial activities. Certainly we must strive to pin down the morality on issues like the one we are talking about, and rid ourselves of immoral acts. However, these things change slowly, no matter how much some of us wish they didn't.

This is why I think it is easier to replace live-meat with lab-grown meat. It should theoretically out-compete live-meat, and eliminate entirely the need for oppressive conditions such as livestock factories. Here I must point out the meat-eating is hardly immoral if the animals are taken care of and not made to suffer, a ideal we should push towards in the mean time. I will dispute any unbacked assertion that all livestock farming causes suffering.

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We have the unique, at least for this planet, chance to eliminate the suffering our species inevitably causes to other animals.

No, we really really don't. We're entirely dependent on the ecosystem which requires animals to keep it going. Unless you have a way to make all the trillions of sentient creatures entirely suffering free then human existence necessarily requires imposing suffering on other species. 

Animals suffer and cause suffering to eachother by their very nature. We, however, have a chance to seriously reduce or eliminate the suffering we unduly cause with the progress of science and changes in society. Why in the world would you want to remove sentience instead of work to reduce that sentience's suffering? Does the positive not count?

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Manageri
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ThunderJones wrote: I don't

ThunderJones wrote:
I don't think the average meat-eater thinks animals suffer any less than humans. They may very well be in denial about the amount of suffering possibly goes into their meat's production, but the idea that every meat-eater automatically thinks animals don't suffer is absurd.

The question was the value they place on the suffering, not whether they think they suffer as much. Meat eaters who are not ignorant of what really goes on are deciding their petty taste pleasure is more important than the pain of a pig having its fucking balls removed without any painkillers.

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My family gets about half our meat from sources that I would assert are quite humane.

Only half my sexual encounters are nonconsesual, do I get a feminist of the year award or something?

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Future potential is not justifying the mistakes of today. Future potential for the elimination of those mistakes in the future is an argument against the absurd notion we should remove ourselves from existence, to eliminate those mistakes.

Suffering today for a pointless cause tomorrow is still pointless, even if reaching tomorrow means there's no more suffering after that.

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Why would you ever remove the source of a negative when that source could solve the negative completely on it's own, and creates many positives as well?

The catch is those positives are only positives because we create the need for them. Nicotine is entirely worthless to someone who isn't addicted to it. Smoking causes pleasure to people addicted to it but that's hardly a great argument for getting everyone addicted.

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You miss the point. I wasn't attempting to raise a human's pain as greater than an animal's pain, I was placing the value of that human's life above that of an animals. The reasons I gave for this remain unaddressed.

I really don't know what reasons you're referring to.

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You are projecting I think. I never said a psychopath's suffering is less than a normal person's. What I will say, however, is that a psychopathic mass murder's suffering should not evoke the level of sympathy a normal person's or a innocent animal's should.

It's not the psycho's fault his brain is fucked up. I see no reason to value his suffering as any less inherently valuable than anyone else's.

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You say in this post that it is not a good act to clean up a mess you have created.

No, I say it's not good to both create the mess and then clean it up. Fixing things you broke yourself does not make you productive, that's just getting back to where you started. To be truly productive you need to clean up messes you aren't responsible for.

Since there is no mess to clean up unless we create it by existing, there can be no truly productive cleaning going on as a whole. the best we can hope for is to get back to point zero.

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However, I disagree with several things here.

It is hardly a mess we have created, if our evolution has predisposed us to act a certain way.

I am a mess my parents created.

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But my point is that even if one has a bad life, they, for the most part, want to live anyway. If someone suffers greatly, they may not want to live. Some people don't care how much they suffer, but desire life anyway. It is a complex issue.

People have a very strong natural (and irrational) fear of death. The fact many people choose to endure their extremely shitty lives rather than face that fear does not prove they're better off staying alive.

It's like if I had to travel to some island to get rid of some extremely painful condition but the only way to get there is to take a plane, but I'm insanely afraid of flying, the fact I might not go does not necessarily mean I'm actually better off that way.

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I disagree that we make a conscious decision.

People make the decision to procreate (or to take proper measures to prevent it).

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I will dispute any unbacked assertion that all livestock farming causes suffering.

All those animals suffer, you can't really have sentience without it.

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Animals suffer and cause suffering to eachother by their very nature. We, however, have a chance to seriously reduce or eliminate the suffering we unduly cause with the progress of science and changes in society. Why in the world would you want to remove sentience instead of work to reduce that sentience's suffering? Does the positive not count?

The positive counts for existing sentience, it does not count for potential sentience. That is the whole point of the typical antinatalist position. A potential person is not worse off not existing because he has no need for any pleasure and isn't harmed by the lack of it. Therefore there is no moral imperative whatsoever to create people for their own sake, so there can be no justification for the suffering caused to those whose lives will be shit.

In case you don't wanna respond to this whole big ass post (I would totally understand) then lemme just point out this last bit is the most important.


ThunderJones
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Sorry about the long wait.

Sorry about the long wait. I've got new reduced free-time now.

Manageri wrote:
ThunderJones wrote:
I don't think the average meat-eater thinks animals suffer any less than humans. They may very well be in denial about the amount of suffering possibly goes into their meat's production, but the idea that every meat-eater automatically thinks animals don't suffer is absurd.

The question was the value they place on the suffering, not whether they think they suffer as much. Meat eaters who are not ignorant of what really goes on are deciding their petty taste pleasure is more important than the pain of a pig having its fucking balls removed without any painkillers.

But wait, we don't really know that all animals suffer from the livestock process. Those that get their food from bad sources should make effort to change that, but you keep implying that all meat comes from the same inhumane sources period.

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My family gets about half our meat from sources that I would assert are quite humane.

Only half my sexual encounters are nonconsesual, do I get a feminist of the year award or something?

You think that eating ambigious (unknown whether unnessecary animal suffering goes into making it) meat half of the time is equivalent to getting half my sex from rape? No way. That is ridiculous.

I don't think what those animals go through is as bad as most rape is. Where are the statistics that ALL meat production is incredibly inhumane?

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Future potential is not justifying the mistakes of today. Future potential for the elimination of those mistakes in the future is an argument against the absurd notion we should remove ourselves from existence, to eliminate those mistakes.

Suffering today for a pointless cause tomorrow is still pointless, even if reaching tomorrow means there's no more suffering after that.

You still don't get it. I'm not saying that suffering today is excused by no suffering tommorrow, I'm saying getting rid of ourselves because of that suffering we cause is idiotic if we might get rid of the suffering without getting rid of ourselves instead.

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Why would you ever remove the source of a negative when that source could solve the negative completely on it's own, and creates many positives as well?

The catch is those positives are only positives because we create the need for them. Nicotine is entirely worthless to someone who isn't addicted to it. Smoking causes pleasure to people addicted to it but that's hardly a great argument for getting everyone addicted.

No. Every animal causes suffering, and I'd think many of them create positive emotion and events.

However, we may create many negatives, but we also create many positives with no catch. We also can look forward to reducing the number of negatives we create as well. There is a net-gain there, as opposed to your idea of creating a neutral zero state in the future.

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You miss the point. I wasn't attempting to raise a human's pain as greater than an animal's pain, I was placing the value of that human's life above that of an animals. The reasons I gave for this remain unaddressed.

I really don't know what reasons you're referring to.

The value of a human life is greater than that of an animals because of that person's greater sentience, sapience, greater self-awareness, ability to apply reason and knowledge, greater capacity to grow and change.

In addition, humans have a much greater capacity for creating positive things in the world, and the capacity grows with science. Although the capacity for harm grows as well, our evolving morality reduces the likelihood of that harm being done on large scales. How does this not overturn your idea of going back to square one, with no sentience?

 

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You are projecting I think. I never said a psychopath's suffering is less than a normal person's. What I will say, however, is that a psychopathic mass murder's suffering should not evoke the level of sympathy a normal person's or a innocent animal's should.

It's not the psycho's fault his brain is fucked up. I see no reason to value his suffering as any less inherently valuable than anyone else's.

Uh it's not always a issue of brain malfunctions. People often make very informed choices to commit heinous crimes. You think that the value of their suffering is equal to that of a normal persons?

The quantity and amount of suffering is not nessecarily different, but the value we place on it is. Prisons are obvious example. We value their current suffering less than that of the people they've already harmed or the people they might. It is a form of punishment, as in, setting things right and then a reasonable amount more to discourage more of the same. I'm not saying its perfect, but that is an example.

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You say in this post that it is not a good act to clean up a mess you have created.

No, I say it's not good to both create the mess and then clean it up. Fixing things you broke yourself does not make you productive, that's just getting back to where you started. To be truly productive you need to clean up messes you aren't responsible for. Since there is no mess to clean up unless we create it by existing, there can be no truly productive cleaning going on as a whole. the best we can hope for is to get back to point zero.

Granted that you only get back to point zero in this scenario, but not everything positive humans do is a cleanup of a negative. That assertion is absurd. There are plenty of extra positives with no negative baggage.

Besides, we usually place a positive on someone's actions to erase a mistake they regret, do we not?

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However, I disagree with several things here.

It is hardly a mess we have created, if our evolution has predisposed us to act a certain way.

I am a mess my parents created.

So your parents are to blame for everything bad you have done?

You had no choices to make of your own? You have had no chances to be responsible for yourself and YOUR actions?

I think you are skewing where the burden of responsibility should lie.

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But my point is that even if one has a bad life, they, for the most part, want to live anyway. If someone suffers greatly, they may not want to live. Some people don't care how much they suffer, but desire life anyway. It is a complex issue.

People have a very strong natural (and irrational) fear of death. The fact many people choose to endure their extremely shitty lives rather than face that fear does not prove they're better off staying alive. It's like if I had to travel to some island to get rid of some extremely painful condition but the only way to get there is to take a plane, but I'm insanely afraid of flying, the fact I might not go does not necessarily mean I'm actually better off that way.

It's not just a matter of fear. Many people (including myself) place a greater value on the positives. We live for the good things, and learn to step up and deal with the negatives. It's a part of life.

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I disagree that we make a conscious decision.

People make the decision to procreate (or to take proper measures to prevent it).

Accidents happen.

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I will dispute any unbacked assertion that all livestock farming causes suffering.

All those animals suffer, you can't really have sentience without it.

OK. All sentience can suffer. That is irrelevant, because all sentience can experience the opposite of suffering as well. The potential for a negative does not erase the potential for a positive. The issue is whether we are causing additional extraneous suffering. There is no way all livestock farming does this. My whole point is that one day, maybe even soon, we could quite possibly eliminate all extraneous suffering that we cause to animals from livestock farming, making the issue of inhumane livestock farming practices moot.

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Animals suffer and cause suffering to each other by their very nature. We, however, have a chance to seriously reduce or eliminate the suffering we unduly cause with the progress of science and changes in society. Why in the world would you want to remove sentience instead of work to reduce that sentience's suffering? Does the positive not count?

The positive counts for existing sentience, it does not count for potential sentience. That is the whole point of the typical antinatalist position. A potential person is not worse off not existing because he has no need for any pleasure and isn't harmed by the lack of it. Therefore there is no moral imperative whatsoever to create people for their own sake, so there can be no justification for the suffering caused to those whose lives will be shit. In case you don't wanna respond to this whole big ass post (I would totally understand) then lemme just point out this last bit is the most important.

By your own philosophy's logic, wouldn't it be logical to try to fill the world with the opposite of suffering as much as possible? Increasing the quality of life for existing and future people, as well as continuing to make people who experience that high quality of life would be a huge upgrade to nothing at all, would it not?

Secularist, Atheist, Skeptic, Freethinker


Manageri
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ThunderJones wrote:Manageri

ThunderJones wrote:

Manageri wrote:

The question was the value they place on the suffering, not whether they think they suffer as much. Meat eaters who are not ignorant of what really goes on are deciding their petty taste pleasure is more important than the pain of a pig having its fucking balls removed without any painkillers.

But wait, we don't really know that all animals suffer from the livestock process. Those that get their food from bad sources should make effort to change that, but you keep implying that all meat comes from the same inhumane sources period.


Just look it up, the shit they do ROUTINELY is absolutely disgusting and more than worthy of being called torture. You seem very naive about this tbh. As for the possibility of having suffering free meat some day, well it's still unethical to buy meat until that day comes. To argue otherwise would be like saying that it's ok to rape someone now because some day they'll be dead and won't feel it anymore when you fuck their corpse.

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I'm not saying that suffering today is excused by no suffering tommorrow, I'm saying getting rid of ourselves because of that suffering we cause is idiotic if we might get rid of the suffering without getting rid of ourselves instead.


Well if I as an individual kill myself today, knowing that starting tomorrow my life will be fucking awesome, that doesn't perhaps make much sense. However if I do happen to die today and never get to that awesome part of my life, it wouldn't matter at all because I'd be dead and would no longer need any positive sensations nor be hurt by lacking them.

Anyway, the main focus of the topic isn't our existing lives, antinatalism is about creating new lives. There is no moral imperative to wake up the nonexisting potential people so you can't possibly justify the harm it causes. This is pretty much the very definition of needless suffering which I trust you agree is bad. Are you going to argue that we have an equally important ethical duty to create new people than we do to make sure existing people don't suffer? I mean is it morally equivalent to create a new happy person than it is to comfort an existing suffering person, if you have to use your resources for just one of those things? With this logic why cure cancer if you can just breed another cancer-free person instead.


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The catch is those positives are only positives because we create the need for them. Nicotine is entirely worthless to someone who isn't addicted to it. Smoking causes pleasure to people addicted to it but that's hardly a great argument for getting everyone addicted.


No. Every animal causes suffering, and I'd think many of them create positive emotion and events.


Heroin causes some kickass positive sensations too, does that mean that if I love heroin I get to inject you with it against your will? That's what parents do, they inject their drug called life into us just because they think it's awesome, all the while ignoring the fact they had no consent and the fact there are fucking massive risks involved that they have no way to safeguard against or fix when the risks become reality. How is one of those impositions more ethical than the other?


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However, we may create many negatives, but we also create many positives with no catch. We also can look forward to reducing the number of negatives we create as well. There is a net-gain there, as opposed to your idea of creating a neutral zero state in the future.


How many orgasms, or whatever you think the awesomest sensations we have are, would you need to be given exactly to spend 20 years getting raped by Josef Fritzl in his dungeon? Let's not pretend the potential positives are anywhere near the potential negatives. If you think there's some balance, let alone a net positive in the world, you're not paying attention. A zero state would be fucking awesome.

Note this is not even touching the fact most our so called positives are really built out of removing negatives, like the fact satisfying your hunger only feels good because the hunger caused you to be in a negative state. Just something to ponder.

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The value of a human life is greater than that of an animals because of that person's greater sentience, sapience, greater self-awareness, ability to apply reason and knowledge, greater capacity to grow and change.


So a less reasonable human is worth less than others? If I murder a really dumb woman shouldn't I get a reduced sentence then? This is just bullshit, all you're doing is trying to find rational reasons to justify your built in illogical speciecism.

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In addition, humans have a much greater capacity for creating positive things in the world, and the capacity grows with science. Although the capacity for harm grows as well, our evolving morality reduces the likelihood of that harm being done on large scales. How does this not overturn your idea of going back to square one, with no sentience?


How about for example because we torture billions of animals every year for food we don't even need? Can you name a bigger act of assholery in some other species, seriously, anything that even comes close? The only redeeming quality of humans is that someone might some day figure out a way to blow the planet up.
 



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No, I say it's not good to both create the mess and then clean it up. Fixing things you broke yourself does not make you productive, that's just getting back to where you started. To be truly productive you need to clean up messes you aren't responsible for. Since there is no mess to clean up unless we create it by existing, there can be no truly productive cleaning going on as a whole. the best we can hope for is to get back to point zero.


Granted that you only get back to point zero in this scenario, but not everything positive humans do is a cleanup of a negative. That assertion is absurd. There are plenty of extra positives with no negative baggage.

Besides, we usually place a positive on someone's actions to erase a mistake they regret, do we not?


No sentience = no need to clean shit up. If you have to create something just so you can make it happy then how is that being productive when all you're doing is fulfilling the needs you created? Nonexisting entities are perfectly content where they are, you are not benefitting them by bringing them into existence.

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I am a mess my parents created.


So your parents are to blame for everything bad you have done?

You had no choices to make of your own? You have had no chances to be responsible for yourself and YOUR actions?

I think you are skewing where the burden of responsibility should lie.


I'm not talking about what I've done, I mean that my needs exist because of them and they're unable to fulfill them, meaning they're unable to clean up the mess they made.


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People have a very strong natural (and irrational) fear of death. The fact many people choose to endure their extremely shitty lives rather than face that fear does not prove they're better off staying alive. It's like if I had to travel to some island to get rid of some extremely painful condition but the only way to get there is to take a plane, but I'm insanely afraid of flying, the fact I might not go does not necessarily mean I'm actually better off that way.


It's not just a matter of fear. Many people (including myself) place a greater value on the positives. We live for the good things, and learn to step up and deal with the negatives. It's a part of life.


So that makes it ok to impose that view on me? I think your positives are ludicrous and the negatives are beyond disgusting. I don't care what your experience is, you don't get to impose your standards on me. Live your life however you want but don't be an imposing asshole, don't animate the dead to march in your pointless parade of suffering.

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People make the decision to procreate (or to take proper measures to prevent it).


Accidents happen.


If you're too stupid to use contraception AND to get a morning after pill after unprotected sex AND to fail to get an abortion in time, you really need to be pulled off life support because you're fucking brain dead beyong repair already. I mean shit, this isn't the bronze age, we kinda know how procreation works and how to stop it.

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The positive counts for existing sentience, it does not count for potential sentience. That is the whole point of the typical antinatalist position. A potential person is not worse off not existing because he has no need for any pleasure and isn't harmed by the lack of it. Therefore there is no moral imperative whatsoever to create people for their own sake, so there can be no justification for the suffering caused to those whose lives will be shit. In case you don't wanna respond to this whole big ass post (I would totally understand) then lemme just point out this last bit is the most important.


By your own philosophy's logic, wouldn't it be logical to try to fill the world with the opposite of suffering as much as possible? Increasing the quality of life for existing and future people, as well as continuing to make people who experience that high quality of life would be a huge upgrade to nothing at all, would it not?


No, it would be logical to eliminate all the suffering possible and not create new sufferers because there is no benefit to creating them. No benefit to creating new life + huge downside risk = pointless risk. You just don't waste suffering when there's absolutely nothing to gain. Should we try to increase the happiness of existing people? Of course, but that's not the subject. You're also ignoring the fact that the price of creating happy people is miserable people. For your little merry-go-round bullshit millions of people live in absolute horror, so you're essentially using their suffering as fuel for your needless fucking joyride, now justify that.

As for whether conciousness is a huge benefit, why don't you explain to me exactly how being unconcious is so horrible. We do it every night and the worst part of sleeping is the fact that sometimes we have shitty dreams, as in we aren't actually unconcious. Why the hell would it matter to me if some day I just don't wake up, what would the horror be exactly when I have no conciousness to feel anything?