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>>>> But, when I watch wildlife, I also see joy, love, and beauty that is not present on the moon.

I'm not sure why you're mostly fixated on beauty from this sentence and are largely ignoring the joy and are completely ignoring the love.

> What i want to know is, what antinatalist reasoning could apply to only humans, other than pure misanthropy?

I've been talking about balance. Is there more pain and suffering or more pleasure, joy, and love.

In humans, I also add in the deliberate and calculated and unnecessary cruelty both to ourselves and to other sentiences. I think this is something that exists to some degree in some other species but is rare outside of humans, especially the deliberate cruelty for its own sake.

So, within our own species, I may observe that over a billion people are worried about such horrific problems as obesity and high taxes while another more than a billion are worried about little things like being starving or chronically hungry. (I hope the sarcasm in this comparison of problems is obvious.)

But, beyond that, I see the deliberate and calculated cruelty of CAFOs. And then I see the wanton habitat destruction and pollution. And, I see a hundred million sharks each year having their fins cut off and being thrown back into the water still alive but guaranteed to die a slow horrible death.

Birds and turtles die in huge numbers from eating plastic. Ocean acidification is going to cause the collapse of the base of the entire food chain in the ocean because pteropods can't form their shells.

I see the entirety of the holocene extinction becoming minor by comparison to what is coming from climate change. As warming and freshwater melt from ice sheets stops the ocean conveyor, the ocean will become anoxic from the bottom up. Sulfur producing bacteria will thrive in the anoxic depths, but little else will. As the anoxic layer becomes thicker, rising to the surface, the sulfur from these bacteria will be released into the global atmosphere. H2S gas (the smell of rotten eggs) will be released in toxic quantities. The sky will turn green, literally.

As a natural catastrophe that happened 250 million years ago, this was truly horrific and killed off 95% of the multicellular species on the planet at the time.

This time, we humans are causing it!

Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future by Peter D. Ward

So, yes. I think humans are different. Humans are a literal catastrophe. In the geological record, if any future species exists to decode it, they will see this time as a catastrophic event in the history of the planet. Perhaps they will wonder how it was all caused by a species that looks a whole lot like a laundry detergent bottle and how that created all of the nuclear waste.

> Second, how do you know that the animals value [joy and pleasure and] beauty in the way we humans do?

I don't. But, before you kill off every sentient being on the planet, wouldn't it pay for you to be sure that they don't?

Yes. I know you are not really planning to annihilate all sentient life on earth. Nor am I actually going to cause human extinction. But, if human extinction is my hope and you are antinatalist for all species, I can only assume your hope would be for all sentient life to go extinct.

> And third, why is [joy and pleasure and] beauty so valuable, that it justifies all the pointless animal lives and all the pain that comes with it?

Because I think that the joy and pleasure can and usually does outweigh the pain and suffering for most animals that have the luxury of living the life for which they evolved in as close to a natural state as possible. And, that is where I personally find the beauty. The beauty is not a justification, just an observation. It is the joy and pleasure that make life worth living.

> You place huge value on beauty.

Actually no. You picked beauty out of a list of three items and fixated on it.

> I dont want to kill animals.

What do you want from your antinatalist views that include animals?

What do you expect to get from telling deer they should not breed?

> What i want to know is why their lives are any better than ours?

It's about the balance. I think I've now explained my view as best I can.

> You reason that humans extinction would be a good thing.

Yes. I think I explained the reason. We cause a tremendous amount of pain and suffering that totally overpowers both the joy and pleasure in the lives of the privileged among us as well as the joy and pleasure experienced by our dogs, cats, and other well-cared-for pets where people do care for their pets lovingly (not a global thing).

> Why does that reasoning not apply to animals?

It is my opinion that the balance is very different among the other animals that aren't destroying the biosphere and that aren't locking their prey animals in CAFOs and that aren't cruel in a deliberate and calculated way and that don't take pleasure in cruelty for its own sake.

> Yes, we dont have the right to outright kill them. But thats not what you plan to do with the humans either?

Correct. I am a member of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. The emphasis is on voluntary.

> You claim something has to be done to humans,

I'm not sure what you mean by this. But, I sure as hell don't think I ever said it.

Something will happen to humans. I don't believe we are capable of coming into balance with the rest of the biosphere. I think we will cause our own extinction. I think we will cause the extinction of a great many other sentiences with us (and have already made quite a start on this).

But, I didn't say that I was going to start a nuclear war or some such.

Something will be done to humans by the laws of ecosystems, not by anyone who follows the same ideals I follow.

> why do you not think whatever that it shouldnt be done to other animals?

I hope you agree that this question no longer makes sense in light of my answer above.

> Yes, the earth is more beautiful than the moon, but what does that have to do with anything?

Why do you think the earth is more beautiful than the moon? What is the difference between the two?

As an philanthropic antinatalist, who seems to see only the pain and suffering in life, or at least sees the balance tipped toward the pain and suffering, I would expect you to think that the earth is a vile cesspool of misery. If you do not, why are you a philanthropic antinatalist?

Sure can. I didn't know anything about academic moral phil - was genuinely convinced that by being moral realist-negative utilitarian-antinatalist vegan I'm automatically higher than breeding, meat eating, nihilist, positive utilitarian pleb. Well, I probably were anyway, but after some hardcore reading I'm now mostly moral skeptic and prioritarian (still a childless herbivore, tho).

There's an uncontroversial 3x3x3 division of ethics: meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. There are three main normative positions - deontology (or duty-based theories), virtue ethics (by far the smallest, but not least interesting) and consequentialism (which divide into utilitarian school [the sum of consequences matter], egoists [only consequences for the perpetrator matter] and altruists [only consequences for others have moral weight], to make up for another 3). Utilitarianism is the broadest, besides the difference between positive and negative it can also be total and average, preference and hedonistic. For more details, Singer's Point of View of the Universe is a highly recommended reading.

SEP is a great resource (IEP is also cool if you don't understand something on previous encyclopedia; use Wikipedia only when something's lacking there). There are two important paradoxes in so-called population ethics you must know something about Repugnant Conclusion and Non-Identity Problem. Incidentally, I believe antinatalism in general is a sound solution for them.

As for AN itself - Three seminal works by Benatar - Why is it better to never come into existence, BNTHB, Debating Procreation should do the trick. Additional reading may or may not include: Cabrera, Harrison and Tanner, Licon, Larock, Belshaw. For a summary of more continental-oriented pessimism, check The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, as it's still unmatched in scope and has a rich bibliography (True Detective creator supposedly ripped-off some lines from Ligotti).

Not necessarily AN, but truly eye-opening is Becker's Denial of Death. And obviously, before getting into a serious discussion you ought to finish your logic 101 course; know the difference between validity and soundness, what a syllogism and enthymeme are, etc. Oh, and the three dead Greeks (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) are literally everywhere.

People at /r/askphilosophy are helpful, people on /r/badphilosophy could indirectly suggest what to avoid (with a grain of salt).

Other links that might be of interest:

http://socrethics.com/
https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

There's a book that is very popular right now called, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?.

Since reading it, I've realized that people who doubt the intelligence of other animals are saying a lot more about their own intelligence than the intelligence of the other animals. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness stated unequivocally that all birds, mammals, and many other animals are without a doubt conscious individuals.

>I am so fucking hungover dude and now I gotta read your wall of text bullshit at fucking 2 in the morning. Whiny cunt.

Nice start, 15 lines ain't a wall, only for you hominoidea.

>Ok, assuming your assertion is accurate and backed up (Race Realism tires me greatly),why does that literally matter for anything? At all?

It matters about virtually everything, as for wealth/education levels to criminality/birth out of wedlock, intelligence is a great predictor, which seems you don't have much. For pisa and timss for example the correlation is around 0.8.

>STUDIES SAY SO BUT I AIN'T GONNA LINK SHIT.

Since you can't search for shit, here goes:

Heritability IQ

Heritability IQ Wiki

Bell Curve

IQ and Global Inequality

A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement

More about Jews

Blacks commit more violent crimes and poverty isn't correlated:

Truth about crime

A little bit of Harris

>'THESE ANIMALS ARE GONNA BREED AND WE GOTTA LEAVE THEM IN FILTH' That is what you said, dude. In fact, I would respect you more if you just came out and said it, or retracted your prior statement, not become a whiny cunt when someone treats you at the same level as your (repugnant) statements.

First world people aren't responsible for the chaos and irresponsibility by african adults. Africa had 200 million people at the start of 1900, now it's 1.216 billion and it's still sky rocketing. They need to become self-sustainable without european aid.

>That statement pisses me off, I've seen it kicked around ad nauseum, as if when people say that 'all men are born equal', they're like 'WELL ASCHTUALLY, WE ARE BIOLOGICALLY DIFFERENTTT'. No fuckwad, that's not what such a sentiment means. It means that, regardless, everybody should be treated with a baseline of respect and dignity. No more, no less.

Never said people needed to lose their natural rights, aid isn't a natural right.

>GUESS FUCKING WHY? IT AIN'T BECAUSE THEY'RE 'THE SUPERIOR INTELLECTUAL RACE', IT'S BECAUSE THOSE ARE FIRST WORLD CIVILIZATIONS WHO DON'T SHIT IN A TROUGH. That is why people get frustrated with you as an individual, because you're dense. Abjectly dense.

You need a smart population to maintain good institutions and have professions, which requires higher cognitive abilities.

>Refer to the above. But regardless, keeping them in poor conditions won't stop any suffering. I abjectly fail to see your amazing solution to this issue. 'IF WE KEEP THEM IN POVERTY, THEY'LL JUST DIE OUT OR SOMETHING'. Nope, they'll just continued to be impoverished and continue to have more dying kids. Good job.

Lack in food supply would force african parents to considerate their number of children and their capability to feed them, like any adult needs. Also, there is no duty to send aid and most of the aid is stolen by the african elite.

>Stop spreading bullshit. Abject bullshit.

The demographics of Africa only exploded because of european technology and aid, if that stabilises is another story, regardles, there is no duty to give aid.

>GUESS FUCKING WHY? IT AIN'T BECAUSE THEY'RE 'THE SUPERIOR INTELLECTUAL RACE', IT'S BECAUSE THOSE ARE FIRST WORLD CIVILIZATIONS WHO DON'T SHIT IN A TROUGH. That is why people get frustrated with you as an individual, because you're dense. Abjectly dense.

They have higher intelligence and intelligent people tend to have less children and invest more on them.

>I dislike your assertion that, because I share an ideology, we are somehow comparable. Or I should have 'x, y and z' beliefs. Eat a dick.

Because antinatalists rely on human nature and evolution to support their claims, but there will be always people like you in any political spectrum.


Cheers.








>

I wrote and published a cyberpunk novel that goes against this trope. :P
Sorry for the self-promo but in this case it's actually on topic.


I think writers include pregnancies and babies to artificially make readers care more/get more invested in the stories because the usual way of thinking is: no one cares about other people but baybees are innocent and cute.

Great post OP. Btw if anyone is more interested in a less heavy, more to the good introduction and guide through Buddhism I cannot recommended Osamu Tezuka's Buddha enough. It's only 8 volumes but it changed my life for the better and really helped me grasp the philosophy.

I'm relatively happy. Life depends on one's outlook.

Here's a great book:

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500223136&sr=8-1&keywords=feeling+good

Hey, I really relate to your feelings, I messed up my college degree (picked wrong field). But GPA isn't everything. If anything, I personally wouldn't feel comfortable working at a place that values GPA more than actual skills.

You seem to be interested in career in finances. I once was too. I think one should be very careful, since that people in that field love creating beautiful facades to hide the ugliness of the industry behind. I highly suggest reading a book [Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle] (https://www.amazon.com/Monkey-Business-Swinging-Through-Street/dp/0446676950), it really opened my eyes.

I don't really care about continentals. By the way, this piece was also pretty influential more recently.

I would recommend you start by reading these rather than "The world as will and representation".

https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Aphorisms-Penguin-Classics-Schopenhauer/dp/0140442278/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501014218&sr=8-1&keywords=schopenhauer+essays

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Life-Counsels-Maxims/dp/1541028953/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1501014265&sr=8-2&keywords=schopenhauer+wisdom+of+life

Thomas Ligotti - The Conspiracy Against the Human Race is probably the one I can recommend the most.

There's also Better Never to Have Been - David Benatar.

If you think one of them is too expensive tell me.

You could also Studies in Pessimism - Arthur Schopenhauer.

At last I can recommend this article from Richard Dawkins going into why nature pretty much sucks.

Top is "The Sixth Extinction".

The fattest one in middle is Countdown.

"Better to never have been" is something of a slogan for antinatalism ;)

I enjoyed Sarah Perry’s Every Cradle Is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/0989697290/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_m-G0Db09Z64PE

Here is the mobile version of your link

Try reading a book: https://www.amazon.com/Every-Cradle-Grave-Rethinking-Suicide/dp/0989697290

You might say there's...mm a conspiracy against the human race? (You may be familiar, but if not: http://www.amazon.com/The-Conspiracy-against-Human-Race/dp/0984480277)

• The Conspiracy Against the Human Race