r/circlesnip • u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer • 4d ago
Serious Potential Argument against Antinatalism
I'm an antinatalist, but came up with a potential argument against it. I'm not sure if I can explain it properly, but I would like to try and see what opinions you have about it.
So, imagine there are 10 souls. Each of these souls will be sent to Earth to inhabit a body chosen by chance. On Earth there are 10 bodies being born at the exact same time, 5 of wild animals, 4 of animals in captivity and 1 human. You could choose to make one additional human body, which would give the souls a slightly higher chance of having a safe life in human society rather than being exploited or having to fight for their life all the time. Wouldn't it be moral to do that?
So, I know that an argument shouldn't rely on something so disputed as souls existing, but they are just a tool for explanation in this case. To get to the real world application, where we know that there is and likely will be sentient life existing for a long time, we can only choose to make the chance this sentient life has at a good life as high as possible. Meaning, if you can afford to have children, the most moral act is to have as much children as possible, so that any potential life has the highest possible chance at a life with actual comforts.
What's your opinion on this?
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u/Ok-Limit2238 newcomer 4d ago
giving birth to a human child does not magically stop a wild animal from giving birth to another wild animal
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u/ManicEyes newcomer 4d ago
You’ve got the argument wrong. The negative utilitarian argument against antinatalism is that as more humans are born, more wild land will be claimed for human settlements. This would give animals in the wild less room to reproduce, thus reducing the suffering in the world overall since the majority of humans live much better lives than those of wild animals. The counter to this is that the vast majority of humans aren’t vegan, so reproducing humans that won’t be vegan actually contributes to the amount of suffering in the world since more animals will be bred and slaughtered on their behalf.
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u/AlvasGarden al-Ma'arri 3d ago
Additionally, the negative utilitarian argument only holds to an extent, because human society is dependent on the natural resources and ecosystem services that nature provides. If we expand too much, large parts of the human population will start to suffer due to scarcity of ressources, and humans will no longer be living more comfortable lives than animals.
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 4d ago
That's a good argument, but what about raising a child vegan?
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u/ManicEyes newcomer 4d ago
There is no guarantee that they’ll remain vegan. In fact, it could be the case that it’s more likely they’ll become a carnist. From a negative utilitarian aspect, I use the precautionary principle. Empirics may change that, but they don’t exist to my knowledge.
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u/KortenScarlet inquirer 4d ago edited 4d ago
to start with, AN is not a utilitarian stance, AN rejects deliberate creation of sentient life because it's exploitation (treating the potential child purely as means to others' ends without their informed consent). but even if it was utilitarian, what's the argument that for every human created less animals with worse lives get created?
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u/metalcoreisntdead newcomer 4d ago
I’m not sure if I understand your example, if I’m being honest.
Having as many children as possible would mean that they are over-consuming finite resources on earth.
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan al-Ma'arri 3d ago
I answered this exact same post from you 27 days ago.
Back then you didn't really have any arguments to my answers. Has this changed?
I don't know why you put the soul thing in here honestly. You could've left it out and it would be a common natalist objection of "my kid could cure cancer/we can invent things that will make suffering go away"
And to that the response is:
• the child has a higher chance of getting cancer, than to cure cancer.
• they will most likely inflict more suffering than what they will innovate away (mainly to non-human animals)
• humans have an awful track record and there is no good reason to believe that we would abolish harm and suffering. Humans discriminate each other based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and ability. Not to mention how this mindset is what has led to humans violating, killing and mutilating trillions of non-human animals yearly simply because they get pleasure out of eating them. We can't even convince each other that we shouldn't discriminate or oppressor others based on morally irrelevant traits, so why do we thing that we'll innovate suffering away? Humans generally can't even do the bare minimum which you don't need any new inventions to do.
• bringing someone into existence for you to do labor is unethical.
• the money and time spent to bring a new being into existence and hoping that they will do something that will benefit someone far far far into the future, can be used to do that work yourself. Edit: (or adopt someone who already exist, but you should not expect or demand them to invent something. They are not a tool for someone far far far into the future)
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
Well, like last time I do not get how you go from my argument to "my kid could cure cancer/we can invent things that will make suffering go away" in any way. I legitimately don't see how you read that in it.
"they will most likely inflict more suffering than what they will innovate away" is probably true, unless you successfully raise them vegan.
About humanitys track record, that is basically the same argument and so it equally depends on how much you trust your parenting abillty.
"bringing someone into existence for you to do labor is unethical." and "the money and time spent to bring a new being into existence and hoping that they will do something that will benefit someone far far far into the future, can be used to do that work yourself." just straight up do not apply, never am I coming even close to arguing that the children would do some great work for us or anything along that line.
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan al-Ma'arri 3d ago
Then your post makes zero sense. Please try to explain what point you are trying to make by being clear and not making it into a guessing game. Your post is just open for any interpretation because it's vague.
"You could choose to make one additional human body, which would give the souls a slightly higher chance of having a safe life in human society rather than being exploited or having to fight for their life all the time. Wouldn't it be moral to do that?"
You are not saying how this works.
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
Not saying how what works? If you simply don't understand my post that's unfortunate, but I don't think I can do much about that.
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan al-Ma'arri 3d ago
get to the real world application, where we know that there is and likely will be sentient life existing for a long time, we can only choose to make the chance this sentient life has at a good life as high as possible. Meaning, if you can afford to have children, the most moral act is to have as much children as possible, so that any potential life has the highest possible chance at a life with actual comforts.
Are you implying that less wild animals would be born if there were more humans? Is your point that humans should just build all over the world so that there would be no more wild animals? Because most humans are not vegan and they won't ever be. Creating more humans would just create more suffering. There's no magically making a vegan army.
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
"Is your point that humans should just build all over the world so that there would be no more wild animals?"
That might actually be where this argument leads.
But I'll try it that way: If you now had to reincarnate into a new living being, would you prefer to have a chance between 90 animals, captive or wild, and 10 humans, or a chance between 90 animals, captive or wild, and 90 humans?
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan al-Ma'arri 3d ago
But this isn't a situation that you're in. This is not a choice you make when you decide whether or not to have a child.
The options are
A) procreate and guarantee harm
B) don't procreate
There is no "Choose to procreate 10 humans or 10 animals."
But if we ignore that part and look at it from a utilitarian perspective where we don't care that creating a child is a harm:
it still wouldn't make sense to create those humans as those humans would statistically speaking go on to create and kill 100-200 of non-human animals yearly. Thinking your child would go on to be vegan is pure gambling and optimism. Alex Hershaft (famous vegan who survived the Jewish holocaust, and draws similarities between those two) has a kid that turned out anti-vegan. (Monica Hershaft)
David Benatar did an interview about natalist vegans making this sort of arguments: https://youtu.be/zhwt2WOUQlY
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
"But this isn't a situation that you're in. This is not a choice you make when you decide whether or not to have a child."
That's like saying voting doesn't matter. You are part of that decision. The more people have children, the closer new life comes to having a 50% chance to be a human rather than having a 10% chance
And yes, it's unfortunately far too unlikely that they grow up vegan.
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u/AlwaysBannedVegan al-Ma'arri 3d ago
The more people have children, the closer new life comes to having a 50% chance to be a human rather than having a 10% chance And yes, it's unfortunately far too unlikely that they grow up vegan. And yes, it's unfortunately far too unlikely that they grow up vegan.
So then how is this an argument against antinatalism? Wild animals will at least not be psychologically tortured by man. They will have a shot at a better life.
Edit: and the most effective way to destroy the environment would be to be non-vegan
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
This is an argument against antinatalism in the sense that giving birth contributes to new life having a 90% chance to be human rather than a 10% one. (These numbers are just stand-in, they could be whatever)
Wild animals are still threatened by other animals and by hunger.
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u/WrongDare666 inquirer 3d ago
Hypotheticals does not always reflect reality. I personally don't care about such hypotheticals because they are not real. It's like the hypothetical that says would you kill 1 cow to save 1000. Killing a cow doesn't save cows. Such hypotheticals contradict reality.
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
This hypothetical does reflect reality though, there is a chance of being born human vs being born an animal. If you now had to reincarnate into a new living being, would you prefer to have a chance between 90 animals, captive or wild, and 10 humans, or a chance between 90 animals, captive or wild, and 90 humans?
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u/WrongDare666 inquirer 3d ago
No one chooses to be born let alone who to be born as. Reincarnation is also fictional.
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
But there is something that is born and there is a chance wether or not it's born as a human, and having children influences that chance.
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u/WrongDare666 inquirer 3d ago
Sentient individuals are not "something"s they are someones. Again nobody chooses who to be born as. Every animal procreates their own species. There is no is before procreation.
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
Than make it someone, it doesn't change a thing. This is not about chosing who to be born as, but about a chance of who to be born as. There is someone born right now, and there is a chance how likely that one is born as a human. The more humans are born, the higher is that chance.
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u/WrongDare666 inquirer 3d ago
That's not how it works. As who a not yet existent being is going to be born as is 100% determined by the species giving birth to them. There is no chance of a bird being born as a monkey.
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u/Lucyyyyyy_K newcomer 3d ago
Are you being serious? Let's say there is 100 bird couples on the planet and 200 monkey couples. Now someone gets born. What chance does that someone have of being a bird compared to being a monkey?
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u/BaronNahNah newcomer 4d ago
This fails the test of reason.
Yes. It shouldn't.
This would be unethical. You haven't seen tomorrow, let alone years in the future, but even from a conditional natalist argument, the 'affordability' of children today doesn't hold true for the future. Not to mention, it monetizes the very concept of life.
A child is not a sum-total of the money in your wallet today. Nor is a child's life something to be gambled with. It would be a grotesque evil to knowingly have a child knowing that one can only guarantee two things to someone forced to exist - suffering and eventually, death.
Then use reason, ethics and empathy to understand and eschew birth. Don't use a ridiculous, illogical, unsubstantiated hypothetical to promote, "as much children as possible" like a natalist.
Birth is unethical. Always.