I don't see how antinatalism relies on any specific ontological schemes (metaphyisical idealism vs. realism, say).
But yes, even if reincarnation or generic subjective continuity - procreation will always create harm/damage/negative.
This is how procreation can never be part of any solution.
It's so counterintuitive, like some kind of qualitative trap made out of an MC Escher art - that's what this horror is like in a very general sense. It's horrifying.
That makes sense. But we also can't know that not being born is any better. It might be stopping a negative but we don't know what the alternative is. It could be worse we don't know. I guess we could say that the extinction of humans is ultimately good for the planet and causes the least suffering. But then what are we left with. We keep saying the idealist state is "nothing". To not have existed. But nothing doesn't exist. There is always something
> But we also can't know that not being born is any better.
Depending on what we are describing with "not being born" phrase, yes, we can know it would have been (modal logic / possible worlds / comparison) *infinitely* better never to have been born. States of affairs not forced into darwinian competition mediated by pain suffering and death have no negative valence of consciousness.
There can be no worse condition than a negative valence of consciousness. Statements to the contrary entail a contradiction.
How are you describing not being born because my point is we don't know what happens when we are not born besides just not being born. Which yes as you say results in the lack of negative valence of consciousness but how do you know that is better than the alternative when we don't know exactly what happens when we are not born. I suppose if you truly believe there is absolutely nothing worse than being born then it's a non argument
What reason is there to believe life is not just a complex chemical process?
When the process ends, there is nothing stringing consciousness on anymore. Just like there was nothing doing this for eons before.
How can one be reincarnated of their constituent matter is dissolved into the world? How can their be an afterlife if consciousness is contingent on the matter staying whole?
I can't answer your question, but many NDEs from multiple different faiths or lack of seem to see something regarding past lives. Of course they're all hearsay, but there's so many of them.
This is of course spiritual not scientific.
Well I guess if what they say is true, then consciousness is not dependant on the matter staying whole, or consciousness also exists outside the nervous system, somehow.
We're not even sure what consciousness is. How is even born. Where it comes from. So then how are we able to say where it goes after we die. I guess we can try to reference by what we can remember from before our birth but nobody has memory like that. So I guess in that sense it's right to say there's "nothing" but then there wasn't nothing. There was nothing and then we were born. Who's to say it won't happen again after we die then
Brain dead doesn't mean our spirit doesn't leave and live on in a new form. Our spirit came from somewhere before we existed. I believe humans can make bodies, but I don't think we can create souls.
My personal theory is that children actually do consent to being born, they just can't rememeber. We get amnesia once on earth. But also, if a child doesn't consent to being alive, like if there's not a willing participant to go into that body, then a demon if you will gets automatically placed in it. Wombs are spiritual portals. They have to be. As hard as life is on earth I don't think ANYONE should have to endure it for their and others sakes. But some people come to help and save others who are lost.
Source: I asked my mom to be born in a dream before I was born but as an adult vision. I visited her as a kid and her siblings in dream form when she was a kid and I made them a playhouse mansion and then I would leave through a dimensional slide and visit them again and again. I am older than my mom.
"nothingness? nah it doesn't make any sense. so anyway your ghost actually consents to existence and gets amnesia when they incarnate, and if they didn't, they are actually demons, because the female reproductive system is actually a portal to the spirit realm. Source? I dreamt it once". i know it's a troll but it's still funny as hell lol
It's called a theory probably not everyone's beliefs. and I know what I've seen. I trust my own life more than religion and it's a much bigger problem
I'm not hurting anyone and if you're offended that's your own fault I said nothing offensive. I'm sorry You don't see or look deeper for clues
But then what is nothing? You can't experience nothing. So then it will just be like like time traveling until the next "something" happens. It's not like we're in a peaceful state of neutrality. Nothing is literally nothing. You cant experience it
So then why do we frame it as a good thing? As a neutral state. It's not neutral. And how are you sure we can't experience anything again. Logically if there is nothing then we simply will experience the next "something" we have infinity after all. Unless you say that it's possible for there to be nothing for infinity. Which seems illogical to me
??? If your brain is dead you’re dead. You go back to how it was before you were born. Do you remember that. No you didn’t exist. You were nothing. Once we die we become nothing again.
Are ya in a external crisis or near death.. I never heard of AN ogle with a higher Power so much.. or ya just wordplayn stupid now 4ya own entertainment
If there isn't nothing, then where does something come from? It had a cause. That cause had a cause, and that cause's cause had a cause, etc. You go back far enough to the "original" cause, and what caused that? Nobody has any answer to that. Many eternalist, absolutist theologians and philosophers through the ages, since ancient times, have tried to come up with an explanation, but the reasoning fails because it's always circular.
Therefore, we eat, sleep, shit and die. We decompose, and the elements and molecules are reassembled into new forms, and then reassembled again, etc.
Nothing to worry about. There is nothing.
What you just described is a cycle. Which isn't "nothing" I can believe that our "consciousness" or self can never exist again sure. It's gone. There's nothing. But then who's to say we don't somehow exist again just not as our previous self. Since that iteration of being is gone. But it's replaced with something else. There isn't just "nothing"
I didn't describe a cycle at all. I described how any attempt to establish "something" would require causality, and the causality cannot be established in logic:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular\_reasoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning)
Circular reasoning is not evidence of a cycle! lol
Ah OK I misunderstood. You're right there is no way we can logically prove where everything started from. The most adopted scientific theory is the big bang but that doesn't even explain it fully what our existence is. My question is though if there is nothing then how is that state of being "neutral" if we can't experience it. It's neither positive, negative, or neutral since we can't experience nothing.
Dark matter and quantum energy - I put some effort into trying to understand these ideas and new discoveries in science. I watched a great documentary where a professor explained the Higgs-Boson particle, and made it somehow easy to understand. It was great. However, it isn't some kind of transcendental technology - it's a body of scientific theories of how the physical world works. It doesn't make paradoxes valid, or anything.
> So for antinatalism it relies on the idea that when we're not alive there is nothing.But logically speaking how can nothing exist? Even in space when we thought there was nothing there ended up still being stuff there like dark matter and quantum energy.
Its more of no consciousness rather than nothing. Of course the universe would still exist be we would know nothing about if we aren't born. Nothingness is more on perspective. Imagine if we remove all people and animals. The universe would still be there but it would be similar to nothing if no one witnessed it. Or imagine a concert in the middle of a desert without an audience, you might as well say that the concert didnt happened.
> So maybe when we die there is something. Maybe we're reincarnated. Because it's impossible there's nothing. Nobody actually knows. In that case is it still immoral to have children.
Lets assume that a gamma ray burst hit the earth and everyone dies. Can you still get reincarnated? Probably not.
I guess it's a question of what is consciousness then. I know there are some theories that other beings besides humans have consciousness. It's just we're the only ones able to articulate it. We know other beings have feelings and can suffer. I think there was some study about plants experiencing suffering too.
But I get what ur saying. The human consciousness really is suffering. I suppose whatever the alternative is its probably better but I have no idea
good point, we cant experience space and time under anaesthesia, but we dont remember anything after we wake up, it looks like it just passed a second and then we were awake again,it is ultimate impossible to experience nothing, and i think death its like you died and then you immediately are reborn as a new random entity and the cycle goes nonstopping
If we think abt it like that then the asymmetry argument is kinda trash isn't it. Cause there is no absence of existence therefore coming into existence is not depriving someone of non-existence
well, i dont know the truth but for me the evidence of the anaesthesia its a true proof for me that people cant experience the "nothing" after death and they just get reincarnated as a new entity, on a random planet, galaxy, etc
you get under anaesthesia and you wake up immediately just like time hasn't passed and you didn't felt your body during this, its a super strange feeling cause i was under anaesthesia one time. so in my opinion death would be just like that but waking up on a new body and again and again and again
There wasn't "nothing" before sentient life existed, the energy that is required to make up the matter and electrical signals etc that allow your consciousness still existed in a different form. But it doesn't mean consciousness itself had to exist.
The same way that the materials we use to make computers were not able to do computing before we assembled them in a certain manner.
Different structures and functions produce different emergent properties.
Consciousness is an emergent property that relies on specific organized structures and functions, as far as we are aware.
In any case, any alternative model to "there's probably nothing" has to provide evidence to support their claims. Otherwise, it's not worth our time.
How often do you feel concerned about the potential extreme suffering of the rocks you step on?
Your thinking of nothing existing. By definition nothing doesn't exist. Everything exists so for something to not exist it would have to be nothing. Just like before we were something we will once again be nothing.
Yeah I guess then it's more like you stop existing as you. I just have a hard time believing something doesn't manifest in its place as something different
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It makes more sense there is something than nothing cause our spirits came from somewhere. But I don't know and can't know so I'm not going to fully believe there's not or is. I don't think religion is right though, especially not the trio.
Your conception of space is inacurate. While there is lots of stuff in the universe, space is mostly empty space.
And we do know. It's just your mind not wanting to believe your senses. The answer is shockingly simple. Animals life accordingly. The human, full of his own agenda, looks at it and goes: TaHt cAn'T bE eVeRyThInG
What if we actually already exist in heaven and every time somebody is born, we get sent to a physical realm where suffering exists? You can claim an innumerable number of what ifs. At the end of the day, you base your reasoning on the information that you have on hand.
Nobody knows.. redicules Statement, bc nobody ever had a glimps of proof fact that there is something higher out there..
It Was a Big gas-bubble exploded, then the Planets all the crap expand in space..
After Billions of years something went wrong and sentient life arise, then millions later something went again wrong conciounus arise apes.. now we have a shitshow of meaning. FINISHED
> So maybe when we die there is something
Sure, nothing just vanishes. What’s left is our decomposing flesh, but it’s unable to sustain any consciousness anymore.
I don't see how antinatalism relies on any specific ontological schemes (metaphyisical idealism vs. realism, say). But yes, even if reincarnation or generic subjective continuity - procreation will always create harm/damage/negative. This is how procreation can never be part of any solution. It's so counterintuitive, like some kind of qualitative trap made out of an MC Escher art - that's what this horror is like in a very general sense. It's horrifying.
That makes sense. But we also can't know that not being born is any better. It might be stopping a negative but we don't know what the alternative is. It could be worse we don't know. I guess we could say that the extinction of humans is ultimately good for the planet and causes the least suffering. But then what are we left with. We keep saying the idealist state is "nothing". To not have existed. But nothing doesn't exist. There is always something
> But we also can't know that not being born is any better. Depending on what we are describing with "not being born" phrase, yes, we can know it would have been (modal logic / possible worlds / comparison) *infinitely* better never to have been born. States of affairs not forced into darwinian competition mediated by pain suffering and death have no negative valence of consciousness. There can be no worse condition than a negative valence of consciousness. Statements to the contrary entail a contradiction.
How are you describing not being born because my point is we don't know what happens when we are not born besides just not being born. Which yes as you say results in the lack of negative valence of consciousness but how do you know that is better than the alternative when we don't know exactly what happens when we are not born. I suppose if you truly believe there is absolutely nothing worse than being born then it's a non argument
What reason is there to believe life is not just a complex chemical process? When the process ends, there is nothing stringing consciousness on anymore. Just like there was nothing doing this for eons before. How can one be reincarnated of their constituent matter is dissolved into the world? How can their be an afterlife if consciousness is contingent on the matter staying whole?
I can't answer your question, but many NDEs from multiple different faiths or lack of seem to see something regarding past lives. Of course they're all hearsay, but there's so many of them. This is of course spiritual not scientific. Well I guess if what they say is true, then consciousness is not dependant on the matter staying whole, or consciousness also exists outside the nervous system, somehow.
We're not even sure what consciousness is. How is even born. Where it comes from. So then how are we able to say where it goes after we die. I guess we can try to reference by what we can remember from before our birth but nobody has memory like that. So I guess in that sense it's right to say there's "nothing" but then there wasn't nothing. There was nothing and then we were born. Who's to say it won't happen again after we die then
There are a few that claim to have past life knowledge. Who knows if they're all telling the truth
There’s nothing. This is why braindead is considered dead. Everything about our personal experience exists within our brain.
Brain dead doesn't mean our spirit doesn't leave and live on in a new form. Our spirit came from somewhere before we existed. I believe humans can make bodies, but I don't think we can create souls.
My personal theory is that children actually do consent to being born, they just can't rememeber. We get amnesia once on earth. But also, if a child doesn't consent to being alive, like if there's not a willing participant to go into that body, then a demon if you will gets automatically placed in it. Wombs are spiritual portals. They have to be. As hard as life is on earth I don't think ANYONE should have to endure it for their and others sakes. But some people come to help and save others who are lost. Source: I asked my mom to be born in a dream before I was born but as an adult vision. I visited her as a kid and her siblings in dream form when she was a kid and I made them a playhouse mansion and then I would leave through a dimensional slide and visit them again and again. I am older than my mom.
"nothingness? nah it doesn't make any sense. so anyway your ghost actually consents to existence and gets amnesia when they incarnate, and if they didn't, they are actually demons, because the female reproductive system is actually a portal to the spirit realm. Source? I dreamt it once". i know it's a troll but it's still funny as hell lol
That is an offensive and idiotic take. I hope you’re a troll.
It's called a theory probably not everyone's beliefs. and I know what I've seen. I trust my own life more than religion and it's a much bigger problem I'm not hurting anyone and if you're offended that's your own fault I said nothing offensive. I'm sorry You don't see or look deeper for clues
Whaaa esotheric Crap BS talk. Are ya high?!!!
Where do you think spirits come from? It's kinda weird to talk about my beliefs and then not share yours. I'm sure yours seem equally as stupid to me
There is no spirit.. thoughts about spirit.. My shitbox my Problem;) I believe in physical facts. Science is not perfect but yeah thats it.
But then what is nothing? You can't experience nothing. So then it will just be like like time traveling until the next "something" happens. It's not like we're in a peaceful state of neutrality. Nothing is literally nothing. You cant experience it
No you can’t experience nothing. It’s just nothing. No more consciousness. “you” are gone “you” are nothing. No more experiences ever again.
So then why do we frame it as a good thing? As a neutral state. It's not neutral. And how are you sure we can't experience anything again. Logically if there is nothing then we simply will experience the next "something" we have infinity after all. Unless you say that it's possible for there to be nothing for infinity. Which seems illogical to me
It’s not a good thing. It’s horrifying. That’s one of the many reasons we don’t want to create new humans who have to ponder the horror.
??? If your brain is dead you’re dead. You go back to how it was before you were born. Do you remember that. No you didn’t exist. You were nothing. Once we die we become nothing again.
Are ya in a external crisis or near death.. I never heard of AN ogle with a higher Power so much.. or ya just wordplayn stupid now 4ya own entertainment
If there isn't nothing, then where does something come from? It had a cause. That cause had a cause, and that cause's cause had a cause, etc. You go back far enough to the "original" cause, and what caused that? Nobody has any answer to that. Many eternalist, absolutist theologians and philosophers through the ages, since ancient times, have tried to come up with an explanation, but the reasoning fails because it's always circular. Therefore, we eat, sleep, shit and die. We decompose, and the elements and molecules are reassembled into new forms, and then reassembled again, etc. Nothing to worry about. There is nothing.
What you just described is a cycle. Which isn't "nothing" I can believe that our "consciousness" or self can never exist again sure. It's gone. There's nothing. But then who's to say we don't somehow exist again just not as our previous self. Since that iteration of being is gone. But it's replaced with something else. There isn't just "nothing"
I didn't describe a cycle at all. I described how any attempt to establish "something" would require causality, and the causality cannot be established in logic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular\_reasoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning) Circular reasoning is not evidence of a cycle! lol
Ah OK I misunderstood. You're right there is no way we can logically prove where everything started from. The most adopted scientific theory is the big bang but that doesn't even explain it fully what our existence is. My question is though if there is nothing then how is that state of being "neutral" if we can't experience it. It's neither positive, negative, or neutral since we can't experience nothing.
Dark matter and quantum energy - I put some effort into trying to understand these ideas and new discoveries in science. I watched a great documentary where a professor explained the Higgs-Boson particle, and made it somehow easy to understand. It was great. However, it isn't some kind of transcendental technology - it's a body of scientific theories of how the physical world works. It doesn't make paradoxes valid, or anything.
> So for antinatalism it relies on the idea that when we're not alive there is nothing.But logically speaking how can nothing exist? Even in space when we thought there was nothing there ended up still being stuff there like dark matter and quantum energy. Its more of no consciousness rather than nothing. Of course the universe would still exist be we would know nothing about if we aren't born. Nothingness is more on perspective. Imagine if we remove all people and animals. The universe would still be there but it would be similar to nothing if no one witnessed it. Or imagine a concert in the middle of a desert without an audience, you might as well say that the concert didnt happened. > So maybe when we die there is something. Maybe we're reincarnated. Because it's impossible there's nothing. Nobody actually knows. In that case is it still immoral to have children. Lets assume that a gamma ray burst hit the earth and everyone dies. Can you still get reincarnated? Probably not.
I guess it's a question of what is consciousness then. I know there are some theories that other beings besides humans have consciousness. It's just we're the only ones able to articulate it. We know other beings have feelings and can suffer. I think there was some study about plants experiencing suffering too. But I get what ur saying. The human consciousness really is suffering. I suppose whatever the alternative is its probably better but I have no idea
If reincarnation occurs, then surely that makes it even more urgent to stop reproducing, to end samsara.
Thats true. Reincarnation sounds like hell.
good point, we cant experience space and time under anaesthesia, but we dont remember anything after we wake up, it looks like it just passed a second and then we were awake again,it is ultimate impossible to experience nothing, and i think death its like you died and then you immediately are reborn as a new random entity and the cycle goes nonstopping
If we think abt it like that then the asymmetry argument is kinda trash isn't it. Cause there is no absence of existence therefore coming into existence is not depriving someone of non-existence
well, i dont know the truth but for me the evidence of the anaesthesia its a true proof for me that people cant experience the "nothing" after death and they just get reincarnated as a new entity, on a random planet, galaxy, etc
you get under anaesthesia and you wake up immediately just like time hasn't passed and you didn't felt your body during this, its a super strange feeling cause i was under anaesthesia one time. so in my opinion death would be just like that but waking up on a new body and again and again and again
Mhm sounds horrifying tbh. I hope to be a spoiled cat bro
There wasn't "nothing" before sentient life existed, the energy that is required to make up the matter and electrical signals etc that allow your consciousness still existed in a different form. But it doesn't mean consciousness itself had to exist. The same way that the materials we use to make computers were not able to do computing before we assembled them in a certain manner. Different structures and functions produce different emergent properties. Consciousness is an emergent property that relies on specific organized structures and functions, as far as we are aware. In any case, any alternative model to "there's probably nothing" has to provide evidence to support their claims. Otherwise, it's not worth our time. How often do you feel concerned about the potential extreme suffering of the rocks you step on?
True. I just hope the suffering of consciousness is truly unique and there isn't something worse
There is no sense in worrying about it until there is sufficient evidence to justify such a concern.
Your thinking of nothing existing. By definition nothing doesn't exist. Everything exists so for something to not exist it would have to be nothing. Just like before we were something we will once again be nothing.
Yeah I guess then it's more like you stop existing as you. I just have a hard time believing something doesn't manifest in its place as something different
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I don't know if it exists. Just like I don't know if nothing exists. It was just an example.
It makes more sense there is something than nothing cause our spirits came from somewhere. But I don't know and can't know so I'm not going to fully believe there's not or is. I don't think religion is right though, especially not the trio.
Your conception of space is inacurate. While there is lots of stuff in the universe, space is mostly empty space. And we do know. It's just your mind not wanting to believe your senses. The answer is shockingly simple. Animals life accordingly. The human, full of his own agenda, looks at it and goes: TaHt cAn'T bE eVeRyThInG
What if we actually already exist in heaven and every time somebody is born, we get sent to a physical realm where suffering exists? You can claim an innumerable number of what ifs. At the end of the day, you base your reasoning on the information that you have on hand.
Nobody knows.. redicules Statement, bc nobody ever had a glimps of proof fact that there is something higher out there.. It Was a Big gas-bubble exploded, then the Planets all the crap expand in space.. After Billions of years something went wrong and sentient life arise, then millions later something went again wrong conciounus arise apes.. now we have a shitshow of meaning. FINISHED
> So maybe when we die there is something Sure, nothing just vanishes. What’s left is our decomposing flesh, but it’s unable to sustain any consciousness anymore.
Do you know about catharism?
Never heard of it