LogFAQs > #956334006

Reigning_King posted...

Someone can be an anti-natalist and love life, there is no conflict of interest there.

Sure there is. If you enjoy your life, you're personally invalidating the belief that life is something harmful that should not be inflicted upon people by giving birth to them. You are yourself deciding that living is worthwhile because it has been a net positive experience.

Reigning_King posted...

There is a very simple formula that shows I am correct, at least from the moral perspective.

Provided you apply a pretty useless definition of "harm," that's a plausible argument. But the thing about useless definitions is that they're useless, so that doesn't really amount to much. Your first premise is also innately flawed: It's perfectly ethical to harm somebody without their consent, provided they are incapable of deciding for themselves and that harm is necessary to attain a benefit that clearly outweighs it. The "harm" that every human can reasonably be expected to experience is not so bad as to outweigh the positive experiences that one will generally have if one exists, so the whole "technically everyone faces some quantity of suffering" thing does nothing to invalidate the net positive effect of being born.

Now, that's not to say there aren't situations where it's likely that the child will suffer such that their life is a net negative experience. In those cases, reproducing is indeed irresponsible and inconsiderate. Attempting to generalize those circumstances to the population as a whole, however, is just plain silly.

---

This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.