And don't feel pressured to agree with me, Snake, just because you're also an anti-natalist. I understand that the scenario is difficult, and typing up my initial response was a little bit painful for even me. It's just my interpretation, and I don't want to speak for all anti-natalists. So if you disagree, that's fine, I don't really expect anybody to agree with me. I just hope you can see where I'm coming from, at the very least.

That's really been my mission over the past few months--not necessarily to convince anyone of the philosophy, but to get people to see where I'm coming from.

Well said.
But...
Hypothetically, what would "doing your part to try and make the world a better place" entail? If by "parasite" you mean someone who is actively trying to be unemployed* (or something along the lines of that), couldn't that person still theoretically make the world a better place by not having children and not supporting the meat and dairy industries?

I mean parasite in the sense that all we do is drain resources without really doing anything to give back. Parasites are just takers. All of us are parasites in this sense--but some are bigger parasites than others. For example, able-bodied fellows who refuse to work.

Being an advocate for veganism/anti-natalism is part of what I'd consider an attempt to making the world a better place, yes. And there's numerous other things you can do as well, but it's mostly just about helping others in any way you can. Acknowledge that everything you do is the result of another human being's suffering (to your house, to your job, down the clothes you wear). Account for it, and take whatever action you feel is necessary to counteract it. We're not going to succeed in preventing all the suffering in the world, but we can certainly try our hardest.

Let's say, in some rural part of a developed country, a woman gives birth to a child in some isolated log cabin. The only person there with her is her only friend-cum-midwife. Nobody else has any knowledge of the birth, and the moment her friend steps out of the log cabin to go home she is hit by a tanker and killed immediately.

So the mother is the only human being on the planet with the knowledge of the baby's existence. She settles down, and reads some Arthur Schopenhauer, David Benatar and Peter Zapffe. Accordingly, she becomes convinced that life has an aggregate, objective disutility and thus procreation is immoral.

So she smothers the newborn as it sleeps. Is this morally permissible/justified.

Yes.

I'm not saying it would be pleasant, and I'm not saying it would be a happy event. Abortions are rarely anything less than an emotional ordeal for not just the mother, but the father as well. But in terms of her options, smothering the newborn is the least worst option, and I think is completely justified.

If I may delve into the mother's psychology, part of the reason why she made the decision might have been because she realizes her means. She likely either lacked the resources and the know-how to even give the child a semblance of a healthy life, or realized that, even if she managed to bring him or her up as best as she could, there is still no guarantee that his or her life will be a "good" one. So instead of imposing her ineptitude on the child, she spared it a life of misery and penury.

Of course, she did a number of things right, which must be commented on:
- She smothered it immediately after its birth.

There's really no better time to do that. Once it starts getting into the "week old" range, "month old" range, "year old" range, it really begins to start sounding ethically questionable. I don't know where to draw the line, exactly, but really, I don't see anything wrong with smothering babies so early after their birth. It's a late-term abortion.

- She smothered it while it was asleep.

Just a smart move in general.

So yes, while that's definitely gruesome, it would be what I'd called "the right thing to do".

Unless she somehow had the means to give the child a perfect life, but clearly, she didn't, if she read all of those philosopers' works.

Absence of pain exists. When you laugh, it's nothing but pure pleasure. Same with sex, or doing an activity you really enjoy. You can escape from pain, even if it is only for a little while.

Pain is very important to feel. It teaches us and gives us understanding. Without pain, we wouldn't be what we are today.

And?

The fact that pain is "very important" is part of the problem. It's part of what makes life so undesirable. Personally, I'd rather not have been forced into a reality wherein pain is supposed to be an important part of the experience. That sounds really, really stupid to me.

You might be okay with it (if you're insane), which is fine for you, but the anti-natalist position is that you don't have any right to impose it on anybody else.

My problem with moral nihilism (speaking as a former nihilist, no less) is its complete unwillingness to make the presuppositions necessary to reach moral facts. Or indeed any facts. The whole of epistemology is a presupposition, the point is making the right presuppositions.

And when it comes to morality, you either make the presupposition or you don't. And if you don't, you're either religious or a nihilist.

At least religious people are smart enough to figure out that ethics matter (hence why most Christians believe in heaven and hell).

Of course, their standards are garbage, but still. Nihilists can't even figure that out.

This is why I could never be a Buddhist, as much as the philosophy appeals to me--I'm just far too vindictive.

You say here's no value in life

Never once have I.

if i could press a button that would destroy all memes

i would press it

as secondclass said

boring and annoying
while you don't deserve to get perma'd, necessarily, i wouldn't mind if you just left

or were removed

When it comes to having stupid opinions, when it comes to having false ideas, and when it comes to having incorrect viewpoints, I'm hard-pressed during my weary travels across the Internet to find anything that could feasibly match the pure evil, sheer insanity, and sky-rending idiocy of the "philosophy" known as moral nihilism. I have to use "philosophy" in quotation marks, too, because the word itself (derived, of course, from the Greek philosophia) is supposed to mean "love of wisdom", but any individuals who describe themselves as nihilists could never love wisdom. If they loved wisdom, they would have to concede that life isn't meaningless, and that there are logical imperatives to be fulfilled in the universe--but that would be inconvenient, so they hate wisdom. If they could, they would take wisdom and smash it, because to have wisdom would be to acknowledge that there is indeed value in the universe.

A nihilist is someone who doesn't believe there is any value in the universe. Common mantras include, but are not limited to, "life is meaningless," or "life has no meaning." Of course, life having no meaning entails the lack of concepts such as consequence, or the necessary result or effect of a negative action or cause. There is no such thing as a "crime" or "moral transgression" to a nihilist. You could torture five or ten or a hundred people, however many you want, for no good reason, and there would be no "moral" repercussions involved. You'll get imprisoned, sure, but to a nihilist, we're dealing with notions of intrinsic negative value. That is to say, to a nihilist, even though you'll get punished undoubtedly for your actions as a murderer, that doesn't mean there's anything intrinsically wrong with torturing someone. It doesn't matter if you don't have a good cause.

Most people who claim to be nihilists that I've spoken to are no older than twenty, so, more than likely, not a single one of them has underwent any real suffering in their lives. None of them have had cancer, none of them have had their limbs crushed, and none of them have died. They have no concept of how bad life can really get, and they're going to make the oh-so-dubious claim that none of it matters.

Next time you meet a nihilist, ask him if he'd appreciate it if you shoved a nail directly into his eyeball. They're going to say no. If you ask them why, they'll probably respond with a statement that establishes the existence, involvement, and the pertinence of the intensely negative sensation of pain. It would hurt a lot if you stabbed their eye with a nail, so they'd rather not be stabbed in the eye with a nail. It all seems very agreeable, until you ask them about other people.

You see, nihilism is often closely knit with a wide variety of other garbage philosophies, such as hedonism, rational egoism, and even solipsism. If one makes the argument that nothing in the universe matters, it's much easier, then, to act as though the self is of utmost importance, because your self is the only thing you know to exist. Your existence, your sensations, are all you are capable of experiencing, so the logical statement being made is that there is nothing else in the universe worth caring about. I call this "drain empathy", or the absence of all acknowledgement towards the feelings of other sentient beings, and this is, irreconcilably, the most evil philosophy that I can think of, bereft of all decency.

You ask that same nihilist, after establishing that he doesn't want to have nails in his eye (because it's painful), if he would go out of his way to prevent his eyes from ever being stabbed, and he says yes. Here's where it gets fun. Ask him how he would feel if someone else--be it a friend, a family member, or some random person--gets stabbed in the eye.

You might get responses like:

- Indifference. The person getting stabbed in the eye has nothing to do with me; therefore, I have no reason to care. It's his problem, not mine. Why should I let someone else's pain and suffering affect me in any way?

Fortunately, this is the more exceedingly rare of the two. Clearly, this person is insane--as is anyone who is unable to realize that one's own comfort has no bearing on the comfort of others, and that just because you may be comfortable does not mean that the idea of other's discomfort shouldn't give you pause.

The other, more common, response (which is really not much better):

- Indifference. Sure, it would be horrible--I know this, because I wouldn't want it to happen to me--and if given the opportunity to prevent it, I would most certainly take it. I wouldn't take it because getting stabbed in the eye is an intrinsic bad, though. I would only take it because I would personally feel bad if I didn't.

This is stupid and evil, for different, yet more complex, reasons. While this is obviously an exaggerated paraphrase, most garden-variety nihilists will take this route instead. While claiming that there is no intrinsic value, they'll also claim at the same time that, just because nothing has any meaning, doesn't mean that they still don't have emotions, and they'll function based on those emotions. This is certifiably retarded, for reasons that are obvious to me, but perhaps aren't for other people.

This version of nihilism is just textbook selfishness--doing good deeds for selfish reasons, in my opinion, almost negates the good deed itself. In a life-threatening situation, would you rather be spared by a kind individual who genuinely cares about your well-being, or by someone who's only in it for the fame and fortune? Or by someone who only did it because they'd feel bad if they didn't--and couldn't actually give a damn about you?

But operating on one's emotions alone isn't just inconsiderate--it's also inefficient and dangerous. An emotionally-driven individual is more likely to help a close relative or friend than they are an entire group of people. It's this type of mindset that feeds into our addictive personalities even further. You start doing good deeds not because they're the right thing to do, but because they make you feel good--and you'll start coming up with strategies to maximize your own happiness with the lowest possible effort--that's called inefficiency. The danger comes from the strain it'll inevitably place on our relationships with fellow human beings.

Most people don't like being "accused" of being selfish--but indeed, some nihilists embrace selfishness. A number of them ask insipid questions like "What's so bad about being selfish, anyway?"

The obvious answer, of course, is that there are a lot more people out there than you. Anyone who honestly believes that the self is the most important thing in one's own "personal universe" should be schlepped off of the goddamn planet, because that is just too stupid for words. If you wouldn't want something to happen to you, because it would incur huge amounts of pain and suffering for you, then you shouldn't want anyone to experience pain and suffering. Not because "it'll make you feel good," either, but because it's the logical standpoint to make.

The reason nihilists are the most intellectually bankrupt people there are is because they answer incorrectly one of the biggest and most important questions in the universe. If you can't figure out that the existence of suffering creates huge ethical responsibilities for us on this planet, then I can only wish the worst for you. I hope a pack of tigers maul you to death--or your family--and then I want to hear you say that suffering doesn't matter.

I want every nihilist--every person who claims that life doesn't matter, suffering has no meaning--every person who looks at events like the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Dark Ages, the plagues, the floods, the earthquakes, the anguish, the depression, the horror, every significant other who's ever died of cancer, every pet that's ever been run over, every disease that's ever been endured, takes a look at all of that horror and says, "None of it matters," I want every single nihilist who says that to be rounded up and shot. There's no excuse for this type of person to be a part of a nation that considers itself civilized, and they don't think anything matters anyway.

I mean, they've basically given the universe consent to torture them if they say nothing matters, in my opinion.
So they should get the absolute worst that life has to offer. It only makes sense.

I made lists. Of everything. Usually of things in video games. Like, the precise number of Goombas/Koopa Troopas/whatever in each level of Super Mario Bros.

Just so that I could have the information.

I mean, I did a lot of weird shit, but that comes to mind in particular, because I still make lists from time to time...

http://sep7agon.net/index.php?topic=23291.0
http://sep7agon.net/index.php?topic=30738.0
http://sep7agon.net/index.php?topic=7025.0

looks boring as fuck

Quote from: Verbatim on June 21, 2015, 10:37:05 PM

Quote from: Lebron James on June 21, 2015, 10:32:52 PM

There's something in the background of the picture OP

you should look out

i like the juxtaposition of your username and your avatar

I like YOU ~~~

i don't

the only thing i like is precisely what i just said that i liked
nothing more

you owning a cat

scares me

What's there to talk about?

^
this

however, this event did indeed inspire a debate between my parents and my sister the other day

my parents both think we should all just give everyone a gun, making the world an "even playing field"
and my sister thinks they're crazy

it was an interesting discussion