Answering Meta's question from a couple months ago

 
Verbatim
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Since I was unbanned, I took it upon myself to search up my username here--to see how much discussion of myself has taken place in my wake. Because I do like a good stroke of the ego every once in awhile. You are all such nice people.

Then I found that, soon after I was banned, Meta had actually made a thread addressed to me, but I couldn't respond to him because of my having been banned. So, I'll take the liberty of responding now, because I'm not a guy who just... doesn't respond to queries posed to him.
Quote
Assume we live in some sort of techno-socialist utopia. Bio-ethics is ridden with abolitionism and utilitarianism; suffering simply doesn't exist anymore.

However, despite all of this amazing technological progress, suffering is offered as a choice to people. 100% of the population cause themselves to suffer in varying degrees at various point in their life.

If this were true - take it to be - would procreation still be immoral, and would suffering be still inherently undesirable in your mind?
It would still be immoral. 100% of the population submits to suffering? Doesn't sound like a choice to me.

See, you simply cannot use terms like "choice" and "100%" together like that. If I flip a coin ten times, for example, and get heads every single time, I can't say that there's a 100% chance of getting heads. Indeed, if I flipped a coin for all 7.2 billion people living on Earth right now, and I got heads 7.2 billion times, I still can't say that the coin has a 100% chance of getting heads.

The fact is, there will be at least one instance down the line where the other option is flipped. This is called statistical inevitability. There will be one outlier who will say, "Holy FUCK. This 'suffering' thing seems really fucking dumb, and I don't think I'll submit myself to it."

If I don't play devil's advocate and apply hard realism to the scenario (which I know you hate when I do), and play your scenario exactly as you... may have intended it, and literally every single human being submits to the suffering, then that cannot be described as a choice under any rational, cogent definition of the word.

Spoiler
Also, as an aside, someone in the thread made a comment with regards to my ban--and I'm paraphrasing:
"he tried to fight the law, and the law won"

lolnoitdidnt
Last Edit: December 29, 2014, 06:34:38 PM by Verbatim


 
More Than Mortal
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This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
I feel as if you've missed the brunt of my question, so I'll phrase it more directly.

If the only suffering which could ever exist was voluntary would I) suffering still be inherently undesirable and II) would procreation still be immoral?
Last Edit: December 29, 2014, 06:58:38 PM by Meta Cognition


 
Verbatim
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I wouldn't have a problem with suffering if it was voluntary, yes. Part of what made your initial question a little ridiculous to me was the 100% notion, which is just too unrealistic to even think about. If you had said the vast majority, I'd probably wonder just what makes the suffering so desirable. 100% implies that they need the suffering in order to function (which would also make it an imposition) and "vast majority" implies a number of things--none of which really favor the ideal of procreation in my eyes.

And again, I know you don't like questions like that, because they're kinda dodgy and they don't answer the question directly, but I mean, it's all part of the discussion, and questions like that certainly help to contextualize and justify the microcosm we've thought up of. It just makes it easier to answer. Or, rather, less difficult to answer.
Last Edit: December 29, 2014, 07:04:11 PM by Verbatim