The professor is neither a positive nor a negative person - he is a REALIST. You come out of the womb screaming. From that moment forward, you experience varying but ultimate degrees of pain throughout life. You fervently grab for any and all pleasurable things you can get or experience to offset all of the pain you have, are, or will experience in the future, By doing so, you convince yourself that you had a fulfilling and significant existence before you die. That's it in a nutshell.
The bad things that happen to us lead to long lasting, if not permanent, depression, anxiety, trauma, PTSD, and even suicide. The good things are over quickly and have no lasting residual effects.
I've thought this, and kinda scares me if I did something wrong for the sake of my son that I wonder if I was selfish for wanting/having a son. At this point, dragging his soul into existence without asking his permission first, I have no choice but to love and raise him best I can.
I first told my mom that I wished I had never been born when I was 12 years old. I am nearly 40 and I have never changed my mind. Both she and my father know this and I know it kills them, but the life they gave me is my burden to bear, and the decision to create that life will always be their burden to bear. I have three sisters, one of whom has two kids, the other two will probably have kids. I told my dad, 3 or your 4 children are glad they were born, those aren’t bad odds. If your son is glad he is alive, then you can rest easily that your decision at least resulted in a happy person. If he ever decides he wishes he hadn’t been born, then indeed that will be your burden to bear. Only time tells.
all humans are in that same boat, it's just that they continue and hope for better times. Better times are actually just getting worse for every generation.
The REAL problem in this is that benatar is so clever that people who are unable to think rationally due to their genetic programming, can not step back and evaluete his arguments from a neutral standing point and thereby fail to acknowledge the fact that he is 100 % correct.
But... he is simply not, he is just very biased against life itself. His arguments are quite illogical, and can be used to back up natalism just as easily, he just arbitrarily gives more significance to the lack of suffering when there is nobody to experience it, which is idiotic, lack of suffering has no meaning if there isn't anyone to experience it
@@Gman711the axiological asymmetry is simply an observational truth that people value the prevention of suffering over the chase of a comparable joy. The way he describes it may not be very intuitive, but the point still stands
@@antinataliz9633 please stop, that sentence makes 0 sense. Using fancy words as "ergo" doesn't make what you say true. AA is NOT a good argument, the lack of suffering from non-existence has no value to anyone, lack of suffering is only valuable to someone who already exists, so how are you better off not being born at all?Completely stupid, lack of suffering or joy have no value unless you already exist.
The interviewer's patronizing and biased tone really prevents this from being as profound of a conversation as it could have been. Tons of logical fallacies from the interviewer here...but David handles it all in stride!
I wish I wasn’t even born, I have to suffer from depression and anxiety disorder. I am not proud of myself as a human being, I am a total failure to society. This is why I am single/unmarried and childfree because I don’t deserve to be a husband and father. I know that I am not financially, mentally, emotionally and spiritually fit for that lifestyle.
Its kind of hard to argue with a professor in this topic but sure he is right. There is a assymetry between pleasure and pain. And all you see and experience is like a laptop. You dont know what reality is. Its like writing a email. You just see a interface made for survival. You dont understand the voltage or how a computer sen the mail or how it transfers the letters you write on your keyboard to a message able to send. So in the case of pleasure, suffering and meaning to create life is to create suffering because the bad outweights the good by infinite unless your life is only good. Because if you take away the goid in kife from someone whom dont exist its not bad because there is no one able to experience the good. So it cant be bad. So its a great argument
This interviewer doesn’t seem to get the deep, deep issues here. To exist, is to suffer, to be an animal+consciousness even further so. What right do I have to pass this life along when i have the ability to deny it - and further suffering
Not just the interviewer. All the parents don't understand the deep issue. They have kid because they are cute, because someone have the kids too, because the kid can take care of them. All these reasons are selfish.
@@ywc99411 I told my mom when I was 12 that I wished I’d never been born. I also told her that I would not care for her in her old age, I would shirk all responsibility because I saw how awful it was caring for her aging grandparents when I was young. I am almost 40 and have never changed my mind. The worst are parents who tell me if their children ever said that to them, they’d smack them. So those parents cruelly brought children into existence and would then physically abuse those children if they ever expressed displeasure about their lives. Everyday common monsters.
@@ywc99411 You said what I've ALWAYS said about the main reason people have children. They are SELFISH. Another reason that ties into your second one (that others have children) is they have them in order to make themselves feel fulfilled, i.e. self gratification or "accomplishment". That's SELFISH as well.
The kidney stone argument for antinatalism. I've had 18. One took 9 days to pass. They're like having a knife pressed into your body and never let's up. In fact it pulses and gets worse once urine is backed up. I'd rather never to have existed than having a life of kidney stones. I'm disappointed in this interviewer. He got personal 😮 good microphone quality does not equal good journalism.
What came _after_ non-existence before birth? Answer: birth. The birth of an organism is what ended said non-existence before birth... Will organisms be born after the one reading this dies? Yes! And so just as non-existence was followed by a life (the one reading this right now), non-existence will once again be followed by a life.
can anybody explain why having or not having a childeren is irrelevant to the idea/strength of the argument ? Wat I mean is if ur having a child ur not following what u believe in Being hypocrite if he has a child and being antinatalist !? anybody
@Random dude yeah I agree 😅 But afta such strong arguments ,why wudnt the person be consistent with his words in real even though if you consider its his choice Stil the question pops out y give birth when life is full of suffering
It’s irrelevant because a personal can be a hypocrite and still have a valid argument, the same way a person can be stupid, ugly, etc. and still have a valid argument. Using someone’s supposed hypocrisy to argue against their position is an ad hominem fallacy, the same way calling them stupid is. The argument stands or falls on its own merits.
@@pamelaglickman1216 thank you for responding ...as u addressed it Isn't it intriguing to stil not know why the person isn't consistent with his words , is it bcz of the situation they bound to take such choice or what 😅?
The interviewer is so biased and a joke to all thinkers that exist out there. To laugh in the face of professor, at least said, says enough about his brain and personality. Hard to to listen to his questions and reactions
I’m not sure if arguments in antinatalism really work. For example, Quality-of-Life argument, the main theme of chapter 3 in “Better Never to Have Been”, assumes “sub specie aeternitatis”. From this, Benatar gave an example in his paper “Still Better Never to Have Been”, that we want to live to be over 1000. But here is a counterexample, that Japanese Samurai in 1600’s were wanted to die rather than to live! In Edo Japan, they had a culture, called “Junshi”(殉死). en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junshi So, there seem to be somewhat strange assumptions on “sub specie aeternitatis”. 1. Good for someone is also good, or at least not bad for everyone. 2. One can know what’s good for others. 3. Before be procreated or after death, beings don’t have any benefits/detriments. But, (1) seems to be failed in Japanese Samurai and for (2), it seems right that we “don’t” know what is common good! For common people, pain is intuitionally bad but for Albert Fish, pain was so good. Then we may make a drug that makes us to masochist and perhaps making such drugs to change pain to “benefit” becomes duty for us. But in our intuition, this is wrong! As in Japanese Samurai in Edo Japan, encouraging suicide becomes duty to make “death” to “benefit”! For (3), for example, doesn’t Horatio Nelson have any benefits/detriments? Nelson in a hero for United Kingdom and if we will be travelling the Trafalgar Square after elimination of COVID-19, we can see status of Nelson so easily. Also in Japanese Samurai case, Samurais had committed suicide to get benefits after death. So I would like to think there is “no” such of “sub specie aeternitatis” and Quality-of-Life argument is failed.
You make a very interesting point but we have to make some clarifications. As opposed to the samurai, most people do want to live. They may be wrong about it but they do strongly feel like going on. Benatar was talking about many quality of life theories. In such a vein, he was discussing how people generally think that long life is good but usually they forget the fact that they only see things from a human perspective. From a larger perspective, it is quite clear how their desires are fashioned by their biology and societies. Even so, they are rarely fulfilled. Finally, one can make generalizations and this is common both in everyday life and in academia. Also, there is no one to have benefits before one is born or after they die (other people may benefit or suffer once one dies, though). People may think that but we have no reason to suppose that to be the case - do we believe that the suicide-bomber when he kills himself really goes to heaven?
@@Peter-iu3dh I just wrote about what's "sub specie aeternitatis" and the argument about general quality of life was outside of my concern. (Of course, I think Benatar just chose the results of psychology in his favor. Why Benatar does not refer such as the following? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
A common misunderstanding on my opinion is that I have insisting any valuing of quality of life is arbitrary so we can't judge any moral proposition. But they do commit naturalistic fallacy. I "don't" say that any true/false valuing of moral proposition is arbitrary. Of course one can enjoy death as samurai but killing samurai is wrong and must be punished. "samurais enjoy death" """DOES NOT IMPLY""" "We can kill samurais".
@@미지-p6g this is a very good point but we shouldn't exaggerate it. If the negativity bias was so strong, I reckon many more people would choose not to procreate. As such, it seems like this bias is a very good way of learning to deal with abuse/avoid bad things in life but many people, once they reach adulthood, decide to keep on living and you need good optimism bias/repression skills in order to think these are alright, especially the ones regarding procreation
@@미지-p6g I did not imply that we should kill people. What I said was that there will be no person to benefit from death after they die. Yes, death may be the best option for when life becomes, as it often does, too bad to keep on living- still, once that person dies, there will be only a corpse, there will be no individual to enjoy the fruits of their endeavor (this if you don't believe in some religious ideas, which would need a lot of proofs...). Also, I am glad that you do not hold the quality of life or morality as simply arbitrary concepts :)
BS. You don't even know why you are living this life for and you believe and think about your afterlife? Dude that's how we have been tricked into believing such nonsense since our childhood. Think rationally.
@@religionofpeace782I am rational. I'm an ex-atheist. This life is a blip in time. The afterlife is forever. Being an atheist is the worst outcome unless there is a God that rewards atheists, which seems unlikely unless we live in a bizarro world. Don't be an atheist. It goes against your interests.
@@brianw.5230 You have been doped by the utter stupidity of a fake religion. You were an ex-atheist but an irrational one and that's the reason religion could easily dope you into believing some nonsense that has no evidence anywhere.
@@brianw.5230 Personal experience is the last thing I would put faith in, since people have dreams and hallucinations all the time, and our senses frequently fool us. Intuition is even less reliable. That’s why we have logic, to not be fooled by our lying senses and intuitions. What if your personal experience is hogwash, just like any hallucination or dream, or even worse, a psychotic delusion? Maybe you convinced yourself of something really scary so now you are terrified to let the belief go…
Benatar is steadfast and consistent. That man has resolve. AN is the most evolved and rational philosophy of all.
That myth about struggle giving meaning - what a load of ......., with all due respect ?.
most ?? it's not a race or add up!
His specific brand is illogical.
"Most evolved and rational" that's how most cults describe their beliefs probably
@@Gman711 how is deciding not to have children and justifying it a cult? Who is harmed?
Pleasures are just absence of pain.
''Id rather not have existed'' Yep
The professor is neither a positive nor a negative person - he is a REALIST. You come out of the womb screaming. From that moment forward, you experience varying but ultimate degrees of pain throughout life. You fervently grab for any and all pleasurable things you can get or experience to offset all of the pain you have, are, or will experience in the future, By doing so, you convince yourself that you had a fulfilling and significant existence before you die. That's it in a nutshell.
They spank you. Thus, the abuse begin soon as you come out of the womb. Red flag.
Asymmetry argument is very powerful and flawless logical construction.
Thanks for uploading. He's a delight to listen to.
Always looking for your comments,the chosen one. are you ok?
@@selfconsciousnothing9697
I am, as always, the panreplicide spandrel.
he is like a messenger from the future, talking to a civilisation gone mad!
And that's why the existing civilisation calls him as mad rather than questioning its own insanity. Ridiculous!
What f-ing future? If he is to be listened to there should be no future, smh... this is insane
The bad things that happen to us lead to long lasting, if not permanent, depression, anxiety, trauma, PTSD, and even suicide. The good things are over quickly and have no lasting residual effects.
THE BEST EXISTENCE IS NONE EXISTENCE.
KNOW LIFE, KNOW PAIN.
NO LIFE, NO PAIN.......
David have the speech skill maxed out
Outstanding
Benatar and Dawkins are my favorites
Same
I've thought this, and kinda scares me if I did something wrong for the sake of my son that I wonder if I was selfish for wanting/having a son. At this point, dragging his soul into existence without asking his permission first, I have no choice but to love and raise him best I can.
I first told my mom that I wished I had never been born when I was 12 years old. I am nearly 40 and I have never changed my mind. Both she and my father know this and I know it kills them, but the life they gave me is my burden to bear, and the decision to create that life will always be their burden to bear. I have three sisters, one of whom has two kids, the other two will probably have kids. I told my dad, 3 or your 4 children are glad they were born, those aren’t bad odds. If your son is glad he is alive, then you can rest easily that your decision at least resulted in a happy person. If he ever decides he wishes he hadn’t been born, then indeed that will be your burden to bear. Only time tells.
And hope that he doesnt turn against you. It happens more than you can imagine.
I wish I wasn't born. I have had more misery than happiness.
Same here...
Same here...and therefore I am a vegan as well. It always makes sense to reduce(if not completely eliminate) suffering!
all humans are in that same boat, it's just that they continue and hope for better times. Better times are actually just getting worse for every generation.
3:40 Wow! What an argument. EDIT: 5:30 Benatar's response is EPIC! Totally dismantled his parroting of this idea that suffering creates meaning.
I want to bring up the point that many people who are alive if given the right conditions and circumstances would want to end their lives...
Yess but nature has made it very difficult and horrifying painful to exist from this cruel world.
Benatar is the Jesus of Antinatalism. The greatest messenger of the philosophy!
it is jesus, lower case for things that do not exist.
I'm an antinatalist from Bangladesh.
I am one to
I am an antinatalist from Kuwait 🇰🇼
Nice to meet you guys
Saya seorang Antinatalis dari Indonesia🇮🇩
The REAL problem in this is that benatar is so clever that people who are unable to think rationally due to their genetic programming, can not step back and evaluete his arguments from a neutral standing point and thereby fail to acknowledge the fact that he is 100 % correct.
But... he is simply not, he is just very biased against life itself. His arguments are quite illogical, and can be used to back up natalism just as easily, he just arbitrarily gives more significance to the lack of suffering when there is nobody to experience it, which is idiotic, lack of suffering has no meaning if there isn't anyone to experience it
@@Gman711the axiological asymmetry is simply an observational truth that people value the prevention of suffering over the chase of a comparable joy. The way he describes it may not be very intuitive, but the point still stands
@@antinataliz9633 yes, and how does that lead to the conclusion that having children is immoral?
@@Gman711 procreation creates joy at the expense of also creating suffering. AA is true, ergo procreation is unethical.
@@antinataliz9633 please stop, that sentence makes 0 sense. Using fancy words as "ergo" doesn't make what you say true. AA is NOT a good argument, the lack of suffering from non-existence has no value to anyone, lack of suffering is only valuable to someone who already exists, so how are you better off not being born at all?Completely stupid, lack of suffering or joy have no value unless you already exist.
I love dr David benatar, he is the man
People are more risk-averse than reward seeking.
The interviewer's patronizing and biased tone really prevents this from being as profound of a conversation as it could have been. Tons of logical fallacies from the interviewer here...but David handles it all in stride!
I wish I wasn’t even born, I have to suffer from depression and anxiety disorder. I am not proud of myself as a human being, I am a total failure to society. This is why I am single/unmarried and childfree because I don’t deserve to be a husband and father. I know that I am not financially, mentally, emotionally and spiritually fit for that lifestyle.
You're child-free?
Congratulations!
Just think of all the suffering you've prevented - something to be very proud of!
Its kind of hard to argue with a professor in this topic but sure he is right. There is a assymetry between pleasure and pain. And all you see and experience is like a laptop. You dont know what reality is. Its like writing a email. You just see a interface made for survival. You dont understand the voltage or how a computer sen the mail or how it transfers the letters you write on your keyboard to a message able to send. So in the case of pleasure, suffering and meaning to create life is to create suffering because the bad outweights the good by infinite unless your life is only good. Because if you take away the goid in kife from someone whom dont exist its not bad because there is no one able to experience the good. So it cant be bad. So its a great argument
This interviewer doesn’t seem to get the deep, deep issues here. To exist, is to suffer, to be an animal+consciousness even further so. What right do I have to pass this life along when i have the ability to deny it - and further suffering
Not just the interviewer. All the parents don't understand the deep issue. They have kid because they are cute, because someone have the kids too, because the kid can take care of them. All these reasons are selfish.
@@ywc99411 Very well said.
@@ywc99411 I told my mom when I was 12 that I wished I’d never been born. I also told her that I would not care for her in her old age, I would shirk all responsibility because I saw how awful it was caring for her aging grandparents when I was young. I am almost 40 and have never changed my mind. The worst are parents who tell me if their children ever said that to them, they’d smack them. So those parents cruelly brought children into existence and would then physically abuse those children if they ever expressed displeasure about their lives. Everyday common monsters.
@@ywc99411 You said what I've ALWAYS said about the main reason people have children. They are SELFISH. Another reason that ties into your second one (that others have children) is they have them in order to make themselves feel fulfilled, i.e. self gratification or "accomplishment". That's SELFISH as well.
4:33
The point being that you most likely WILL suffer that when it comes to the end of your life.
Wow the interviewer must be really rich and have a nice life or completely delusional
👍
The kidney stone argument for antinatalism. I've had 18. One took 9 days to pass. They're like having a knife pressed into your body and never let's up. In fact it pulses and gets worse once urine is backed up. I'd rather never to have existed than having a life of kidney stones.
I'm disappointed in this interviewer. He got personal 😮 good microphone quality does not equal good journalism.
What came _after_ non-existence before birth? Answer: birth. The birth of an organism is what ended said non-existence before birth... Will organisms be born after the one reading this dies? Yes! And so just as non-existence was followed by a life (the one reading this right now), non-existence will once again be followed by a life.
Meds.
Until the universe turns cold and all atoms are scattered too far away, life is temporary, the universe is dying out slowly
can anybody explain why having or not having a childeren is irrelevant to the idea/strength of the argument ?
Wat I mean is if ur having a child ur not following what u believe in
Being hypocrite if he has a child and being antinatalist
!? anybody
@Random dude yeah I agree 😅
But afta such strong arguments ,why wudnt the person be consistent with his words in real even though if you consider its his choice
Stil the question pops out y give birth when life is full of suffering
@Random dude that's not what I meant and Im just a human bound to speak tamil 😅
@Random dude cool
Have a great life 👍
It’s irrelevant because a personal can be a hypocrite and still have a valid argument, the same way a person can be stupid, ugly, etc. and still have a valid argument. Using someone’s supposed hypocrisy to argue against their position is an ad hominem fallacy, the same way calling them stupid is. The argument stands or falls on its own merits.
@@pamelaglickman1216 thank you for responding ...as u addressed it
Isn't it intriguing to stil not know why the person isn't consistent with his words , is it bcz of the situation they bound to take such choice or what 😅?
The interviewer is so biased and a joke to all thinkers that exist out there. To laugh in the face of professor, at least said, says enough about his brain and personality. Hard to to listen to his questions and reactions
I’m not sure if arguments in antinatalism really work. For example, Quality-of-Life argument, the main theme of chapter 3 in “Better Never to Have Been”, assumes “sub specie aeternitatis”. From this, Benatar gave an example in his paper “Still Better Never to Have Been”, that we want to live to be over 1000. But here is a counterexample, that Japanese Samurai in 1600’s were wanted to die rather than to live! In Edo Japan, they had a culture, called “Junshi”(殉死).
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junshi
So, there seem to be somewhat strange assumptions on “sub specie aeternitatis”.
1. Good for someone is also good, or at least not bad for everyone.
2. One can know what’s good for others.
3. Before be procreated or after death, beings don’t have any benefits/detriments.
But, (1) seems to be failed in Japanese Samurai and for (2), it seems right that we “don’t” know what is common good! For common people, pain is intuitionally bad but for Albert Fish, pain was so good. Then we may make a drug that makes us to masochist and perhaps making such drugs to change pain to “benefit” becomes duty for us. But in our intuition, this is wrong! As in Japanese Samurai in Edo Japan, encouraging suicide becomes duty to make “death” to “benefit”! For (3), for example, doesn’t Horatio Nelson have any benefits/detriments? Nelson in a hero for United Kingdom and if we will be travelling the Trafalgar Square after elimination of COVID-19, we can see status of Nelson so easily. Also in Japanese Samurai case, Samurais had committed suicide to get benefits after death.
So I would like to think there is “no” such of “sub specie aeternitatis” and Quality-of-Life argument is failed.
You make a very interesting point but we have to make some clarifications. As opposed to the samurai, most people do want to live. They may be wrong about it but they do strongly feel like going on.
Benatar was talking about many quality of life theories. In such a vein, he was discussing how people generally think that long life is good but usually they forget the fact that they only see things from a human perspective. From a larger perspective, it is quite clear how their desires are fashioned by their biology and societies. Even so, they are rarely fulfilled.
Finally, one can make generalizations and this is common both in everyday life and in academia. Also, there is no one to have benefits before one is born or after they die (other people may benefit or suffer once one dies, though). People may think that but we have no reason to suppose that to be the case - do we believe that the suicide-bomber when he kills himself really goes to heaven?
@@Peter-iu3dh I just wrote about what's "sub specie aeternitatis" and the argument about general quality of life was outside of my concern. (Of course, I think Benatar just chose the results of psychology in his favor. Why Benatar does not refer such as the following?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
A common misunderstanding on my opinion is that I have insisting any valuing of quality of life is arbitrary so we can't judge any moral proposition. But they do commit naturalistic fallacy. I "don't" say that any true/false valuing of moral proposition is arbitrary. Of course one can enjoy death as samurai but killing samurai is wrong and must be punished. "samurais enjoy death" """DOES NOT IMPLY""" "We can kill samurais".
@@미지-p6g this is a very good point but we shouldn't exaggerate it. If the negativity bias was so strong, I reckon many more people would choose not to procreate. As such, it seems like this bias is a very good way of learning to deal with abuse/avoid bad things in life but many people, once they reach adulthood, decide to keep on living and you need good optimism bias/repression skills in order to think these are alright, especially the ones regarding procreation
@@미지-p6g I did not imply that we should kill people. What I said was that there will be no person to benefit from death after they die. Yes, death may be the best option for when life becomes, as it often does, too bad to keep on living- still, once that person dies, there will be only a corpse, there will be no individual to enjoy the fruits of their endeavor (this if you don't believe in some religious ideas, which would need a lot of proofs...). Also, I am glad that you do not hold the quality of life or morality as simply arbitrary concepts :)
David is an atheist. The afterlife may be worse for them. 🙁🙁🙁
BS. You don't even know why you are living this life for and you believe and think about your afterlife? Dude that's how we have been tricked into believing such nonsense since our childhood. Think rationally.
@@religionofpeace782I am rational. I'm an ex-atheist.
This life is a blip in time. The afterlife is forever.
Being an atheist is the worst outcome unless there is a God that rewards atheists, which seems unlikely unless we live in a bizarro world.
Don't be an atheist. It goes against your interests.
@@brianw.5230 You have been doped by the utter stupidity of a fake religion. You were an ex-atheist but an irrational one and that's the reason religion could easily dope you into believing some nonsense that has no evidence anywhere.
@@religionofpeace782 I only converted based on personal experience.
God and Satan are real.
@@brianw.5230 Personal experience is the last thing I would put faith in, since people have dreams and hallucinations all the time, and our senses frequently fool us. Intuition is even less reliable. That’s why we have logic, to not be fooled by our lying senses and intuitions. What if your personal experience is hogwash, just like any hallucination or dream, or even worse, a psychotic delusion? Maybe you convinced yourself of something really scary so now you are terrified to let the belief go…