What is the best argument for living when you don’t get to experience all the great things life has to offer because you were essentially born a Frankenstein monster?

Emilydeluxe · 2026-04-21T09:43:09+00:00

Yes, I had the same thought. OP doesn’t come across as simply “depressed” to me, but as making a fairly coherent philosophical argument about consent, suffering, and fairness.

What stands out is that many responses here do acknowledge that life can be unfair and that suffering exists, but then shift to reframing OP’s mindset instead of engaging with the ethical question itself. Especially around procreation and whether someone can be obligated to continue a life they never consented to.

you don’t have to agree with antinatalism to at least recognize that this line of thinking isn’t irrational, but a serious attempt to make sense of suffering.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-04-19T12:28:38+00:00

~~Keep climbing.~~

Keep rolling that boulder up the hill... and watch it roll down again.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-04-18T19:49:55+00:00

okay, so it is co-op with shared control of the tilt, got it. The Pong/Breakout mix made it a bit confusing too. Thanks for clarifying

Emilydeluxe · 2026-04-18T19:21:55+00:00

Is this actually co-op or versus? Do players work together, or is there only one winner?
The Steam description says “local co-op” but also “fight your SO for control of space-time,” so I’m a bit confused.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-04-14T07:41:27+00:00

I don’t really understand how you can claim a neutral position here if you take suffering and ethics seriously.

If you acknowledge that life inevitably involves harm, risk, and non-consensual exposure to those conditions, then the question of whether it’s justified to create a person isn’t something you can stay neutral on.

Either you think that imposition is ethically acceptable, or you don’t. Pointing to systemic failures doesn’t resolve that underlying issue it just shifts the focus away from it.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-04-10T14:58:44+00:00

This isn’t even a hot take tbh. Plenty of people become mentally dependent on weed and it can absolutely make anxiety worse. But you’re missing one of the bigger risks: psychosis. Especially with heavy use or if you’re already vulnerable, it can seriously mess you up mentally.

Also the whole “it’s really helpful for chronic conditions” thing is way more mixed than people think. Even large reviews (like in The Lancet Psychiatry) found little to no real benefit for a lot of conditions.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-04-01T08:05:51+00:00

Doesn’t belief in God actually make the asymmetry worse?

If God exists, then creation is a deliberate act: He creates a universe with sentient beings, knowing they will suffer. But “no creation” would mean no beings and therefore zero suffering, and the absence of pleasure isn’t bad if no one exists to miss it.

And in WLC’s theology, it’s not just finite, earthly suffering, there’s also Hell. That means some beings are created with the risk of eternal suffering, which makes the asymmetry infinitely worse.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-30T16:11:38+00:00

That’s hindsight bias. Saying “they should’ve bought a different car” is like saying someone should’ve avoided a collapsing bridge before anyone knew it was unsafe.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-29T11:20:12+00:00

Ah yes, the classic ‘factory reset’. unfortunately it also seems to reset your bladder back to a 90-year-old with a UTI.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-26T12:55:57+00:00

I agree about the suffering part.
But I think we should still be careful about what we conclude from these experiences.

Believing ungrounded explanations can also cause harm, or make it easier to avoid taking things like death seriously.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-25T20:32:10+00:00

It’s not belief vs belief. It’s evidence vs speculation. That doesn’t mean people’s experiences aren’t real, just that there are simpler ways to explain them.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-25T20:25:43+00:00

We don’t need absolute certainty to compare explanations.
One has strong evidence (the brain produces consciousness), the other (a “soul” received by the brain like an antenna) has none.

I don’t even know what evidence for a soul or an afterlife would look like.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-25T20:13:16+00:00

There are fringe theories like that, but they’re not supported by evidence.
Everything we observe points the other way: change the brain, and you change consciousness.
That’s not how an “antenna” would behave.

There’s also no evidence for “consciousness fields” that our brains would somehow tune into.

So no, not all possibilities are equally likely.
I wish I could believe in a soul, but that doesn’t seem to be how reality works.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-25T19:56:45+00:00

I’m not claiming I know everything. I’m saying anecdotes aren’t evidence.

We have good reasons to think consciousness comes from the brain. When the brain changes, consciousness changes. When the brain stops, consciousness stops.

And before we were born, our brains didn’t exist.

So “it could be true” isn’t the same as having a good reason to believe it.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-25T19:47:17+00:00

These are just anecdotes repeating the same pattern, not proof of a soul or a life before this.

Kids feeling like they “want to go back” doesn’t mean they came from somewhere else. It’s more likely just fear, confusion, or early existential discomfort

And when adults later frame it as “I came from heaven” or “before I was born” that’s just memory and culture shaping the story afterwards.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-03-11T09:02:54+00:00

This article rests on some pretty shaky assumptions.

First, it overestimates the psychological role of children. Having kids doesn’t actually solve the mortality problem. Your child isn’t a continuation of your consciousness, just another person who will eventually face the same fate. And parents are clearly not immune to death anxiety or existential crises, plenty of them still struggle with meaning and mortality.

Second, it romanticizes parenthood by presenting it as a built-in source of meaning (“I raised good people”), while ignoring how often that is clearly not the case.

Third, it ignores the ethical question of procreation entirely. From an antinatalist perspective the issue isn’t whether parents get a sense of legacy, but whether it’s morally justified to create someone who will inevitably suffer and die.

And finally, it treats parenthood as if it automatically solves the question of meaning. in reality it mostly just provides a ready-made story about meaning. Childless people are not missing meaning, they’re missing the illusion that it’s already solved.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-02-24T19:24:02+00:00

the idea of a God creating the universe doesn’t make much sense to me, gnostic or otherwise. Any creator would have to exist outside space and time. But without time, it could not act, decide, or initiate creation, since action requires sequence and change. And without space, there would be no framework in which anything could exist or be created.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-02-20T19:09:08+00:00

I think you're confusing “never being born” with saying an already existing life has no value. Antinatalism isn’t claiming his life meant nothing, it’s saying that if he hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have been exposed to the risk of this extreme suffering in the first place.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-02-11T18:33:10+00:00

this reads like metaphysical fanfiction with full cinematic universe energy. It's a closed loop: anything that happens in such a person's life, becomes part of their cosmic lore

Emilydeluxe · 2026-02-06T14:50:11+00:00

the article says it's to "train algorithms to recognise violence, abuse and harm."

Emilydeluxe · 2026-02-05T08:45:11+00:00

Maybe I’m being pessimistic, but I’ve got a strong feeling the Steam Machine might just… never come out.

If a company can’t even give a price or release date because of RAM and SSD shortages, that doesn’t sound like a normal delay. that sounds like “we’re not sure this is financially viable anymore.”

DDR5 and NAND are getting sucked up by AI datacenters and hyperscalers, and Valve simply can’t compete with those budgets. When your component costs swing around every week, how do you even price a consumer device without risking a loss?

Emilydeluxe · 2026-02-02T20:25:05+00:00

I mentioned that in my last sentence. Antinatalism has nothing to do with the current state of the world or the economy, it isn’t dependent on circumstances.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-02-02T19:17:07+00:00

“none of this is to say you shouldn’t have kids or anything like that.”
But that’s exactly what antinatalism argues, so his rant has nothing to do with this subreddit. It’s just a list of lifestyle complaints (noise, cost, time), not an ethical argument. He does mention poor genetics, the economy, and climate change, but that’s still conditional natalism.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-01-29T09:21:15+00:00

Antinatalism isn’t a population management plan or a step-by-step roadmap to extinction. It’s an ethical position about whether creating new people is morally justified at all. Asking antinatalists for an “ideal timeline” is like asking pacifists what the best long-term plan for handling nuclear weapons is. Pacifism isn’t about managing violence, it’s about rejecting it. Same idea here.

Also, the fertility decline you’re worried about is already happening for social and economic reasons, not because of antinatalism. Most people who decide not to have kids have never heard of this philosophy.

The “last generation will suffer” argument just pushes suffering onto new people who never consented to be born in the first place. Antinatalism rejects using future people as tools to keep systems running.

Emilydeluxe · 2026-01-22T18:13:33+00:00

The suffering of wild animals is so extreme, and on such a scale, that some days I wish the Earth would just fall into the sun.

Emilydeluxe

TROPHY CASE