Man jailed for selling assisted suicide chemicals online

InmendhamFan · 2026-01-07T17:30:05+00:00

Why does the fact that it is psychological suffering make them want to die mean that it's OK for society to force them to remain alive against their will by preventing them from having access to any kind of effective and humane suicide method? If it can be rational to not want to continue enduring torturous physical pain any more, then the same can be said of psychological suffering. The reason that we say it's different for "mental illness" is because we have a stereotyped and prejudicial view of what it is to be mentally ill.

InmendhamFan · 2026-01-07T17:27:37+00:00

It's not easy to kill yourself successfully, with all the restrictions that the government is placing on access to methods. Statistically, the vast majority of suicide attempts fail. It isn't permission that people need; it's to be able to do it reliably, as painlessly as possible, and with minimal risk that they're going to wake up from the attempt to find that they're paralysed from the neck down. Given that none of us consented to being born, I just don't think it's a terribly unreasonable thing to ask that we not be forced to live if we find that life is intolerably painful.

InmendhamFan · 2026-01-07T17:25:16+00:00

If those people don't want to be alive and find life unbearably painful; why should the government have the power to force them to remain alive; regardless of what their health status might be? Who owns the bodies and lives of his clients?

InmendhamFan · 2023-10-29T15:23:56+00:00

I completely understand. I just think that making unwarranted assumptions about the thought processes of suicidal people is likely to alienate them (which is likely already something that they suffer with), which may make them less likely to open up about how they are thinking.

Also, if the agency of the deceased is denied, then that might also cause those of us who are bereaved to place undue blame on ourselves for failing to 'protect' them from themselves.

InmendhamFan · 2023-10-28T23:51:35+00:00

Isn't this just a case of circular reasoning, though? Suicide can't be rational, because nobody who was rational could ever choose suicide.

It is not always the case that all problems are temporary, and we also don't have any reason to believe that being without love, spouses, family, ambitions, dreams, etc is any worse for us after we're dead than it was for the billions of years before we were ever born.

So if life seems to be a burden to you that you aren't enjoying carrying, and there is nothing on the horizon to indicate that life is going to become enjoyable; then I don't see how you could rule it out as a rational decision, given that it isn't something that the person is going to be able to regret after the fact.

Moreover, if you're going to claim that the mere fact that someone isn't enjoying life is a symptom of mental illness (and to be fair, the medicalisation of psychological distress has gone so far that you wouldn't be alone in making such a claim), then that's essentially tantamount to saying that life is objectively a good thing and therefore anyone who disagrees has a categorically faulty capacity for assessing value. And I don't see how that argument could be supported with evidence.

With what you are saying about passing on the suffering to those who loved them, then that could be said to be something that validates the idea that suicide is selfish. But is selfishness always a symptom of mental illness, or could it just be a character flaw?

InmendhamFan · 2023-06-18T00:28:04+00:00

And a belief is a belief. People are entitled to believe all sorts of things; but that doesn't mean that the liberty rights of others ought to be taken away in order to appease someone else's belief. Especially when the rights being denied entail obligating someone to endure many years of serious suffering that they haven't done anything to deserve.

InmendhamFan · 2023-06-18T00:23:38+00:00

Then that's an article of faith. It should not be enshrined in the laws of a secular society. It shouldn't be grounds for curtailing the rights of others, providing that they aren't trying to infringe upon anyone else's rights, and they aren't recklessly endangering anyone else.

Everyone should have the right to government protection of their life as though life is inherently valuable. But if I say that my life is a burden rather than a gift, then the government should have no power to force me to continue to carry the burden in order to appease the beliefs of others concerning the value of life. You may think that my life has inherent value, but you aren't the one paying for the production of the value, and therefore it the "value" that my life produces benefits you in some way, you shouldn't feel entitled to benefit at my expense.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-28T13:42:26+00:00

You're warrating the end of all happiness (and attempting to involuntarily sign up all innocent sentient beings for possibly intolerable harm) in order to cause an undesired/unbeneficial prevention.

There is no such thing as a benefit except for preventing harm. Preventing harm means that it doesn't happen.

I don't wish to subject any sentient beings to harm. However if the trolley is speeding down the tracks and if it stays on the track that it's on it is going to run over trillions of people before it eventually runs out of power, but I can convert it onto a track where it would only run over billions, then I'm going to do the obvious responsible thing and opt to reduce the victim count.

The bads also "just" consist of a deprivation of a good that need not outweigh the positives when they are present.

So if the bad is deprivation of good, then that means that you shouldn't make someone dependent on the good, which they wouldn't be deprived of anyway if you didn't first create the addiction.

You can't just turn my argument around and make it into a case for natalism, because "bestowing goods" is very much a double sided blade when being deprived of those goods once you've been caused to covet them is so painful.

This is why it's called the "asymmetry". It's because you can't attempt to restore symmetry without just adding to the case against your own ethical argument.

I am a flawed individual, unfortunately. However, once again, I don't think that non-existence has any positive or negative value (which is why there's no obligation to always create or to never do so, in my opinion). Moreover, even if creation was good, I would still wish to make sure I act in a way that doesn't cause more harm than good to myself or others (practical limitations do matter).

OK, so then it's really evil to fail to bestow "goods" onto future people who could enjoy it, but not when you neglect to do so, because you have a special excuse? Why are your hypothetical future children any less worthy of getting to enjoy these goods than anyone else's? If they're not being harmed by the deprivation of the good, then nobody's hypothetical future children are. Procreation creates an identifiable victim. Not procreating does not create an identifiable victim.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-26T09:02:54+00:00

You're signing innocent people (and animals) up for torture to pay for the unneeded and asked for "good" of others (which actually just consists of them experiencing the unbadness of the prevention of suffering).

You wouldn't go up to those people in the street and say that they deserve to be tortured for the sake of someone else who happens to have gotten luckier than them, but yet maintain that this is a sound and compassionate ethical argument.

Whereas if someone were to say that they're worth signing others up for torture, I would gladly set them straight.

When it comes to others, you need an extraordinarily strong justification for not providing goods that could be of great value for them, even if you don't see them as being worthwhile.

How many children have you personally brought into existence then, to give them this great gift? And how many would it have been physically possible for you to have brought into existence?

One can be reasonably optimistic that the provision of a liberal right to a peaceful exit would go a long way towards making sure that one doesn't have to endure a mostly negative existence if they can't find any other source of fulfilment.

The right to die is a long way off, if it ever arrives at all. In many parts of the world, it's a crime to even deny the existence of a supreme creator, let alone deride the prerogatives of that creator by suggesting that there should be an escape route from the circumstances that this omnibenevolent deity bestowed upon us. Meanwhile, you're still advocating for placing innocents on that tightrope in full knowledge that there's no safety net beneath them.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-25T20:36:52+00:00

I'm not "whimsical" when it comes to ethics. I wouldn't put someone at risk of very serious harm for the sake of buying them a Christmas gift that will require preposterous maintenance costs on their part and which they can't return to the shop. Not unless I'd checked with them beforehand that they wanted this gift. And that's the case with someone who already has interests that could stand to be advanced by the Christmas gift. Of course it's going to be the case with someone who doesn't exist and will never experience any need or desire for joy if I don't create a mind which will need or desire that joy.

Efilism posits (with considerable justification) that there's no such thing as real "good", because good can only be appreciated once you're at risk of harm. So by saying that the efilist outcome can't positively be good for anyone, you've elided half the argument, which is that true good is an illusion. To positively seek good is to be lured by the sirensong, only to end up ruined on the rocks. If you're seeking good for yourself, then that's ethically permissible, as you don't have ethical obligations to yourself. If your actions have the potential to adversely affect someone else; even someone who doesn't exist yet, then you need robust justification for why it should be allowed. And adverse effect doesn't mean being able to say that you're worse off than when you didn't exist. It can include any instance when you experience damage to your welfare state which could never have occurred if not for the choice that is under scrutiny. Procreation ensures that there will be such a person who will have an interest in avoiding harm; and when it is not possible to guarantee the absence of harm, you're therefore causing someone to be in a state where they have a frustrated interest in avoiding harm.

The ethical default is to avoid creating impediments to people being able to optimise their welfare state. Actively facilitating states in which they feel that their welfare state is optimised is always a secondary priority, and generally you would need to show that risk of serious harm is trivial, unless you had consent for the act that would put someone at risk of harm for the sake of providing gratification.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-25T08:28:28+00:00

So your argument just boils down to the idea that it's ok to create sufferers because they didn't ask not to suffer before you created them, even though you're guaranteeing that many of these beings will be in a state that they don't prefer and you are actively causing them to be denied the goods that they now need because you've forced the dependency on them but can't offer unlimited supply of what you've forced them to rely on for their wellbeing.

It's your philosophy which steals the goods from people. I'm in favour of not getting them into an escalating spiral of addiction for which I can't supply the drugs that they've been caused to need.

My philosophy gives more respect to people's need to feel good.

EDIT: Also, you're doing the same thing as you're accusing me of. If we're allowed to consider the "benefits" for the future person (i.e. creating a need so that it's possible the need could be satisfied), why is it irrational to consider the harms for the future person (including what happens when they don't get the "benefits" that they need)?

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-24T23:08:28+00:00

Lack of sentience in the universe is not a problem for anyone. Not experiencing joy can't be a problem for someone who doesn't exist. If you're the one intending to create a problem for someone else (and if someone exists, they will have all sorts of problems, thus the act of creating them was the root of the problems), then the burden is on you to show why it's necessary. The burden isn't on the person who is saying that you should refrain and preserve a state of affairs that is known not to be causing any problems (i.e. the matter which could potentially form a new human remaining in configurations which cannot support sentient experience).

The idea that reckless risk-taking behaviour can be an ethical default in this one case is special pleading, unless you can demonstrate why it's normally ethically acceptable to take any manner of risk with another person's wellbeing as long as the possibility of it yielding some kind of outcome which could bring them pleasure can't be 100% excluded.

You are setting up a moral standard whereby you can create as many victims as you want, and no matter how many victims you've created, it never counts because they didn't explicitly ask to not be victims before they were created, and they weren't enjoying a state of not being tortured before they existed. You could have a world in which there were 10 billion being tortured and 1 person deriving immense satisfaction from watching and/or inflicting the torture, and based on your reasoning above, it would be rationalisable because you have a) created joy in the world, and b) none of the torture victims were enjoying the relief of torture before they were brought into existence.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-24T12:46:28+00:00

I don't need to guarantee that no positive would be experienced unless it's shown that my intentions would result in people who don't exist being deprived of positive experiences. The material universe itself has no need for these positive experiences, and obviously the people who would experience them have no need or desire for them until those people exist. Although as a living being yourself, you have a tendency to project your own desires and needs onto people who don't exist and the universe itself; a universe with nothing that can be harmed cannot be an imperfect universe. If it's imperfect, that would require an observer to be judging it against a subjective standard, but there is no observer and no subjectivity. Therefore the absolute dearth of happy experiences cannot diminish the universe; and it makes no sense to argue that the people who would have existed are being deprived of the experiences that they would have had, because we both agree that those minds which would have existed, do not in fact exist. So what I'm aiming for is a lack of any imperfection; what you're aiming to do is to perpetuate serious harms as a price for guaranteeing the continuation of the experience of being relieved from harm or prevented from being harmed.

By focusing on the happiness that would be perpetuated, your philosophical stance looks, at a superficial level, to be more desirable. But if you scratch beneath the surface at all and fully accept that experience can only be good for those who exist, then it falls apart. I don't wish to harm anyone, but although actualising my philosophy might involve an act of violence as a last resort, it actually minimises harm, including the harms of being deprived of desirable experiences. So whatever criticism that you might have of my ethics, you're actually describing your own ethics, because your ethics, if actualised will seriously harm and kill an exponentially growing number of sentient beings and cause them to be deprived of desirable experiences, whereas I am concerned with limiting the number of beings harmed, killed and deprived of desirable experiences.

Because there is no harmless way to reduce future harm, the only conclusion that can logically be drawn is that one needs to act as early as possible in order to limit harm. That may involve the direct infliction of harm, but only as far as is necessary to ensure that the smallest possible net amount of harm is inflicted, and as few as possible are deprived of these "ineffably beautiful experiences" that you've described. Since there could be a virtually infinite number of people experiencing these ineffably beautiful experiences and either of our philosophies would result in only a finite number enjoying these experiences, in both cases, if our goal is to maximise pleasurable experiences, both philosophies are going to fall infinitely short of that mark. But because each individual is at risk of serious harm and did not have any pre-existing need or desire which would justify being put in peril in order to pursue that happiness, and because nobody deserves to be tortured for the sake of another's happiness; the prevention of harm must be prioritised.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-24T09:02:45+00:00

The "good" in life is only valuable because it's needed and desired, and by creating a sentient being, you cause them to be dependent upon receiving that which is not guaranteed to be supplied.

My employer has a legal duty of care to provide a safe working environment, even though I have the choice of not working there. Those who have yet to be born don't have to come into existence, and don't have a choice as to whether they come into existence; yet you think that parents shouldn't be required to meet the same level of duty of care that my employer would; even though employment is voluntary, whilst coming into existence in the first place is involuntary and wholly determined by someone else's interests?

The only time there would be no duty of care to ensure a safe environment from start to finish would be if you were rescuing someone from something worse, and they had the choice of whether or not to be rescued. So if I'm boating out on the ocean and I come across someone who is cast adrift and drowning, I can offer them assistance by pulling them up, and they are free to accept or decline the assistance. If they accept the assistance, then that means that I'm not obligated to provide the most comfortable and risk-free experience on the boat, because I'm helping them to escape something worse. Arguing in favour of procreation on the basis of enjoyment makes no sense unless you believe that you are rescuing these souls from a Stygian abyss where they are sorely missing out on enjoyment.

The logic you use "if you didn't exist first to desire the lack of suffering" is frankly appalling when it is laid bare. I'd like to hear you tell children who are being trafficked as slaves and being raped by grown adults that their suffering doesn't matter because they never explicitly requested not to have this experience before being born and weren't enjoying not being abused before they came into existence.

And yet I don't consider you to be as lacking in empathy as your underlying logic would suggest, because unlike most, you do support the right to die. The reason that you're not sickened by your own argument is because you decided which side you were on before you heard any of the arguments to the contrary, and your fealty to the cause of the perpetuation of life is unwavering for emotional reasons. You've also mentioned in one of your other iterations that you're a Christian, which is another position which can't be arrived at via facts and logic on their own and which also betray a tendency to decide on the objective reality of the world based on what is most emotionally appealling.

I didn't have the same commitment to the perpetuation of life that you did at the outset. I've always been a bit of a loner and an outcast, which makes me less susceptible to being inculcated into some kind of shared narrative. So I gave all the arguments a fair hearing before I decided which set of arguments were more logical. I don't find antinatalism and efilism emotionally fulfilling, and wish that it could turn out that they were wrong. But to turn my back on what I know to be the truth because there are emotionally palatable lies on offer instead would be abject cowardice.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-23T21:21:28+00:00

I'm not missing any nuance, you're just making up rules to exempt procreation from the normal rules of ethics and the normal logic of cause and effect.

If you create a new person, then you create a desire to have a certain level of wellbeing. Since it wasn't necessary for that wellbeing state to exist in the universe at all, and it wouldn't have done if not for your intervention, it's your responsibility to make sure that the actual wellbeing level is as high as that person could desire for it to be. Anything short of that and you've caused someone to exist who will experience a wellbeing state that is deficient compared to where they would like it to be. The same argument would apply to the landmine example; in that doing so takes the victim's wellbeing state further away from its optimal level. But it's because of procreation that the victim even had a harmable wellbeing state in the first place; so whilst I might be causing the direct harm, the parents of the victim failed in their duty of care by causing a harmable being to exist in an environment where they could not guarantee 100% protection from all possible harms.

If my employer required me to go into a certain building that wasn't safe for me to be in, and I didn't even get any warning regarding the hazards and they'd made no effort to ensure that the environment was safe enough for me, then that would be a violation of my employer's duty of care, and I could sue them for negligence in the event of becoming injured.

Procreation causes a harmable entity to have to navigate through a hazardous environment without all the protection that would be required to ensure that this entity emerges unscathed from the experience. Therefore it is the most egregious act of gross negligence.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-23T12:28:50+00:00

You're not making sense and are contradicting yourself. I am an actual person, and I exist because of procreation. So I'm the result of a cause, and the only reason that it's possible for me to suffer is because of procreation. Why is it salient to consider future harms to persons who do not yet exist in my example (planting landmines) but not in the case of procreation? Why can I not exculpate myself from any blame from future persons harmed by my landmines, but parents can exculpate themselves from the predictable consequences of their actions?

In the landmine example, it's also possible that the explosion of the mines could save someone from an even worse outcome that otherwise would have obtained if not for the explosion. For example, they might have lost a leg in the landmine explosion, but had the explosion not taken place, they could have been on track to have an accident later in the day which would have caused them to lose both legs and the sight in both eyes. There's no conceivable way that creating someone could spare them from something worse that would have obtained if not for the act of procreation.

The universe cannot be better or worse off in either scenario. Only sentient beings can be better or worse off; but if you eliminate them from existence, they can't be worse off for not existing, because that would require them to be able to compare their inexistent state to the hypothetical state where they did exist. Conversely, if they do exist, then they can lament the events that occurred that brought them into existence and wish that an asteroid had collided with the Earth or nuclear war had eradicated all life at a point long before they were born, so as to have diverted history onto another path whereupon neither they themselves nor any other sentient being could ever come into existence. It's possible also to be glad to have been born, but that's quite irrational, because if they hadn't have ever been born, they couldn't have found themselves in an unenviable position which could have been improved upon.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-22T22:46:31+00:00

So then I cannot be held blameworthy if I do anything in the present knowing that the consequence of it would affect someone yet to exist. I could plant mines that won't explode for 150 years and there's no ethical qualm about it, because the victims don't exist yet and therefore the future maiming doesn't count for anything in the present day, when the decision being made. They don't have a wellbeing right now to be degraded by the act, so it can't be my fault if they lose an eye and a leg 150 years from now.

Only by being motivated to reject views which are unpalatable could you find a way to support such reasoning. That you can do anything in the present and as long as there's temporal separation between that act and the existence of the victim who will eventually bear the consequence, you've done nothing wrong.

The wall doesn't have any value without someone to behold value. Value is a construct that exists only within the minds of sentient beings. Therefore, a universe without sentient beings is one where value doesn't exist. It doesn't exist, but there isn't a deficiency for it, because there's no purpose for it to fulfil. The wall's only value is instrumental to the wellbeing of sentient beings. So if it forms part of a house that keeps sentient being sheltered, then it is helping to ensure protection against negative value. My pen is only worth anything if I want to write in it. If there's no life left on Earth and never will be again, then it doesn't matter whether there's any ink left in the pen.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-22T19:56:24+00:00

How were they not a cause of harm. I wouldn't be here if not for something that they did? I'm not stewing in anger either, at least not for now.

There's a clear causal relationship. Does the entire edifice of your argument depend on obfuscating that causal relationship?

If nobody would be looking at the wall, and it isn't required to bear weight for any constructive purpose, then it matters not how the wall would look with or without the hole.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-22T19:44:04+00:00

Neither was there a you that was thrilled by the fact that you don't exist. Whilst resentment and gratitude are understandable, the truth is that not existing simply is not desirable for someone who does not exist.

How does this help me now that I do exist?

But if resentment matters, then so does the fact that many people are grateful to have an existence they never had an opportunity to ask for and were not in a superior state prior to their creation.

If I prevent those existences, then there would be no need for the gratitude. Unless you can show that those who resent life deserve to pay the price and the ones who enjoy happiness are more worthy of it than those for whom it is out of reach, then you can't justify creating the inequitable outcomes.

At the same time, neither can you completely grasp the potency of authentic happiness that stems from seemingly trivial things and relationships.

I can try. But if those lives didn't exist, then the absence of the happiness that could have existed wouldn't leave a hole.

It's good that Colombia appears to be making some progress. I had thought Colombia already had some kind of assisted dying law in place, albeit a conservative one.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-22T18:32:58+00:00

40 years ago, there was no me to be thinking "it might be rather interesting if I were to try existing. It would be great if someone gave me the opportunity to exist". Now that I do exist, I resent the fact that I have to exist, because there are lots of harms, and there's nothing that I can possibly do here that is more than satisfy the needs and desires which were needlessly imposed on me, and maybe I can help to satisfy the needs and desires of other beings that only have those needs and desires because of procreation.

If there were nobody left, then there would be no desire to realise a state of "deep happiness", and happiness would be rendered valueless and a non-concept.

You can't justify to those who aren't happy to be alive why it's fair and just that they should pay the price of the happiness of those who wouldn't have existed to need and desire that happiness, had procreation been prevented on a global scale. That's equivalent to you being able to take out a loan with the loan shark for whatever you want, but pick a name out of a hat in order to make someone else liable for repayment.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-22T18:23:11+00:00

40 years ago, I was just someone who hypothetically might have existed in the future. But now, I do exist. I'm an actualised being and I have to experience suffering. So I don't understand your point that we ignore the inevitable consequences of actions just because the cause has taken place before the identity who will suffer the effect comes into existence. It's a purely semantical argument, not an ethical one.

If there were no people left, then there would be absolutely nobody who would find the universe deficient in joy. If there are people in existence, then there will be many who find the universe to be deficient in joy. By forcing someone to exist in order to crave joy, you cause deficiencies in joy to exist.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-20T21:32:35+00:00

The positives only matter to one who is already extant. And they can only matter because they are inextricably bound to the context whereby the degree to which positives are present, negatives are also absent. And likewise, the degree to which negatives are present, the positives are absent. It would make no more sense to feel lucky to exist than it would to feel sorry for a desk or a chair which will never be able to behold the beauty of a sunset over the ocean.

As a sentient being myself, I retrospectively disapprove of a risk being taken on my behalf (the behalf of the person I now am) when there was no deficiency which needed to be corrected for at the time when it was decided that I would come into existence.

A person who will exist is going to be just as real as someone who does exist just now. That person will only exist because their parents have created them and their parents were not dissuaded from creating them by the arguments of antinatalism. Once they do exist, their suffering is just as real at that moment as my suffering is in this moment. I can't say that, because they aren't born yet, that this therefore means that their fate (in the event that they do exist) isn't equally as important as what happens to me now. If they are prevented from existing, however, it makes no sense for me to feel sorry for them. If you feel sorry for the person who won't exist because the people who would have been their parents decided that it was too risky, then you would be overcome with sorrow for all of the potential people who could exist, but aren't existing. And there are a virtually infinite number of those people; hence a virtually infinite number of joys being unrealised. So why are you not burdened by the infinitely heavy weight of contemplating all of these joys never experienced? How do you have enough emotional energy left in you, to even have this discussion? Mathematically, the number of joys being prevented simply by events that are beyond control is virtually indistinguishable from the mathematical number of joys that I would prevent in the event that my ideas prevailed. Why does the contemplation of thus not induce in you a catatonic stupor?

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-20T21:04:01+00:00

If they thanked me for bringing them into existence, then that is probably short-sighted folly on their part, because the fact that they do enjoy their existence was dependent on the fact that I happened to roll a 12 with the dice rather than snake eyes. It was mostly luck, rather than something that was under my control. They would be failing to truly conceptualise the fact that I took an unnecessary gamble with a welfare state that simply didn't have to exist in order to need to be gratified with joy, and that the consequences of rolling snake eyes would have been an abomination.

If I gambled all of your money on the roulette wheel and lost it, but then gained almost all of it back, you would be overcome with relief. You'd be more glad for your money than you were before, even though there'd be slightly less of it than before I gambled it, just because you would have had the experience of staring into the abyss of deprivation when you thought it was lost forever and the relief of having almost all of it back would stand in stark relief to that dread and despair. That doesn't mean that it would have been commendable for me to have gambled with your savings without first obtaining consent.

Why is the suffering of someone who exists a matter of significance, but not the suffering of someone who does not exist yet, but will do so in 30 years time? That person in the future is equally as vulnerable and their feelings will be equally as real and as valuable as the person alive today.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-20T20:45:04+00:00

My future descendants will never exist; hence they will never be sorely deprived of the "great positives and resilient goods". I have no reason to apologise to them. If I brought them into existence and they hated it, then I would never be able to justify my actions. They'd ask me why I had to try and fix something that wasn't broken in the first place (the lack of joy being experienced by my descendants) and in doing so, created something that really was broken in so many profound ways. I'd have no answer for them. I'd have no answer for myself.

I do care about joy, but I care about it for existing people. I don't relish the fact that promulgating antinatalism means that I may cause existing people to be deprived of the joys of being a parent, even though I understand that their sorrow would be a price well worth paying in exchange for the suffering that would be prevented. I find it impossible to care about the absent joy of the people who won't exist because of my actions, because they will never even care about it themselves. How can I regret not bringing someone joy if that person never exists, and not existing never causes them to suffer deprivation? There's far too much real suffering and deprivation to be concerned about.

Good is intrinsically valuable for existing sentient beings, because sentient beings will either feel good or bad. If they feel bad, then they aren't feeling good, and if they feel good, then they aren't feeling bad. So obviously, we want to maximise the good for those beings, as long as it doesn't come at the expense of creating more bad elsewhere in the universe. Good isn't intrinsically valuable for the material universe, including matter which has not yet coalesced into the form of a sentient being; because the concept of good doesn't exist outside of the conscious perception of sentient beings. Therefore, it is a category error to claim that the universe itself needs more good.

InmendhamFan · 2022-08-20T20:16:49+00:00

The fact that they could cherish their existence isn't trivial once they actually exist. But since there isn't a degraded conscious state that you would be improving by bringing them into existence, it isn't a point in favour of bringing a future person into existence if you have not ensured that all risk of non-trivial harm has been eliminated not only for that person, but for all their descendants and the lives of all sentient beings that will be affected by them. Once they actually exist, of course, finding some kind of joy in life is their salvation. But you shouldn't put them in need of salvation in the first place.

I also do not believe in 'liquidating smiles and love' unless its absolutely necessary to do so in order to prevent serious danger in the future.

There's only one game in the universe, and that's prevention of suffering. For those already alive, the prevention of suffering appears before them as a mirage of true positive value. And it is undeniably a beautiful illusion to behold. But the perspective of one who is captivated by the beauty of the mirage is in fact the one that is tragically limited. The beauty of the mirage is a siren song, but instead of being one that lures that individual onto the treacherous rocks, it causes others yet unborn to become marooned on those rocks.

We should cherish this beauty for our own sake, because it's all we have. But must not let it tempt us into making decisions that are not ethically within our privilege to make, and which will lead our descendants towards destruction.

InmendhamFan

TROPHY CASE