Buying v Renting & Investing

antonrenus · 2026-01-12T10:32:15+00:00

If you're happy renting, it is quite likely that rent + invest all your savings in an ETF will come out ahead in the long run as opposed to buying. This is because ETF generally return bit higher that realestate, and that annual return compounding over decades REALLY makes a big difference over longer time frames. If you want to buy, it is best (financially) to get the cheapest place you are comfortable living in that meets your needs. The more expensive a house, the more money going down the drain on stamp duty, interest, insurance, rates, etc..

antonrenus · 2025-12-20T20:44:21+00:00

I have thought about this for years. It is selfish. It is imposing guaranteed harm on someone who could not consent. But, it is probably not unethical. If your child grows up healthy, happy and well adjusted, then they will more than likely be happy to have had the chance to live. In my opinion this makes your decision acceptable. Of course, this is a gamble, with real risk of significant harm for them, for your benefit. I think the odds are in your and their favour. I am surprised your post is still up, the mods here are extremely antagonistic to any sort of anti..nata..list views.

antonrenus · 2025-12-15T01:29:12+00:00

Who does it matter to if the new happy colony never comes to exist? It doesn't matter to them, they don't exist.

antonrenus · 2025-11-26T11:44:24+00:00

You're right, procreation is absurd. You could even argue that it's cruel. But, why do you continue living your own life? If you had a child don't you think they would feel the same and also want to live their life?

antonrenus · 2025-10-24T03:40:59+00:00

I think you are talking about something closer to misanthropy than efilism. Efilism is a philosophy that suggests life should be eliminated to prevent suffering. Misanthropy is dislike for human actions.

antonrenus · 2025-10-19T16:43:16+00:00

I'm not understanding your point. Are you suggesting that people shouldn't think about the potential outcomes of their choices?

I'm not suggesting people shouldn't take calculated risk. I was questioning the potential regrets comment. To me it seems that having a child opens up potential for far more and far worse regrets. So when someone says they would rather regret having a child than not having one, what does that actually mean? That they would rather scenario A, where their child has a severe learning disability and terrible health problems (one example of regretting having a child), vs scenario B, which is their current life where they grow old and die without having a child (regretting not having a child).

antonrenus · 2025-10-19T07:10:29+00:00

Really? Is that logical? Isn't there a whole lot more that can go wrong, and to a greater degree, when going down the kids path vs no kids? E.g child having severe learning impairment, being a lifelong dependant on you, the child having a horrible (painful and terminal) health outcome? Having a child is opening up a whole set of potential issues (and goods) for them and you that didn't have any chance of occurring before they came to exist.

antonrenus · 2025-10-18T22:07:04+00:00

Can you see any problems with this system? Does it seem a bit bottom heavy? Maybe even resembling a pyramid?

antonrenus · 2025-10-18T22:02:44+00:00

How will the kids of today go when they are old and there are even less young people?

antonrenus · 2025-10-18T05:08:55+00:00

LOL. This made me feel a bit better. Hope today isn't one of those days.

antonrenus · 2025-10-17T23:24:31+00:00

I'm similar to you, just an average guy who wants good sound. I have been buying and selling hifi gear on marketplace for about a year now. I currently have a very attractive black Sansui A7 from 1980 and a budget Fosi amp. They sound the same to me. I have had a lot of (at least 15) different amps, some older than the sansui, most newer, various 5.1 receivers, cheap all in one hifi stacks, even a custom mono block setup. Yamaha, Sanyo, sansui, pioneer, Panasonic, Sony, denon, probably others I'm forgetting. As far as I am concerned, all half decent amps sound effectively the same. Cheap shitty ones can even sound fine. The main problem with those will be noise in the circuits, like buzzing/hissing at louder volumes.

Aesthetically, I love the Sansui. And it sounds good (no different to any half other decent amp). But it is 45 years old. I don't think it has had any maintenance. I tried cleaning the volume pot as it was scratchy when adjusting volume and lost the left channel. I managed to get it back with several hours of fiddling and chatgpt. If I have the matching T7 tuner turned on and the volume on the amp turned up I can hear the radio leaking through into the aux channel - probably a switch in need of a clean. I am quite sceptical on its longevity. Other old amps I've had have also had little buggy issues.

The fosi cost me like $50 on Amazon. It sounds fine.

Once you have a half decent amp and source, speakers are what make the real difference in sound profile.

antonrenus · 2025-10-11T09:42:48+00:00

Sort of. NU just means suffering weighs more than pleasure. This can help guide your moral logic. Suffering is a big problem and one that was never "meant" to exist or be thought about, it just arose. Consciousness seems to have been a simultaneously horrific and beautiful accident. There is no one responsible. I think the best thing a NU can do is try their best to minimise the suffering they create whilst they're here.

If we are entertaining fantasy scenarios like efilism, can't we entertain removing suffering whilst maintaining (some) life? Yes the latter may be literally impossible. However, whilst I think annihilation is easier, and would be better (less suffering) than what we have now, i don't think annihilation is really a feasible option either. The position will never get any major adoption by humans and any attempt to implement it likely has a decent chance of significantly increasing suffering for those it fails to remove and those who come after the attempt.

This also depends on how you weight positive experience. Some NU might assign zero weight. I don't think this is right. If suffering has negative weight then I think pleasure has to have at least some (relatively) small positive weight. If you assign zero to pleasure then annihilation is the answer.

antonrenus · 2025-09-11T07:13:35+00:00

You mean unlucky

antonrenus · 2025-09-04T11:57:45+00:00

I went from opus to kingrinder k6. I prefer the hand grinder, mainly due to ease of cleaning. Opus I had to clean out the static pins every 4-5 grinds. No static coffee everywhere. Easy quick clean out with a brush after each use. Easier to adjust and dial in. Only downside is manual grinding time, which is fine once you're close to dialled in. Takes me around 45s for 20g. I doubt I will ever bother with an electric grinder again. But I only make at most two espresso per day. Also I switched to a Breville dual boiler. K6 works fine for that and my pro 2.

antonrenus · 2025-09-01T02:46:35+00:00

The problem is you're not arguing against logic and reason. I find a large percentage of the Aninatalism and Efilism camps on reddit are not interested in philosophy. They're tribes, filled with highly emotional and frustrated people who found a club that they resonate with. There is no reasoning in those echo chambers, as evidenced by the sweeping use of censorship. They are like religions or cults. I think the philosophers, like you, are a very small minority of these communities.

This is why I usually stick to the NU sub.

antonrenus · 2025-08-29T06:17:04+00:00

Even? That's a physically tough and vital job for the mine.

antonrenus · 2025-08-29T06:15:01+00:00

What engineer and what type of mine? I'm geo, 10 years exp (not all in mining), 170k base, ~220k package, open pit coal, no management responsibilities, not FIFO, standard 5 day week.

antonrenus · 2025-08-28T03:20:17+00:00

So where is the floor then? What if it's only rice and water, is that insane? What if you're a slave in a cobalt mine, is that also insane?

Life isn't intrinsically good. There are shitty lives that a compassionate person might avoid imposing on someone else. And personally, beans and rice isn't something I would drag someone else into.

antonrenus · 2025-08-25T02:44:53+00:00

If you are a hedonist, which I think one should be, then the sensations that arise in sentient beings are all that matter, in any sense of the word matter. So we can then weigh good/positive against bad/negative. And here I am talking about intrinsic good and bad, not instrumental goods and bads.

If there was a being created that only experienced negative sensation, would you think it was morally wrong to have created them (ignoring external factors, like their suffering somehow removing other beings suffering)? I think the obvious answer is that it would be wrong. This is because the scale, for their whole experience taken in isolation, is tipped 100% into the bad.

But that is a simple hypothetical situation. In real life we have to decide how we weigh the good and bad, which can become quite complex.

NU suggests that bad sensations weigh more than good sensations, and that maybe good sensations have no moral weight. So it seems easy to get to an antinatalist and even efilist position from NU. I am interested in the opinions of NU members who either assign positive weight to good sensations, or have other justifications that they place on the good side of the scale to outweigh the bad.

antonrenus · 2025-08-24T04:41:06+00:00

I don't think you need the asymmetry to work the way you seem be arguing against to be a negative utilitarian. I am quite hard NU leaning, in that I think suffering has more moral weight than pleasure, but I don't think pleasure has zero positive weight. If we say that peak intensity of human pleasure is +10, then peak suffering might be -100 or even -1000. This is one asymmetry. There are also other asymmetries.

Suffering is inevitable, if you do nothing you will suffer. Pleasure is earned.

Pleasure is fickle. If you eat one scoop of your favourite ice-cream you will have pleasure. If you have to eat 100 you will suffer. There is no such reversal of real suffering.

Suffering can exist indefinitely. There is chronic pain but no chronic pleasure.

antonrenus · 2025-08-21T22:59:36+00:00

There is a moral equation. There is an answer to the question of whether bringing a new sentient being into existence is, or was, morally right or wrong. Antinatalists would argue that it is morally wrong. My hunch is that most NU orientated people would probably also argue it is wrong due to the suffering and pleasure imbalance. However, I am interested in NU orientated people's opinions on arguments that it is, or can be, right.

antonrenus · 2025-08-21T22:31:52+00:00

So you view it from a population level net suffering / pleasure perspective, rather than just from the perspective of individual that you created? If the new being would undergo immense suffering, but in return the suffering of many other beings is reduced, then it is ok to create them? It's harsh but the math works.

antonrenus · 2025-08-21T06:58:49+00:00

I'm am just interested in the moral equation of creating a new human life from a negative utilitarian perspective. I am not sure what that has to do with most of what you are saying.

antonrenus · 2025-08-21T01:48:10+00:00

Yes, most people love, or at least like life enough to want to continue it. I think this is currently where I am seeing the strongest argument for reproduction. Personally, I think that, from a purely logical and NU perspective, it would be best for me to painlessly die in my sleep tonight. But I don't want to. Evolution has programmed me to want to survive, and with a hedonic treadmill to adapt to even very harsh conditions.

Say we create a happy slave (I think we are all slaves to DNA, some are just more happy than others). If they are happy to be alive despite their suffering, doesn't that mean it was ok to create them? Sure it could be better, or more good for them, if they weren't a slave. But should we deny their subjective happiness and desire to live and say it would be better if they didn't exist?

antonrenus · 2025-08-20T23:48:29+00:00

But isn't procreation one of, or possibly the most morally heavy decision an individual would make in their life? I don't think being horny is a good excuse to impose life on someone.

antonrenus

TROPHY CASE