An archive of every known David Benatar interview in audio format on the subject of antinatalism, except the ones the owners didn't give permission to re-upload yet.
I'm seventy in a couple of weeks and I still maintain that 'life is a bleeping poop and then you die'. I believe that is some kind of 'prison sentence' which is why I have stopped trying to 'commit suicide' - I recovered from one that was so bad I spent 18 months as an 'in patient in a psych ward' with a 'section threat' hanging over my head.
1) It seems to me that anti-natalism takes individualism to the extreme. For example, people inevitably need caregivers as they get older. A civilization running under an anti-natalist paradigm will inevitably run out of caregivers, thus increasing the suffering of those needing care as they age. Yet we are to disregard these aging people's collective suffering in favor of preventing the potential suffering of those who already exist and will actually suffer. It's like recognizing on one hand people's interest in continuing to live while ignoring that living long enough inevitably means depending on others who must, in turn, exist to be depended upon. 2) The objection to arithmetically comparing good and bad seems sound to me. I have experienced good that I would never have experienced had I been given the option to avoid it, and even though the bad I would've avoided simultaneously occurred, the experience of the good made the experience of the bad seem far more trivial that my simple calculations would've suggested. I can only reason that my ignorance prevented me from calculating rightly...and who has more ignorance than one who has yet to exist?
This made me think of another solution to the fermi paradox. All the other intelligent life out there wasnt dumb enough to perpetuate their own torture like we are.
The fact that Jordan Peterson got completely outclassed by a very average philosopher defending one of the weakest, most logically incoherent philosophy's out there in "Antinatalism" is a real testament to just how overrated this guy actually is. This debate should have been akin to hitting a softball off a tee, and instead Jordan slipped in dog shit and wound up flat on his back. Total pseudo-intellectual who can't string two logically coherent thoughts together, but rather meanders around with gobbledegook rhetoric and tangential reasoning.
This is pointless to listen to : Benatar : Life is suffering and pain is bad therefore having kids is bad Jordan Peterson: Just playing semantic games for the rest of the conversation
Jordan Peterson is a hypocrite. If he was in severe chronic pain and if a crystal ball and he knew that he would be in severe pain for the rest of his life he would kill himself in a second . He just thinks its okay to bring OTHER people into existence.
From the Hindu perspective, the "I am" or Self is ever-existing. And your core nature is the same as this. So, you never really came into being or disappear forever. You merely take on various states, attach to it, call yourself as "David Benatar" and experience the senses from the body-mind's nervous system. You can make a case that the human existence is net-suffering, the Buddha did say that too, and that the void-state devoid of pleasure and pain is "superior" to existing within duality. The whole goal of Hinduism and Buddhism is to be freed from the duality. However, for the western mind, where such a Self doesn't exist, and only the material complex exists, the idea of antinatalism makes a bit of sense. However, from nature's perspective, beings will forever be born, unless you figure out a way to nuke the planet into a state where no bacteria or amoeba exists and there's nothing to prevent life from coming into existence again in this planet later or elsewhere in the universe. I think the act of anti-natalism is pretty futile if it's purpose is to prevent suffering. Perhaps it's ok as an individal philosophy, and indeed, Indian philosophy sees great merit in renounciation/sannyasa, freed from the attachment to familial life, but this doctrine i not applicable for the whole of society.
i was really hoping someone like peterson would be able to give some good pronatalist arguments (one argument would be good enough for me). is there someone here who can perhaps give one?
Come on man, don't draag abortion into this :( David has said over and over this is regarding reproduction beforehand with your partner and considering suffering of your hypothetical offspring. His ideas don't apply to ppl who already exist as they have additional reasons to consider such as continuing to exist. Okbye
Can't we do an exit poll and see which one humans prefer? "Did you enjoy your life enough to stay in it or was there enough pain that you wouldn't wish it on anyone?" I think humans wouldn't exist if we followed the poll.
1:29:02 Bloody hell 😟 This alone would drive anyone who is sane straight into clinical depression. None of you know what being alive means, let alone love Life. The options presented here are either hate existence itself or continue being tortured by morons who believe that living is a slow agony that one must embellish with lies. Both of you are beyond disrespectful, callous, and frankly put, wilfully stupid (which, in my books, is the definition of evil), denying that LIFE is a gift. A gift which, like love, has been refused by the world created by you and those like you. This explains the utterly destructive cults of death and suffering- be them religions or the anti- human obsession with technology. Fuck this shit 😄
1:10:47 Well, well, well 😃 Who would have thought this point would be raised? Read the UK law and caselaw. It’s very clear (unless one of the Judges who don’t deserve that title made a new idiotic precedent). I have lost faith in the Judicial system after 2020 when some criminal idiots ruled that it was in the best interest of elderly lacking mental capacity to be injected with an experimental drug. Also, I remember no Judge raising questions about the legality of everything that happened during the Covid crisis (or afterwards, for that matter). All just sat on their arses looking at how UK was going to shit. Fucking Justices, you are full of lice of injustice underneath your wigs. Disgusting. And you wonder why I feel the way I feel…
1:03:38 *Peterson finally loses it* 😃 He resisted for one whole hour which is highly commendable. Nay, a miracle. My patience with this shit would not have lasted beyond 20 min tops.
1:00:59 Peterson, you, clown! Hasn’t The Divine created existence itself and human life as gifts this world constantly shits on? LIFE. That is the default position. Full LIFE. Proper LIFE. Not a life of suffering drugged with this or that ideology, but effort to maximise and fully enjoy LIFE. Happiness is not stupid hedonism. The sheer Beauty of LIFE that was supposed to be enjoyed. Why the hell are you so adverse to the idea? Keep your sadomasochism to yourself, ‘Hero’. You have the right to be happy, but suit yourself, Mr Misery Guts. Your intelligence is wasted on you.
1:00:11 Logic is not your strongest point, mate. If you say that, you posit that life/ living even when suffering is preferable to death/non- existence, thus you destroy your own argument. Perhaps I am the stupid one and cannot see the difference between pre- existence logic and post- existence logic. 😧 But, hey, human logic is strange as they cannot do anything but say ‘nothingness is’. That, in itself, should indicate that being and living are- and should remain- the default position.
58:13 No. You don’t have any right to euthanise anyone. At the same time, if they have mental capacity to make decisions about ending their life, you have no right to intervene. It’s their life, not yours, and they have the right to make decisions that you consider unwise. Do I believe that it would have been better if they had not been born? No, I definitely do not believe that. Life is a chance at living and developing own’s potential to the maximum natural extent. There are individual factors that prevent that from happening, but there are social, cultural, and economic factors that make it impossible. We are responsible for each other, so don’t make life an utter hell for others, then blame someone who kills him/herself. How much of that was cowardice or weakness (including weakness of character)? How much was due to social illness and evil that you could have at least tried to remedy? One can never be sure, therefore you must at least try not to make it worse for them. Fight injustice. Do something to make this bloody world a better place. You could start by stopping telling lies.
56:48 What’s with amputating the child’s leg? It’s true, mate, that you don’t have a leg to stand on in this discussion, but still… it’s randomly morbid.
46:07 Yes, we do. Like LIFE. Mind you, I am talking about LIFE, not the shit you call ‘life’ that is antithetical to LIFE. There is an important distinction. I am in love with LIFE which, by the way, extends beyond physical death. Dignity, freedom, correctly balanced rights and responsibilities, sane meaning, respect- all that has become a joke in this world. Yes, I am naive. Yes, I am idealistic. And I will be damned if I will change that about me or compromise just to survive.
44:57 So, you would go back in time and prevent humans from existing altogether rather than fighting injustice. Ladies and gentlemen, please enlighten me why are all insane people allowed to air and potentially spread their psychopathological stupidity? Fuck ‘free speech’ if this is what it means. If only one person falls for this, you have committed a crime against humankind.
44:26 This is the perfect illustration where the stupidity these two share (albeit in different ways) turns into evilness. So, injustice has been done to people and you advise them to think of spreading the light in the dark corners of a prison and/or pray in gratitude to a fucking god, instead of apprehending the real criminals and burning their prisons to the ground. Stupidity is NEVER benign.
37:35 I would have asked this philosopher a straightforward question. Live. At this point in the interview. ‘If it were in your power, would you go back in time and prevent Peterson’s daughter from being born?’ Moron. That would have been the end of this interminable tedious and pointless conversation (pointless because he does not listen and would not be convinced by any argument- hell, he bypasses common nonsense, so there is no hope in hell for him).
33:40 Peterson, I told you not to bring your family life into the public arena. How can you stand your daughter’s life being used as an example by morons? Anyway, you brought it up so I will make reference to it. Do you believe in the spiritual value of suffering? You do because you are obsessed with christ archetype. Then, why did you take your daughter to the doctors? (Thank goodness for that! You may be philosophically deluded but at least you’re a good Dad). Because you know that suffering is BAD and we should do our best to reduce it. OK. But, then, why do you carve crosses and sell them with a dose of stupid bullshit, to your audience? The honest position would be, in my opinion, something like this- Natural life is. With good things and bad things. If we live it properly, we don’t suffer, we live fully. The vast majority of causes for suffering are social, economic, and cultural. These must be addressed. Now. Think of those who are powerless in the society (the literally poor elderly, people with disabilities, etc). What can we do for them? Fuck Jung, man. There is stuff to be done. It adds to my despair-m. If you who are intelligent and maybe- just maybe, to give you the benefit of the doubt because I’m stupidly naive- are well intended do this, how much more all morons who have zero insight and zero willingness to do something? You make me feel so hopeless, man. You really do.
29:08 And whose fault is that, mate? Yours, because you cannot be arsed to at least try to make this world a better place and eliminate the causes of unnatural suffering. Not that Peterson were arsed to do that, either, with his obsession of suffering as necessary. You both are against LIFE, actually, just in different ways.
26:28 ‘So, you are a hedonist’. What the fuck just happened? 😳 Where did that come from? This is the point where my brain freezes for a moment because it is desperately trying to understand. But there is nothing to understand. Stupidity is infinite and unfathomable. It’s quite fascinating to observe, actually. For me to come up with such idiocies it would exhaust my brain, creative as I am.
25:35 Peterson, you are a patient man. I will have terminated the conversation long before this point. There is no point in trying to argue with fools. He must be intelligent enough to understand formal logic, but he is 100% determined to be right. He’s not even listening to what you have to say. This is just one of the reasons for my despair. Despair is the right word to describe what I have felt as a result of my encounters with humans. Sheer hopelessness and despair.
19:33 *Peterson groaning in frustration with that chap’s sheer stupidity* I feel your pain. I really do. And that is my point. Life is. Just is. The suffering is caused by the effects of human stupidity, not by physical causes. I can stand physical pain, but I cannot stand human idiocy that causes me pain. I can manage things that are genuinely unavoidable, but the effects of human stupidity could- and should- have been prevented. It’s one thing to suffer because one has a chronic health condition that cannot be medically addressed and there is a completely different thing to suffer because the doctors are fucking incompetent morons who don’t give a shit about patients.
16:17 *Christ* ‘What do you mean “No”? Jesus Christ, Jordan, you break my heart! I thought you loved me. Am I not having a spiritual orgasm of cosmic proportions whilst enduring suffering?’ *proceeds by lecturing Peterson on the pain/pleasure neurological paths. With a sprinkle of Jung to make it more palatable*
12:36 Ethical, you say. Ethical. Who the fuck is bothered by ethics? Let’s test and experiment on naive subjects. Fucking tell me it is not so. I dare you.
9:53 Why not, Peterson? Why should we not operate with a utilitarian, quantitative measure? You’re like- statistic distribution of this and that, statistics show, and all that mathematical model applied to human beings. Quantify the hell out of life.
7:26 As I was saying… I do have a problem with that claim. This will be a debate between an animal and a suffering servant of Jung. I have to wholeheartedly quote Zizek ‘I hate life’.
6:36 Mate, I don’t know who the hell you are, but I know this much. If it were up to you, you would sterilise people with learning disabilities, would you not, given how stinking your argument brain fart is.
1:03 I haven’t even started to listen to this circus show (which is guaranteed given that Clown Peterson is in it), and I am wondering whether I should waste time by listening to a conversation around such crap model. Is life reducible to pleasure/pain dyad? Are humans just animals?
