#148 

I've listened to this interview literally 10 times at least over the last few months. David Benatar is a privileged philosophical mind. Thank you, Ricardo, for having him on.

Benatar = FACTS!

A Portuguese host with a Russian accent. Rather intriguing. Thanks for the interview.

thanks for bringing prof. Benatar!

The right to live or die in my view, should always been a personal one. The world resources are colapsing out of lack of planning for future generations survival. We live in almost total denial regarding food, water, clean air, preservation of nature,, personal security, social justice, etc, etc . I crossed the half century age and since age 12, I have been thinking about all this topics and have always been impressed in a bad way by the indiference shown by the majority of people i met and specially when questioning about the bringing more children to the so self destructive world question. The decisions against euthsnasia, abortion, suicide , natal control, etc are usually made wirhout reflexion, based on traditional values, for any social pressure that must be accepted just to please another people interests... To sum up! After seeing so many unhappy children and parents, the nature suffering so much to keep our nonsense reproduction all over the planet, so many people having excruciating pain as a result of a cruel diasese as cancer, just because they are not allowed to use euthanasia, all in life sometimes sounds completelly insane. That is why i am glad to have found Dr. David Bennatar work and congratulate his courage!

This was a good conversation, I enjoyed the interview

I felt nothing but depression my entire life. I am a example as to why people shouldn’t fucking gamble with peoples welfare!!!!!

videos like this are so life saving! I feel sane because people in my life never have these conversations, you start to think you are going crazy

I'm biased by "the way I'm in the world". But I find Benatar's argument to be bullet-proof. A pity that it comes to late to influence my parents' behavior.

When a cat is dying it literally will go lay down somewhere and just let itself pass away slowly.

The absence of Good is not ''anything'', unless there is an agent to experience it.

I wish I knew this before reproducing.

Antinatalism not only save the victims from the pain of heinous crimes but also the culprits from the punishment of these crimes be that on earth or in hell. It not only save the people from all physical and mental health problems but also the pain and guilt their parents might carry from their mistakes

At first I thought the host was purposely doing an over the top Russian accent, but then I realized, nono he’s Portuguese. Thank you for the video by the way.

Someone (not me lol) please show this to all those women who are sad at not having had kids.

Good interview

Amazing interview, I enjoyed it a lot. And I like the accent!

Wow, thanks for sharing this, and being brave enough to talk about this in modernity. First objection - understandable, and a common one: It's "Saying that life is bad is a bias too." This is simply the tu quo que fallacy as a counterexample, and is irrelevant to the fact that it's bad. Antinatalism as described by Benatar is not simply: "life is bad." I'm going to continue listening. Fascinating and excellent questions, thank you again.

Why can't more people think like him.Iam sure this people love pain and boredom. My whole life has been a negative experience and restrictions

Setting the antinatalist argument to one side , it is very good that Professor Benatar mentions the over population problem , particularly with regard to the resources people in the developed world use compared to the developing world . I have been involved in Green issues for 40 years and back then population issues were top of the agenda . For some reason about 25 years ago it started to be non PC to talk about overpopulation . It is generally said that people in the developed world use 30 times the earth's resources compared to those in the developing world . In the UK you probably have people at one end of the economic spectrum who use 100 times the resources and at the other end many people who use less resources than wealthy elites in developing countries . I suspect that many of the people who lecture us on ecological issues are at the higher end of the resources spectrum - so please may they be introspective and realize that they are part of the problem , not the solution ( particularly when they fly by private jet to some ' green ' conference ) 🕊️

47:30 really interesting example on enduring pain

Thanks, Colin Feltham is another one you can look at, although he is no academic.

Wow very interesting and beautiful ❤

I find Antinatalism internally consistent in its logic, but only if one is willing to accept the following four premises: 1) Atheism - there is nothing that transcends life and suffering - no higher sense, no god 2) Asymmetry of pleasure and suffering: the sum of suffering always or largely exceeds by far the sum of pleasure - Or how Schopenhauer has put it "Llife is a business that does not cover its costs" 3) Negative utilitarianism - the view that we should minimize the total amount of suffering in the world 4) The assumption of a finite world - only in a finite world with a finite number of possible formations of lifes, the total amount of suffering can be limited by not giving birth, otherwise, in an infinite world, the total amount of suffering would also be infinite, whether we give birth or not If - and only if - one embraces all of this premises the logical conclusion is Antinatalism.

My mom already had two kids why the fuck would she pop out a third. Life is suffering simple as that. The positive in the universe is the misery and pain you feel. That’s what matters in life on this planet!!!

His accent was getting on my nerves but once I got over that I thought it was an interesting interview with relevant questions

What about Hell? I feel like pessimist atheist philosophers have no fear of it. If there's no life after death, then life is ultimately pointless and nothing really matters in the final analysis. If there's a bad life after death, then that's even worse. Now I go to Church and pray 5 hours a day.

It is a serious arm

Crazy

David is saying that ALL conscious experience should not be caused, and would have been better to not have ever had conscious experience in the universe. So you-no matter who you are-could ask him, "should I have a kid?". Without taking anything into consideration, David's answer is always "No". In other words, instead of using the words "life", "pregnant", "birth"... We can switch out those words for one word: "Bad". So it's utterly pointless to bring up the differences and varieties of the kinds of individual lives that exist. Because, David's view is that life= bad. Sure, some people have it worse than others, but that's irrelevant for what David is saying. If David could have it his way, there wouldn't be a single consciousness in the entire universe. But this leads us into the discussion of something called "Generic Subjective Continuity". For Benatar's antinatalism to make sense, there'd have to be an alternative to conscious experience. Something akin to being able to experience your own lack of consciousness while under general anesthesia.... Or to appreciate your own lack of existence after death, or before you existed... This is what philosopher Tom Clark called "positive nothingness" in his essay "Death, Nothingness and Subjectivity". ... The thing is... Only experience is experienced, and so there's no escaping experience. Think about it. Do you experience periods of time when you're unconscious? No. From consciousness' point of view, all periods of unconsciousness are always skipped over. You also didn't experience all of the billions of years you didn't exist, and _you_ won't experience your lack of existing after death. But this is where is gets complicated. Was there experience before you were born? Yes, there was. There was the conscious experiences of all of the living people and animals all over the world. In each of those skulls there was experience occuring. If you're a naturalist, then you (most likely) believe that consciousness is a function of the brain. We can say, "brains _do_ consciousness", just as we can say legs walk. So, yes, there was most certainly experience before you were born; before _this_ particular consciousness started. You were not in a persistent state of non-existence, or some sort of ongoing silent, sightless, thoughtless state, occuring in a black void, or "peaceful oblivion", or "nothingness". You simply didn't exist. So let's think about death for a moment. If death= non-existence, then let's ask ourselves, "what ended that non-existence?" The answer is, the birth of a living sentient body known as a "baby". Just another baby born in the universe. That is when "you" began. So you have to see yourself as just another body. Just another baby. Or just another brain doing consciousness. Now let's ask, "will babies be born after I no longer exist?" Yes, we know baby humans and animals will be born after you, I, and everyone we know dies. So how is that (babies being born after you don't exist) any different than your birth causing _this_ experience, this consciousness? You didn't exist, but then a baby was born, and so the birth of a baby is what's responsible for _this_ experience. Will babies be born after this life ends? Yes. So we can conclude that death-being the same as "non-existence before birth"-will _also_ be followed by a life, just as non-existence before birth was followed by a life (the one that's reading this right now). You have to see yourself as just another life. And know that there will literally be lives after this one ends, because we know babies will be born after this life ends. "Life goes on". This is what atheist/naturalist philosopher Tom Clark calls _Generic Subjective Continuity_ ... There's no continuation of the consciousness that's reading this right now, but there will continue to be consciousness done by other brains. And so if you were never born, then you wouldn't be in some state of deprivation or "oblivion", etc. But there would be experience, because we know there was experience before this one. So-in this way-experience is inescapable. So if Benatar seeks to spare us from conscious experience, then his pursuits are futile. Only experience is experienced, no matter the source of that experience. The best we can do is try to improve this place...

About suicide - It usually violates the suffering prevention ethic for other people. It causes anguish to others (family and friends) plus treats with contempt the love others have for them; and also or if they cannot prevent further suffering of others if they are dead. Discounting anguish as severe as others experience due to a close one's suicide opens the door to trivializing still strong but unmistakably less severe emotional anguish of others (harassment, vandalism, theft, assault and battery, etc). Others feelings are at least as important as your own, and in some cases even more so. So the least bad thing is to endure life and in the meantime do what we can to relieve suffering of others. Needless to day, I think the right of individual autonomy does have limits (denying those limits is a justification for chaos, destruction, and selfishness - i.e. the worst sense of anarchy).

Has anyone ever dared to call you Benatal??

Why is Anti Natalism only for humans? If life is suffering and we do not want other beings to experience it then we should not be selfish and only practice it in our own species, but to assert it to other species as well. (I dont agree with Anti Natalism btw)

43:10 suicide

Maybe I’m missing something, but his asymmetrical argument seems obviously wrong. It hinges on the 'fact' that the absence of pain is good and the absence of pleasure is not bad, and therefore, when you deprive someone of both pain and pleasure (by depriving them of life) there is a net good. But who is it good or bad for? Good has to mean 'good for a purpose' or 'beneficial', good is always measured relative to a goal. So I don't see a goal, unless he believes that there is a god who's goal is to amass a bigger and bigger pile of good. It can't be good for the person that didn't live, because they don't exist. You can represent good as a number greater than 1, and bad as a decimal between zero and one. The bigger the number the more beneficial, the smaller the more bad. Then multiply the number by the number of people that it effects. So if one person is affected, and the action produces goodness of level 1.2 then total good is 1 x 1.2 = 1.2 (you have been improved by the goodness.) Alternatively, when a bad thing happens 1 x 0.8 = 0.8, your status is diminished by the badness. If more than one person is effected by the event then 20 x 1.2 = 24, the total amount of improvement can be calculated. But if nobody(or nothing) is effected by a good then 0 x 1.2 = 0, and the total amount of good in the system has not increased. Therefore, his asymmetrical system is wrong on two counts: 1) The total good in the system has not increased. 2) Even if it had increased, nobody would benefit from the increase except for a god who loves to increase the size of his pile of good.

But... but... hasn't he heard of JESUS?? Surely, JESUS can change his mind! The idea is: you suffer through decades of drudgery, but THEEEEN after you die, then you get rewarded - because you'll be in Heaven! And Heaven is pretty great, folks! 👍☁

Abortion 41:37

If I'm understanding him correctly, he is saying that if a person would have lived an extremely good life, and the only bad thing that ever happened to them was that they fell over and scratched their knee once, then it is better that they never have lived, because missing out on all the good counts for nothing and missing out on the scratched knee counts as a good. Surely this is madness! Surely you would have to take into account the ratio of good versus bad? And even if the bad outweighed the good by 51% to 49%, I don't think that's a good argument for saying it is better that the person not exist. Maybe 75% bad to 25% good would be a stronger case for non-existence. I feel like there is an important explanation missing from this whole discussion. "Better to have never lived" - better for who or what? Coming into existence is a harm to who? He admits that the ecological argument is not the main argument.

How the hell you know if someone is born..it will become a disaster ???? Are you a disaster??? Why are u married?? Are you god??

My mind and heart can't understand the central point of his arguments. I think he gives too much moral weight to cancelling suffering, and from his choice of words I imagine he also devalues pleasure, and the pleasures that suffering can bring ;) I mean look at some people who enjoy eating peppers or doing marathons. The point of life isn't to end pain, there's way more to it. Also from a more practical perspective it's much better to try and create conditions so people have more meaningful lives than just telling them to stop reproducing. It's even futile since their abscence will give more space for other people to continue the evil cycle of torture. You could try to have children and teach them good values so they can make a more pleasant world, or you could just let cruel people who make other lives shit get and advantage and thrive.

I also think that it is inconsistent to treat unborn lives differently to people who are already born. If he was consistent, he would have already committed suicide (I don’t think he should do that, I think he should change his beliefs about life, and maybe get some therapy.) I had to laugh out loud when you asked him to provide empirical evidence to support his claim that, on average, there is more bad in life than good, and he gave as one example, the fact that if we use the scale from one second to eternity, to measure how long a human life is, that it is much, much closer to zero than to eternity! Man, that is some serious pessimism! You should have asked him if he suffers from depression, and if so, whether he thinks that affects his outlook on life and his ability to be objective.

God gave every human a chance to live and according to his her situation and deeds they ll enter either hell or Paradise. Prophets are from Adam Noah Abraham Moses Jacob Joseph Jesus and the Last prophet is Muhammed prayers be upon them with four books zabour on abraham old testament on moses Bible on Jesus and all derived the last original version is Quoran it dares any one to find the minimum fault in it

So why dont you start stop existing to proof its work?

I love the channel. Dislike the subject. I struggle with this nihilist way of seeing the miracle life is. I'm not religious. I have a nephew with this views and we spend hours around it. Humans are not only a biological shell. Consciousness is a misterious thing. I am sure, for my experience, that people who defend this are very unhappy, depressed people. No hope, no dreams. They have a dislike for something that is good. With ups and downs, after all we live in a dualistic universe. It's misanthropy. Why not leave then? Why wouldn't they kill themselves? Because has I have seen so many times the majority of humans when times comes they want just one more week, one more day. See one more sunrise. The survival instinct is a powerful force.