Antinatalism - A conversation with Professor David Benatar by AUGUST LEO LILJENBERG 

David benatar is a gem of our era ..

Thank you so much for sharing this video. 🧡

By the way, David Benatar has many interviews that are not posted on RU-vid. A quick google search will prove this. If you could upload some of them it would be great!

Life is funny and the joke is on mankind

where is benatar? hes not even in this vid. title is just a lie .

Thanks for posting this. I just found your channel. Please keep going. It's great. We need to decrease the number of kids born as much as possible!

❤

Please explain the last bit about the death of god philosophers? Thanks

Thought experiment: Imagine a universe completely devoid of life. But then a sentient being comes to exist. In this scenario, are there any "non-existent beings" actively being spared from the consciousness that exists? No, because there's no _they_ to refer to. There is conscious experience, it's just being done by that one living brain. No other beings exist in order to prevent that consciousness from being experienced. So, in this scenario, there's no avoiding the consciousness, because there's no you to avoid it. There's experience, and it's the only experience... There is no lack of experience. There is no "state of neutrality", or opposite that could be called "better" for you, because you don't exist in this scenario, and so instead of "your" life, it's this one and only life, because it's the only experience there is. There's no you to escape it. So... Had you not been born (in reality, here on Earth where billions of lives lived before you, and billions of lives will live after you) then instead of *this* life it'd be one of the lives that _exists_ , as opposed to a state of deprivation or neutrality. And so: If it isn't one life it's another - one that *does* exist.

12:42 No, they may have understood very well because to have an interest in continuing to exist would not override an _intelligent_ _(such as Benatar)_ person's insight that *every minute he continues to exist runs his balance further into the negative* which could _comparatively_ easily be avoided by committing suicide. And since Benatar must know this, I am certain that he is a dishonest person in that he doesn't really trust his own philosophy and yet spreads it. As much as I agree that the net pain in each existence is unfavorable to existing, Benatar's arguments are flawed in at least three ways I have mentioned before: 1. The asymmetry doesn't work: _for whom_ is the absence of pain good in case of a person that does not exist ? 2. He doesn't consider that not bringing a new being into existing might open up more room _for other beings_ to be brought into existence, so it might actually end up creating _more_ suffering, just somewhere else, unless he can make sure that no sentient life can rearise _anywhere_ ! 3. Generally, antinatalism suffers from the decisive weakness that it considers the fate *of the creature* subject to birth, suffering and death of exclusive relevance for the question whether births should take place. Even though I concur that *if* (!) we could prove that there are no concerns beyond this physical existence relative to which this physical existence, even though that is net suffering in itself, might serve an enhancing function of whatever sort *then* antinatalism holds true, I would want to emphasize that the mere fact that one has to be at the very least agnostic about such a potential purpose of a difficult existence for a higher meaning that we have to abstain from absolutizing antinatalism as if the condition (!) was already proven to be satisfied. 8:44 is a case in point: his argument is almost circular in this respect.