Carl-Richard

If reincarnation works like an assembly line where souls choose an available body, then your contribution as a single anti-natalist doesn't matter at all. You would have to stop all people from giving birth.

But should you expect humans who were born into an unethical situation to act perfectly ethically?

And Advaita says 1=2

Religious texts are resources to learn from. Find what resonates with you. If it doesn't resonate, throw it away.

I wish I had found meditation before high school and not straight after

Shame, despair, disappointment, fear. Where is the courage? The love?

And I would also say that you're also only thinking about the child, but in a different sense. Because once we stop having children, the amount of lives you're going to put through a 100% certainty of hell is certainly not ethically neutral. Once you run out of young people, you're stuck with a bunch of lonely and helpless old people in a collapsing society. The last person that will ever be born will experience a life only describable as death and decay. So which one do you value more: personal consent or global suffering?

In fact, I think anti-natalism taken to its ultimate conclusion is unethical, because it's ultimately anti-life, and ethics is about figuring out how to live a good life.

Nope. I was only pointing out how the idea that you need someone's personal permission to justify bringing that person into life, while it's indeed virtuous, is likewise born out of selfishness.

When did I say humans aren't selfish?

There is no justification for life. Life is life. Only humans need justifications for things, because they're selfish. What if for there to be something greater than your selfish little self, you must sacrifice something? What if for there to be anything at all, there must be something that is unjust?

Anti-natalism is like being forced to go to a dinner party with your parents, getting served free food and cake, and then after you've eaten the cake, you decide that it was unethical because you didn't like the vegetables.

Children are the only thing that makes the world not awful.

And what do you mean by that?

Don't just assume what he means by computation.

What do you mean by compute? It's able to move around and solve problems like finding food. Human intelligence is just a complex version of that.

How does that work?

Don't derail the thread with nonsense.

What is a high value woman?

Why?

Not really, but I've lost interest in them. Hanging out with stoners is like hanging out with grandmas.

Why is this the conversation? ?

Definitions assign meaning. Their main duty is a precise language and clear communication.

Intellectuals in particular often deal with concepts that are not in the dictionary, or again, their use is much more specific, have different interpretations, or they mean something else entirely than the dictionary definitions. The best example of this is the word "consciousness". It can mean anything from phenomenal consciousness (the usual mystical definition; phenomenal qualities), intentionality (conscious private inner life), meta-cognition (self-reflective capacity), responsiveness (as opposed to unresponsiveness due to e.g. acute head injury), wakefulness (as opposed to sleep), etc.

Do you agree or disagree with some of the arguments?