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SvetlanaButosky t1_j5kl3oi wrote

How can procreation be moral when existence is a huge trolley problem that nobody can agree to before birth?

I mean, its the trolley problem, somebody will suffer from terrible lives due to pure bad luck, its unpreventable, as long as people procreate, some will draw the shortest sticks. lol

So knowing that some will always live terrible lives, how is it moral to keep creating people and risk this?

Does this mean its always morally ok to let the trolley crush unlucky people in exchange for the "decent" lives of others? Is this imposed sacrifice morally coherent with our intuition?

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zaceno t1_j5me647 wrote

Your proposal hinges on the assumption that a “miserable life” is worse than no life at all. I’m not convinced that is true.

Also since we don’t remember anything from before we were born it’s possible we were all given a choice, but forget as we incarnate. Not arguing that is the case - just saying that would also be a way out of the dilemma.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j5ndg5r wrote

>I’m not convinced that is true.

Would most people trade their lives with these miserable lives? I'm talking about the worst prolonged suffering possible and most ended in agony, most are children, they dont get any "happy ending" for their terrible fate, its terribleness from birth till death, this is statistically undeniable and unpreventable for some.

Would you trade your life with them? If its that valuable?

>it’s possible we were all given a choice,

Eh, what? No offense, but absurd claim requires extraordinary proof.

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zaceno t1_j5nhq3l wrote

Didn’t claim pre-life choice is real - just a hypothetical possibility.

About trading my life: that’s not what I said. I would not trade my life against a miserable one, of course.

What I said was: perhaps having a bad life is better than never living at all.

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AnUntimelyGuy t1_j5on6d9 wrote

>What I said was: perhaps having a bad life is better than never living at all.

I am not the person you are responding to, but I think value judgments like this are entirely subjective. In this sense, OP can judge that a life is not worth living within her perspective, and you can judge that a life is worth living within your own. The person whose life is miserable can also judge whether his/her life is worth living or not. All of you can be correct in this manner.

It is important to me that people are also able to weave this subjectivism into their discourse. To recognize other people's values and desires as valid expressions, and not shut them down as unreasonable and wrong.

As before, this approach requires recognizing subjectivism with regard to reasons and values. I am rather extreme as I would be considered amoral to some (which is my own preference), and a moral relativist to others. My objective is to remove any unnecessary middlemen/intermediaries (e.g. moral obligations and experiences of external values) to expressing our cares and concerns.

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zaceno t1_j5oucd5 wrote

I fully agree with the subjectivity of evaluating the worth of living. Which is why I used the word “perhaps”. In fact in everything I wrote I was explicitly not expressing any personal beliefs or values. I was just offering some hypotheticals that could possibly invalidate/weaken the original argument (“procreation is immoral”)

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bradyvscoffeeguy t1_j5q1tgx wrote

I don't really understand how the trolley problem applies, could you explain? However your idea about miserable lives does play an important part in the anti-natalists' asymmetry argument (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetry_(population_ethics)).

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SvetlanaButosky t1_j5qfsor wrote

It means somebody will get crushed, horribly, slowly, painfully and then they die, no reward at the end of the struggle, except the release of death.

Not sure how else to explain it, lol.

As long as people exist, it will happen, so unless they dont exist, then it cant be solved.

So the question is about the morality of letting it happen because we are willing to sacrifice some people in exchange for the good lives of others.

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slickwombat t1_j5qhfr6 wrote

That's not the trolley problem. Here's an explanation of what that is.

The antinatalist version of the trolley problem would be whether it's permissible to impregnate someone if it led to five other people not being impregnated, or something.

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bradyvscoffeeguy t1_j5qjs6e wrote

Yeah so when you're talking about someone who doesn't yet exist, there aren't direct sacrifices, so I would reformulate what you are saying to something like this: "When choosing to reproduce, you are gambling on giving rise to a happy life at the risk of giving rise to a miserable one."

I don't know if this is exactly what you had in mind, but I suppose you could say that by making this gamble, you are making it on behalf of the person you are bringing into existence, and only they should have the moral authority to have made such an important choice. But we are happy to let parents make many decisions on behalf of their children, and don't give children any moral authority. And the non-existent can hardly make such a choice for themselves. Indeed, it is only after giving birth to and raising a child to adulthood that we give them their full rights and freedom of choice; prior to that important choices are made for them, and we find this acceptable.

An alternative approach is just to more straightforwardly argue that taking the gamble is ethically wrong because the possible bad outweighs the possible good. This is where you would do well to deploy an asymmetry argument. Check the link I sent you.

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