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Post by goz on Jan 29, 2018 2:47:22 GMT
Last time when asked about which mental illness I had, you didn't come up with any mental illness at all. So again, which mental illness and how are you qualified to diagnose remotely? I doubt you have a mental illness. I think you're an unhappy guy who has convinced yourself that your unhappiness isn't about you, but rather about the universe and the fundamental unfairness of humanity. But guess what? If you're unhappy, that's on you. Only you are ever going to be able to fix it. And you never will, until you accept that fact. This anti-natal absurdity isn't the explanation of your misery, it's a symptom of it. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps Mic just wants to be noticed and takes controversial and contrary stands on issues to feel clever and intellectual. I have however interacted with him for about a decade and he has recently become more radicalised to the extent that IMHO posting about either/or killing the entire human race/spraying contraceptives over a non-consenting world population, is starting to look far from normal and a manifestation of what could possibly be a range of pathological mental illnesses.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2018 3:04:59 GMT
The proportion who want to take their own lives is unknown. No, it isn't. It's the proportion who commit suicide, give or take a little. In fact if anything it's less than that, since most people who say they want to commit suicide, or try to commit suicide, don't actually want to commit suicide. They make the threat, and the attempt, in order to gain attention. Where is your evidence that most of the people who commit suicide did it unintentionally? But that's different from denying them a choice. If nobody existed, then there would be no choice, but there would be no problems to precipitate the need for a choice. Alright, we shit out torture victims. Is that any better? So the guy who shot his own face off and then had to live that way for the rest of his natural life just did it for attention, then? Doing something based on instinct is not a 'want'. Bacteria do things based on their genetic programming, but they don't have 'wants'. I put food in my mouth because I don't want to starve or be malnourished. So when I'm doing that, I'm staving off the harm of malnourishment. Evolutionary instinct does not yield desire that is the product of internal reflection. Unconscious people who have secured an exit bag to their head may rip off the bag when they are unconscious, as a reflex. Same thing with people who hang themselves start thrashing around after they've made the decision (even after they've lost consciousness), because the body is reflexively trying to stay alive. The instinct to survive doesn't have to be something that rises to the level of a conscious decision at all. Girls in Africa don't want to be genitally mutilated, but they go through with it anyway because they basically have to. Same thing with arranged marriage, being forced to stick with a religion that you don't believe in; or having your desires thwarted (including the desire to commit suicide) by a religion that you do believe in but are afraid of. Where is your data for this? Nope. Nobody, no matter how much they love life, would have been deprived of it had they never been born. And you could easily have been one of the people who had to be tortured to bring about the enjoyment of life to others, and it's likely your perspective would change were that to be the case. You're turning the results of what is effectively a lottery into a matter of deserve vs undeserve. And most people aren't given a straight choice over whether to commit suicide. They don't even give themselves that choice, because of social conditioning and their own instinctual fear of death, obligations to those around them, or some kind of delusion that there's something that might be waiting around the next bend even if things are oppressively miserable at the moment. Where's your data to show that most of the people who complete suicide didn't mean to - did Derek Acorah perform interviews with these dead people, or what? Where is your source? The number that you have quoted reflects, give or take, the number of completed suicides. I want the figures which include the disabled people who have absolutely no way of committing suicide, the convinced religious believers who would commit suicide, but sincerely believe that suicide is punishable by eternal torture from a malign deity, people who have made serious attempts to die but have failed due to unforeseen factors, people who are just not intelligent enough or haven't researched well enough to plan their suicide properly, people who didn't have access to any means to suicide, people who were physically restrained before it would be possible to make an attempt, etc. Please provide a direct source so that I can check that your quoted figure includes all of these contingencies. Then give me a direct link to the source for these figures, so that I can personally inspect them. People need to learn how to think. People will reject life via the same means via which they reject religion; through ability to reason. This is why suicide rates are notoriously higher amongst atheists than amongst the religious. That's disgustingly arrogant, along the same lines as the Tory rhetoric 'they're poor because they've chosen to be poor, and therefore they should never be helped'. And predictably enough the pro-natalist Pollyanna has to resort to personal insults. I haven't shared any details of my personal circumstances; and even if I were to be living the absolute life of Riley, that would not reflect negatively on my argument. If you don't exist, then you don't have any stakes in coming into existence...because you don't exist to have any interests in existing. Because the woman isn't making a choice that concerns only herself and her own future. She's deciding to impose a whole array of risks on someone else in the future without having the faintest knowledge of what the disposition of this person will be, let alone which of the potential harms will become actualised. There are some parents who carry the genes for some truly terrible disabilities, and it is known that these are highly likely to be passed on to their children. So I suppose you would think that it's completely the parents decision if they want to have 20 children, even if the probabilities are that 50% of these children will be afflicted with a terrible disability, such as the one in the link? www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2283218/Epidermolysis-Bullosa-Genetic-condition-called-butterfly-disease-means-skin-fragile-breaks-touch.htmlYeah, those people don't exist yet, so their future wellbeing isn't at all worth considering. Only the parents' unfettered right to have as many children as they can is worth considering, right? We can consider the future harms of people who will exist, because there's no problem needing to be fixed for non-existent people by bringing those people into the world, from the perspective of those who don't yet exist. Therefore the burden should be on the person taking the decision on the part of someone else as to why that person (as yet merely a hypothetical person) must come into existence. There is a greater obligation against doing harm (including such actions that are known to be highly risky, but not a guarantee of catastrophic harm) than there is to do good. Without prior consent, at least. The supposed benefits aren't sufficient on their own to overturn the considerations of the harm that will occur, because the hypothetical person is already in a state upon which there need be no improvement, and they do not have any desire for the 'good' which the parents believe that they are able to impart. Therefore the only judgement in respect to whether the 'benefits' are worth the harms that matters is the judgement of the person who does not yet exist. A judgement which cannot be obtained. Therefore, ethically, we must err on the side of doing no harm to obtain for that person an unneeded and undesired benefit. It does not imply anything of the kind. If there are no needs and no desires, then there are no needs nor desires that are going unmet. There's a reason that most rational people don't consider the barrenness of Mars to be a great tragedy; and it's because there are no Martians missing out on the benefits of existence. You might still wish that there were life on Mars, but that wish would be for your own benefit (you think it would be cool to meet extraterrestrial life), rather than because your heart is bleeding for the non-existent Martians. Determinism is not fatalism. What I want is for the course of determinism to be changed, and my actions here are done with the intention of being one of those causal factors. We can only know that an action is unavoidable in hindsight, so births that have already occurred were ones that could not have been prevented. But as deterministic agents ourselves, we tend to act in accordance with the changes that we would like to see, and in my case, fewer births would be that change. You can't choose not to choose, so therefore I'm doing what I am caused to do. If you're going on that argument, then we also shouldn't bother to do anything about climate change, or childhood poverty, or try to cure diseases, because all of cases in which people have been afflicted by these issues were predetermined to happen. You can be deeply discontented with life without being suicidal, and people who haven't been born are not discontented. But the non-existent people neither need, nor crave any improvement upon their present circumstances. Therefore there ought to be an exceedingly compelling reason for why they need to be brought into an existence where they are likely to be deprived of benefits, and feel harmed. I can't speak for what people's motivations are, so this could be true. But you can't bestow a benefit on someone who doesn't need to be benefitted, and whose situation could not be improved upon either in theory nor in practice. Hark; a strawman argument. I'm not concerned about anything on behalf of the non-existent. I'm concerned about the suffering of the people who will come into existence who needn't (from a moral, rather than deterministic perspective) have come into existence.
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Post by cupcakes on Jan 29, 2018 3:16:23 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2018 3:29:02 GMT
Where is your evidence that most of the people who commit suicide did it unintentionally? I made no such claim. But no better. Nope. It's really not that hard. Keep trying, I'll let you know when you get it right. Nope. But he certainly does want to live. Or else he would be dead. Yes, it is. That has nothing to do with it. And what you just described is wanting to eat. It does, but it actually doesn't matter if it a product of internal reflection. It's still a want. Beside the point. Puh leese. Go ask anybody who works with suicidal people. I've known several. It's one of the most basic facts of the profession. Again : if you make this argument then you also must admit that hypothetical future suffering need not be considered, and you've once again destroyed your own argument. [/span] [/quote]Such choices are not "given". They exist. That is the only figure that matters. The rest is irrelevant. No, people already know how to think. I'm all for people learning how to think more rationally, though. Including you. No, I have made no insult. I've merely stated the plain fact that you do not want to die, not really. Irrelevant. Her body, her choice. If it has consequences for others, too bad. Correct. Again, you can only do this by destroying the premise of your own argument. Sure it does. Well that is by definition impossible, so end of discussion, really. I'm not. That was YOUR argument, not mine. I'm merely pointing out your hypocrisy. So, to summarise : there's no argument in favour of anti natalism that stands up to the basic facts, or any kind of rational argument. I am curious, though. You understand that this argument is never, ever going to carry the day, right? People don't simply "want" to reproduce; for most people it's a very strong desire, strong enough that many regard it as the basic purpose of their lives. So... outside of just throwing this oh-so-edgy viewpoint around, is there anything you particularly want to DO about it? Is there anything you think you actually COULD do?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2018 3:46:27 GMT
Last time when asked about which mental illness I had, you didn't come up with any mental illness at all. So again, which mental illness and how are you qualified to diagnose remotely? That is patently not true. I came up with depression, psychosis, sociopathy and psychopathy in my opinion, all with a basis in you also being on the Aspergers scale. You didn't mention depression or psychosis in your previous messages, and none of the other 3 are mental illnesses.
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Post by goz on Jan 29, 2018 3:54:37 GMT
That is patently not true. I came up with depression, psychosis, sociopathy and psychopathy in my opinion, all with a basis in you also being on the Aspergers scale. You didn't mention depression or psychosis in your previous messages, and none of the other 3 are mental illnesses. Yes, I have, though not in the recent one. I have previously over ten years on MANY occasions speculated on those mental illnesses. BTW define mental illness. Hey Mic. Answer me this hypothetical proposition. Given the means and opportunity to with no repercussions 1) sterilise everyone ( or at least all females or all males) on earth 2) kill every human and/or sentient being on earth Would you? One or sequentially both?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2018 4:43:06 GMT
I made no such claim. But no better. Nope. It's really not that hard. Keep trying, I'll let you know when you get it right. Nope. But he certainly does want to live. Or else he would be dead. Yes, it is. That has nothing to do with it. And what you just described is wanting to eat. Yeah, much like the guy in 127 Hours desired to cut his arm off, I suppose. Choosing to satisfy a need, when the alternative would bring about severe hardship does not yield that having hunger and satiating that hunger is a better thing than not to have existed to experience the hunger to begin with. When you're faced with harm, then of course you 'want' to avoid that harm by any means that are available to you. That still doesn't mean that being in the situation where you're having to stave off harm is a net benefit when compared to never existing and being ignorant of that fact. It's a case of people doing what they are culturally conditioned to do. In the case of suicide, many people around the world truly and sincerely believe that if they commit suicide, they would be tortured for eternity. Therefore, suicide is a non-starter for that person, and not because they're living the life of Riley and are overcome with joy to wake up every morning to go and work 16 hours for $1 a day at their sweatshop job, much of that time likely spent in soiled trousers and underwear because they aren't allowed toilet breaks. How can this be a knowable fact if the people in question have died and cannot confirm what their motives were? Do you really believe that people shoot themselves in the brain, hang themselves with thick rope or dive in front of a passing train with the desire to be alive after the event (likely severely disabled)? As far as the people who take a handful of pills from the medicine cabinet, yes there are a lot of those people, but the vast majority of those people fail in their suicide because what they have done wasn't particularly harmful and they probably called for an ambulance 5 minutes after. But even in those cases, the person had to be enduring significant distress in order to even make the gesture to begin with, even if it was only for attention seeking purposes. Contentedness with life isn't a binary between on cloud nine and committing suicide; and there are many reasons why discontented people do not commit suicide, which you've ignored for your own tendentious purposes. And what happened to my long list of subjectively and objectively legitimate reasons why people may not commit suicide? How come the person who desperately wants to die, but is completely disabled gets counted in as one of the people who 'loves life'? Or the person who is severely depressed, but strongly believes that they will be tortured in Hell if they die? Why does that fall under someone who is absolutely on cloud 9 and giving a resounding endorsement to their parents' decision to have them (according to you)? The only factors that need to be considered are whether any aggressive action is justified in being taken to bring someone into existence who didn't exist at that time. If they don't exist, then they aren't experiencing a deprivation of life and therefore this isn't a justification to bring them into being. If they do come into existence, they may report the subjective feeling of being benefitted, but will be guaranteed some measure of harm. Everyone has a different standard of how much harm is worth the (unneeded) benefit, and since we couldn't ask them how much harm they were willing to endure in order to receive the 'benefit' that they'd never have otherwise known that they were missing, then the moral default should be to refrain from putting them in harm's way. In accordance with the ethical principle that most people share that it's more important to refrain from doing harm than it is to risk someone else's wellbeing in trying to do them a favour for which they never asked. So that's why it wouldn't be permissible for me to steal funds from your bank account to take to Las Vegas, even if I intended to pay you back more than I stole if I happened to make a profit. So a severely disabled person begging to die, but under constant supervision and with no ability to kill themselves gets counted in as someone who has given a resounding endorsement of life and their parents' decision to birth them? And the same with the person who believes that they're either going to suffer miserably for the rest of their life OR commit suicide and be tortured with infinite intensity for the rest of eternity - that person is absolutely loving life, right? And what about all the animals that are mistreated in order to bring about benefits to humans? Got any suicide statistics concerning dairy cows kept in crowded pens and never breathing fresh air? If most people are still believing in ancient theistic myths, then they haven't learned how to think rationally. If people think that it's OK to put someone else in needless jeopardy without first obtaining consent nor verifying that the person has any need or desire for the supposed 'benefit', then they have a long way to go in learning how to think both rationally and morally. You've insulted me by suggesting that I'm trying to exact some kind of sympathy, or merely trying to be 'edgy'. Right, so if someone wants to kick you in the balls, then they should be able to, because it's their body that they're using to do it, and therefore their choice. Well that's revolting, and even most natalists think that people should exercise their reproductive rights responsibly. No. I'll rephrase then - what I want is for determinism to lead people to make different choices tomorrow than they did yesterday, and I want to be part of that deterministic chain of events which brings about the alteration. Much like climate change scientists want to be part of a chain of causality that causes people to use up less fossil fuels than others have in the past. Happy with that? I'm not a soothsayer, so I don't know anything of the sort. I can only do what I do. What I do know is that people are starting to see childbirth as less of an obligation and more of a choice than they did in the past. And more and more people are starting to consider the carbon footprint of having a child, as well as overpopulation issues, which were not concerns in the past. And I'm sorry that you don't think that there's anything logically credible about antinatalism, but all of the theists that you argue with feel the same way about their own beliefs. I understand that reproduction is more than just a desire or a whim, but it's still possible to modify people's behaviour. All I can personally do is add to the conversation to try and spread the memes. Hopefully this will help the issue come to the attention of someone who might in the future have the power to actually do something tangible about it in the future.
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Post by goz on Jan 29, 2018 5:19:17 GMT
And what you just described is wanting to eat. Yeah, much like the guy in 127 Hours desired to cut his arm off, I suppose. Choosing to satisfy a need, when the alternative would bring about severe hardship does not yield that having hunger and satiating that hunger is a better thing than not to have existed to experience the hunger to begin with. When you're faced with harm, then of course you 'want' to avoid that harm by any means that are available to you. That still doesn't mean that being in the situation where you're having to stave off harm is a net benefit when compared to never existing and being ignorant of that fact. It's a case of people doing what they are culturally conditioned to do. In the case of suicide, many people around the world truly and sincerely believe that if they commit suicide, they would be tortured for eternity. Therefore, suicide is a non-starter for that person, and not because they're living the life of Riley and are overcome with joy to wake up every morning to go and work 16 hours for $1 a day at their sweatshop job, much of that time likely spent in soiled trousers and underwear because they aren't allowed toilet breaks. How can this be a knowable fact if the people in question have died and cannot confirm what their motives were? Do you really believe that people shoot themselves in the brain, hang themselves with thick rope or dive in front of a passing train with the desire to be alive after the event (likely severely disabled)? As far as the people who take a handful of pills from the medicine cabinet, yes there are a lot of those people, but the vast majority of those people fail in their suicide because what they have done wasn't particularly harmful and they probably called for an ambulance 5 minutes after. But even in those cases, the person had to be enduring significant distress in order to even make the gesture to begin with, even if it was only for attention seeking purposes. Contentedness with life isn't a binary between on cloud nine and committing suicide; and there are many reasons why discontented people do not commit suicide, which you've ignored for your own tendentious purposes. And what happened to my long list of subjectively and objectively legitimate reasons why people may not commit suicide? How come the person who desperately wants to die, but is completely disabled gets counted in as one of the people who 'loves life'? Or the person who is severely depressed, but strongly believes that they will be tortured in Hell if they die? Why does that fall under someone who is absolutely on cloud 9 and giving a resounding endorsement to their parents' decision to have them (according to you)? The only factors that need to be considered are whether any aggressive action is justified in being taken to bring someone into existence who didn't exist at that time. If they don't exist, then they aren't experiencing a deprivation of life and therefore this isn't a justification to bring them into being. If they do come into existence, they may report the subjective feeling of being benefitted, but will be guaranteed some measure of harm. Everyone has a different standard of how much harm is worth the (unneeded) benefit, and since we couldn't ask them how much harm they were willing to endure in order to receive the 'benefit' that they'd never have otherwise known that they were missing, then the moral default should be to refrain from putting them in harm's way. In accordance with the ethical principle that most people share that it's more important to refrain from doing harm than it is to risk someone else's wellbeing in trying to do them a favour for which they never asked. So that's why it wouldn't be permissible for me to steal funds from your bank account to take to Las Vegas, even if I intended to pay you back more than I stole if I happened to make a profit. So a severely disabled person begging to die, but under constant supervision and with no ability to kill themselves gets counted in as someone who has given a resounding endorsement of life and their parents' decision to birth them? And the same with the person who believes that they're either going to suffer miserably for the rest of their life OR commit suicide and be tortured with infinite intensity for the rest of eternity - that person is absolutely loving life, right? And what about all the animals that are mistreated in order to bring about benefits to humans? Got any suicide statistics concerning dairy cows kept in crowded pens and never breathing fresh air? If most people are still believing in ancient theistic myths, then they haven't learned how to think rationally. If people think that it's OK to put someone else in needless jeopardy without first obtaining consent nor verifying that the person has any need or desire for the supposed 'benefit', then they have a long way to go in learning how to think both rationally and morally. You've insulted me by suggesting that I'm trying to exact some kind of sympathy, or merely trying to be 'edgy'. Right, so if someone wants to kick you in the balls, then they should be able to, because it's their body that they're using to do it, and therefore their choice. Well that's revolting, and even most natalists think that people should exercise their reproductive rights responsibly. No. I'll rephrase then - what I want is for determinism to lead people to make different choices tomorrow than they did yesterday, and I want to be part of that deterministic chain of events which brings about the alteration. Much like climate change scientists want to be part of a chain of causality that causes people to use up less fossil fuels than others have in the past. Happy with that? I'm not a soothsayer, so I don't know anything of the sort. I can only do what I do. What I do know is that people are starting to see childbirth as less of an obligation and more of a choice than they did in the past. And more and more people are starting to consider the carbon footprint of having a child, as well as overpopulation issues, which were not concerns in the past. And I'm sorry that you don't think that there's anything logically credible about antinatalism, but all of the theists that you argue with feel the same way about their own beliefs. I understand that reproduction is more than just a desire or a whim, but it's still possible to modify people's behaviour. All I can personally do is add to the conversation to try and spread the memes. Hopefully this will help the issue come to the attention of someone who might in the future have the power to actually do something tangible about it in the future. You haven't answered my questions AND I now have a couple more. Just in the same way that you could hypothetically kill/make sterile mankind...you can now become a parent. 1. If you impregnated someone by any means, and they, obviously became pregnant, would you insist that they terminate the pregnancy? 2. If they refused and gave birth, would you kill that child in your antinatalism? You can't say this would never happen because you and I both deal occasionally in hypotheticals.
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Post by cupcakes on Jan 29, 2018 14:00:26 GMT
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Jan 29, 2018 18:19:23 GMT
Edit: If you consider @miccee mentally ill, then you must consider me mentally ill, also. I think he and I are realists, not mentally ill. Depends. You're telling us that you are in a life of considerable suffering. That's fair enough. You're telling us that one day the suffering might become so great that you would end your life. That's fair enough too. But are you telling us that you consider your suffering - and the suffering of others in your position or similar positions - is such that it would be worth ending the human race to stop it from happening?
If so then no, I don't consider you to be mentally ill. But I do consider you to be making an irrational and extremely selfish argument which really doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. I'm not familiar enough with the formalized antinatalist stance on these things, but... and here is where my environmentalist brain kicks in... wouldn't the world be better off with fewer people in it? The lottery of life would be less extreme? I don't know if formalized antinatalism advocates ending the human race by any means other than attrition. And whether or not a majority of people could be persuaded that that scenario is desirable. But the children I never had will never suffer. Kittens and puppies not born to cats and dogs that have been spayed and neutered will never be drowned, abandoned to die, starved or tortured. That's just logic. Perhaps because of my involvement in animal rescue and sheltering, I see this logic in that context and think that the same approach in humanity might lessen suffering of children born who are not wanted. How exactly that would play out in the future is unknown. But people should be aware that not reproducing is a valid choice.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2018 18:30:44 GMT
I'm not familiar enough with the formalized antinatalist stance on these things, but... and here is where my environmentalist brain kicks in... wouldn't the world be better off with fewer people in it? That depends. Better for whom, and by what standards? Probably not, actually. If people ceased to exist, other life forms would multiply until they use up the resources that we use. And since Humans are amongst the larger creatures, the net result would likely be more life forms in the world, and since nature is notoriously cruel, the result would probably be a net increase in suffering. In fact it strikes me that a true anti-natalist would not only want to exterminate humanity, but destroy all other life on the planet too. It would be the only way to end suffering. Nor will these hypothetical children ever feel joy.
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Jan 29, 2018 18:44:59 GMT
I haven't participated because, for the last three days, I've been working my ass off at a low-paying part-time job in order to have enough money to buy groceries this month. I have no medical insurance as of January !, 2018, because the health insurance premium I was paying jumped from $400 a month to $1,200 a month, and my late husband's Social Security check is only $1,800 a month. I couldn't live on what was left, so I dropped my health insurance and pay for my medications out-of-pocket. These meds prevent a recurrence of cancer, and make my chronic migraines less frequent and less severe. To go without those meds would cause me increased suffering. In October I will turn 65 and qualify for Medicare, but for ten months I have to hope nothing major happens medically. Since I was diagnosed with cancer at such a young age, statistically I am more likely to die of a recurrence of cancer. I have, since my diagnosis, maintained a stash of drugs so that I can end my life if nothing but suffering is left. I have watched relatives die of cancer, and I would rather die of an overdose of drugs. I am fortunate enough to have acquired these drugs legally - they are prescribed to me for pain. I endured several days of pain in order to save enough pills to painlessly end my life. But I have nine more months of struggling financially to buy my meds and still be able to buy groceries and keep the electricity on. I retired from a highly stressful career in 2014, because the Affordable Healthcare Act provided health insurance for me at $50 a month. The insurance industry has continually raised the premiums for the same plan, first to $80 a month, then eventually up to the $400 a month premium. I struggled for a year at that rate; when it went to $1,200, I couldn't afford it anymore. And at age 64, I cannot go back to a full-time job in order to have health insurance supplemented by an employer. No one would hire me at that age, knowing I can qualify for Medicare in a year, so I take on part-time work in order to make ends meet. This is not a happy time in my life. I have a 95 year old mother that needs assistance to live, and I can't do that and work full-time, too. There is a physical limit to what I can do. Suffering is in the eye of the beholder. Walk a mile, or live for nine months, in my shoes. Edit: If you consider @miccee mentally ill, then you must consider me mentally ill, also. I think he and I are realists, not mentally ill. I am both sympathetic and sorry for you. I know this is probably preaching to the choir, butt it makes my blood boil, what is happening to the United States, and how stupid and misled so many people are. You have clearly outlined how the original Affordable Health Care Act was a blessing for people and how now you are forced into a hopeless situation. We here have free health care for everyone topped up with Private Health Insurance for those who can afford it. ALL age pensioners who qualify for a pension get free health care. Edit: because my computer prematurely posted. I have 'known' Mic for many years and interacted with him considerably. IMHO he has mental health issues. I don't know you, so I would never be presumptuous enough to assign any issues to you except that you are having a hard time of life right now, and as I said I both empathise with you and would hope to support you in some way or other as you seem intelligent articulate and reasonable. Thank you for your sympathy. But to be fair, the current 'administration' is not solely to blame, there are many other factors, some very personal that I'm not willing to discuss here. Suffice it to say, my mother should never have had a child. My Dad was a great parent; if only he'd chosen another woman to marry. I will let you and @miccee duke out the antinatalism issue amongst yourselves. But, with my background in psychology and behavioral analysis, please don't use the salad bar approach with the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual. Differential diagnosis places sociopathy and psychopathy in two distinct categories, and from reading mic's posts, he is neither. However, the current POTUS is indeed a paranoid narcissistic psychopath, as determined by over 20,000 mental health care professionals. The link is available if you want it.
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Post by rachelcarson1953 on Jan 29, 2018 18:56:33 GMT
I'm not familiar enough with the formalized antinatalist stance on these things, but... and here is where my environmentalist brain kicks in... wouldn't the world be better off with fewer people in it? That depends. Better for whom, and by what standards? Probably not, actually. If people ceased to exist, other life forms would multiply until they use up the resources that we use. And since Humans are amongst the larger creatures, the net result would likely be more life forms in the world, and since nature is notoriously cruel, the result would probably be a net increase in suffering. In fact it strikes me that a true anti-natalist would not only want to exterminate humanity, but destroy all other life on the planet too. It would be the only way to end suffering. Nor will these hypothetical children ever feel joy. "In fact it strikes me that a true anti-natalist would not only want to exterminate humanity, but destroy all other life on the planet too. It would be the only way to end suffering." I think @miccee would be the one to address this. ______________________________________________________________________________ "Nor will these hypothetical children ever feel joy." My personal experience in life has had very little joy in it. Trust me, I did them a favor. ______________________________________________________________________________
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Post by cupcakes on Jan 29, 2018 19:25:19 GMT
tpfkar Thank you for your sympathy. But to be fair, the current 'administration' is not solely to blame, there are many other factors, some very personal that I'm not willing to discuss here. Suffice it to say, my mother should never have had a child. My Dad was a great parent; if only he'd chosen another woman to marry. I will let you and @miccee duke out the antinatalism issue amongst yourselves. But, with my background in psychology and behavioral analysis, please don't use the salad bar approach with the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual. Differential diagnosis places sociopathy and psychopathy in two distinct categories, and from reading mic's posts, he is neither. However, the current POTUS is indeed a paranoid narcissistic psychopath, as determined by over 20,000 mental health care professionals. The link is available if you want it. Neither psychopathy nor sociopathy are diagnoses in the DSM. Neither is "utterly nutwaggers". Nor do discussion board opinions claim to be remote medical diagnoses, regardless of how willingly you'll accept those when they fit your politics and affections. And what would be your "differential diagnosis" be for someone who wishes to force-sterilize the population and unleash a nuclear holocaust on the world? Seek a test that lets reality judge between you.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 0:51:59 GMT
Nor will these hypothetical children ever feel joy. I'll use an example here which I used earlier, which I feel is quite a neat retort. Existing people need joy, much like they need food. That doesn't mean that it's warranted to bring people into existence so that they can eat food (when there are other harms involved, including deprivation of food, to which they did not consent), because before they came into existence they were not deprived of food. So just as it would seem irrational to bring sd, it would also be irrational to bring them into existence so that they can feel joy, when there's no reason to think that there are disembodied souls floating around space being deprived of either food or joy.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 1:12:30 GMT
Yeah, much like the guy in 127 Hours desired to cut his arm off, I suppose. Choosing to satisfy a need, when the alternative would bring about severe hardship does not yield that having hunger and satiating that hunger is a better thing than not to have existed to experience the hunger to begin with. When you're faced with harm, then of course you 'want' to avoid that harm by any means that are available to you. That still doesn't mean that being in the situation where you're having to stave off harm is a net benefit when compared to never existing and being ignorant of that fact. It's a case of people doing what they are culturally conditioned to do. In the case of suicide, many people around the world truly and sincerely believe that if they commit suicide, they would be tortured for eternity. Therefore, suicide is a non-starter for that person, and not because they're living the life of Riley and are overcome with joy to wake up every morning to go and work 16 hours for $1 a day at their sweatshop job, much of that time likely spent in soiled trousers and underwear because they aren't allowed toilet breaks. How can this be a knowable fact if the people in question have died and cannot confirm what their motives were? Do you really believe that people shoot themselves in the brain, hang themselves with thick rope or dive in front of a passing train with the desire to be alive after the event (likely severely disabled)? As far as the people who take a handful of pills from the medicine cabinet, yes there are a lot of those people, but the vast majority of those people fail in their suicide because what they have done wasn't particularly harmful and they probably called for an ambulance 5 minutes after. But even in those cases, the person had to be enduring significant distress in order to even make the gesture to begin with, even if it was only for attention seeking purposes. Contentedness with life isn't a binary between on cloud nine and committing suicide; and there are many reasons why discontented people do not commit suicide, which you've ignored for your own tendentious purposes. And what happened to my long list of subjectively and objectively legitimate reasons why people may not commit suicide? How come the person who desperately wants to die, but is completely disabled gets counted in as one of the people who 'loves life'? Or the person who is severely depressed, but strongly believes that they will be tortured in Hell if they die? Why does that fall under someone who is absolutely on cloud 9 and giving a resounding endorsement to their parents' decision to have them (according to you)? The only factors that need to be considered are whether any aggressive action is justified in being taken to bring someone into existence who didn't exist at that time. If they don't exist, then they aren't experiencing a deprivation of life and therefore this isn't a justification to bring them into being. If they do come into existence, they may report the subjective feeling of being benefitted, but will be guaranteed some measure of harm. Everyone has a different standard of how much harm is worth the (unneeded) benefit, and since we couldn't ask them how much harm they were willing to endure in order to receive the 'benefit' that they'd never have otherwise known that they were missing, then the moral default should be to refrain from putting them in harm's way. In accordance with the ethical principle that most people share that it's more important to refrain from doing harm than it is to risk someone else's wellbeing in trying to do them a favour for which they never asked. So that's why it wouldn't be permissible for me to steal funds from your bank account to take to Las Vegas, even if I intended to pay you back more than I stole if I happened to make a profit. So a severely disabled person begging to die, but under constant supervision and with no ability to kill themselves gets counted in as someone who has given a resounding endorsement of life and their parents' decision to birth them? And the same with the person who believes that they're either going to suffer miserably for the rest of their life OR commit suicide and be tortured with infinite intensity for the rest of eternity - that person is absolutely loving life, right? And what about all the animals that are mistreated in order to bring about benefits to humans? Got any suicide statistics concerning dairy cows kept in crowded pens and never breathing fresh air? If most people are still believing in ancient theistic myths, then they haven't learned how to think rationally. If people think that it's OK to put someone else in needless jeopardy without first obtaining consent nor verifying that the person has any need or desire for the supposed 'benefit', then they have a long way to go in learning how to think both rationally and morally. You've insulted me by suggesting that I'm trying to exact some kind of sympathy, or merely trying to be 'edgy'. Right, so if someone wants to kick you in the balls, then they should be able to, because it's their body that they're using to do it, and therefore their choice. Well that's revolting, and even most natalists think that people should exercise their reproductive rights responsibly. No. I'll rephrase then - what I want is for determinism to lead people to make different choices tomorrow than they did yesterday, and I want to be part of that deterministic chain of events which brings about the alteration. Much like climate change scientists want to be part of a chain of causality that causes people to use up less fossil fuels than others have in the past. Happy with that? I'm not a soothsayer, so I don't know anything of the sort. I can only do what I do. What I do know is that people are starting to see childbirth as less of an obligation and more of a choice than they did in the past. And more and more people are starting to consider the carbon footprint of having a child, as well as overpopulation issues, which were not concerns in the past. And I'm sorry that you don't think that there's anything logically credible about antinatalism, but all of the theists that you argue with feel the same way about their own beliefs. I understand that reproduction is more than just a desire or a whim, but it's still possible to modify people's behaviour. All I can personally do is add to the conversation to try and spread the memes. Hopefully this will help the issue come to the attention of someone who might in the future have the power to actually do something tangible about it in the future. You haven't answered my questions AND I now have a couple more. Just in the same way that you could hypothetically kill/make sterile mankind...you can now become a parent. 1. If you impregnated someone by any means, and they, obviously became pregnant, would you insist that they terminate the pregnancy? 2. If they refused and gave birth, would you kill that child in your antinatalism? You can't say this would never happen because you and I both deal occasionally in hypotheticals. I'm not answering your first hypothetical, as there are too many variables. There's no way anyone could become pregnant by me, and I wouldn't kill any living child.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 1:13:33 GMT
Nor will these hypothetical children ever feel joy. I'll use an example here which I used earlier, And I will just say what I said earlier - if the future joy of hypothetical people does not matter for whatever reason, then neither does the future suffering of hypothetical people. Which destroys the antinatal argument by itself. Also, you never answered my questions. So here's another. Would you regard it as ethical for mankind to destroy every other species on Earth before it destroyed itself?
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Post by goz on Jan 30, 2018 1:28:41 GMT
You haven't answered my questions AND I now have a couple more. Just in the same way that you could hypothetically kill/make sterile mankind...you can now become a parent. 1. If you impregnated someone by any means, and they, obviously became pregnant, would you insist that they terminate the pregnancy? 2. If they refused and gave birth, would you kill that child in your antinatalism? You can't say this would never happen because you and I both deal occasionally in hypotheticals. I'm not answering your first hypothetical, as there are too many variables. There's no way anyone could become pregnant by me, and I wouldn't kill any living child. You wouldn't kill any living child? So what are you going to do, kill all the adults and let all the kids starve? in this antinatal apocalypse you are proposing?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 1:47:08 GMT
I'll use an example here which I used earlier, And I will just say what I said earlier - if the future joy of hypothetical people does not matter for whatever reason, then neither does the future suffering of hypothetical people. Which destroys the antinatal argument by itself. Also, you never answered my questions. So here's another. Would you regard it as ethical for mankind to destroy every other species on Earth before it destroyed itself? It doesn't put even a dent in the antinatalist argument, because the onus is on the aggressor (those forcing new life forms into existence) to justify why it's necessary to do so. There's no problem needing to be fixed from the perspective of people who don't exist, and therefore it shouldn't be anyone's place to bring people into existence to be imposed upon in order to solve problems that have nothing to do with those people who don't yet exist. I answered each of the questions that you asked me, although you didn't in fact ask me any, merely asserted over and over again that anyone who hasn't yet killed themselves, for any reason, hasn't suffered, and everyone else is on cloud 9 and glad to have been born and that it's ok to decide on behalf of someone else (who has no input on the decision) that an unknown amount of (unneeded) benefit is worth an unknown amount of harm and risk. I think that it would be ethically justifiable to forcefully but humanely bring about the extinction of life on Earth.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 1:48:20 GMT
I'm not answering your first hypothetical, as there are too many variables. There's no way anyone could become pregnant by me, and I wouldn't kill any living child. You wouldn't kill any living child? So what are you going to do, kill all the adults and let all the kids starve? in this antinatal apocalypse you are proposing? I don't have the power to do any of that, and it's not foreseeable that I ever will. If I wasn't able to implement any kind of antinatalist worldwide policy, I would not kill anybody.
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