Let’s see your funny and cohesive movie world and story written, performed, and edited to youtube for millions then! The world building is pretty basic and derivative, but it’s at its heart closer to a satire than anything resembling a serious story. I think there was significant effort in building, but also writing recording, etc.

theres a youtube movie someone made about a dystopian society in minecraft whose economy operates on doing cool parkour tricks and climbing the ranks to become a minecraft parkour god. it’s hilarious and high-effort, but stupid

This is hilarious

You are already (fat and fluffy) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think that you have a well-reasoned and valid view. It’s not that I regret my birth, but that I didn’t consent to being a living, conscious thing – the consent portion of which you can reasonably view as an impossibility.

Suffering is a necessity of living, and therefore bringing a person into the world means they will suffer. You’re right that I generally take a utilitarian view of things, upon reflection. Though, taking it to its most extreme conclusion, I could never be asked to choose between saving 5 million people if it meant killing 4,999,999. Such thought experiments leave me confounded.

Maybe it’s the case we’re faced with infinite impossible choices because the universe doesn’t care and tends towards entropy. There is likely no perfect answer. All I can do as a person is try to beget as little pain into world as possible, but I recognize that my view isn’t without flaw or applicable to everyone everywhere all the time.

This is also why I don’t simply despise people who have children, like my own parents.

I appreciate you taking the time to explore this with me! Genuinely much food for thought.

I say that it’s actually impossible to answer, except in the most extreme cases.

It’s certainly impossible to answer in a single broad stroke for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful or relevant to think about.

That is because the question was about rights, not consent.

If that’s so, then we’re talking past one another. My point is that in my ethical framework, having a child is wrong. They are incapable of consenting as you point out, which is part of why I view it as wrong.

Existence is a presupposition to consent.

Why? The child surely exists before, during, and after its birth. Can’t it be that the unborn human is incapable of consent rather than creating a paradox? I understand the chicken-and-egg problem you are describing, but I think it’s incomplete. As a fully functioning human being now, if I look back at my birth, did I consent? Did I exist yet? I think I can say simply, “No, I did not consent to being born.” Whether you ascribe a negative, positive, or neutral value to this is up to you. In my opinion, it’s immoral.

In what way is that different to negotiation?

It isn’t. I don’t think we disagree on this

But birth is a natural result of conception.

Yes, however isn’t this logic used to argue against abortion? I’d argue that a person becomes a full “person” at birth, which is perhaps arbitrary, but we have to define that point somewhere. Regardless of when we say a person “exists”, they still cannot consent regardless.

That all said, is anti-natalism completely correct for everyone? I don’t know. I’m sure our species going extinct would create lots of suffering for the dwindling population. Maybe on average, humans do not regret their existence. Does that mean it’s moral to make more conscious beings who are capable of feeling that regret?

How is there a ranking of “goodness” at all, be it “bad, because suffering”, or “good, because joy”? That’s like demanding a serious answer for: “how many angels can dance on the tip of a needle?”

The question was “is the joy worth the pain?” That’s a fairly simple question – not nonsense. Is there a point at which suffering outweighs joy? Are you to make that determination for a “hypothetical” person? The question is perhaps abstract and difficult to answer, but it’s perfectly valid.

Rights aren’t given. They’re negotiated. I negotiate the right with the person that conceives the child with me.

This is the transactional portion. I meant no ad hominem, it just sounds funny to me to put it this way. My point is that the child at no point enters into the question of consent. You’re saying there is no violation of consent because the person doesn’t exist yet, but what about when they do? I.e. when they are born? Did they consent to that? Does it matter to you?

Who “gives” any rights from your point of view? God?

Other humans. The only way to have a “right” is for the people around you to agree that you have them. Perhaps it’s more complicated than that if you want to get extra philosophical, because I do believe that all conscious beings deserve the least amount of suffering possible purely by virtue of them being aware – be they birds, pigs, cows, whatever. I think maybe that’s more morality than “rights,” but I’m not sure how clear the distinction is between them.

You’re claiming by conceiving a child, you’re violating its’ consent. At that point, nothing exists, yet. It’s only a being whose consent can be violated in the hypothetical future.

This isn’t what I am claiming. I am claiming that birth is a violation of consent. Conception is meaningless to me unless it comes to fruition and bears a conscious being.

That only happens, because the whole anti-natalist reasons are paradoxical from the start.

Can you describe the paradox? I found a paradox using your own words. If they were in jest or you were “meeting [my] non-sensical argument where it’s at” then please help me understand better.

I think I have a fairly cynical view that reproduction is primarily a selfish act based solely on our biological drive to continue our species. I’ve pondered for a long time, and I fail to see a more logical conclusion than that.

Life is tough and there are no guarantees. Rolling the dice by having a kid seems like a messed up thing to do imo.

That said, I would adopt a child or children. That’s a better way to ensure you are putting kindness and hope into the world where it’s needed, rather than creating another vessel for pain from whole cloth.

You yourself said they are not yet existent, so really is joy being “withheld”? That doesn’t work in your framework, I think.

Just because a human exists does not mean they fall neatly into a category where they innately love “contributing to a community”. We’re not apes, well most of us :p

rights are negotiated

You only mentioned the rights of the parents (in a strangely cold and transactional way btw lol). What of the child’s rights? They must negotiate with you for them after their nonconsensual birth?

Consent doesn’t matter for hypothetical futures

It’s not hypothetical–a child is born. They live and experience. You’re in a paradoxical state where consent doesn’t matter because the kid doesn’t exist, yet they necessarily must exist to experience the joy you mention

Is the joy worth the pain? What if they don’t want to contribute to a community? Can you guarantee the joy will outweigh the pain? What gives you the right to will another being into existence?

If the being will become conscious and self aware, why doesn’t their consent matter?

The only way to experience suffering is to be alive. The only way to be born is without consent

He did it to sexually stunt America in the name of Christianity and his warped morality. I would say that if a religion mandates you do something barbaric, then that practice should still be outlawed. I believe in a secular state where the rules of society and the greater good take precedence over myopic religious practices.

Similarly how the right to free speech does to let you go around making threats etc., the freedom of religion must not allow for crimes – which I consider infant genital mutilation to be.

Are you aware the majority of Americans are not jewish but were subjected to genital mutilation after birth? It is not a religious thing here primarily, it’s a practice that was started by a prude named Kellog to explicitly make it more difficult to masturbate and because it is “cleaner,” which is a dubious claim at best.

America has Zelle which does instant money transfers by email/phone. It’s private but it works in my banking app, is totally free, and is instant

I get what you’re saying. Are you saying also that you haven’t ever encountered anyone using the term as a pejorative? My original reply is earnestly asking what was meant because the original post was ambiguous to me. I’m talking about connotation and you’re talking about the textbook definition. I know what a scripting language is, and it’s pretty dismissive to say otherwise imo. To call JS and Python scripting languages puts them up there with bash, lua, and perl. Interpreted or not, do you think these languages are equal? Can a developer as easily create a fully featured app or website equally with all of them? Can you land a perl job as easily as a JS one? I don’t think so. It’s not a matter of bruised ego so much as I want to combat the notion, especially for newer developers, that JS and Python and friends are somehow less-than, whether or not that was the original intent of the post.

I’m merely saying that to me, and to probably a large group of devs, it sounds like a dig. I totally take that it is an appropriate designation and there was no ill intent though. I think the fact that we’re having this conversation is enough to prove that there is at least a little ambiguity given the right context and experience with the term. Cheers

I’m certainly replying from my own perspective! Again, I don’t think the original reply was intended to be negative. I am just discussing the language used and what it implies to me and perhaps others from a similar background and time. I think, to me, a clearer and more modern way to describe these languages is as “interpreted” or other words describing the nature of the languages rather than saying it is a language for scripting, which carries a connotation (at least to me, in my corner of the internet)

If someone on the internet calls something a “scripting language,” it’s hard to take that in a vacuum. I’ll accept that there is overlap between “interpreted” and “scripting” languages, but they aren’t synonymous, particularly in my experience interacting with developers online. The typical discourse does indeed trivialize the so-called scripting languages, and my only intent is to say that they are a lot more than what they began as.

It was for you, too (っ^_)っ

What is the “classical” sense? What are you implying when you say they are “scripting” languages? What you are imparting to me is that they are less-than other, real languages. I don’t take personal offense, but I do take issue with the mischaracterization and implication that those languages are somehow less serious or less broadly useful.

No hard feelins! (: