Is It Immoral To Birth People Into Existence? - Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley

Duration: 11:19 2265 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The podcast features a discussion centered on David Benatar's controversial philosophy of antinatalism, specifically his argument that it is immoral to bring people into existence. The core of this view relies on an asymmetry between pleasure and pain: before someone exists, the potential for them not to experience suffering is good, whereas their non-experience of possible pleasures is neither bad nor irrelevant. Benatar posits that once a person exists, both pleasure and matter, but prior to birth, only the avoidance of negative experiences holds moral weight. To illustrate this, he uses thought experiments such as imagining Mars; while we do not lament the lack of potential joy there, we generally agree it is good that no beings suffer on the planet. Similarly, most people would refuse a trade where five minutes of worst imaginable suffering are endured to gain an eternity of bliss, suggesting intuitively that avoiding pain outweighs gaining pleasure in this specific context. Benatar further develops his argument through rights-based reasoning and analogies involving consent. He suggests that just as one cannot break another person's arm even if it leads to a net positive outcome or saves their life from worse suffering without permission, bringing someone into existence violates the implicit right of non-existence. Since an unborn individual cannot consent to being born, inflicting upon them any amount of pain—even with the promise of future happiness—is morally impermissible because they are unconsensually subjected to masses of suffering. This perspective challenges common optimism about life quality; Benatar argues that people vastly underestimate how terrible their lives actually are and fall victim to a "Pollyanna principle" where they remember good moments more than bad ones, leading them to believe life is worth living when it might not be upon closer inspection. A significant portion of the conversation addresses the logical implications if one accepts Benatar's premise that life consists primarily of suffering: why do people not commit suicide? The hosts discuss David Benatar's footnote comparison where he likens this situation to watching a bad movie halfway through; while you wish you hadn't started, leaving once inside is difficult. However, the speakers express skepticism about whether this analogy holds up as a robust defense against self-harm. They note that if life were truly not worth living based on such arguments, it would logically follow that continuing to live is also unjustified. This creates an evolutionary selection pressure where only those with sufficient optimism or resilience remain in the "meme pool," while genuine pessimists often select themselves out by ending their lives before they can fully propagate these ideas. The dialogue concludes by distinguishing between intellectual curiosity regarding the worth of life and the emotional reality of suicidal ideation. The hosts observe that most people engaging with this topic are doing so from an intellectual standpoint rather than a place of crisis, which allows for forthright philosophical discussion without immediate intervention needs like suicide hotlines often found in such videos. They reference Albert Camus's *The Myth of Sisyphus*, where the central question is identified as whether life is worth living or not, noting that meaning can be derived from whatever keeps a person alive. Ultimately, while Benatar provides a rigorous framework suggesting regret for one's existence and viewing birth as an immoral act due to inevitable suffering, the conversation highlights the tension between these abstract ethical conclusions and the practical realities of human psychology and survival instincts.

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I remember you his whole thing is this balance between suffering and pleasure is that even tiny microcosm of suffering is so great that it doesn't it outweighs any amount of pleasure. A lot of people pulled that out of a 5 year 5 and a half year old canteen conversation. Thank you. A great advert for a tasty drink zero calorie available now at little wisdom. And he remembers. It's I think when a lot of people would consider is life worth living one crude way of working it out is adding up the pleasure minusing the pain and sort of seeing what you're left over with you know is it is it worth living overall. Benatar thinks that crucially before you exist the potential pleasure that you might experience if you come into existence doesn't matter one like one drop. It's literally irrelevant but the potential pain that you would avoid does matter. And he tries to prove this through some sort of intuitive thought experiments. For example, there are no conscious beings on Mars, right? We don't really think that it's a bad thing that all this pleasure that could be on Mars is is being missed out on. We don't think what a tragedy that all all of the potential pleasure that could exist on Mars isn't actually happening. But we might think that it is a good thing that there's no suffering up there. And some people hear that kind of example and they go yeah, that makes sense. Some people go well no I am I am I am sad that there's no pleasure on it it's sort of an intuitive thing. He also one other way of thinking about this at least for the imbalance might be a question which is would you take 5 minutes of the worst imaginable conceivable suffering that you could experience if afterwards you got to have 5 minutes of the best possible bliss. I mean I don't know what you guys would do you wouldn't take it. I think that's I don't think I'd take 5 minutes of the best possible bliss. I mean the rest of your life the rest of your life where you just Yeah you just you just be complete you just feel empty you know. Another asymmetry that's an additional asymmetry and that that actually might be just a sort of good response to this kind of thought experiment because what Benatar is trying to say is that most people would say no and so crudely it seems like the suffering kind of counts for more but as so much of philosophy does it kind of relies on intuitive that you you're sort of feeling of I have a sense of negativity bias. Another way he he talks about and and crucially this is only before you exist, right? Once you exist your your pleasure is good for you and your suffering is bad for you but before you exist the fact other people have a choice about whether you do or don't. Before you exist for someone who doesn't exist them not experiencing pleasure is not bad but them not experiencing suffering is good. And so before you're born the only moral calculus is the goodness that you're not suffering. And so that's all that should be taken into account. It's good that you're not suffering let's not bring that into existence. Another line of reasoning he goes down is a kind of like a rights based approach where he says suppose for example that if I were to like break your arm you would get an encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy or something. You might if I gave you that option you might think to yourself like you know what I think that's that's worth it. Probably it definitely be worth it for me I'd take that. However, even if I would actually prefer that if you didn't ask me first if you just did it like you don't have the right to do that to me, right? If if I found you in need of an ambulance and the only way to save your life somehow was to break your arm then I think most people say you should do it but if by causing you suffering I can not save you from worse suffering but bring you something good most people think that I don't have the right to inflict that suffering on you even if it would be ultimately worth it. So for Benatar same thing before you're born, right? You're allowed to inflict suffering to prevent worse suffering but you're not allowed to inflict suffering on the promise that there'll be some good that comes out of it unconsensually. Because what you're essentially doing is is causing a bunch of people to unconsensually experience masses of suffering that they had no say in. Some people have actually tried to sue their parents for wrongful birth because they That's actually that has actually happened. If you're Benatar pilled. Yeah exactly. So the the asymmetry thing is is quite important to Benatar's flavor of antinatalism. You can have antinatalism without it you can just say that life consists in more suffering and if you think it's it's consisting more pleasure you you've fallen for the the the Pollyanna principle as I think they call it which is the idea that we tend to remember the good stuff more than the bad stuff the sort of rose tinted view of of the past. Most people says Benatar like vastly underestimate the extent to which their lives are going terribly. They they like sort of in retrospect you know you know it's all good but if you actually were to live through it again you'd realize that at every moment it was going very badly. He then after after convincing after convincing you that you're he sort of he sort of says like you know it doesn't matter how much you suffer or or experience pleasure in life it's immoral to bring people into existence. And then after convincing you of that he then says but just so you know life is actually does actually contain a lot more suffering. And this detour into disability ethics or metaphysics I suppose is sort of part of this case. You know these these menial sufferings that that you don't even notice. It's not you shouldn't have been here you should be upset that you are here and by the way the fact that you are here also is a reason for regret. Yeah it gets a little bit tricky because like once you're here I mean the the inevitable question for today Benatar is then why don't you just think we should kill ourselves? And David Benatar in a footnote compares this to going to a movie and when you're about halfway through thinking like this is kind of a crap film it's not bad enough that I'm going to leave now that I'm here but I kind of wish I'd never come in the first place. That's sort of his position on on on life. He's he's he's robust do you think that is as an answer to why shouldn't I just kill myself? I think it it doesn't really work very well because I'm quite suspicious of the the asymmetry argument like anyway so I think that a case that that sort of makes life not worth living and therefore not worth beginning will inevitably create a powerful argument for not continuing life. Benatar like is as far as I can remember quite quite sort of staunchly not that. I'm not so sure that they can be so definitively separated. Has someone taken that? Is there a suicide cult philosophy? There have been examples I think Camus talks about a few examples at the beginning of the myth of Sisyphus doesn't he? He sort of he sort of mentions I think like one or two examples of some philosophers who like wrote a tract. He mentions I can't remember who it was he mentions who wrote a tract and then killed himself in order to like bring attention to his work but it didn't work cuz no one liked the work anyway. Philip Mainlander killed himself but I don't know if that I I can't remember if that's who he's talking about. I can't remember who Camus is talking about but no you tend to find that people who are genuinely committed I mean Camus says in the myth of Sisyphus for the man who does not cheat what he determines to be true must determine his action. So if you become convinced that life is not worth living and you're like certain enough of that in order to kill yourself then you're probably not going to sit around writing a book first. So it's it's you it's sort of like self selecting. There's an interesting sort of evolutionary deselection for views like this and for views like antinatalism and and again Benatar addresses this. Doesn't affect the truth of the claim but it means it will never take off because exactly yeah which in reverse is the explanation I think for the general optimism that sort of sort of just just just only the optimistic people left exactly to some degree. I mean there are people who are not optimists but they're not quite pessimistic enough to to fully commit to the bit as it were. And if they are then they select themselves out of the meme pool. I had a conversation with a gentleman who his entire theory of human evolution human cultural evolution is that human culture is almost expressly built around helping people to not take their own lives and that our system is too and we got halfway through the episode and he it's the only time this has ever happened he bailed out of the episode partway through was had a bad night's sleep and wasn't he felt like he wasn't making a and I thought well that's kind of on brand for somebody who had this sort of a worldview that everything is about avoiding things going badly that partway through an episode about it he decided that it was going so badly that he didn't want to continue. Another thing Camus says is that the meaning of life is literally whatever is keeping you from killing yourself. You know and I think that's that's more or less true. Why don't you kill yourself? Yeah and I think that there are most people who engage with that topic do so on an emotional level and that's the that's the motivation for these kinds of thoughts. There are people who are just like intellectually interested in in the worthiness of life like whether it's worth living but that very rarely is actually what's what's what's going on I think when when people are seriously struggling with this and so I don't know it it makes it a sort of difficult philosophical terrain but I think that people who are just interested in it intellectually often will appreciate someone who can just forthrightly discuss it. You know because a lot of the time it's like you know you you open a open a a YouTube video that's going to discuss abstractly the philosophy of suicide it opens with a helpline so way to give away your position you know like I think people will like like the loads of ideological bias in the suicide discussion because people I think people want to feel like they're being taken seriously, right? And if if you if you come with a with a with a philosophical or emotional conviction to the table and someone before you even get started says hey just so you know like you know we're going to we're going to move towards this direction. I think I think a lot of people would appreciate like a forthright direct approach which is why so many people are attracted to the myth of Sisyphus by Camus because it's sort of it's starkly opens with that there is but one serious philosophical question and that is suicide. 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