PyramidHead
Contributor
TL;DR: Everything we are hardwired to want in life depends on exactly the type of order that is subject to entropy, which means that we are all stuck in an environment whose natural laws continuously subvert our preferences. This is not a value-neutral situation that is just as likely to produce good outcomes as bad outcomes. It is a severe and pernicious handicap that is so ingrained in our lives that we no longer notice it. To have a child is to place someone in a predicament in which they are at a major disadvantage with respect to their needs and desires, as a simple consequence of physics.
David Benatar notes that it's not uncommon for something to happen, suddenly and without warning, that severely decreases somebody's quality of life for the indefinite future; it is far less common for something to suddenly happen that makes a person's life that much better, for that much longer. The good things in life come after loads of work and effort and are often fleeting. The bad things come without any invitation and usually persist. You could also think of it in terms of probability. The things in life that we value, that are important to us, that make life worth living, are highly unlikely to spontaneously occur; if and when they do, they would quickly fall apart without outside intervention. On the other hand, the things we fear and dread have a much higher chance of arising spontaneously, and require almost no maintenance. It is far easier to destroy something valuable than it is to create something of equal value, for any definition of value people are likely to have. In a perfect (or at least fair) world, the probabilities and durations of both good and bad would be roughly equal. But in reality they are grossly disproportionate in a way that almost seems deliberately malicious.
I think this is because self-replicating life generally, and consciousness in particular, tends toward endpoints that are low in entropy. Organized complexity is a necessary aspect of life, and entropy is the reason it's so rare. Nothing very profound about that, but when conscious beings with the ability to hold values and preferences enter the equation, we are for the first time in a position to evaluate the prospect of continued self-replication. We have already overcome several of our genetic impulses for the good of our communities, and indeed ourselves, so the idea that natural instincts may be antithetical to how we wish to treat others is not new. Few would argue that men are permitted to have sex with as many women as they please, with no regard for the women themselves, even though our physiology seems geared toward just that kind of lifestyle. The goals of our genes need not be our goals. So, in a universe that has now been exquisitely characterized by the sciences, although much remains unknown, perhaps the most certain fact in human knowledge is the second law of thermodynamics. We don't have any reason to hold out for a future where entropy will decrease on its own--it will never happen. In other words, we now have firm reason to believe that any future human, no matter what joys they may experience, will nonetheless be experiencing them in the context of the unceasing decay of entropy.
It would be hard to design a set of physical constants and laws that is worse for conscious inhabitants than the ones we observe: there are many combinations that would result in no possibility of consciousness at all, but probably only a few that allow consciousness while instilling it with yearnings that the universe can never satisfy, which can only be partially approached in the face of the continual dismantling of our sources of meaning, our closest relationships, and eventually ourselves. We didn't always know this was true, but now we do. Equipped with this information, the question of creating new life can no longer be "why not?". It must be "why?".
Most people on this forum would probably think sending a gay man to Saudi Arabia to live out their days would be cruel, or at least something for which permission would need to be granted beforehand. Some might go even further and claim that, if medical technology advances to the point where someone's later sexual preference can be accurately predicted before birth, it would be at least morally questionable for an Saudi Arabian woman with no prospects for relocation to give birth to a child that she knew would grow into a gay man. Maybe some would agree that it would be immoral to bring into the world any child that would grow into a pedophile, if we could somehow identify a chromosome for this behavior. This is because there is something callous about knowingly hindering someone's uncontrollable strivings, or by proxy, placing them into an environment that does so. I claim that the universe itself is, at a fundamental level, just such a place in its relation to universal human strivings. Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the level of violence, disease, hunger, or war on planet Earth. All of those factors could someday improve, as they have been in recent times, and the problem of entropy would still remain. We happen to live in a universe that, given enough time and energy, produces beings that are actually conscious of their poor match for its physical conditions, viscerally aware of the burden that accompanies their search for contentment. Evolution has brought us to this point, but we have no obligation to keep it running, and I think a considerable obligation to spare others the ordeal.
David Benatar notes that it's not uncommon for something to happen, suddenly and without warning, that severely decreases somebody's quality of life for the indefinite future; it is far less common for something to suddenly happen that makes a person's life that much better, for that much longer. The good things in life come after loads of work and effort and are often fleeting. The bad things come without any invitation and usually persist. You could also think of it in terms of probability. The things in life that we value, that are important to us, that make life worth living, are highly unlikely to spontaneously occur; if and when they do, they would quickly fall apart without outside intervention. On the other hand, the things we fear and dread have a much higher chance of arising spontaneously, and require almost no maintenance. It is far easier to destroy something valuable than it is to create something of equal value, for any definition of value people are likely to have. In a perfect (or at least fair) world, the probabilities and durations of both good and bad would be roughly equal. But in reality they are grossly disproportionate in a way that almost seems deliberately malicious.
I think this is because self-replicating life generally, and consciousness in particular, tends toward endpoints that are low in entropy. Organized complexity is a necessary aspect of life, and entropy is the reason it's so rare. Nothing very profound about that, but when conscious beings with the ability to hold values and preferences enter the equation, we are for the first time in a position to evaluate the prospect of continued self-replication. We have already overcome several of our genetic impulses for the good of our communities, and indeed ourselves, so the idea that natural instincts may be antithetical to how we wish to treat others is not new. Few would argue that men are permitted to have sex with as many women as they please, with no regard for the women themselves, even though our physiology seems geared toward just that kind of lifestyle. The goals of our genes need not be our goals. So, in a universe that has now been exquisitely characterized by the sciences, although much remains unknown, perhaps the most certain fact in human knowledge is the second law of thermodynamics. We don't have any reason to hold out for a future where entropy will decrease on its own--it will never happen. In other words, we now have firm reason to believe that any future human, no matter what joys they may experience, will nonetheless be experiencing them in the context of the unceasing decay of entropy.
It would be hard to design a set of physical constants and laws that is worse for conscious inhabitants than the ones we observe: there are many combinations that would result in no possibility of consciousness at all, but probably only a few that allow consciousness while instilling it with yearnings that the universe can never satisfy, which can only be partially approached in the face of the continual dismantling of our sources of meaning, our closest relationships, and eventually ourselves. We didn't always know this was true, but now we do. Equipped with this information, the question of creating new life can no longer be "why not?". It must be "why?".
Most people on this forum would probably think sending a gay man to Saudi Arabia to live out their days would be cruel, or at least something for which permission would need to be granted beforehand. Some might go even further and claim that, if medical technology advances to the point where someone's later sexual preference can be accurately predicted before birth, it would be at least morally questionable for an Saudi Arabian woman with no prospects for relocation to give birth to a child that she knew would grow into a gay man. Maybe some would agree that it would be immoral to bring into the world any child that would grow into a pedophile, if we could somehow identify a chromosome for this behavior. This is because there is something callous about knowingly hindering someone's uncontrollable strivings, or by proxy, placing them into an environment that does so. I claim that the universe itself is, at a fundamental level, just such a place in its relation to universal human strivings. Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the level of violence, disease, hunger, or war on planet Earth. All of those factors could someday improve, as they have been in recent times, and the problem of entropy would still remain. We happen to live in a universe that, given enough time and energy, produces beings that are actually conscious of their poor match for its physical conditions, viscerally aware of the burden that accompanies their search for contentment. Evolution has brought us to this point, but we have no obligation to keep it running, and I think a considerable obligation to spare others the ordeal.
