TheDarkQuark
@TheDarkQuark@lemmy.world
- Comment on Any advice appreciated 19 hours ago:
I do not regard the “passing on of the problem” to be a valid argument against procreation. The problem is carried by humans as a collective and through the years it has been getting better and better.
Would it be morally permissible to commit an immoral act if the sufferer were to be mildly compensated? Consider torture. In the first year, you feed them only water and poor prison bread. In the second year, you might find the meal too inhumane and add an apple. In the third year, you give them porridge. In the fourth, you give them a pie occasionally. Would you deem the torture moral simply because it has gradually improved for the sufferer?
Neither do I think that “prevention of potential suffering” is a valid argument. There is no joy without suffering and no life without both. Without bad there is no good. Life is about falling and getting back up. It is the essence of life. It is what gives life its worth.
I agree with you that joy cannot exist without suffering, and that experiencing joy requires experiencing suffering. However, you are an already existing being. In the interests of an existing being, it is rational to enjoy life (ignoring suicide). Nonexistent “beings”, however, are not subject to your predicaments. They do not need to experience joy or suffering, nor do they need to learn the necessity of “falling and getting back up”, or find the meaning of death. You are projecting your views on the beauty of the universe onto a being that neither experiences nor needs to experience it. There is nothing in it for a nonexistent being.
I personally can understood when you are 100% certain that the kid will have a birth defect that you might not want to have the child suffer under it. However, in many cases even those people are enjoying life just fine. People with down syndrome are famous for enjoying the little things in life and being full of happiness, despite the suffering.
Given my previous examples of unavoidable suffering, I view the certainty of suffering as absolute. Moreover, I do not believe that just someone enjoying their life is a sufficient justification for an immoral act. Consider slavery. Enslaved people may find community among fellow sufferers. They might sing, dance, or express gratitude for what they have. Would that make slavery morally permissible? They play the hand they are dealt with and make the best of a difficult situation. The act of making the best of a bad situation does not negate the immorality of the act that imposed that suffering upon you.
In any case, the worth of the life of the child was to me a given and not even up for debate. I do not believe that children with bad parents shouldn’t have been born. Imagine telling somebody with bad parents “it would be better if you weren’t alive”. That’s obviously not moral. They would agree with you if they hated themselves, but I would not regard this as “good for their mental health”. They too deserve a happy life, despite their bad parents. Their life still has a lot of potential and it could still be worth it, despite all the trauma.
Again, I believe you are conflating existing beings with nonexistent ones. I would consider a child’s life utterly valuable once they exist. However, I maintain the view that it would have been in their best interest not to be brought into existence in the first place. Also, the phrase “it would be better if you weren’t alive” is highly ambiguous. “Weren’t alive” can imply death, which seems to negate the value of their already existing life. That is not what I am doing here. To someone who would not misconstrue me or be emotionally hurt, I’d rather say something along the lines of “I am so sorry, it would have been in your best interest not to be brought into existence”. And yes, everyone deserves a happy life; but unfortunately, they do not get it. Instead, they experience substantial suffering that could have been avoided in the first place.
Regarding humanity as a collective, I somewhat agree with you. Creating the next generation reduces the probability of the current generation dying a miserable death. However, my point regarding this was that “kicking the can down the road” is not a good and permanent solution; it merely increases the collective suffering in the long run.
- Comment on Any advice appreciated 1 day ago:
I would disagree with your assessment that “telling people to stop procreating” is inherently malevolent, provided it is communicated in a reasonable, rational, and well-meaning manner. I agree that attributing negative value to procreation, and a subject acting on that attribution, could potentially deprive them of the happiness they might otherwise have experienced. However, I believe that bringing a being into existence is not in that being’s best interest. They are not missing out on anything, as they do not exist yet and therefore do not experience anything. So, the only one “losing” here is the parental subject, who may walk into a lonely life (which, in itself, is debatable).
If, however, a parent brings a child into existence, they expose that child to a high likelihood of numerous adversities: depression, anxiety, diabetes, cancer, insomnia, hunger, poverty, asthma, accidents, bereavement, and more. Beyond these, there are also political, economic (as you alluded to), and environmental conditions that make a child’s life significantly harder. Moreover, by bringing a child into existence, you are imposing on them the risk of “growing old living a miserable, lonely life”—in case they cannot have children, or do not want to, perhaps for reasoning similar to mine above.
So, the solution you propose to avoid loneliness is to pass the question onto another being. Would it not be more favorable to not impose so much suffering on another being, just to avoid our own loneliness? If it is loneliness we wish to combat, should we not explore other suffering-free solutions?
As for your equivalence of the poet’s words and “bad parents”, I interpret them slightly differently. The poet says:
They may not mean to, but they do.
This suggests that the act, in itself, stems from ignorance, and not malice. I do not interpret this as “bad parents”, but rather as ignorant beings. Most people do not engage in the moral calculus of bringing a new being into existence; they do not assess the pros and cons of the matter. For most, they do it because it makes them happy, is socially acceptable, and increases the probability of having a safety net in their old age. This doesn’t necessarily make them “bad” in my view, but rather ignorant. I find myself fortunate that I was able to weigh this before procreating. For the few who have thought about this, cannot come up with a counter-argument, and still choose to have children, I would personally consider them immoral and self-centered. For those with strong counter-arguments, I would want to hear them. Perhaps, it will change my mind on the topic as well.
None of my views promotes violence of any kind. I am not taking this stance due to hatred of children (I do not hate them). I simply think that they enter a lose-lose scenario by coming into existence.
^To anyone reading this: I am so sorry for opening up a debate in a shitpost, lol. As for the em-dash, I generated it with the compose key; these are my words, not an LLMs.
- Comment on Any advice appreciated 2 days ago:
Why is it disgraceful and offensive? I mean, you could argue it’s disgraceful if said in a militant manner in an unprompted scenario, but in a general discussion or a debate, why is it considered disgraceful and offensive?
- Comment on Might be reality sooner than you think 3 weeks ago:
Adam Something did a video about this 3 years ago: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fcWOivJ6bs
- Comment on Equilibrium (2002) 4 weeks ago:
Scυnthorpe
- Comment on Tiddies are nice but the metric system is better 5 weeks ago:
(you forgot 3 zeroes in Picometer)
- Comment on "You're from where?" 2 months ago:
I see. I wasn’t aware of the Scυnthorpe problem. Thanks for the link.
I see that lemmy uses a
slur_regexto replace slurs with removed: github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/…/slurs.rs#L5I don’t know what lemmy.ml’s regex is, but I know that cυnts aren’t appreciated there, lol.
- Comment on "You're from where?" 2 months ago:
Don’t worry friend, I got you. I looked it up and I reckon he is referring to “Scunthorpe”.
- Comment on Can the permissions given to a Firefox addon be finetuned more than the GUI allows? 2 months ago:
I think you should be able to edit
permissionsin the extension’smanifest.json. I don’t know if they will be overwritten by updates though. I was working on an experimental local add-on, so I had more control over it. - Comment on Perception is everything. 4 months ago:
Am I the only one who thinks it is cute? This is far from nightmare fuel!
- Comment on [deleted] 4 months ago:
Yeah, I get all that. But, did you ever install a Linux ISO at 3pm with a friend (or more)?! That’s better than sex!
- Comment on Tru 4 months ago:
I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that people do not understand this. Like, why would you ever think that you have more money than the amount deposited in your account?! I am guessing it is regional — restricted to places with poor financial hygiene/literacy due to whatever reasons.
(Despite the em-dash, I am not an AI. Two plus two is four Minus one, that’s three.)
- Comment on There are basically 4 types of files : text, image, audio and audio visual, right ? 5 months ago:
If you have a .docx file, rename it to .zip, and extract it. You’ll see it is just the .docx is just packaged text (and image) files.
- Comment on Do you stay on vpn 24/7 or turn it on whenever you need it? 5 months ago:
What are the advantages of self hosting your VPN? Is it to just hide your sessions from your ISP? Also, does it not link the domain (and identity, which I’m assuming you have provided during registration) to your online activity? I thought the whole point of these commercial VPN sellers was that you could “blend in” the traffic, and add enough noise to make any sort of aggregations meaningless. If you, however, did register and pay for it anonymously, what service is it? The last time I searched for anonymous VPSs, all of them were outside my budget.
- Comment on Marriage 5 months ago:
So, I searched for the mural specifically instead of the entire image in Google Images, and I found this this reddit post:
I looked the image up in tineye, and found the oldest use to be this picture from pikabu.ru:
So, while the image itself might be AI, the mural/meme definitely predates AI.
Hated every moment of it!
- Comment on It's not like my budget is... [NVNCBL] 5 months ago:
Fck vwls!
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
Just use Linu… Oh, sorry, you said curtains, not windows! Smh shaking my head my head!
- Comment on Is it possible to pay someone to create an excel sheet for me? 8 months ago:
Try using an LLM.
I tried to timebox myself with a Python OCR solution, but ended up spending way more time than I should’ve, without ever arriving at a good solution.
I then tried using Qwen 235B via Brave’s Leo AI, and got some okay results (I think you’ll have better luck with commercial AI models; I just don’t have an account with them atm)
- Comment on Is it possible to pay someone to create an excel sheet for me? 8 months ago:
What does the PDF look like? Can you not OCR it into something like a CSV, and import it in Excel?
- Comment on my crush when they finally see me naked 9 months ago:
Yes. Via Vehicular Manburger Helper.
- Comment on Space Nazis 2 years ago:
Tbh, it makes me sad that the Swastika is viewed as a racist symbol. It has existed for ages before the advent (and collapse?) of Nazis. The Nazis have misappropriated it in the eyes of the western world. There are still numerous cultures all over the world who view the swastika as a symbol of good health.
- Comment on reDUcTIon iS gAIn 2 years ago:
This is the oldest I could find (from 2013): dailyrecord.co.uk/…/john-niven-were-living-high-2…
- Comment on Choosing violence 2 years ago:
You can, but I recommend
btop. It’s much more cooler. - Comment on The Code 2 years ago:
Scihub ftw! 🏴☠️
- Comment on Dystopia 2 years ago:
Apple solution
- Comment on Pruod of your 2 years ago:
*you’re
