Implications

I believe the basis of what is or isn't valuable is negative and positive feelings. I do not study consciousness, but feelings are what, in those studies, might be considered affect, mainly, negative and positive valence. Feelings may be; unwanted, aversive, negative valance, against preference. Or; wanted, attractive, positive valence, or towards preference. I claim the letter itself does not, itself, contain feelings, it is an intentional object, you can experience feelings about the letter. I am not trying to argue FOR the philosophy.

Activism involves campaigning for the right to die, convincing people that birth is wrong; convincing people to adopt children or to adopt abandoned animals. They campaign to sterilise wild animals and destroy forests. There is a man I have found interesting who is not a promortalist, and may or not be an efilist (efilists tend to be a certain kind of people), but he is an animal antinatalist. Brian Tomasik He has posted a whole manifesto on how to reduce the amount of life that occurs on Earth. He advocates for focusing only on animals, not humans. He advocates for wiping out a large amount of plants or insects (because they are at the bottom of the food chain, and becuase he thinks insects might suffer). All these philosophies are based on an "asymmetry argument". Negative feelings are bad for someone Positive feelings are good for someone There are no negative feelings when there is no-one to experience it There is no desire for positive when there is no-one to experience it Therefore the conscious being should not exist.

All conscious animals as much as possible, cats, dogs, magpies, geckos. Efilism is a form of animal antinatalism; the view that animal birth, and animal life, have negative value. I define life as containing positive and negative feelings. In this context. I define being dead, or nonexistence, as having neither positive or negative feelings. To me, this makes the argument unclear.

Ah. I'm not entirely sure I have made it clear. These philosophies are based on welfare considerations. Efilists and promortalists want to reduce the amount of conscious life on Earth, as much as possible, to prevent them from suffering. They believe that their philosophies are kind and will reduce suffering. I continue to believe that the only thing that is good or bad, is what is good or bad for conscious beings, so I do not believe evolution, inevitability or energy use are relevant.

Changed. Promortalistm attaches a negative value to life, it is a philosophical stance is that it is better for you to cease to exist than continue to be. Put otherwise, it is the stance that if you do not want to suffer, then death is the only reasonable option other than preventing someone else's suffering.

Hello. I have come to heavily doubt my Efilist and promortalist stance. Is anybody here an ex-efilist, an ex-animal-antinatalist or ex-promortalist? How did you get into it, how did you leave? This is a call for help, I feel trapped by this philosophy. I need to know if there are others like me. EDIT: I am mainly looking for people who have held these stances and have now changed. But I suppose I might as well let others join in. Efil is life spelled backwards. It represents a stance of "anti-life". Efilists are universal antinatalists ,which means they want to sterilise the planet, and are generally promortalists. Promortalists attaches a negative value to life, it is a philosophical stance is that it is better for you to cease to exist than continue to be.

I am argueing that value judgements absolutely can be true or false, becuase what is a true or false value is what is good or bad for conscious beings, and I am arguing that existence is generally bad for conscious beings though those effected by privilege and survivor bias may disagree, but we have no choice to keep living if we accept that our personal suffering doesn't matter that much and we have aduty to prevent the suffering of others. Basically: Life can be good for Richard, while being generally bad. I am interested and sympathetic to the idea that spirituality or transcendance is emergent. I already accept that emotions and morality are emergeant (in other words, emotions aren't just a bunch of electric and chemical impulses but are actually important) I could possibly accept something else is emergeant. I think. It may be reasonable, to imply that life is neutral (as there isn't really a nonexistence to compare life to, nonexistence is not a thing, tohugh that's an argument I have a slgihlty hard time getting my head around.) I certainly hope so. I wish to be scientific. But I must admit I may also be guilty of simular problems I accuse Richard of; humans tend to be irrational.

Alright I can change the uncited claim if you want but there is an actual point being made...

In "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins writes Later Richard Dawkins wrote "Unweaving the Rainbow" This belief is common among athiests, and I am going to argue that Richard is wrong. It is a matter of fact that every single one of us is going to suffer, and this is ample evidence that Richard Dawkins is wrong. I argue that believing that we are lucky to be alive when you accept the reality of suffering, is bit like believing in God when you believe that life on Earth was all formed by evolutionary and physical processes. This does not represent a true acceptance of the facts. The title "Unweaving the rainbow", refers to John Keats criticism of science, that it had "destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism." Richard Dawkins claims this is wrong. I claim that Richard is not drawing quite the right conclusion. What science shows is that the rainbow is not inherently beautiful, beauty is a mere aesthethetic. There is nothing poetic about a rainbow. I argue, that science shows there is no spiritual, transcendent or philisophical quality to the universe and that the existence of life or rainbows does not have value. What science shows is that there is an objective universe and as such I beleive that Richard's claim, that we are are lucky to be alive, can be false. I propose that the correct response to this unspecial nature of the universe, is something resembling stoicism or philisophical Buddhism. We must accept that suffering exists and respond compassionately to others and ourselves. We must be careful to not panic in the face of suffering, or else we will make it worse. We must destroy the myth that things other than welfare have value. PS: One thing some of you may find confusing is the idea that emotions are in some way objective and that someone can make an objective statement about wether life is nice or not. What I claim to be true, is: Emotions are the only measure of welfare, welfare is the only measure of morality, and it is an objective fact that all affective beings will suffer.

Be kind. I argue against individual purpose. We must find the best way to cater to conscious things and make sure no needs are exploited.

I can see pitfalls of changing ecosystems yes. If you think I got my ethical reasons screwed, i'm curious about that too. I want to discuss something I have been confused about that hopefuly may clear up some issue. The thing with the antinatalist vs natalist debate, seems to be; that antinatalists hold the assymetric view of birth, and natalists hold the incomparability of non-existence. The assymetric view of birth states that is very bad to create suffering individuals, and happy individuals are a weak justification for taking the risk. The incomparability view, states that it cannot be better to exist or not exist and nonexistent individuals don't have rights, as no person is affected, so antinatalism can't be true. The incomparable view has some implications for things that we may more intuitively think of as correct, like selecting against chronic pain, and improving the welfare of people in the future.

> isn't just some theoretical philosophy adopted by biologists >tangible benefits My argument is that what is morally,ethical, whatyacallit, true, must have tangible benefits, not be mere philosophy. It seems to me we could start with fast-breeding and common animals, particularly when not native. Making things worse must be considered, but we can be conservationists purely becuase we do have information about how ecosystemns work. I believe the notion that ecosystems are so mysterious is a part of this "beautiful glorious whole" narrative. It's silly to imply any problem is just too complicated and therefore procrastinate serious investigation. If something is purely useful to humans then this is bigoted to animals.

The existence of Life on Earth is the only problem faced by life on Earth, discuss. I used to be a tree-hugging hippy, at least by my current values, life is beautiful, biology is fascinating. But then I realised that the higher order of complexity; the "balance", between good or bad, the great interconnection on all life on Earth, has no value. I argue that animal antinatalism; reducing the amount of animal birth to prevent poor welfare, is legitimate biology. Conservation is considered to be legitimate biology despite being a philosophy; it is an attempt at finding a biologically accurate version of morality to apply to wild animals, and I argue that it is wrong. I argue that what is best for living things can be acquired by humans; what we need to do, is make sure the needs of conscious beings are met as effectively as possible, I argue this is scientifically possible. Granted, humans are distractable; it might be happening to me; my solution must be effective , make sense, and not merely make futile sense. If I harm others instead of help, I will be obligated to stop. What is the case, though, is that life runs on backwards logic. Nonconsciousness is the default from which, ideally, we need to justify conscious beings, instead, we're forced to justify being alive. Bad experience does not actually protect you from bad things, as "bad things" are a hallucination of conscious minds and are not necessarily existent. It appears to be the case then, that antinatalism does not actually need to be proven at all, but is just as self-evident as atheism; we need to deliberately say yes to life in order to justify it's continued production, and we do not have the proof to justify it. Positive experience is not effective proof. There are intensely bad implications in the argument that positive is just as valid in value as negative, appeals to equality of opinions or appeals to "democracy" (including the opinions of animals). These imply that it is ok to abuse somebody as long as enough people join in. The argument that animals would disagree is frankly bizarre, if I lacked the correct reasoning skills I would not reason that harming others is wrong, if I lacked science I would not be able to help. This may not be intuitive, however. We have challenges to face. If we are to reduce the population of animals; Where do we start? Does this view have harmful implications for the rights of conscious things? How do we navigate the risks associated with population shifts? How bad is species extinction? I am currently willing to accept the "unpleasent" implications of antinatalism implies; nonexistence (being dead) is preferable to existence, that the right to life is a kind of fiction; we're forced to be alive, only have a right to life because we have obligations to other agents, and have a right to die when we choose. What are the further implications of this? We need to answer these questions, and what I seem to see, is that people refuse to rationally engage in debate, writing off antinatalism as edgy nonsense, not good-faith debate. I have been careful to not make any edgy pleas except for possibly this one; billions of conscious beings are suffering and dying as we speak, do we really have no choice but for this to continue as normal? Biologists do not take antinatalism seriously and are conservationists instead, if there is good rationale behind this I'd like to hear it. What it appears to me, is that scientists become distracted with complex dynamical systems, which misleads them from the experience of the actual beings involved.