Is nonexistence preferable to living?

[seriously disabled]

Human life really doesn't mean much in my opinion and I think that it is justifiable to say that the universe is really merciless and cruel.

 

We all live, we all die and then we are forever forgotten. There is no life after death because after we die we just cease to exist... forever and ever.

Edited June 6, 2013 by seriously disabled

[arc]

I think this is a common thought by many people. I would assume mostly of those between the ages of 14 - 24. Why, because I was young once. I remember feeling hopeless, that the amount of effort it would take to be happy and fulfilled seemed daunting. Where would you even begin? What would it take for you to reach an acceptable degree of existence.

 

Unfortunately this society will not provide you with a free ride and the lottery is to great of a long shot for most. So you spend your time contemplating the existence of all of humanity as if it was placed on an arm of a scale. But what is on the other end of the bar? What is balanced against all of humanity? You have place yourself. By appointing yourself the great jurist, the one to decide the fate of all. Seems like such a selfish idea doesn't it. All of humanity needing to balance one person.

Edited June 22, 2013 by arc

[knownothing]

I think that there is a distinction between the kind of pessimism that is born from ignorance of the world or crushed idealism (the kind of teenage angst that older people sneer at contemptuously) and the kind of pessimism that is brought about by a sober analysis of human existence. As you said, I have experienced a lot of discouragement. I have been at such a low point that I greatly wished to be dead. I am sure that this must be obvious since cheery people generally don't come to the conclusion that life is bad.

 

Where would you even begin? What would it take for you to reach an acceptable degree of existence.

Some antinatalists believe that any suffering is unacceptable but I would say that a world in which suffering=pleasure is an acceptable world. This would still be a very mediocre place to live in but it would not be deplorable like current human existence is.

 

Unfortunately this society will not provide you with a free ride

 

I don't know if you are assuming you know my desires or just making an irrelevant statement.

 

So you spend your time contemplating the existence of all of humanity as if it was placed on an arm of a scale.

The issue here is that each other person does this when they decide to bring a baby to life. If you intentionally give birth, you are deciding that life is good. Why am I getting crap just for having a minority opinion? You seem to think that depriving someone of their future by killing them is selfish but creating a human is not selfish. Who are we doing a favor when we create a human? You cannot say that we are doing a favor to the baby because the baby does not exist to want to be alive. People have babies because they want them.

 

The difference is that someone cannot be worse off for being dead, while someone will certainly be worse off for being alive. The absence of pleasure is rendered meaningless when it does not result in deprivation; a dead person cannot be deprived and is no worse off for being dead. In the end it cannot be said that it is good to bring a human to life so that they can experience pleasure, because there was no deprivation to satisfy in the first place.

 

Don't say that I am selfish for not caring what the rest of the human race thinks unless you will concede that it is selfish to bring a human to life in the first place. And, as I have shown, my action does not result in suffering like giving birth does, so my action is the less detrimental of the two. My action results in exactly no suffering, because there are no people left to grieve and no one alive to be deprived of pleasure.

 

By appointing yourself the great jurist, the one to decide the fate of all. Seems like such a selfish idea doesn't it. All of humanity needing to balance one person.

 

Again, I'm not anymore of a judge than the people who decide that life is good. When you look at how every bad thing that ever happened to anyone (including suffering the death of a loved one) can be traced back to being born, my decision to end this pointless game doesn't seem so bad. I think you would have to justify not pressing the button if you had the opportunity to kill everyone. My action is purely good because it results in no suffering but it ends all kinds of suffering. Your decision not to press the button would mean that either you think the good in life outweighs the bad, or you think there is some magical abstract thing about living that makes it good on principle. If you only think that the good in life outweighs the bad in most cases, then you are being "selfish" because you are sacrificing the best interests of a small minority. My decision does not sacrifice anyone's best interests (at least not to the degree to which any suffering is caused), because they cannot be worse off for being dead.

 

You are just as much of a "jurist" when you insist that you are not harming a child by bringing him or her to life. If that kid gets raped, it is on you by proxy because you knew the risks. You either naively decided that your child would definitely not get raped or you decided that the risk was worth taking. Yes, every time you have a child, you are playing roulette with someone who is not you. If that is not "selfish" I don't know what is.

 

I don't want to offend anyone; I am not trying to make anyone feel bad for being a parent. I'm just trying to be as objective as I can, because sentimentality has a tendency to make people irrational.

Edited June 23, 2013 by knownothing

[Greylorn]

What follows assumes that no life after death exists and that a dead person returns to the state of pre-birth. This is not necessarily my opinion, but it seems to be the most logical conclusion.

 

It is commonly said that life is a gift, or at least that you are lucky to have it. Being born means beating astronomical odds, so even the scientifically-inclined tend to characterize it as something that one should be happy about having. But is it really more fortunate to be born than to die in utero? Leaving all sentimentality aside, let us consider what life is like.

 

1. After birth, humans begins to have desires. Now, a desire is a form of discomfort. It drives us to do whatever it is that we end up doing. It could be a desire for pleasure or a desire to avoid pain.

2. Some humans have "good" lives. A good life is when a human generally succeeds at meeting his or her goals, avoiding pain and feeling pleasure.

3. Others will have "bad" lives. A bad life is when a human generally fails at meeting his or her goals, avoiding pain and feeling pleasure.

4. Those who have "bad" lives will either die quickly (in a primitive society) or suffer through their life in shame, frustration, depression or chronic pain. No compensation will ever be given.

5. Those who have "good" lives will still have to experience the death of loved ones and the dying of themselves.

6. The quest to find meaning or acquire knowledge is well within the arena of "avoiding pain" or "feeling pleasure" and is no different than having sex or moving up the corporate ladder.

 

I know that in reality, there is no such thing as a "good" or "bad" life, but I am speaking roughly about a life where someone either suffers more than feels pleasure, or feels pleasure more than suffering.

 

My conclusion is that being born means that you are astronomically unlucky rather that the opposite. You are free to dispute anything I have said up to this point. Other than that, I have two questions:

 

1. Is it more desirable for an individual human to be stillborn than to live?

2. Would it be better for all of humanity to go extinct?

Given your preliminary assumptions which appear to be either atheistic or clsssical Buddhist, the answers to your questions should be apparent.

 

1.) It depends upon the particular human. Many of them address this question via suicide. Others make the best of their lives and enjoy every moment of their exisence, even appreciating the bad times.

 

2.) It makes no difference if we are extinct or not. "Better" than what? "Better" is a value judgment which, in the context of your comments is only relevant if a mind external to the system being evaluated exists to make comparisons.

 

Therefore, I propose that we extend your argument to a created universe in which human beings and human minds are created. That changes the answer, at least for me. Were I to actually believe that a God created man, body and soul, I would self-terminate as an act of personal revolt against a creator who was either malicious or incompetent.

 

However, there is a third alternative, that some entities actually did create the universe, including the critters on this planet and our biomechanical bodies, but did not create the conscious component of the human mind, a component primitively described by Rene Descartes to the best of his pre-physics understanding.

 

Suppose that this is a reasonably correct assessment of creation. If so, you as a conscious mind were not created. More likely you have always existed as an entity with the potential for consciousness, but unable to realize that potential without assistance. The brain-body system provides that assistance.

 

Under such hypothetical circumstances where your conscious mind might survive your body's demise, perhaps later entering other bodies to obtain a consciousness-boost, how would you answer your own question?

[arc]

knownothing;

My apologies, my intention was to address all those that have had these contemplation's, I believed by expressing "Why, because I was young once. I remember feeling hopeless, that the amount of effort it would take to be happy and fulfilled seemed daunting" was adequate in associating this to a common experience. My use of "you" was to imply all of us. The phrase "I grew up in a small town where you had little opportunity" is analogous to my intent.

 

I believe this matter is simply our biology manifesting its will into our circumstances. It is telling you its time to move on. This is the mechanism of evolution that suggested to our ancestors to crawl on their fins to a larger and more oxygenated puddle. The history of life has been the history of disproportionate challenges. Some life forms and people have had fewer pressures to change, an alligator and a millionaire may be similar in this, both would require a substantial change in surroundings to elicit an adaptive response. You are experiencing natural abet disproportionate challenges on a personal level.

 

I have always been drawn to history, it has given me a context to measure my own discomfort and my motivations to relieve it. Some of the people that had experienced the Bataan death march and subsequent captivity related to their experience many years later as an adaptation and even a period of character building that they credit to their later successes in life. This would possibly validate this mechanism as responsible for mankind's successes beyond mere survival, that continuous adaptive challenges of human caused origins are partly if not completely responsible for our large brain capacity. A forcing agent of human competition within its own species.

 

Where was that point in human history where we had been mostly biologically adapting and then with gradual increase's in intelligence to being slowly but increasingly driving our own ship so to speak with our own cognitive consciousness. The saying "What doesn't destroy you can only make you stronger" is the frame by which the majority of humans live, whether by personal choice or not.

 

In my area there was a cartoonist who became quite successful, he was a quadriplegic with little use of his arms and a little movement in his hands with which he made his living. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Callahan_(cartoonist)

Though not mentioned in the above, he stated that the car accident that had changed his life had actually saved his life. I don't remember his exact words, but it related to his belief that the direction his life was heading was to an early grave. He had an amazing outlook for someone who was beset by what would be to most people as an unfair and overwhelming chain of events.

 

This may be of little help to you, but it is important for everyone to subject their cognitive results to the test of time. To run the experiment the full observational period. You will only know the truth in this way. Anything less would be considered poorly done science. arc

Edited June 23, 2013 by arc

[knownothing]

 

1.) It depends upon the particular human. Many of them address this question via suicide. Others make the best of their lives and enjoy every moment of their exisence, even appreciating the bad times.

 

2.)

It makes no difference if we are extinct or not. "Better" than what? "Better" is a value judgment which, in the context of your comments is only relevant if a mind external to the system being evaluated exists to make comparisons.

 

1. I think that very few people actually address the question of life's worth at all, to be honest. People who kill themselves or decide to find the best in life often do not do so for philosophical reasons. Many who kill themselves are unthinking and only concerned with ending painful self awareness, and many who are optimistic believe in the pseduo philosophy of glass half full thinking. I do not want to be down on optimists, but I do think that they should justify being optimistic. If they are optimistic in spite of the world, then I can better understand their position. It is the people who claim that life is not so bad that truly annoy me. That is as bad as an angst-filled teen declaring that the world is terrible based on his short, privileged life. When I make judgements about humanity, I base my pessimism on the nature of existence, not the individual events that take place.

 

2. I am speaking as a human. I do not believe that such things as abstract values really exist. Earlier on in this topic, I said that I would not consider human existence bad if I were an immortal godlike being, because human existence is of no consequence to a human in the long run. From my point of view as a human, I can see that it is objectively true that suffering is a major part of life. I cannot prove that suffering is universally bad, but I can show that it is bad for us. We are the only known beings capable of making these subjective judgements about things, so things only really matter at all to us. In the reality that our brains make for us, pain is objectively bad.

 

Under such hypothetical circumstances where your conscious mind might survive your body's demise, perhaps later entering other bodies to obtain a consciousness-boost, how would you answer your own question?

Since the nature of existence is to suffer, an inability for the consciousness to die would be a bad fate. My understanding is that many Buddhists regard Nirvana as being in a state of annihilation, so it seems that I am not the first to think of this. I could go for eons without being conscious again but it would seem like only a light nap before I came back to life.

 

I said earlier that I would still wipe out sentience even if it would come back later, just because it would still spare billions of people suffering. I understand that I have no objective basis for choosing to do this and it would be my own personal decision when faced with ultimate futility. It would not be a permanent solution, but I would still do it.

 

Now, I will answer concerning me as an individual only. If I knew that I myself was going to come back instantly, I would not even bother. If I was living a worse life than I am now I would go for it and hope for something better. As it stands now, however, I could very much come back worse off. Eons of unconsciousness pass in the blink of an eye, and suddenly I could be getting scourged five times a day by some drunkard father in Earth 2.0 after another big bang.

 

My apologies, my intention was to address all those that have had these contemplation's, I believed by expressing "Why, because I was young once. I remember feeling hopeless, that the amount of effort it would take to be happy and fulfilled seemed daunting" was adequate in associating this to a common experience. My use of "you" was to imply all of us. The phrase "I grew up in a small town where you had little opportunity" is analogous to my intent.

I was being a little bit defensive because I thought that you thought I expected society to give me a free ride. Sorry if I came off in a snide way.

 

I have always been drawn to history, it has given me a context to measure my own discomfort and my motivations to relieve it. Some of the people that had experienced the Bataan death march and subsequent captivity related to their experience many years later as an adaptation and even a period of character building that they credit to their later successes in life. This would possibly validate this mechanism as responsible for mankind's successes beyond mere survival, that continuous adaptive challenges of human caused origins are partly if not completely responsible for our large brain capacity. A forcing agent of human competition within its own species.

 

This is one of the major things that I have against the so-called goodness of life. Competition and suffering are the parents of our species, and so we are damned to be their children forever. Our society has taken away some of the competition of life, but we can still clearly see how a disabled person loses almost every competitive part of life to someone who is not disabled. When before such a disabled person would have died by natural selection, now they are merely deprived of the rewards of being born with functional body parts. Perhaps art is man's great refuge, because it does not have the same level of competition that everything else has.

 

Where was that point in human history where we had been mostly biologically adapting and then with gradual increase's in intelligence to being slowly but increasingly driving our own ship so

to speak with our own cognitive consciousness. The saying "What doesn't destroy you can only make you stronger" is the frame by which the majority of humans live, whether by personal choice or not.

In my area there was a cartoonist who became quite successful, he was a quadriplegic with little use of his arms and a little movement in his hands with which he made his living. http://en.wikipedia....an_(cartoonist)

Though not mentioned in the above, he stated that the car accident that had changed his life had actually saved his life. I don't remember his exact words, but it related to his belief that the direction his life was heading was to an early grave. He had an amazing outlook for someone who was beset by what would be to most people as an unfair and overwhelming chain of events.

 

I want to a find a way to affirm life, but I cannot ignore the reality of existence. I am not too happy, but I can remember a time when I was profoundly miserable. No matter how happy I ever become, I will never say that life is good out of respect for the miserable people. I think that we should come clean and admit that some people do not have a reason to celebrate life. With respect to the quadriplegic artist, who I am happy for, his happiness is not a piece of evidence that should convict every quadriplegic person of the inherent goodness of life. If you want to be really ugly, you can think of how he actually competitively defeated some other aspiring artists, some of them being quads themselves. Every opportunity is limited, and so one quad succeeding means that another now has less opportunity.

 

And just to be clear, I am not disabled, I am just using that as an example.

Edited June 24, 2013 by knownothing

[arc]

I was being a little bit defensive because I thought that you thought I expected society to give me a free ride. Sorry if I came off in a snide way.

 

No, I would have done the same. I reread my post after your response and you were more than gracious.

 

 

 

This is one of the major things that I have against the so-called goodness of life. Competition and suffering are the parents of our species, and so we are damned to be their children forever. Our society has taken away some of the competition of life, but we can still clearly see how a disabled person loses almost every competitive part of life to someone who is not disabled. When before such a disabled person would have died by natural selection, now they are merely deprived of the rewards of being born with functional body parts. Perhaps art is man's great refuge, because it does not have the same level of competition that everything else has.

 

Competition and suffering are the parents of our species, and so we are damned to be their children forever.

I think that has begun to change rather quickly and recently. The fate of those with Downs syndrome for example has changed completely in the last 40 years. They were once institutionalized due to the "institutional" philosophy that left them with bleak existences in most cases. Now they are integrated into society, living in residential neighborhoods and working to their capacities. One visit to a Special Olympics event shows how far things have come. This is remarkable and gives hope for the future of all of use who someday may be dependent on society.

 

The good in this world can be found and nurtured. We can override our programming, and implement new protocols. This is where many find their purpose and reason to live. arc

 

 

[MonDie]

The difference is that someone cannot be worse off for being dead, while someone will certainly be worse off for being alive. The absence of pleasure is rendered meaningless when it does not result in deprivation; a dead person cannot be deprived and is no worse off for being dead. In the end it cannot be said that it is good to bring a human to life so that they can experience pleasure, because there was no deprivation to satisfy in the first place.

I said earlier that I would still wipe out sentience even if it would come back later, just because it would still spare billions of people suffering. I understand that I have no objective basis for choosing to do this and it would be my own personal decision when faced with ultimate futility. It would not be a permanent solution, but I would still do it.

 

Now, I will answer concerning me as an individual only. If I knew that I myself was going to come back instantly, I would not even bother. If I was living a worse life than I am now I would go for it and hope for something better. As it stands now, however, I could very much come back worse off. Eons of unconsciousness pass in the blink of an eye, and suddenly I could be getting scourged five times a day by some drunkard father in Earth 2.0 after another big bang.

From my point of view as a human, I can see that it is objectively true that suffering is a major part of life. I cannot prove that suffering is universally bad, but I can show that it is bad for us. We are the only known beings capable of making these subjective judgements about things, so things only really matter at all to us. In the reality that our brains make for us, pain is objectively bad.

 

 

In my uninformed opinion, I think we may have to distinguish between pain & pleasure as cognitive judgments and pain & pleasure as qualia.

 

If "pain & pleasure" refer to specific qualia, then a weighing out of pain & pleasure cannot take into account desires. In this context, if I desire something that I feel I was deprived of, the thing desired isn't necessarily a form of pleasure. If the quale is pleasurable, that is an inherent property of the quale, whether I desire the quale or not. If one were to base a form of utilitarianism on qualia, it wouldn't necessarily take into account the self-concerned feeling of deprivation, for it might not be relevant; pain & pleasure become detatched from the thinking individual. For example, if making more babies (increasing the population) would increase the sum happiness while lowering the mean happiness, it would still be considered moral, despite the many people being deprived of their wishes.

However, this way of thinking raises some questions. First, do pain & pleasure even depend on our cognitive awareness of them? Could a rock possess pain despite its lack of awareness?

Second, does this fall prey to Wittgenstein's private language argument? Is it rationally justifiable to insist that certain qualia are "good" or "bad"?

 

If "pain & pleasure" refer to cognitive judgements, they clearly depend on intelligence (a rock could not possess them). In that case, it make no sense at all to talk of reincarnation, because you are more than just a chunk of electrons, you have a specific way of thinking and a unique identity. You were the source of those cognitive judgements, and once your brain is destroyed, the thing that was identifiably "you" is gone.

In this context, it may make more sense to talk of deprivation because of the focus on the experiencing individual.

 

Also, we don't consist of the same biological materials throughout our lives. We are open systems that exchange materials with the environment.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Mondays Assignment: Die

[knownothing]

The good in this world can be found and nurtured. We can override our programming, and implement new protocols. This is where many find their purpose and reason to live.

I think that the only way to truly "override our programming" would be to implement a very complex authoritarian system that basically ensured that you would be happy from day one. Since most people would rather have "the choice to suffer" as Huxley puts it, then I don't think our society is going anywhere very fast. You mention purpose, but there is some reason to suspect that the desire to feel purpose is merely a response that we have to suffering (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/afps-prt030211.php). People are terrified by the idea of their lives not having purpose, and many of these same people will interpret the kinds of changes that would be needed for more overall happiness as taking the meaning out of life. That is not to suggest that well off people don't seek out purpose, either, but this is just the reaction of a "winner" at life who realizes that he is still going to die some day.

 

pain & pleasure become detatched from the thinking individual.

What do you mean by this? I think that only the unthinking individual can escape pain by means of self-denial, meditation or positive thinking.

 

For example, if making more babies (increasing the population) would increase the sum happiness while lowering the mean happiness, it would still be considered moral, despite the many people being deprived of their wishes.

I agree, although I can't conceive of a real world situation where more babies would equal more happiness. Maybe you are just throwing an example out there.

 

 

Is it rationally justifiable to insist that certain qualia are "good" or "bad"?

Like I said earlier, I cannot prove that pain is bad. All I can use to measure these things is the human experience, and that is the only experience that matters when we are talking about highly abstract concepts like badness. The fact that no such thing as suffering really exists doesn't comfort a person who is suffering. Through consensus reality, we can confirm that there are common trends of feelings in humans and that the same feeling is painful or pleasurable for every different human. If a human has a less than graceful experience and is not humiliated, it does not mean that he does not feel pain from the feeling of humiliation. It only means that he was not humiliated in this instance. In my opinion, we do not need "private language" to talk about the broad experience that humanity has. The private experience of a person is only his unique take on a very ubiquitous experience that billions of other people are experiencing in a somewhat nuanced way.

 

If "pain & pleasure" refer to cognitive judgements, they clearly depend on intelligence (a rock could not possess them). In that case, it make no sense at all to talk of reincarnation, because you are more than just a chunk of electrons, you have a specific way of thinking and a unique identity. You were the source of those cognitive judgements, and once your brain is destroyed, the thing that was identifiably "you" is gone.

 

In this context, it may make more sense to talk of deprivation because of the focus on the experiencing individual.

I agree, I was just responding to Greylorn who asked me to consider my decision if my conscious mind might survive my death and enter into another body. I don't think that that is likely to happen for the reasons that you gave.

Edited June 26, 2013 by knownothing

[MonDie]

 

pain & pleasure become detatched from the thinking individual.

What do you mean by this? I think that only the unthinking individual can escape pain by means of self-denial, meditation or positive thinking.

 

I mean that we would be talking in terms of pleasure qualia and pain qualia, not happy people and unhappy people. Most people don't think in this way. If given the opportunity to bring a little happiness to the most miserable person or bring a lot of happiness to an already happy person, most people would choose the former, but the latter is actually more favorable from a utilitarian perspective.

 

I agree, I was just responding to Greylorn who asked me to consider my decision if my conscious mind might survive my death and enter into another body. I don't think that that is likely to happen for the reasons that you gave.

 

Since it's relevant to the question of what it means to exist, I'll bring it up.

 

The question of identity is relevant to the possibility of quantum teleportation (40:00 - 44:00 of this NOVA video). They pose the question: is he actually teleported to Paris, or is he merely transformed into a lump of matter?

[Roers]

I don't think this matter can be resolved because we all exist while the bias is there. We could not. it just won't. I don't think we can fully comprehend the idea of not existing.

[knownothing]

The question of identity is relevant to the possibility of quantum teleportation (40:00 - 44:00 of this NOVA video). They pose the question: is he actually teleported to Paris, or is he merely transformed into a lump of matter?

I think that you would not be "you" if you got taken apart and reassembled somewhere else. Is there really any way to tell if we are the same conscious beings that we were a year ago? I guess that is for another topic.

 

I don't think this matter can be resolved because we all exist while the bias is there. We could not. it just won't. I don't think we can fully comprehend the idea of not existing.

We can't imagine not existing because nonexistence isn't a real thing, it's not that it is a unknown to us. If the consciousness survives death, that is one thing. But the questions of the topic are regarding nonexistence and there can be no speculation about what "nonexistence" is. Nonexistence is defined to mean something specific, so we can very well comprehend it, while not being able to imagine it. We are talking about the choice between conscious life or total unawareness.

Edited June 28, 2013 by knownothing

[MonDie]

I think that you would not be "you" if you got taken apart and reassembled somewhere else. Is there really any way to tell if we are the same conscious beings that we were a year ago? I guess that is for another topic.

 

From a biological standpoint, your genes would remain intact, and that's all that's important.

From an egoistic standpoint, you (or something like you) would still exist to carry out your will.

[Iota]

Sometimes I think I'd prefer to have not be born, in the sense that I wouldn't know the difference... because, well, I wouldn't anything. But it's pretty cool being able to live once, on top of that, live and be concious of life. Most people go throughout their whole lives, practically not aware of anything, rather pointless. Struggling to explain exactly what I mean, luckily I remembered this quote by Oscar Wilde that says it:

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

I think if you live without the fortune of an education and a reasonably intelligent mind then, in my opinion, it would be better not to exist. Because when that is the case, their purpose is not their own, it's merely nature's: the propagation of DNA. The bad aspects of living can only be made up for by at least having the privileged understanding how you exist and your significance to the universe, and the universe itself.

[knownothing]

To be honest, I think that life is worth nothing even if you are educated. Knowledge, when it is pursued for its own sake, will almost always make you unhappy. We start out intellectually dead, as children. We believe that the world is basically good and that there are good things in store for us. As we grow older, we must admit that certain comforting stories are false, and this is as far as most people are willing to go. To the average person, life is a story that revolves around them: struggle and pain is meaningful, true love exists, there is such a thing as good and evil, good is bound to win, and deeds are worth some kind of abstract value even when done privately. To most people, these are the falsehoods that they refuse to stop believing in.

 

It is not too painful to realize that these things are lies. We are not yet in existential horror territory. That comes later, when you realize that life is a giant competition and the starting lines have been set miles apart. Everyone sees everyone else only for their potential for being exploited. The weak are only assisted because it pleases the strong. It is obvious to any truly educated person that genetic inferiority is not only present, but rampant in the human species. The lottery of birth lays out a person's life for them, and then they are praised or blamed for the outcome. Every painful feeling is much more profound than every good feeling, and this is because our body must torture us to get us to have reproductive health. I suspect that a chief reason for suicide is that a person's body does not realize when a goal is unattainable and keeps torturing them anyway. We are slaves to the blind idiot god of evolution. To me, all of this is much worse than the existence of starving children in Africa. Existential horror is the realization that we are glorified wolves, fancying ourselves as being sophisticated.

 

I envy the people who see the world in an optimistic way.

[Iota]

 

To the average person, life is a story that revolves around them: struggle and pain is meaningful, true love exists, there is such a thing as good and evil, good is bound to win, and deeds are worth some kind of abstract value even when done privately. To most people, these are the falsehoods that they refuse to stop believing in.

I agree.

 

 

 

The weak are only assisted because it pleases the strong.

 

No, the weak survive because human culture has unwittingly allowed for it. Ironically, man's evolution into a more intelligent being in order to improve survival chances has actually backfired for the species 'fitness' as a whole and hindered individual cases of survival and reproduction.

 

 

 

I suspect that a chief reason for suicide is that a person's body does not realize when a goal is unattainable and keeps torturing them anyway.

 

Perhaps, although I suspect some have a more concious and deliberate reason for it. Not linked to a goal, just weighing up the pros and cons of life in general.

 

 

 

Existential horror is the realization that we are glorified wolves, fancying ourselves as being sophisticated.

 

This is almost redundant to me. I'm all too aware of the way people act, in the same way animals do, using others for their own gain and benefit, in competition with the rest of us. I don't allow that to interfere with my own goals though. I take solace in realising that I realise this whereas others do not.

[knownothing]

 

the weak survive because human culture has unwittingly allowed for it.

Unwittingly, yes. But I still believe that I am correct in saying that it pleases the strong. It is our obsession with a culture of life and equality that has made the accommodation of the weak necessary. If we did not accommodate the weak, it would cause mental turmoil and so we would be unhappy because of it. Because we do not help the weak for their own sake but for ours, the weak still often meet a grim fate. Who hasn't thought to themselves "well, somebody has to be a janitor!"? And even now, we underestimate the low quality of life that the impoverished suffer from. For "social" animals, we are spectacularly lacking in empathy. My point is that ultimately we let people suffer as long as we can tell ourselves that we have somehow washed our hands of their suffering. We do not care that people suffer, only that we do not feel guilty because of it.

 

EDIT: It occurred to me that I could be pretty wrong about this. It is necessary to appease the proletariat because those are the backs that riches are built on. I suppose that, in a way, the weak do have leverage as one massive unit. But it is still that it pleases the strong, because they would rather give up some wealth than have their workers walk out on them.

 

In situations where there is no leverage, no such thing happens. Unfortunate people are not saved the arduous labor and degradation of the working class. Their leverage only works as long as they prostitute themselves to more fortunate people.

 

 

I suspect some have a more concious and deliberate reason for it. Not linked to a goal, just weighing up the pros and cons of life in general.

I think that suicide is usually an effort to end self awareness. Painful self awareness results from social pain. Without other people, our goals would be simplistic and pointless. Social pain is as intense as it is because (as I stated) it is your body's way of telling you that you are about to either get ostracized from the group (death in a state of nature) or that you do not have reproductive fitness (will not pass on genes). Clearly, your body serves the species first and you second. Suicidal ideation, in my opinion, is the realization that your existence does not serve you.

 

 

This is almost redundant to me. I'm all too aware of the way people act, in the same way animals do, using others for their own gain and benefit, in competition with the rest of us. I don't allow that to interfere with my own goals though. I take solace in realising that I realise this whereas others do not.

 

Interesting, it only made me despair when I discovered this. I suppose that it is not the fact that we are so selfish that is horrible. Rather, what is so horrible is that we must hurt each other and deep down we really don't care. Just by existing, we must cause thousands of instances of social pain to others. I am sad, essentially because social pain is an unsolvable problem and it is serious, excruciating pain. Life's goodness is less than zero sum, because the suffering of an inferior individual is greater than the pleasure of a superior individual, and a satisfied desire is not as pleasurable as a deprivation is painful.

 

I'd like to hear your take on this. Why does this insider knowledge give you solace?

Edited July 15, 2013 by knownothing

[Iota]

 

 

Social pain is as intense as it is because (as I stated) it is your body's way of telling you that you are about to either get ostracized from the group (death in a state of nature) or that you do not have reproductive fitness (will not pass on genes). Clearly, your body serves the species first and you second. Suicidal ideation, in my opinion, is the realization that your existence does not serve you.

 

I'm not sure it's as absolute as that. As I said before, our intelligence can conflict with our somewhat hard-wired brains, and make goals above that of survival and animal instinct.

 

 

 

Who hasn't thought to themselves "well, somebody has to be a janitor!"?

 

Well, I guess, but it's not always as bad as that. The people who do these jobs often find ways to enjoy aspects of the jobs to get them through it, and with the way Western society is set up in particular, most working class people are somewhat satisfied with where they're at.

 

Originally I was discussing the burden of being intelligent and having above average knowledge, relating to your original topic, so in that case, the janitor can arguably be better off than the scientist or whatever, because said person is ignorant to many realisations that others of us have.

 

 

 

Rather, what is so horrible is that we must hurt each other and deep down we really don't care.

 

 

I'd like to hear your take on this. Why does this insider knowledge give you solace?

 

If we felt bad about everyone we hurt we'd drive ourselves insane, so I guess you could claim it's a survival mechanism to wipe our hands of others' misery. Personally, I wouldn't say I wipe my hands of others' misery, I'm just not concious of it 24/7. That's an impossible task to ask of yourself.

 

I take solace is knowing that I am concious of why people screw me over, even though they're not concious of it. I know that I can be different in not screwing others over for my own gain, yet when it happens to me, I'm indifferent to it, because I almost expect it to happen sometimes and I can counter it, because I know what's happening.

 

Coming from a state school, most of the idiots there who were too busy bullying others for being smart, wasting their time not listening in class, I've witnessed them going absolutely nowhere in life. Where school probably quite as good for me in the social sense, but good for them. They're paying for that now by having shi**y jobs and not having a lot of money to spend on doing the things the want. My 'reward' if you like is me trying at school and now I'm getting a good degree which will pay off in the future and have me a job I'll enjoy too. On top of that I don't tend to feel sorry for them because most of them are too arrogant to realise they're in the position they're in because of their actions, and their lives aren't that bad anyway because society picks up after them to keep the economy running.

 

See there's a difference, people in the poor parts of the world who didn't have the option of education, or the Janitor in the first world, who neglected education deliberately for social gain or whatever (in most cases anyway). I feel sorry for the prior.

[knownothing]

 

I'm not sure it's as absolute as that. As I said before, our intelligence can conflict with our somewhat hard-wired brains, and make goals above that of survival and animal instinct.

I was just thinking along general lines. If you are curious, you might want to check out the work of psychologist Thomas Joiner relating relating to suicide.

 

 

If we felt bad about everyone we hurt we'd drive ourselves insane, so I guess you could claim it's a survival mechanism to wipe our hands of others' misery.

I am just saying that hurting people is inevitable. It is a pill that every utopianist and optimist should have to swallow. Just by existing, you are indirectly causing others to starve and be out of work. You, living in a first world country, are also causing damage to the environment and causing workers in the third world to be exploited. And we also factor in the aforementioned social pain. Everyone who thinks that the world needs more people should consider all of these things instead of just naively declaring that life is good.

 

 

I take solace is knowing that I am concious of why people screw me over, even though they're not concious of it. I know that I can be different in not screwing others over for my own gain, yet when it happens to me, I'm indifferent to it, because I almost expect it to happen sometimes and I can counter it, because I know what's happening.

 

Coming from a state school, most of the idiots there who were too busy bullying others for being smart, wasting their time not listening in class, I've witnessed them going absolutely nowhere in life. Where school probably quite as good for me in the social sense, but good for them. They're paying for that now by having shi**y jobs and not having a lot of money to spend on doing the things the want. My 'reward' if you like is me trying at school and now I'm getting a good degree which will pay off in the future and have me a job I'll enjoy too. On top of that I don't tend to feel sorry for them because most of them are too arrogant to realise they're in the position they're in because of their actions, and their lives aren't that bad anyway because society picks up after them to keep the economy running.

 

The problem is that this is your individual experience. In reality, bullies often possess high reproductive fitness and intelligence, and they will go on to become the leaders of our country in industry, business and academia. The same traits that make an individual vulnerable to bullying often mean that they do not possess the needed traits to succeed in the work force. Simply being ugly is enough to cause you to earn less over your lifetime. There is no fairness built into life, and there is no make good for the people who get crapped on. If you are succeeding in the face of adversity, you are doing it despite your adversity. As for the bullies who do not succeed, keep in mind that they are failing alongside many of the victims they traumatized for life. Some guy could be a wage slave because he was ugly and lost a job to an attractive person with lesser qualifications. This is how life works.

 

The truth is that many intellectuals are only intellectuals because they could not compete in the social arena. I know that I would be a vacuous football worshiper if I had not spent years brooding in alienation. I would have died in the state of nature. I'm not going to tell myself a nice story about how I am a special ape and everyone else is flawed. I would have been among the bullies, homophobes and simpletons if I had developed normally, and I would have loved it. Even from my lowly position from the bottom rung, I still mocked others for their traits.

 

No one in life is to blame. We are all fellow sufferers living within a woefully inadequate system.

Edited July 16, 2013 by knownothing

[Iota]

 

 

I was just thinking along general lines. If you are curious, you might want to check out the work of psychologist Thomas Joiner relating relating to suicide.

Have to admit I'm not a huge fan of psychology, it's mainly just speculation.

 

 

 

You, living in a first world country, are also causing damage to the environment and causing workers in the third world to be exploited.

That's different to your original point, which was talking on a psychological level.

 

 

 

Everyone who thinks that the world needs more people should consider all of these things instead of just naively declaring that life is good.

Agreed.

 

 

 

In reality, bullies often possess high reproductive fitness and intelligence

 

Hah, really? Well, it's wrong to generalise in either direction, but what you're saying is absurd in my eyes.

 

 

 

The same traits that make an individual vulnerable to bullying often mean that they do not possess the needed traits to succeed in the work force.

 

I don't think human society is anywhere nearly as Darwinistic as you envisage it.

 

 

 

As for the bullies who do not succeed, keep in mind that they are failing alongside many of the victims they traumatized for life.

 

Ever heard the saying 'the geeks shall inherit the Earth?'. I think what you just said underestimates this statement.

 

 

 

This is how life works.

 

You speak as if this is an absolute, I think you're being very unscientific.

 

 

 

The truth is that many intellectuals are only intellectuals because they could not compete in the social arena.

 

I thought the opposite was the consensus, that intellectuals don't compete in the social arena because they're intellectuals. Besides, it seems almost axiomatic to me that after school, it's the intellectuals whom fare well in the 'social arena', and those who used to, tend to decline.

 

 

 

I would have been among the bullies, homophobes and simpletons if I had developed normally, and I would have loved it.

 

What? If you developed 'normally'!? Please define normal and in doing so acknowledge that the definition is completely subjective and relativistic.

 

 

 

Overall I'd say your view of the world is fairly warped.

[knownothing]

I'll try and address your post systematically. First, let me elaborate about why I included the physical deprivation of others along with the social pain. I was only showing that the social harm that we cause to others, while not negligible, is far from the only harm.

 

The reason that I think that bullies often have higher reproductive fitness than victims of bullying is because bullying is a habitual abuse of social, physical or mental power. A bully could very well also be a victim of bullying, but this only shows that public schools, prisons and work places have a pecking order. There are many causes for bullying, and I am not denying that some bullies have very low status. However, I am arguing against the popular platitude that most bullies are just losers themselves, because this is clearly not the case. Victims of bullying are often nonconformists, either in their deeds, opinions, appearances or phenotypes. Bullying is the human species's mechanism for strengthening the group as a whole, it is the way of identifying heretics. Intellectualism and open-mindedness are against our instincts, and they served no purpose throughout our evolutionary history. Group cohesion, however, made all the difference, and bullying can be carried out privately by an enforcer or it can be a social activity of mass ostracism. Society is not looking for entrepreneurs and philosophers, it is looking for workers. Simply being socially ideal is more important in our species than possessing thoughtfulness or intellect.

 

 

 

Ever heard the saying 'the geeks shall inherit the Earth?'. I think what you just said underestimates this statement.

 

I think that the statement is wishful thinking, to be honest. There are entrepreneurs, but those are the exceptions. There is nothing stopping the socialites from your high school from studying your favorite subject in college and then getting the job because they are more sociable and attractive. Sure, you could get it, but that doesn't mean there is any kind of karma that will cause you to get it. You might be a socialite, for all I know. I am just guessing from your earlier statement that you did not engage so much in the social arena as the other children. I don't know what your school was like, but for me there was an abundance of children in the socialite class (not bullies) who enjoyed optimum reproductive fitness and excelled in school. This goes to show that there really is no consolation for someone who possesses either one or the other (intelligence or social acceptable) since there are many people who possess both. This goes back to my statement about rampant inferiority, and we cannot honestly be call it anything else.

 

 

Going back to the janitor, he could either be a janitor because he had low reproductive fitness or because he was lacking in intelligence. The best way to succeed in our society is to have both. Someone with both would have to just live in bad circumstances to end up becoming a janitor.

 

 

intellectuals don't compete in the social arena because they're intellectuals. Besides, it seems almost axiomatic to me that after school, it's the intellectuals whom fare well in the 'social arena', and those who used to, tend to decline.

This doesn't seem axiomatic to me at all. Perhaps you could elaborate. Everyone wants to compete in the social arena. It is the way you are wired. In nature, caring more about the meaning of life than group cohesion was suicide.

 

 

What? If you developed 'normally'!? Please define normal and in doing so acknowledge that the definition is completely subjective and relativistic.

When I say "normal" I am talking about the kind of development that would serve the survival of the species in a state of nature. It is certainly not normal for humans to learn compassion for people who are not part of the group. Compassion's usefulness runs out when you start being tolerant of people whose opinions differ from the group. I realize the homophobia comment was somewhat inappropriate, because tolerance in Western society has actually reached the point where it is a social more. In enclosed institutions, however, homophobia is still alive and well.

Edited July 16, 2013 by knownothing

[Iota]

 

 

I think that the statement is wishful thinking, to be honest.

 

Not at all. Look at the billionaires in the world, the presidents, prime ministers, scientists, anyone of importance basically. Sure some of the people who I stereotype as the bullying type at school can creep their way up into the above average jobs, but I insist, rarely, still.

 

 

 

Society is not looking for entrepreneurs and philosophers, it is looking for workers.

 

With the absolute statements you keep throwing into discussion, it's clear to me that you've subscribed to a belief system and are sticking with it. A belief system that is defeatist, overly bleak and almost completely out of touch with reality. You're taking on the voice of cold reality, but I feel you're exaggerating the matter, and not open to think on the subject. I'll let you have the last word but I feel we're going in circles now and so I'll call it a day.

[knownothing]

I don't know if you mean "cease to reply" or "cease to reply until tomorrow." I will reply anyway, just because I agree that many of my posts have been sloppy and assumptive. I don't want to end the discussion with you thinking I am just pulling stuff from behind.

 

We are both guilty of giving no sources and making statements without really backing them up. This was because I thought some of these things were self-evident, but I can see that it was wrong to think you would share my perception of the world. If you are letting me have the last word, at least let it be said that I backed up my arguments.

 

I am not trying to "win" the argument, as they say. You seem to be under the impression that we are having some kind of conflict, but I am just discussing these things with you with curiosity. I have asked you questions about your beliefs because I don't automatically dismiss you as being wrong, and I'm interested in hearing your explanations. Let me show you that I am not an ideologue, by providing sources for many of my claims. This is not exhaustive of what I have said, but it is a start.

 

Studies have shown that bullies are often bullied themselves:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/564923.stm

 

However, this is not set in stone. We can see that someone who is both a bully and a victim is not exactly in the same boat with someone who is just a bully. In fact, pure bullies end up enjoying school quite a bit. As for bully victims who bully others, this goes back to my comment about the pecking order. As I said earlier about myself, getting crapped on never gave me an iota of sympathy for others. Anecdotal, I know, but we can observe that being victimized does not make people nicer.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/564923.stm

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/6/1231

 

Now, you mention the presidents and the Prime Ministers and all of that jazz. As I said, being intelligent is fine. It is only when you are lacking in reproductive fitness that intelligence becomes somewhat negligible. When you bring up someone like Bill Gates, that is not a realistic goal for anyone to strive for. There is a very limited amount of opportunities for becoming a billionaire, and besides nobody can become a billionaire just by having reproductive fitness alone. When we talk about billions of dollars, that is strictly something that must be done with the intellect.

 

I am talking about everyday life, here. Most of us cannot hope to succeed as entrepreneurs. Most of us have to compete in the circus of capitalism, and it is not fair. Reproductive fitness, as I have said, plays a big role:

 

 

Beauty plays a role:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/ugly-you-may-have-a-case.html?_r=2&hp&

http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/19_2/19_2_2.pdf

 

Tallness plays a role:

http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/height_discrimination_short_guys_finish_last/index.html

 

And intelligence plays a role, which is equally unfair.

 

Furthermore, the things that are likely to make you a victim of bullying are the same things that make you less attractive as an employee.

 

As for the claim that the nerds will "inherit the Earth," the burden of proof is on you to show that. My position all along has been that there is no make good for being genetically inferior. Just because intelligence is not completely negligible does not mean that low reproductive fitness does not muddy your chances for success. You mention presidents, but a great deal of them were attractive, tall, intelligent and sociable. I doubt that many of our presidents have had low reproductive fitness, and none of them have likely had low intelligence. Lincoln comes to mind, but, like I said, super intelligence can make up for low reproductive fitness. That does not mean it would not have helped Lincoln to be sexy. Oh, and he was really tall so in a way he did possess a certain level of reproductive fitness.

 

I have said that society is looking for workers instead of entrepreneurs and philosophers. I thought this was evident, but I will explain why I think this way. You must understand, entrepreneurs are not required for our society to function. The system will not suffer if it remains the same. Think about all of human history, those thousands of years. Almost everyone was a worker, and almost no one was an intellectual or an innovator. Liberals believe that progress is important, but why is it important? What will happen if there is no progress? We will run out of oil and billions will starve, but that is of no consequence in the long run. The industrial revolution brought on a state of artificiality within humanity that does not at all reflect its true nature. Progress is utterly unneeded for the survival or the human species. Philosophers and entrepreneurs are an anomaly, and they have jobs that the system and humanity can do without. If an entrepreneur invents something that serves the system, that is good. But the system does not suffer because that thing is not invented. The only philosophy that is worth anything to the system is the philosophy that tells men to pick up their shovels and start working. It is true that we are facing an energy crisis now, but the fault of that as well as the solution lies with entrepreneurs. It would not be an issue if progress had never happened to begin with. Society only wants thinkers so that they can make the system run smoothly, and in this way they are turning thinkers into workers anyway.

 

 

With the absolute statements you keep throwing into discussion, it's clear to me that you've subscribed to a belief system and are sticking with it. A belief system that is defeatist, overly bleak and almost completely out of touch with reality. You're taking on the voice of cold reality, but I feel you're exaggerating the matter, and not open to think on the subject. I'll let you have the last word but I feel we're going in circles now and so I'll call it a day.

 

I do believe many things, but I do not possess a belief system. I have been burned out from the inside now, and I do not have passion about much of anything. There are not a lot of subjective feelings inside of me that I would be able to stand up for with conviction. I only know that life is much less good to a person than most people will admit. I wish that I was exaggerating, but it doesn't look like it, especially when your consider all of you cognitive biases in favor of optimism. It bothers me that one calls an approach that does not assume the validity of life's goodness to be defeatist. How is it defeatism for me to look at a low down miserable wretch and say that it is not his fault? If anything, this is sympathy, not defeatism. In the same way, I do not blame a bully for going nowhere in life, as you do. Bullying can be a symptom of low reproductive fitness, after all.

 

Source for optimism bias:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivity_bias

 

I don't deny that I made statements with the appearance of absoluteness, although I really intended them to be general statements rather than absolutes. I think that if you read the entirety of my text, you might be able to understand where I was coming from. Oh well, I admit that it was sloppy of me. Any objections?

Edited July 17, 2013 by knownothing

[Neutrina]

The idea of "living" is so vast a topic that I find it difficult to comprehend the question in the first place.

 

To start, very many factors influence the quality and quantity of days we "live" (I put the word live in

quotation marks simply because the definition is relative). Most of which we have absolutely no control over. The first thing I thought of subsequent to reading the question was the quote: "It is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all." But is it really? Pain and life are a package deal, but such is not the case with nonexistence.

 

But what is nonexistence exactly? With no conscious thought? Existing without the ability for higher thinking? Complete obliteration? Or does death alone serve the purpose of nonexistence?

 

You could come at this question with happy faces and rainbows, with logic and probability, or with a string of ramblings ultimately leading nowhere (philosophy) (says the existentialist). I am content to approach this question with the utter frustration that no question can have a true answer without knowledge of all variables. We can assume all we want, but until some poor bull rider comes back to life after arresting on the table and tells us of the wonder of heaven, all we can do is surmise.

Edited July 18, 2013 by Neutrina

[knownothing]

I don't think we need to over-think this. I think that you should just ask yourself this: What problem did you solve for a person by bringing them into existence? There was no problem at all, and a little introspection will certainly reveal that parents have children to satisfy their own desires.

 

Is it possible to suffer deprivation in a state of pre-birth? Certainly not. You are deprived by not existing, but there is no suffering because of it. Pleasure becomes obsolete when consciousness ceases. We speak of the wonders that life can bring us, but all of these things are worthless to a non-person. The only justification would be that a born person would experience great pleasure and very little suffering, but this is not the case ( http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71516.pdf ). We cannot take a person's word for whether or not life is good, because our brains deceive us. ( https://en.wikipedia...i/Optimism_bias, https://en.wikipedia...Positivity_bias )

 

As far as I am concerned, there is no Heaven. I remember nothing from before I was born and I remember nothing from when I am in deep sleep. We can witness parts of the brain become damaged and see people lose parts of their cognitive abilities. Why would all of those parts of the brain, that can individually be destroyed, wait around in some metaphysical sense to rejoin after a person dies? We can physically change a person's personality by slapping them in the head with a pipe.

Edited July 18, 2013 by knownothing