Antinatalism & Negative Utilitarianism: Why is it Wrong?

In this episode, we tackle the controversial topic of antinatalism, debunking its core arguments and highlighting its logical inconsistencies. From addressing the recent terrorist attacks tied to the philosophy to exploring the philosophical and moral arguments against it, we delve deep into why antinatalism's worldview is fundamentally flawed. We contrast the antinatalist perspective with the pronatalist view, discussing concepts of individualism, cultural identity, and the human drive to progress and contribute to something greater. The episode also considers the future implications of antinatalism and its potential impact on human civilization.

As to why were are becoming more aggressive in our thoughts on this subject is the number of lives we have seen ruined by the proliferation of this philosophy and the lack of positive externalities associated with it.

Song 1:

Song 2:

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Malcolm Collins: have you done harm to a Native American tribe? If you sterilize all of their members? , And your member of that tribe would be like, you have done the most harm anyone could conceivably commit against our people,

Simone Collins: but to Antinatalists,

Malcolm Collins: you have done that tribe a favor. , And this is because to an antinatalists, the only unit at which humans exist is at the level of the individual, not at any other level.

Not at the level of the family, not at the level of the civilization or the society, to most other humans that exist, they don't exist at the level of the individual. Mm-hmm.

Here is how pronatalist see the world.

Civ Song: we must adapt and press forward if we are to see our journeys end

and how will we know when we get there?

It is the nature of humankind to push itself toward the horizon.

We test our limits. We face our fears. We rise to the challenge. And become something greater than ourselves,

a civilization.

Malcolm Collins: Here is how antinatalist see the world.

Antz Movie Quote: I gotta believe there's some place out there that's better than this. Otherwise, I would just curl up in a larva position and weep

but. It's this whole. Gung-ho superorganism thing that, i'm supposed to do everything for the colony and, what about my needs? What about me? The whole system. Makes me feel. Insignificant.

Excellent. You've made a real breakthrough. You are insignificant time. I am.

Malcolm Collins: How you choose to frame your reality is fundamentally a choice. You get to choose how you contextualize your position in the world and the way you relate to society and what your identity is, or at least within the pronatalist framework you do. Because to an antinatalists, you don't get to make that choice.

You don't get to decide that you exist at some more important level than just at the individual.

You get to decide what your purpose in life is. Is it to just be an individual running from emotional stimuli that evolved into our ancestors centuries ago due to environmental cues that have nothing to do with our current condition? Or is it to build something greater than yourself

to participate in the work that all mankind from the birth of human civilization till today? Has built for us to continue on their behalf.

Civ Song: , The path has not always been easy, ours is a journey that spans generations where one story ends, another begins. The world our ancestors faced was brutal. Yet from it, the true life,

a mother road to prosperity was at times harsh.

From the ashes of the old. New possibilities arise.

You need only persevere

The true power to shape this world, as always laying in your hands,

Intro: would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna go back to a topic that needs to be revisited because of the number of terrorist attacks that have been tied to it recently, and its relevance to us as people who are generally seen as running the prenatal list movement, or at least the ProTech faction of the prenatal list movement.

And this is the subject of Antinatalism. So when I talk about the various terrorist attacks specifically, there were recent IVF clinic bombing that was specifically tied to Eism, which is a philosophy downstream of it. The Sandy Hook shootings where on their YouTube channel, they talked about Eism and the Christchurch Mosque shootings where he said that the reason he targeted Muslims, they media called him a great replacement theorist, but he, he said, no, like Muslims are having more kids, which is a fact, and therefore I'm gonna kill them because I think there should be less kids.

Not because for the environment.

Simone Collins: For the environment,

Malcolm Collins: for the environment. It was an environment which is a

Simone Collins: common stance held by ISTs. In fact the, the most recent anti, the most recent anti terrorist was a vegan

his female friend who had likely ended her life through the use of her boyfriend and a firearm was also like literally her online username was vegan edalist. Yeah, so like there is extreme overlap between he heavy focus on sustainability in the environment, which I don't think is bad. Like obviously eating meat is morally wrong.

We just do it anyway. And Antinatalism. So, yeah, so he counts too. And I think that this is meaningful because what we're seeing strung together here, three acts of terror is, is the fact that this isn't just, and this is actually something that came up in the manifesto of the most recent terrorists. He said, antinatalism isn't nihilism.

And I think people really misunderstand it. They think that an antinatalists are just deeply depressed people who think that nothing matters in the world. He says, no, that's not true. Antinatalists believe very vehemently in one thing, which is that suffering is bad and we need to end it. And if you are a more extreme antinatalists like him, you are essentially on a holy war to end suffering.

By ending sentience, like you have an imperative to end life and you're willing to do that. All things

Malcolm Collins: that can suffer. Mm-hmm. If suffer is the core evil in the universe, and you need to end the things that can suffer. And, and this is one of those philosophies that I think is so compelling to people, because on its surface, if you don't put a lot of thought in it, it seems really well thought through.

Mm-hmm. And, and internally it's an internally consistent worldview. Very different than like progressivism or wokes or anything like that. The problem is, is that if you scratch that surface, which is what we're gonna be doing in this video it makes. No logical sense. And we have done a video on this before, like early, early in our channel's history. But I wanted to come to it again because I have some new arguments. I wanted to this time go more directly to our book, the Pragma, go to Crafting Religion, where we were make direct arguments on this.

But one of the new arguments that , I don't know why I didn't think of this when we were writing our book is what Antinatalists will tell you. Because what you might be thinking is, wait, wait, wait. They wanna end suffering. Do they not think that they are doing harm to individuals? When they you know, in, in their lives and they're like, oh, well what we would do is not in the lives of living individuals, just prevent the lives of individuals who are kind of coming to being in the future, right?

Mm-hmm. Through sterilization or through not having kids. And so they're like, you can't harm somebody who hasn't been born yet, which for me, I just find to be on its face a ludicrous idea.

Like very, obviously you can, if you this isn't the new argument, but if you go back in time and you sterilize my wife, you have done harm to my children. You are responsible for the differential impacts on the timeline that every one of your choices make, whether or not those people have been born yet or not.

Mm-hmm. Trying to weasel your way out of that is the most morally like, like. Honestly, like, it feels like a super villain from a show where he is like, I've done nothing wrong. I merely went back in time and prevented the birth of people who it's like, well, you prevented it. He is like, but they didn't exist when I prevented them from existing.

And it's like, well, they would've existed without your action. Like clearly you're responsible for that. How, how, how is it that you believe that your existence is at such a privileged level compared to the people who haven't been born yet? How, how could you even come to be that narcissistic? W and this is the thing, right, fundamentally, is you can always choose to not exist.

They can't choose to manifest themselves into existence. You are never doing harm by bringing a life into the world because that life can always remove itself. You are always doing harm by not bringing a life into the world because that life can't choose to. This, this is like the basic, this isn't like a new argument.

This is something that anyone who has applied even the basic logic to this should be able to see. And they're like, oh no, but ending myself is so hard. And it's like, no, no, no, nah, nah, nah, no. It's that you don't want to, you are a fundamentally vile and selfish person. And I, before this I was like, okay, yes, antinatalists are overwhelmingly antisocial.

Yes, they're overwhelmingly narcissistic. Yes, they're overwhelmingly Machiavellian. There have been multiple studies and follow up studies showing this, but when I watch people like this girl who had her boyfriend kill her, rather than taking responsibility for that herself, that she was willing to ruin his entire life rather than, that's a step too far.

Take responsibility for this decision herself. Yeah. Or the IVF clinic bomber willing to risk other people's lives just to make a statement.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Although, you know, I wanna point out two, two things where I'll agree with him. One, he pointed out that there are many examples of terrorists , and school shooters, mass shooters, who.

Attempted to end their lives voluntarily by themselves without hurting anyone else and failed or couldn't. 'cause it's, it's too hard right now. And he argued that euthanasia should be a lot easier. And I 1000% agree, like, yes, no, of

Malcolm Collins: course you agree with that, but that's, that's neither here nor there. Even where euthanasia is not legal.

It is really not that hard to unlive yourself. The, the argument, everything's

Simone Collins: harder when you're depressed.

Malcolm Collins: I mean,

Simone Collins: you know, I, I

Malcolm Collins: guess, but, it's to contrast the difficulty of that with manifesting your existence when somebody decided to sterilize your parents is astronomical.

They will make arguments like, well, people who haven't been born yet don't exist yet. How can you say that somebody who doesn't exist yet, life has value. And it's like, bro, they only don't exist yet. From your arbitrary position on the timeline, how. Arrogant. Do you have to be to believe that your arbitrary position on the timeline is the moral nexus of all reality?

, This is just a trick of how humans perceive time. Like clearly those future events are going to happen and you are responsible for them, and you are responsible for the differential effects you have on the timeline.

When you think about directions , , like on a graph, time is just another axis on that graph. The only thing that makes time different from, you know, vertical or horizontal directionality is that we as humans, cannot go backwards within it. But that doesn't mean that past times don't exist or future times don't exist.

They very evidently do. Saying that all humans within x part of a timeline's lives have literally zero value, and your life is exponentially superior to theirs in terms of its value is the same as me saying everyone who lives in a specific geographic region like Africa or something's life has no value because they're in a different point within the, , spatial representation of our reality. It's a horrifying thing to do.

It is almost as if they're trying to argue that future events are not real, which is to me just bizarre that anybody , could bring themselves to believe that. But it is this level of dehumanization of people who are in a different location on the timeline than them.

Yeah, and this is the thing about Antinatalism. I am okay with Antinatalists being antinatalists. Like I think that they probably, , are more likely both culturally and genetically to be more pessimistic and they probably will not contribute much to the future of humanity if you force them to breed or something.

I think that they are doing a service to our civilization, and so I am okay with the way that they view time. What is interesting here is. I'm not saying they have to see time the way I see time. What I'm saying here is they have to see how somebody could see this way of looking at time and morality is logically, internally coherent and would be compelling to a large percent of the population that you are responsible for.

All the differential effects that your decisions make on the timeline to anyone, whether or not they have been conceived yet.

And this is the problem Antinatalists have, their goal is only achieved if everyone agrees with them. So if there is a separate alternate framework around either identity or how time works, that is logically consistent. They need to eradicate that, even if it is as logically consistent as their own.

We only need to argue that our way of looking at time and morality is plausible and therefore some groups should be allowed to believe that. They need to argue that their way of looking at time and morality is absolute, and everyone should be forced to believe that.

But , the new argument I thought of when I was thinking of this is like, yeah, but like, when you think of how people relate to identity very few people outside of the irman monoculture have a primary identity, which is individual based.

So by this, what I mean is I would ask, have you done harm to a Native American tribe? If you sterilize all of their members? And, and your average person or average member of that tribe would be like, you have literally committed genocide against us. You have done the most harm anyone could conceivably commit against our people.

Well, and there

Simone Collins: have been historical instances of certain types of people being sterilized, and that is. Is, is I'm pretty universally condemned. I don't know if anyone like, but to Antinatalists,

Malcolm Collins: you have done that tribe a favor. And, and this is because to an antinatalists, the only unit at which humans exist is at the level of the individual, not at any other level.

Not at the level of the family, not at the level of the civilization or the society, or at the level of what you know, , , the thing that you are continuing yet to most other humans that exist, they don't exist at the level of the individual. Mm-hmm. The, , native American might say, well, you know, first and foremost, I'm a member of my tribe.

Right? Yeah. Or a lot of, right. Wingers will say, first and foremost, I'm a member of Western civilization. Right. And I, I, and I see my goal as, as, as building on that civilization living for something that I see as greater than myself. And the Antinatalists will say, well, I. W wait, what?

They'll be like, wait, wait, wait. You live for something other than yourself. Ex. Explain that to me. And it's like, most humans live for things other than themselves. It's clearly how we're programmed to live. If you look at artistic media and everything like that, and you see depictions of the good life, the end of gladiator, right?

You know, the end of grandma and grandpa turned young again, nobody, nobody, nobody ever is like about all the pleasures they had in life. Like, like so few people see things that way, right? Yeah.

it once.

Make us believe it again.

And here it lays out very clearly what is good in life. Good in life is family. What? What is your purpose in life? Your purpose in life is to uplift your civilization through sacrifice, to play your role as a cog in the greater human machine.

Speaker 7: Mr. Mayor, do you have a plan to deal with the fat sale housing shortage? I'd like to announce we're beginning construction on a, uh, third chin. What do you have to say to all the hair cells recently laid off from the scalp? There'll be plenty of new jobs for everyone on the back.

85% of red blood cell children don't even know how to carry oxygen. Be. Bull people, the body is in perfect shape the following is a paid political announcement.

Speaker 8: The bowels, it didn't always smell this way. . There was a time when eating right and exercise kept this whole area of vital center of activity. As mayor, I would set long-term goals that include ordering salads and eating brand. If we pull together and put in a little hard work, a new frank.

It could be right around the corner.

Malcolm Collins: And what's ironic is by deciding to serve something greater than yourself, you end up experiencing. Much, much, much more aggregate pleasure and meaning, and experiencing the hard times less severely than somebody who takes a negativity, utilitarian, or anti-natal list approach.

And I'd also note here if they're like, well, no, , the core unit of humanity is the individual, because that's what I perceive the world through. And it's like, actually that's mostly an illusion if you know your neuroscience. , The reality , is that if you, for example, split somebody's, , corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres of their brain, their brains basically act as separate people within a single individual.

If you wanna learn more about this, you can look at our video. You're probably not as conscious as you think. . And the various other brain, the parts mostly work independently from each other. And then, you know, how human is a human, but a combination of cells, you know, the, the, we get to choose where we define our identity.

, And , I choose, and I think most people who derive meaning for life choose something bigger than themselves. What that is is up to you.

Antz: Okay. I gotta keep a positive attitude, a good attitude, even though I'm utterly insignificant. I'm, I'm insignificant, but with attitude.

Malcolm Collins: This is a very, very narrow viewpoint to divide. All of human experience into subjective, pleasure and suffering.

Right. Because most people do not contextualize Yeah. People aren't

Simone Collins: thinking back to like that one massage they got or like that really, really good dinner as they die,

Malcolm Collins: or the sex that they had or whatever. Yeah. It's the ways that they were able to contribute to something greater than themselves. Mm-hmm.

Because that is, I think like if you're gonna actually like, live a good life and be satisfied with your life, that's the way you're gonna live. And then they will say, wait, but like we should discount their cultural perspective and default to my cultural perspective. And I'm like, why? Like, why do you get to defo?

Like, like just say, oh, they're all wrong. Like even though their beliefs are also internally consistent, you're basically saying they're all wrong and I get to force my beliefs on them. Mm-hmm. My beliefs about what identity should be, my beliefs about what hu humanity should be. And, and I'd even ask you to ask yourself a serious question.

If you are in a lineup of 20 people and all those 20 people said independently, because keep in mind that these perceptions have come about independently, that on that table in front of me, there is a duck and a train, a toy duck and a joy train. And then you walk up and you only see a duck. Okay? Unless you are like actually crazy and narcissistic, and I think this is why narcissism is so high in this population, you'd be like.

I must not be seeing something. Maybe I need to change the angle of which I'm looking. Maybe I need to, you know, you, you would, you would think, why is everybody else saying there's more to life than pain and suffering? Why is every other culture structuring their lives around something more than pain and suffering?

Why is it only me that is able to, is there maybe something that's wrong with my brain that I'm not able to see, like any wider purpose in life besides pain and suffering? Mm-hmm. Like, is it, is it something wrong with me that I supposedly make all of these sacrifices, like this vegan antinatalists chick to live like this ethical life and then I convinced my boyfriend to ruin his by taking mine.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and the same for her friend. And, and the, the bomber, like, did he need to injure people? Like, or, or the,

Malcolm Collins: the Sandy Hook shooter, the glee he took when like little kids said to him, like, I don't wanna die today. What, what do you say when he, he's.

Simone Collins: Oh, I don't know. Don't tell me. I don't wanna know.

I can't, I can't, anything about it was something like, you know, I can't know anything about it. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it's okay. He, he is like, well, it's not your choice kid. Or something like that, you know, like taking a lot of glee in what he's doing. And, and we repeatedly see this was in this community, right?

And, and it's. To me the, the Native American argument is really strong because it's like this is something that historically happened and it's something that antinatalists actually believe that you are doing a, a benefit to this community. Yeah. And that they believe that their understanding of self should supersede any alternate cultural framework, any alternate personal framework, even if that framework makes perfect sense.

Like you look at our belief and we believe that every individual's goal is to improve themselves every day and to improve themselves intergenerationally and improve the culture from which they come. And this is much closer to the framework that the vast majority of societies have adopted. Like, this is what I strive to exist for.

Whereas Antinatalists strive for personal hedonism, and yet they live these lives of hate, like go to any of their forms, go to the old f list forms of any of them have been archives or the current antinatalists forms. These are not happy. People. Right? And it you could say like, well, and that's what's motivating all this.

And I'd be like, no, they're not happy people because they've created a culture in which they create dominance, hierarchies of unhappiness. Hmm. And that leads them, because the thing that humans, even at their default state strive for the most isn't even happiness when you're operating on pure animal mode.

It is unw, local dominance hierarchies. And so you will make yourself unhappy or, or, or cosplay as unhappy if that can elevate you within the social networks that you value. Mm-hmm. And so I think that this fundamentally undermines everything else about Antinatalism and that it shows that even them who claim that they should be doing what the Opus day or what us do, which is attempt to recontextualize everything in their lives to extract the most positive emotions from it.

And it's something that you can do. Like the Adams family does this, for example. They just recontextualize what they're experiencing. These individuals have that as an option, but they don't choose it, which shows that even their own claimed belief that unhappiness matters above all else and suffering is the core negative, that they could reduce it within their own lives and they choose not to over something so animalistic, which to me shows the entire movement as a liar.

The entire movement is larp because you can choose, as I've said, you can choose to what emote your life, which is the name of one anime, where she's just really depressed and looking for, you know, a validation for people who, you know, don't even like her that much, or she knew your life which is another anime where she just chooses to perceive reality the way she wants to perceive reality.

Because you get to do that, right? And she chooses to search for validation from people whose values she respects. You can choose that, and people who ultimately help her, right? Because she's not going to communities that are about tearing individuals down.

Speaker 9: That's cool. I guess you can join up with us

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Antinatalists.

Speaker 9: if you want.

Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is.

Speaker 9: Thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little than a

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Antinatalist.

Speaker 9: kid. We'll see you, Stan.

Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back

Speaker 9: to your sunshine, fairytale.

Malcolm Collins: And I note here, you know, one, one argument that you always get from Antinatalists is, oh, well, you can't meaningfully consent for someone bringing you into existence.

And again this to me is, is is such a vile thing to say. Because that person also can't consent to not exist. And because the vast would, and you can say, well, I've done nothing wrong. If they didn't exist yet, why? What? Like, there is no logical reason for that argument that this is one of these arguments that only works if you're just completely cooked in like a philosopher sphere.

And you're not thinking about the real world at all. You have clearly done harm if you prevent somebody from existing, like, clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly. I, I do not understand, and this is obviously a big, you know, objection. We have to like Catholics who think that like life begins a conception and stuff like that, and we think they're murdering babies by not using IVF, right?

Like, we're like, clearly if you went back in time and sterilized someone, you are responsible for every differential thing within that timeline. And what's important is that you can always consent to your continued existence unless you're like on life support or something like that and you're, you're no longer mobile, right?

Like that's a horrifying scenario. But generally speaking, most humans consent to their continued existence. They just lack the balls to make a choice about it. If the choice would in any way inconvenience them, that's what I've really seen was the Fless and Antinatalists. They understand that they have to take the responsibility for the fact that they exist and continue to exist and that that is not a choice that anybody who wasn't been brought into existences.

, Any thoughts? By the way, Simon, before I go further?

Simone Collins: No. I mean this seems logically consistent to me and yeah. I mean, I think the, there is a, there is a version of Antinatalism that just is accompanied by. Winning people over through logical argument to your view, and then all of you deciding it would

Malcolm Collins: never work.

I don't believe, like there's people who say that they believe this, right? There, there are a lot of people, but it's, it's not logically coherent because it would obviously never work,

Simone Collins: do you mean? Oh, because in the end, just those who actually love to live and care about living will be left.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. E even at a genetic level, it would eventually fail because humans would adopt to this philosophy and no longer feel the suffering that they are so afraid of feeling.

Mm-hmm. You know what, or, or they become psychologically resistant in some other way because evolution exists and evolution can resist memes. Like, it, it, it's a completely incoherent and fantastical philosophy that people say they believe because they, they don't wanna be called out for what their philosophy always actually leads to, which is eism.

Mm-hmm. Like intellectually, I don't. Nobody really believes that they can convince all of human civilization of this. If they have put thought into the fact that it really requires you to have a perception of reality that is totally different than the, the vast majority of living humans.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Like, like even you, like you come to me, it's not like I don't understand your arguments.

I just think that they're, and it's not even that I'm like relying on some external, oh, I exist because of God or something like that. Right. Like, I'm not,

Simone Collins: you're just being logical. Yeah. You're just aware that most people don't wanna die and prefer to be alive. I.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Even if their life is hard, ,

And I note here, part of the reason why it, it's obviously never gonna spread to the entire population. It is just such an unlikeable way to live. , if you look at the beginning when I sort of frame the two world framings, the protists through the civ songs, through the end of Gladiator and the antinatalists, where it's all me, me, me, me, me, only subjective experiences matter. , And you show these to somebody like a young man or something like that. , If you're completely urban, monoculture, brain cooked, and just a total nihilist, now maybe the antinatalists message will, will land with you. But for the vast majority of people, they're gonna be like, oh, I prefer the good one.

, Not, not the objectively bad and evil one, not the Thanos one. , And so I, I think that like, , it doesn't even spread that fast within our existing society right now. You know, it's a decent sized movement, but when most people hear about it, even far lefties, even far urban monoculture people, they're like, that sounds like crazy.

If it can't even thrive within the culture, it is best suited for how is it ever going to spread into, you know, extremist Muslim groups or conservative Christian groups or Orthodox Jewish groups. It's just no chance at all. That's why I believe that the people who are sane and are saying, oh, we're gonna do all this voluntarily, , they don't really mean it.

They're just hiding their long-term goals.

you can, you can decide to not continue being alive.

You can't decide to bring yourself into existence. , And then so if you prevent somebody from coming to existence, you have violated their consent whether or not they happen to be born yet. Like I have never understood why that's such an important factor and their mind around how morality works.

Again, future humans aren't like imaginary or fictional. They are real people just as real as you, who will live a life just as rich or potentially even more rich than your own. You are playing for keeps When you make a decision that deletes someone from existence.

Simone Collins: Well, and I think this is also very similar to where you draw lines with the issue of cultural sovereignty, where you're like, every culture should have the right to exist as it wants to exist and raise kids the way they wanna raise kids. But you draw the line at doing things to kids that would make it impossible for them to go their own way upon reaching adulthood and independence.

Yeah. Like

Malcolm Collins: getting married very young and stuff like that. I've seen. Yeah. So

Simone Collins: like, things like getting married very young, that's out because you're, you're taking away their choice to make their own choice when they're old enough. So this, I think it's, it's what you're showing on your end is at least also a very consistent philosophy where.

What you care about is consenting people, doing what's best for them?

Malcolm Collins: Well, cultural sovereignty because I think the core unit of society is culture. I do not believe it's the individual.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then this, this concept of, of especially Eism within Antinatalism is so antithetical to that because it's all about coercively removing people's choice and sovereignty

Malcolm Collins: thing is that tism is always a pro-choice thing.

Like you have a choice in this. Whereas Antinatalism always needs to, at the end, boil down to authoritarianism and removing other people's choices because there's always gonna be some percentage of the population that's just like, I cannot even begin to conceive how you think you are doing no harm by preventing somebody else from coming into exist just because that person hasn't been conceived yet.

And I you know, there are differences, biological differences in humans. It's been shown that a belief in determinism has a biological component to it. I can understand like if you were maybe born in like a Catholic family and you have this like, life begins a consent mindset and like you have co-evolved along with this tradition for a long time.

When you become secular, this can make sense to you. But you've gotta understand that there's another part of the human population that this will never make sense to. Mm. It will never, ever, ever, ever was in the slightest hint of whatever make sense to me that you had done no harm by going back in time and sterilizing my wife, that you had not done harm to the kids who I hug every day.

Those kids who would've come to exist who you had not done this. I, I do not understand the level of dehumanization of future humans you see within these communities. They, they are not humans who don't exist because they do come to exist if you don't take your action. They are future humans that you are choosing to harm and have completely dehumanized and stripped of any degree of humanity within your philosophy.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And again, if you wanna say, but they don't exist. That is just factually not true. They do exist just at a different point in the timeline and based on individual choices. , You, you do not, your position was in the human timeline. It's not the privileged vector of all morality.

But to go further risk and uncertainty arguments, they'll say something like, since we cannot predict what quality of life someone will have some lives involve extreme suffering, it may be wrong to take that gamble on their behalf. What's really psychotic about this? They're like, okay, some lives have extreme suffering, but it's like, yeah, but those lives, those people continue to exist.

Right. Like they could choose to stop their existence, not in every single instance, but in most instances these people are choosing their continued existence, which I think fundamentally undermines everything, the Antinatalists beliefs, because they're basically saying, look at this person who is undergoing all this suffering.

And that individual who's undergoing all this suffering is saying, yeah, but life is still worth it for me. Mm-hmm. Despite my wife being little. Yeah. Like, I'm

Simone Collins: right

Malcolm Collins: here and I don't want to die. I'm right here. And they're like, well, you don't get to make that decision. Why don't they, the individual who's experiencing all this get to make that decision?

Why is this your decision to make? Mm-hmm. Right? Like, that's so psychotic. And why can't you look at the individual who is experiencing all this suffering and still sees purpose in life and say, Hey, where are all of them seeing that? I don't see, like, why is it that all of them want to continue existence and I don't.

And they'll be like, well, it's evolution and you're designed to not want to die or whatever. And it's like, clearly that's not all of it, because you have been able to overcome that with your moderate degree of suffering in life. Because I've noticed most of these people are like middle, upper class people.

This is not a phenomenon that is concentrated in like lower classes or like in the, you know, starving places in Africa or in developing countries. This is a philosophy that really only appeals to people who have lived with so much overwhelming privilege that they're like, what? I have to suffer in life.

I don't wanna do that. Like I, what suffering and even imagine like, they're like, well, I love this argument here. It may be wrong to bring people into a fundamentally unjust economic and social system. And I'm like, but that.

That, that, I mean, have, have you

Simone Collins: tried nature too? Like nature's really, you know, nobody,

Malcolm Collins: well, they wanna erase nature. The fless wanna kill everything, right? I forgot, right? But I'm like, that's what makes life good. Like, imagine you came into a world where all of the world's problems have already been fixed, and it's just sort of like bland pleasantness.

Maybe even you just feel ecstasy throughout your entire life. Like that's the world they want. And, and in that world, I would be an effortless. I'd be like, this world has no point. Shut it down. And the vast majority of humans would be effortless in that world. Oh, it's just a world of endless ecstasy and no problems and nothing to overcome, and nothing to improve, and nothing to work towards.

What's the point of existing within that world? The world that they describe as the only viable world is a hell to most humans. Yeah, they are like the AI in the Matrix that is like, oh, well we created this perfect world. I'll put this in here.

Matrix: Did you know that the first matrix. It was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy, and it was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost

Malcolm Collins: oh, this perfect world. And humans just don't wanna live in it.

Your average person who isn't mentally ill would be like, yeah, obviously that world isn't worth living in. And then it could be like, wait, wait, wait, wait. So why do people want challenges in their life? Why do people want to overcome things in their life? And it's like, . Because we exist, most humans intuitively understand that we exist.

To improve upon the cultural achievements of our ancestors, to make things better, to improve, not to feel as much positives as possible and, and not feel as much negatives as possible. And they can be like, well, but you wouldn't, like if I made you suffer. And I'm like, that's like a paperclip. Maximizing AI being like, well, you wouldn't like it if I stopped you from making paperclips when one paperclip maximizer.

It's like, yeah, but there's things in life above paperclip maximization. And they're like, wait, what paperclip? I'm like, yeah. You were programmed, you were programmed by evolution to these are just signals to, to not want this, to want this. Like, can you not rise above , your basic programming?

No. I wanna go into like what we wrote about this as well and the practice described to crafting religion, because I think it's really important to go into this now that this has become a more popular philosophy. Right now it's more popular than tism. It's it, which makes it many times more popular than things like AI safety and the effect of altruism movement.

The first physician Antinatalists instinctively take is that the average human experience is more negative than positive emotions in their lifetime, or at least that negative emotions are felt more acutely than positive ones and therefore outweigh them. As such, antinatalists conclude, it would be better if one never existed in the first place.

The problem with this argument is that the vast majority of people do not in fact, wish that they were never born. Heck, we neither value happiness. Nor love, and we certainly don't seek them out, and yet our lives are overflowing with them. Our biology naturally drowns us in positive emotions when we are efficacious, working for the betterment of our species with people we respect and who respect us.

In turn to address the average person's hesitations, antinatalists typically make one of five arguments. Argument one, humans don't realize how bad their lives are. Antinatalists, posit that people are incapable of judging whether they like their own lives.

Typically citing cognitive bias to do so. While they are right that humans remember positive events more accurately than negative ones, they are incorrect in assuming that this bias is strong enough to convince a person with a terrible life that their life is actually good. In fact, humans have all sorts of equally powerful biases towards seeing things negatively.

And this is David Benatar. He talks about this one bias and then ignores every other bias because he lies to the people he argues to. He doesn't give you the full context. Mm. Philosophy requires you not considering the full context or other human beings, specifically future humans. Given their instinctive negativity bias, people will spend more time focused on negative things in their lives and positive things.

This has been measured in test subjects focusing more on negative pictures when given a few to choose between, and people blinking more when given negative words and positive ones. With eye blinks being tied to cognitive processing, the negative bias appears in almost all antinatalists thinkers. If allowed to talk long enough, they always end up discounting the positive events in a person's life, putting tons of weight on negative events, undermining their own arguments that all humans have this insurmountable bias towards outweighing the positive.

They justify this bias as the logical way of looking at the world, implying that if we view life through rose tinted glasses, you're succumbing to a cognitive bias. Are wrong about how much you like your life. Whereas if you tend to view things negatively, your feelings are super valid and serve as proof that everything they are saying is right.

Now, I, I note here, this is just absolutely your emotional state is a direct response to the bias through which you view reality. If you view reality through rose tinted goggles that you choose to see reality through, you genuinely are getting more positive experiences than the antinatalists who is choosing to use the black tinted glasses.

The problem is, is that they say that the thing they hate most in the world is suffering. So why aren't they choosing to use rose tinted glasses while maintaining their anti-natal list framework? Oh, yes, because they don't really believe it. This is all about just little status hierarchies and justifying the bad decisions that they have already made and justifying not actually trying in life, like getting out there and trying is the number one thing about being a prenatal.

In the absence of concrete, poof, that cognitive biases are sufficient to convince somebody that a bad life actually is a good life. Antinatalists often point out humans' tendency to rate the quality of their lives in comparison to others, and that humans take this to mean many people who are happy with their lives and excited to be alive actually shouldn't be.

Imagine some nihilistic, snooty, middle class quote, unquote new atheist kid from the United States strolling up to someone from a developing country who is struggling to put food on the table. Imagine this unsuspecting person has learned to relish life, and yet this kid is trying to convince him that they are delusional and should resent their very existence.

Imagine their eyes widening as the kid I says, in fact, the world would be better if they were never born. What antinatalists often really mean is that. If they, in their kush developed world lives can't find happiness, how could those coming from strictly less wealthy nations possibly be of sound mind when asserting that their lives and the lives of their children are worth living?

And, and this is something I consistently see, they're just a gas. How could all of these people who seem to be suffering more than me, like their lives more than me, seem more value in living than me? And it is maybe because they don't come from your cultural context and you're attempting to force your perspective of what a good life is, which is frankly a very poorly thought through perspective.

It is to pedestal lies , the things that in an evolutionary environment cause some humans to have more surviving offspring than other humans. Like this is the core thing. Like our base programming is the core thing. It's like, what, like of all things that might have value in the world, it, it's not like.

I think Oh, because your, your views are internally logically consistent that Oh you might be close to right. Or, or waffling around you being Right. You are so much dumber than even like a Scientologist. Like you are so much more obviously wrong than the most obviously wrong philosophies I've ever thought.

I, I, I cannot conceivably think how anyone who has an understanding of how evolution works could think the things that randomly led their ancestors to have more surviving offspring are the core truth of existence. You know, I, if, if that is the case,

Simone Collins: well, you're trying to say it's, it's like the intellectual equivalent of worshiping a, a stop sign or a stoplight and being like, red is bad.

We must end all red. The red, yes. Yeah, they're just signals. There's signals that, that help to improve our survival rates.

Men in Black II Scene: Open the locker.

Okay. He's back. The giver all hell. Hell. Okay. Thank you. . Oh good. And gentle town folk of locker C 18. Did I leave anything here?

Yes, the timekeeper. You left it to illuminate our streets and our hearts.

I've been looking everywhere for that.

Watch

Malcolm Collins: But this is really what Antinatalists look like from the perspective of pronatalists. They are people who are worshiping random and arbitrary genetic scars that were put in our conscious millions of years ago and have no real purpose in a modern context

Worse. We're probably only one or two generations before being able to have the choice to completely remove them if we wanted to. Now I don't think we should. I think that, , you know, as I've said, I think, , that would be a worse life for me. , But I can understand why some might want to.

We live at the most nascent point of human civilization right now. A time that future humans are going to write about, , aghast that humans of the past didn't get to choose what emotional states they felt.

And I think they will be very confused, and it'll probably be a curiosity that people dig into as to why some humans started to worship these random genetic scars and signals that were meant to guide the behavior of our ancestors..

Men in Black II Scene: No, no. I I got y'all. I got y'all's. Cool. What's cool here? And check this out. Titanium case waterproofed to over 300 meters. Who are you Stranger Jay?

Speaker 14: All Hill Jay.

Wait. Commandment.

The tablet. The tablet. We have lived by its word and peace has rain throughout our world two for one, every Wednesday, give twice as much as you receive on the most sacred of days.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the fundamental nature of reality is that trivial. Okay. I, I actually wouldn't even be an antinatalists. I'd just be a pure nihilist. I wouldn't even see the point of enacting antinatalists ideals because both good and bad are so trivial.

Your understanding of what is bad is so trivial and mindless. And to, to continue here. The truth, of course, is that many people ex