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