Comment by dragonwriter
Comment by dragonwriter 2 days ago
> We could destroy the planet leaving all future generations screwed and that's okay because they are owed nothing?
I’m not saying it is okay, I’m saying that, for people who reject a moral duty to non-existent people, any argument that it is not okay must rest on something other than a duty to hypothetical people that may or may not ever come into existence depending on events that have not yet occurred (and which may include the very thing whose moral acceptability is being debated.)
> If that thinking passed muster we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's obviously maladaptive.
I mean, if chattel slavery never existed, we (the specific people having this conversation) wouldn't be having this discussion, either, but I don’t think “it is in the course of history leading up to the present discussion” is an argument for an idea being correct.
This is confused thinking. People who support slavery would not want to trade places with their slaves. A moral position that depends on such accidents of birth are not worthy of consideration, and this applies to the anti-natalist argument. Only people where anti-natalists haven't wrecked the planet could and would support anti-natalism. Who wants to be worse off?