It is better to have never been

Thank you, Con. This round, I will be furthering or solidifying my arguments. I will not be dealing with every counter-argument Con makes this round, due to word limits. Resolution interpretation: Firstly, I apologise for making the resolution unclear. Although it was implied, I now say that I am referring to humans as a whole species, past, present and future. If there was a button that would stop any sentient creature from being brought into existence, then I would press it. P1: The context – A brief history Con basically concedes this premise. For the purpose of this debate, I can now say that: 1. The Big Bang is the best explanation we currently have for the universe’s origins, and that there was no divine influence 2. There is not apparent intrinsic value to life that extends from a god/gods 3. Evolution is a crude mechanism that has no external direction, and is also heavily supported as a scientific theory 4. The core factor of reproduction is the furthering of genes; evolution does not ‘care’ about pleasuring/hurting anything 5. There is absolutely no regard for a sentient creature’s nervous system or sentient experience. Both such things helped sentient animals to survive. Our origins extend from an objectively purposeless spawn, which then transitioned into a reckless ‘I’m better than you’ game, wherein the welfare of sentient creatures is not regarded in the slightest. The bloodshed, carnage and brutality of our origins is something that should make you shudder. Remember that this is the context that allowed us to be born into today’s world. All our instincts and neurological hardwiring have been forged in these barbaric times. We are products of a brutal game. P2: Discomfort is bad Con’s syllogism and composition fallacy accusation (and later: VI. It is better for humans to survive) My opponent has admitted that P1. (of his syllogism of my argument) is the only contestable premise. My opponent begins his syllogism of my argument by saying that my initial premise is ‘Life is a state of discomfort’. This is almost correct, in that I would say ‘life perpetually produces discomfort’. Life in itself is not ‘discomfort’, rather it is what life primarily produces. In between bouts of desire, there is peace. This avoids the composition fallacy my opponent refers to, in that I am not saying life is discomfort, rather that it likely contains many, many instances of discomfort, much more than comforts. For the same reasons, this also avoids the argument my opponent makes later, which argues the dichotomy of ‘life is either discomfort or not’. Discomfort shown existent via motivation Every sentient entity that has ever existed has been motivated by the discomfort-comfort mechanism. Right now, it is present within you and me. Without discomfort, why would you ever do anything? If I do not want food, then why would I seek it? Clearly, this discomfort exists, as shown by people’s drives to acquire things. From this, we know that discomfort exists. Discomfort is bad Now, since this discomfort exists, and it is true that it motivates people to do things, does that not indicate that discomfort is undesirable? If discomfort was not desirable, or ‘bad’, then why is it that people are constantly trying to escape it? Why do people say ‘that is not too bad’ when the discomfort is mild, and yet they scream ‘please stop!’ in the event of serious discomfort? If endure discomfort for long enough, a feeling of ‘I need to do something’ develops, rather than a ‘would it not be good if I had this?’ What this shows is that at its core, discomfort is bad. To emphasise the inherent bad nature of discomfort, imaging wanting something. This could be anything: a medal, a nice car, a kind word etc. Now, let us assume that you will never be able to have this thing. Your desire for it will perhaps lessen, as you lose hope in attaining it, but would you not describe this as an overall bad experience? Would anyone prefer to live a life wherein there was no attaining things that they desired, OR have a life wherein there was no desire to attain them in the first place? As you can see, the discomfort, as a result of desire, is bad. Pleasure and pain not necessarily factors of discomfort When I refer to discomfort, I refer to a wanting, a desire to change. It is entirely possible that someone may experience ‘comfort’ when in pain, in some kind of masochistic way. It is also possible that someone could experience pleasure whilst in discomfort, as some sort of ‘bitter-sweet’ feeling. Whilst pleasure arguably has a high correlation to comfort, and pain with discomfort, the correlation is not absolute. Con’s parody counter-example and false-dichotomy accusation Firstly, if you ever watch a child whine about something he/she wants, you will see that the child is having a negative experience, due to the discomfort of not having. This reaction is obfuscated in adults, due to social pressures and maturity, but still occurs. If discomfort was simply ‘not good’, if it did not matter that you were in the state of discomfort, then why can ‘not having’ cause so much misery? Why do professional sportspeople become frustrated in the event of failure? Why do people dislike being turned down for a job they were interviewed for? Would not these people be in a neutral state if they had no failure or job application turned down, yet descend into a deprivation state (which is bad) when they do want something? There is reason I say that discomfort is bad, and it is not simply because it is the opposite of comfort. Secondly, it needs to be absolutely clear that discomfort always comes first: 1. I want to scratch the itch 2. I scratch the itch It makes absolutely no sense when this is the other way around: 1. I scratch the itch 2. I want to scratch the itch The itch has already been scratched, so how could you even want to scratch it if it no longer exists? This is an integral point because this means discomfort (the negative) cannot always be satisfied. A1: Unintelligent Design My opponent has ignored the values and attributions I have made to life. I will elaborate on this argument in a future round, since it is already established without obvious opposition. A2: What is of real value I agree with my opponent that value cannot exist outside of human (or sentient life’s) existence. However, with sentient existence, some experiences are decidedly more or less negative than others. For example, outside of fringe psychologies (e.g. masochism), lying in a snug bed is preferable to having your genitals mutilated with several spikey roses. Therefore, in an ethical and absolute moral sense, it would be logical to try to have as many people lying in a snug bed, rather than trying to do the latter for everyone on the off chance that someone enjoys it, because the vast majority are going to enjoy the former. There is absolutely a qualitative difference between the two. Now, when this applies to discomfort, ALL sentient creatures would prefer comfort over discomfort. So, we can construct a moral/ethical framework that reflects this. My opponent alluded to a ‘lump of gold’ being of value, but this is not of real value. “It is not the ice-cream flavour that is of value. It is the ice-cream itself that is of value.” ~ Gary ‘Inmendham’ Mosher It is not the lump of gold that is of real value (think ‘consumption’), rather it is the relieving of discomfort that occurs when the gold is acquired, which is of real value. It does not matter how the relieving is achieved, whether it be a lump of gold, a holiday, conceiving children or burning yourself. Comfort is what people are actually chasing, not this perceptual value. A3: What the real impact is What does perpetuating life bring and how can it be justified? The 2011 Global Hunger index report categorised the overall global hunger level as “serious. 26 countries still have levels of hunger that are extremely alarming or alarming” [1]. Looking into 2014, “Half a billion people live in water-stressed or water-scarce countries, and by 2025 that number will grow to three billion. In the last 50 years, cropland has been reduced by 13% and pasture by 4%” [3]. As of late 2011, the world’s population reached 7 billion people. Every day, at that point, 225000 people were added to the planet, and the rate was only increasing. In practical terms, if everyone would live by basic human standards for water usage, we would use 87.5 billion gallons of water each day, which is more than the world has, in terms of usable water [2]. Think ‘cannibalism’. “81 million people worldwide are out of work. More than one billion people in the world on less than $1.25 (U.S) a day. 190 women who become pregnant every minute do not plan or wish the pregnancy. By 2050, world population is projected to reach 9.5 billion” [2]. The atrocities of life are often minimised by psychological masks, such as the valence effect and self-serving bias. “The valence effect of prediction is the tendency for people to simply overestimate the likelihood of good things happening rather than bad things” [4]. Self-serving bias occurs when “individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures” [5]. I will expand upon this contention in later rounds. A4: Life is imposed My argument here is simple: since you do not know what kind of life a person is going to have before you bring him/her into existence, you should not be allowed to bring him/her into existence, because it is otherwise reckless. Furthermore, there is never any consent given by the person brought into the world before conception. References: [1] http://www.ifpri.org... [2] http://www.populationspeakout.org... [3] http://overpopulation.org... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org...