It is better to have never been

Thanks Pro. I. Preface I am going to stick with the interpretation that it is better that we, humans, have never been born. It seems to be the most obvious interpretation of the vague resolution and Pro's arguments. I am somewhat surprised by Pro's opening arguments, as there is barely a paragraph related to the resolution at hand. I presume the bulk of her argument the will come in the following round, so I will deal with cards that have been dealt, so far. II. Clarification of the Resolution 'It's better to have never been' has multiple interpretations, as it could mean both yourself (as a human) or the human species as a whole. For the sake of this debate, I mum going to take the population as a whole. Also this obviously is past tensed, and so refers to all of human history, or all of personal-history, so I presume Pro's arguments are going to be directly against this. Therefore I kindly request Pro, and I think it would be beneficial to the debate as a whole if Pro presented her full stance on the matter so we are not shooting into thin air. III. Presuppositions I have absolutely no interest in arguing God's existence, divine valuation/causation, life's intrinsic value or the veracity of evolution/Big Bang theory. In all honesty I see them as irrelevant to this debate except for evolution because of explanations that involve our brains and perceptions. I would even go as far as stating that evolution is a barbaric, although elegant theory, unlike how Richard Dawkins aptly likes to describe it. I would even go as far as to accept that life is intrinsically purposeless. For now, Pro can have her P1. IV. Values To make the call on whether or not it is better to have never been, we need to assess it according to our held values. There are two types of values humans can have, intrinsic and extrinsic. I will briefly discuss both.[1] Intrinsic Value: Are valuable by their own nature. An innate feature. Extrinsic Value: Are valuable by the virtue of an external entity. I will not be defending life's intrinsic value in this debate, as far as I see all things are valuable because sentient beings value them. A lump of gold for example is completely meaningless absent of a sentient being to perceive it, and ascribe value to it, due to it's beauty, utility etc. Similarly human life can only be seen to be valuable in the light of sentient beings to perceive it.[2] V. Comfort/Discomfort Pro presents an apparent tautology of comfort/discomfort, and apparently has defined 'comfort' as follows: Comfort- The 'relieving' of discomfort Discomfort- A 'wanting' or desire, deprivation Furthermore, she asserts that 'discomfort is bad'. And her argument roughly appears to be as follows (I would like to ask her to clarify it if it strawwomans her). P1. Life is a state of discomfort P2. Discomfort is not preferable to comfort C1. Life is not preferable to comfort P3. Non-Life is Comfort C2. Non-life is preferable to life Before I begin attacking the argument, remember the burden of proof is on Pro, and that being the case she has to actually support the assertion of 'discomfort is bad', especially given that this is essentially her central thesis for this debate! Why should we accept this assertion? It appears prima facie plausible, but remember what 'bad' needs to mean for Pro to demonstrate the resolution (that we should have never been), 'Bad' needs to be a negative value, and not a 'absent positive value. I.e. Pro needs to demonstrate that 'discomfort is bad' means something worse than 'discomfort is not good', they are very different concepts. For this syllogism, P2 and P3 are by definition true, so I can only contest P1. Attack on P1: This is a critical premise, which Pro needs to defend, or something like it for the resolution to pass. While it seems prima facie plausible, it is actually a rather bizarre proposition. First, Pro may, and indeed has argued that life contains instances, or states of discomfort. You would have a want for food, water, sex, etc. However it does not follow at all, even if there was absolutely no individual state of 'comfort' within life, life itself is a state of discomfort. This would be known as a fallacy of composition.[3] To illustrate this fallacy, see the following analogy: "Each work of literature has an an author, therefore literature has an author" Where obviously what is true for a subset of 'Literature', does not apply to the superset of 'Literature', it is just absurd. That can only possibly be true if we include something akin to the following argument: P1. Life overall is the sum of the states of comfort/discomfort it contains P2. Life contains a sum state of discomfort C. Life is a state of discomfort Even if we assume P2 to be true, which Pro has yet to argue for although III expect she will, then there is still no reason to accept P1. It seems prima facie plausible yes, but there is a crucial thing we need to remember, the comfort/discomfort dichotomy does not address every state within life. Remember, Pro defined discomfort as a want, or a need, and comfort as the fulfilment of that state of discomfort. However I would make the argument that there are many good and bad cognitive inputs which do not fit within those categories, such as states of pleasure or pain which are not part of a need of desire. Moreover even states of discomfort that have been 'fulfilled' would seem to not only induce a state of comfort (negation of the state of discomfort), but also induce a state of pleasure. For example, if we take Pro's itch analogy, we would experience a state of 'discomfort', where you have an uncomfortable skin irritation, the antithesis of this would be to negate, or remove the uncomfortable skin irritation. There is absolutely nothing there that encompasses, or describes the brief state of pleasurable sensations you receive upon relieving the itch, it seems aparent that not only do you remove the state if discomfort, but you get an additional 'reward' from the reward-mechanisms within the brain. This can apply to most things that Pro would classify as 'comfort' or 'discomfort', since Pro's definition of 'comfort' does not encapsulate pleasure, it only encapsulates by definition 'not-discomfort', there is a huge difference. With this understanding in hand I would like to throw a parody counter-argument at Pro on this matter. All pleasures are states of satisfaction, the negation of this is dissatisfaction (I.e. Not pleasured). To put this into linguistic perspective, that sensation you receive from eating a steak is a state of 'satisfaction', and not having that sensation is a state of 'dissatisfaction'. What we can quickly see is that states of 'satisfaction' are 'good', but states of dissatisfaction are 'not bad'. Therefore, it is impossible to have an overall 'bad' state of life. Therefore: P1*. Life is a state of dissatisfaction P2*. Dissatisfaction is not bad C*. Life is not bad Here I hope you can see very clearly the issues of the false dichotimy, just as satisfaction/dissatisfaction do not encompass everything within life, neither does comfort/discomfort. If we don't accept the satisfaction/dissatisfaction dichotomy, then why accept Pro's? VI. It is better for humans to survive Another issue is that we cannot view 'life' on a per-organism basis, as the entire biosphere needs to be accounted for, including all humans as a superset, and all sentient beings as a superset of that superset. Both their states of 'satisfaction' or 'comfort' needs to be accounted for. It is possible of course to reformulate the argument I have given to account for this (a larger assumption needs to be made by Pro that all life as an entity is a state of discomfort). But even if we accept that Iife IS a state of discomfort, then it doesn't follow that humans should have never been. See the following horned dilemma: P1. Either life is a state of discomfort, or not P2. If life is not a state of discomfort, then the resolution fails P3. If life is a state of discomfort, then humans should live (or be), and the resolution fails C. In either case, the resolution fails We have already 'affirmed' P2, and P1 is true by the law of the excluded middle, so all I need to do is defend P3. In defence of P3, if it was convincing that sentient life was a state of discomfort, then humans being the most intelligent animals would be capable of systematically causing the extinction of all other life in Earth. Moreover Humans would be capable of ensuring that sentient life remains extinct for the remainder of Earth's history, which would entail remaining so new sentient life doesn't evolve ever again. Ergo, fulfilling P3. Future: It's rather myopic to just look at the current state of affairs, we are currently on a very steep technological curve, with a rapid advancement of technology. It is very, very conceivable that if what pro said is true, then we would develop the techniques to breed sentient humans/machines that would not and could not experience states of discomfort & pain.[4,5] They would experience all the positives in life, yet none of the negatives, and their lives would be overall positive. Considering the future of the Earth is several hundred million years, then us 'not being' would deprive these putative organisms of a positive future. We cannot look too narrowly when making these assessments. VII. Conclusion I look forward to seeing Pro's entire argument, so I may adjust my refutations. VIII. References 1. http://plato.stanford.edu... 2. http://www.samharris.org... 3. http://www.nizkor.org... 4. http://ideas.ted.com... 5. http://retis.sssup.it...