it is better to have never been/exist

My opponent examples of not knowing being preferable is flawed. The reason for this is that in the two example he gave, there are glaring exceptions. Ultimately whether or not the knowledge of the molestation should be told to the victim depends on the victim. There are some people who would prefer not having information withheld from them. While some people may benefit from not receiving the news, not everyone is included in this group. I am personally in the group of people who would rather know the horrible truth than have the information withheld from me. The second example ignores the fact that if the man didn't know the rent was due, he would have gotten a shock when he got the eviction notice, and it is very possible that the lack of knowing would end up causing more stress on him and his family. I would like to say that the main purpose of this debate, is whether people who exist would rather not exist. So if people who exist feel that they "...are a way for the cosmos to know itself" then the opinions (or lack of) of those who don't exist doesn't matter. So my opponent's comment: "Also if one never comes into existence they cannot feel they have missed out on the knowledge of the cosmos because to 'them' the cosmos obviously do not exist." means little, since it is about whether people who exist care about if they didn't, not vise versa. People who exist may be glad that they exist to see the beauty of the universe. Just because if they didn't exist they wouldn't feel like they missed out doesn't change the opinions of existing people. Now I wasn't aware from my opponents main argument that he was also saying that it would be better if the entire universe didn't exist. Of course I should have took the raw meaning about statement "It is better to have never been/existed" rather than apply it to intelligent life. I would like to thank my opponent for clarifying this debate with the comment he made about asteroids:"...it would certainly be more preferable for these matters such as the "asteroid" and "rabies" to not exist..." I would like to say that in the point I made was "The good outweighs the bad on average" which doesn't mean that the "good outweighs the bad in all situations". I feel like my opponent may have overlooked the word average. I would just like to say that if pain was something that ended up being greater than happiness, then MOST people wouldn't ever feel happiness without it getting drowned out by pain. If a person would have their happiness drown out by pain, then if they were ask the question "Would it be better if you never were conceived?", they would say yes. Now if you were to take a large sample of people and gave them that question. The "majority" would say no. While there are some suffering by depression who would say no, they are in the minority of people. I feel that my opponent obscured the picture by saying human consumption causes animal to be maltreated. Human consumption merely causes animals to be kill, maltreatment occurs from significantly smaller group people not caring about their treatment. While the cause of the maltreatment are humans either way, I feel that my opponent is trying to give the feeling that majority of people are guilty for the animal maltreated. This would help him with trying to give the impression that the all of humanity is responsible for the misery, even though in reality it is a minority of the humanity. Now the next argument my opponent makes is that there are large amounts of suffering on earth. My opponent gives a wealth of statistics of suffering that seems to overwhelm human existence. While the numbers he gave are in the 100's of millions, it is important to know that a 100 billion people existed during the same time frame(1). The entirety of the horrible things that my opponent has mention, end up only to be less than a percent of people who existed during the same time. I feel that my opponent fails to consider people who prefer to exist even in horrible situations. While he and others may prefer to not exist because of the likeliness of suffering, there are people that prefer to exist and deal with the likeliness of suffering over not existing at all. Now I feel my opponent has made a drastic oversimplification of the con's side. He claims that all on the con's side are 'Pollyannas' and goes on to say "...that they think that they and their children will be spared all this [misery]". I would like to say that there are many people, myself included, that do not believe that they or their children will be spared from horrendous misery. Yet myself and others like me still prefer to exist despite the likeliness of misery. Personally I am fairly sure someone will eventually brutally and painfully murder me some day. Yet despite this likeliness of pain, I still prefer to exist and have the potential of happiness, rather than never exist and be free from misery. There was an example I gave in a previous argument of a horrible situation and the was a small probability of it getting better. I and many others would be willing to live through such an ordeal for this small probability. And if we are willing to live through such an ordeal, we are certainly willing to exist through such ordeal, just to exist. So in the end the pro side not only makes a claim that is false in all situations for people willing to go through hardship to have the potential to live life to its fullest, but also false for the majority of people on earth. Thank you reference 1. http://www.prb.org...