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The philosopher Thomas Metzinger suggests a thought experiment called Benevolent Artificial Anti-Natalism (BAAN), in which a full-blown autonomously self-optimizing post biotic superintelligence system has come into existence, aimed to assist humanity with ethical decisions. The superintelligence system is benevolent and fundamentally altruistic, so it fully respects humans’ interests and the axiology originally gave to it. The system has a better understanding of humans’ minds and values than humans themselves have, for example, it is familiar with humans’ cognitive biases which disturb and mislead their rational thinking. In Metzinger’s words:

“Empirically, it knows that the phenomenal states of all sentient beings which emerged on this planet—if viewed from an objective, impartial perspective—are much more frequently characterized by subjective qualities of suffering and frustrated preferences than these beings would ever be able to discover themselves. Being the best scientist that has ever existed, it also knows the evolutionary mechanisms of self-deception built into the nervous systems of all conscious creatures on Earth. It correctly concludes that human beings are unable to act in their own enlightened, best interest.”

Since the superintelligence system knows that bad is stronger than good, and that biological creatures are almost never able to achieve a positive or even neutral life balance, and that no entity can suffer from its own non-existence, it concludes that non-existence is in the own best interest of all future self-conscious beings on this planet. “Empirically, it knows that naturally evolved biological creatures are unable to realize this fact because of their firmly anchored existence bias. The superintelligence decides to act benevolently.”

The idea behind this thought experiment is to help humans think about some of the aspects involved in artificial intelligence, as well as serving as a cognitive tool helping to prevent important ethical issues from turning shallow and be affected by biases. Regarding antinatalism, Metzinger argues that: “one of the points behind it is that an evidence-based, rational, and genuinely altruistic form of anti-natalism could evolve in a superior moral agent as a qualitatively new insight.”

However, as smart, elaborated, and efficient as the superintelligence system would be, it is not very likely to help advance antinatalism, for two main reasons, first, since this superintelligence system would be originally designed according to humans’ values which are extremely pro-natalist, there is no reason to believe, even as a thought experiment, that the superintelligence system would infer such unusual and uncommon conclusions.
Second, even if the system would nevertheless infer such conclusions, obviously humans would simply ignore it.
The problem with antinatalism is not that its supporting thinkers are not smart and educated enough, or that people are too perplexed and in need of a more factually authoritative guidance, but that people simply don’t want to accept the antinatalist imperative.

Take an easier ethical imperative such as veganism for example. Veganism is much less violent and oppressive, it is much more sustainable, it is much healthier, and yet…
Veganism is definitely not a matter of lack of knowledge or unconvincing arguments, but a lack of motivation on the side of the offenders.
There are many valid and informative antinatalist arguments, the problem is that there are only few who are ready to listen. I don’t think that the problem is with spokespersons, so I don’t believe that a thought experiment regarding a superintelligence system would help people think about some of the aspects involved in procreation, or serve as a cognitive tool helping to prevent important ethical issues from turning shallow and be affected by biases. Unfortunately, I don’t think it would help even if one day there would actually be a superintelligence system that would really reach the conclusion that the most ethical thing to do is stop procreating.

And that is despite that if the superintelligence system would truly be compassionate, genuinely altruistic, rational, and totally unbiased, then considering the interests of all sentient beings on earth, it is absolutely unquestionable that it would conclude that humans must refrain from procreation. We don’t need a superintelligence system for that conclusion as even in lousy commercial action movies the “bad guys” often argue that humanity is a plague, cancer, a virus and etc. that needs to be destroyed. Humans have never got along with each other. All along history they never stop fighting, looting, killing, raping, destroying everything in their way and everyone they see and can use for their own benefit. They are doing it all along history, with no limits, not even natural ones as they artificially create sentient creatures only to exploit and murder them later. And not only that they almost never miss the chance for harmful actions, they keep inventing new ones. So again, a non-biased superintelligence system shouldn’t even hesitate before concluding that humans must never procreate.

One of the motivations behind this thought experiment is to ignore the noise and to rationally focus only on the empirical data, because cognitive biases such as what Metzinger calls the “existence bias” (humans do almost anything to prolong their existence), interfere with such a process. But why would it be any different when humans would hear the superintelligence system’s conclusion regarding their procreation? Metzinger writes in the article that “sustaining one’s existence is the default goal in almost every case of uncertainty, even if it may violate rationality constraints, simply because it is a biological imperative that has been burned into our nervous systems over millennia.” So there is no reason to believe that the benevolent artificial antinatalism thought experiment, nor the actual existence of a superintelligence system, would make any difference in humans’ unethical behavior.
The problem is not that people don’t know what is right, but that most want what is wrong.
We don’t need technology to help us understand what is right, we need technology to help us implement what is right.

References

Metzinger Thomas Benevolent-Artificial-Anti-Natalism (BAAN) 2017

https://www.edge.org/conversation/thomas_metzinger-benevolent-artificial-anti-natalism-baan

The former two texts address couple of the most common arguments against ‘Wrongful Life’ claims. If you haven’t read them yet, it is recommended (though not necessary) to do so before reading this one, which addresses another common argument against ‘Wrongful Life’ claims, that is that they would put pressure on doctors to advise people to have abortions.

Just a quick reminder, a ‘Wrongful Life’ case is when a child sues for medical negligence a doctor or hospital for failing to diagnose and/or for not informing the child’s parents about a genetic disorder or foetal impairment when abortion was still an option and would have been chosen by the parents had they been informed. The claim in a wrongful-life suit is not that the negligence of the doctor was the cause of the impairment, but that by failing to inform the parents, the doctor is responsible for the birth of an impaired child who otherwise would not have been born and therefore would not experience the suffering caused by the impairment. The lawsuit is in respect of the damage caused by the impairment, this would generally include pain, suffering, and ‘disability costs’—the extra financial costs attributable to the disability, such as the cost of nursing care.

A quite common claim against ‘Wrongful Life’ suits is that it would put a lot of pressure on medical advisers to suggest abortions in cases of foreseen or a suspicion for impairments, out of fear of being sued for damages. That might indeed happen, but of course the creation of people with severe impairments merely to avoid doctors being pressured to encourage abortions out of fear of being sued, can never be morally justified.

Every breeding case is performed without the consent of whom who is supposed to be the protagonist of the action. But in ‘Wrongful Life’ cases the omission of consent is even more extreme as it is not even performed with the consent of the children’s parents, who had they been informed about their children’s impairments they would have had an abortion. And according to the above claim, these children should not even be compensated for their harm since that might put pressure on doctors to advise other people to do – what these people would have done had they been informed – an abortion.

Anyone who is not adherently opposed to abortions shouldn’t be so alarmed by a potential pressure put on doctors to advice it. And anyone who is adherently opposed to the creation of people with severe impairments is supposed to be in favor of such a pressure, in the aspiration that as many preconception and prenatal testing as possible are performed to avoid as many impairments as possible.

Of course I can’t speak for other antinatalists other than myself, but in spite that on the face of it the argument that ‘Wrongful Life’ claims disvalue the life of people with disabilities is supposed to be the more challenging one for us antinatalists, I feel most uneasy with this one. That is because on the one hand I have no doubt in my mind that these are cases of medical negligence as surly the doctors could have prevented the children’s suffering had they informed their parents. But on the other hand, parents, all parents, can’t always prevent the misery caused to their children, which statistically may be smaller and less probable than the cases at the center of this text, but sometimes can also be worse than these cases. Accidents and horrible events that take place along the way can turn someone’s life to be much worse than someone who was born with impairments. The life of a person who was born with impairments that luckily don’t involve chronic pain, can be much less worse than people who weren’t born with impairments but life somehow hit them hard along the way and turned their existence into an ongoing misery.
Life necessarily involves many unavoidable harms which none of them are necessary and people are forced to endure them only because their parents have decided to create them. Shouldn’t parents have some responsibility over their children’s harm?
Only because harms are so natural, mandatory and self-evident we treat them with acceptance. But they are unnecessary, and causing unnecessary harm is morally wrong.
Pain, frustration, sickness, boredom, fatigue, weariness and etc., are all certain and unavoidable, shouldn’t parents have some responsibility for not preventing it or getting consent from their children about it?
We don’t need genetic screenings to figure out that harms would occur. And the harmed is never informed, not to mention agrees to any of them before being created.

Some supporters of ‘wrongful life’ cases, claim that the plaintiffs need not to show the court that non-existence is a preferable option, but only to show that they suffer from reasonably foreseeable, and preventable harms caused by the defendants. Yet, isn’t it the case that everyone suffers from reasonably foreseeable, and preventable harms caused by the parents?

That is why although I agree that indeed there is a criminal negligence by the medical staff in these cases of procreation, there is a criminal negligence by the parents in every case of procreation.
While the doctors are guilty not of causing harm but of not preventing harm, the parents are guilty of both causing harm and of not preventing it. The parents are guilty of every harm they would personally and directly cause to their children, and for not preventing every harm that would be caused to their children by everything that is not them.
Every procreation is a case of criminal negligence by the parents because of all the misery that can happen to all people, at any given moment, and for all the misery that would be caused by all people at any given moment.

So I agree that the pressure put on doctors is unfair, but obviously not because of fear of more abortions, but because most of the liability must still be put on the parents. That is since the option of the doctors missing or not informing the parents about impairments is always there, not to mention the option of misery not caused by doctors’ negligence but by something else later in life, therefore it is still, and always, the parents’ responsibility.

Surly the doctors are guilty of criminal negligence for not adequately examining the possibility of impairments, or for not informing the parents about examined impairments, giving them the chance to have an abortion. But the bigger crime is that people are in the position of deciding whether to have an abortion or not in the first place. The major issue is the situation in which people can decide whether to create a person without that person’s consent, while running the risk of that person being miserable, without having any justified reason or purpose, and with that person being forced to endure pain, fear, sickness, frustration, regret, broken-heartedness, boredom, death, the fear of death, and etc.

The doctors’ actions are criminal because had they informed the parents these pregnancies wouldn’t have ended with a ‘wrongful life’ but with abortion. But every case of pregnancy that doesn’t end with abortion ends with a ‘wrongful life’ because every case of procreation is a very serious crime.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing on someone else the most important decision in that person’s life.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it is harming someone else without that person’s consent.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it is gambling on someone else’s life.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing someone into a needless, pointless, absurd, constant chase after meaning in a meaningless, needless, pointless, and absurd world.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing someone into a needless, pointless, absurd, constant chase after pleasures despite that pleasures are not really intrinsically good but addictive falsehood smoke screen illusions, which trap sentient beings in an endless, pointless and vain seek for more of them. Pleasures are preceded by wants which are the absence of objects desired by subjects. People want because they are missing something. They seek pleasures to release the tension of craving. Craving or wants, are at least bad experiences if not a sort of pain. Pleasures are short and temporary, and compel a preceding deprivation, a want or a need, which is not always being fulfilled, rarely to the desired measure, and almost never exactly when wanted. And even when desires are fulfilled, the cycle starts again.

Procreation is a crime because it is forcing someone into a situation where pain is the natural default state. If one would stop all action, pains would attack very shortly in the form of hunger, thirst, boredom, loneliness, physical discomfort, thermal discomfort and etc. Pain comes if one does nothing. Pleasures are unguaranteed, brief, and at some point become boring and ineffective. There is no chronic pleasure, but there is definitely chronic pain. And it is quite abundant. Pain is always guaranteed for every person born.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it is forcing someone into a needless, pointless, absurd, constant chase after happiness – despite that according to the “set point” theory of happiness (which many psychologists find convincing nowadays), mood is homeostatic and we all have a fixed average level of happiness. That means that even desirable things which people do manage to obtain, are satisfying at first, but eventually people adapt to them and return to their “set points”. Therefore people usually end up more or less on the same level of wellbeing they were before. That’s why some argue that people actually run on hedonic treadmills.

Procreation is a very serious crime because there is a very realistic probability that a person forced into existence would be miserable. There is not even a theoretical possibility that a person forced into existence won’t be harmed at all. Creating someone who would definitely be harmed and the only variable is to what extent (with the potential of extreme misery), must be morally prohibited. Given that the motives are never the interests of the to-be born person, it is not only morally flawed, it is selfish, egocentric, arrogant, and careless.

Procreation is a very serious crime because the ample evidences that bad experiences are more important than good ones, not only serve as a proof that good experiences are at least not as good as bad experiences are bad (if not proving that bad experiences almost always outweigh the good ones), but how horrible life actually and inherently is. Basically, pain and other negative experiences, increase the fitness of individuals by enhancing their respondence ability to threats to their survival and reproduction. It has a crucial adaptive function. Existing sentient beings are tortured by evolutionary mechanisms which their only point is that additional sentient beings would exist, regardless of any of those beings’ personal wellbeing. It is a pointless, frustrating and painful trap.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it is treating someone as a means to others’ ends. People create new persons to serve their own purposes such as to take care of them when they are old, to save their decaying relationships, to continue the family line, to please their parents, to ease their boredom, to fill their empty and pointless lives with a sense of meaning and purpose, to feel powerful because someone is totally depended on them, to feel needed and important, to ease their loneliness, to hush their biological impulses, to boost their ego, to create an immortality illusion, to take care of society’s elderly, to be loved even if that love is temporary and conditioned and a result of imprinting and not of free choice and objective assessments, to continue the human race, to feel normal, to make them look normal to others. And creating extremely emotionally and physically vulnerable persons as means to others’ ends is a very serious crime.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it diverts energy, time and resources from persons who already exist and are in need, to those who needed nothing, were deprived of nothing, and harmed by nothing before they were forced into existence.

Procreation is a very serious crime because life is a constant Sisyphean struggle just to survive a life no one chose. Everyone is bound to overcome needless frustrations, disappointments, pains and discomforts.

Procreation is a very serious crime because people are creating new persons for their own selfish sake and count on that their children would adapt and adjust to the difficulties of life, just like everybody else does. Only that not everyone manages to adapt to life’s difficulties, and even if everyone did, why condemn people to such a state in the first place? Why knowingly create someone who would have to adjust to bad situations, instead of easily avoiding any bad situation that person would be forced to endure coming to existence? Why consciously choose to throw other people into the position in which they must always compromise and never get everything they want?

Procreation is a very serious crime because lives not worth living is not a theoretical possibility, it is a certainty. People whose lives are not worth living would be born, and the chances for that happening are renewed with each procreation. Misery has no quota. The only way to avoid this worse off option is by not procreating.

Procreation is a very serious crime because there is no way to retroactively undo it, and there is also not an easy and harmless option to end one’s existence by carrying out suicide. Many people are trapped in horrible lives without a truly viable option to end it because they are too afraid to kill themselves, or because they don’t want to hurt the ones who care about them if they do, or are too afraid that if they won’t succeed in killing themselves they would be socially stigmatized in the better case, or coercively hospitalized in a worse one, or harm themselves so severely while trying to kill themselves that they would end up even worse than they were. Trapping people in the impossible situation of not wanting to live but not wanting to kill themselves so not to hurt others or because they are afraid to kill themselves for any of the mentioned reasons, is a very serious crime.

Procreation is a very serious crime because it forces someone to die, and to fear of death for most of one’s life.

Procreation is a very serious crime because people can choose whether to create sentient creatures who would necessarily suffer from many bad experiences that they have necessarily not given consent to, and with no guarantee whatsoever that the created persons won’t be very miserable, yet they choose to do so anyway. They choose that other persons would experience pain, frustration, fear, boredom, they choose they would get disappointed, sick, rejected, and humiliated. Yes, that person may enjoy parts of life too, but that is not mandatory, while it is mandatory that this short list of bad things will happen at some point, at least once in each person’s life. Despite that pleasure is optional, happiness isn’t even optional, and suffering is inevitable, people criminally choose to willingly force sentient creatures into this condition.

And finally, more than anything, what makes procreation such a serious crime, is that it is forcing enormous needless and pointless suffering on thousands of individuals vulnerable to harms. While the person created is one morally relevant creature which would be harmed by being created, each person created is hurting infinitely more morally relevant creatures during a lifetime.

References

Begeal, Brady “Burdened by Life: A Brief Comment on Wrongful Birth and Wrongful Life.” Albany Gov’t Law Review Fireplace Blog. 2011. Accessed Jun 1, 2012. http://aglr.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/burdened-by-life-a-brief-comment-on-wrongfulbirth-and-wrongful-life

Benatar D (2006) Better never to have been: the harm of coming into existence. Clarendon, Oxford

Botkin Jeffrey R., “Ethical Issues and Practical Problems in Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 26, no. 1 (1998): 17-28.

Ettorre Elizabeth, “Reproductive Genetics, Gender and the Body: ‘Please Doctor, may I have a Normal Baby?’,” Sociology 34 no. 3 (2000): 403-420.

Gardner, M. (2016). Beneficence and procreation. Philosophical Studies; 173(2) 321-336

Giesen Ivo, “Of wrongful birth, wrongful life, comparative law and the politics of tort law systems,” Journal of Contemporary Roman-Dutch Law 72 (2009): 257-273.

Harris John, “The Wrong of Wrongful Life,” Journal of Law and Society 17, no. 1 (1990): 90.

Hensel Wendy F., “The Disabling Impact of Wrongful Birth and Wrongful Life Actions,” Harvard Civil RightsCivil Liberties Law Review 40 (2005): 141-195.

Jennifer Ann Rinaldi, “Wrongful Life and Wrongful Birth: The Devaluation of Life With Disability,” Journal of Public Policy, Administration and Law, 1 (2009): 1-7; Liu, “Wrongful life: some of the problems.”

Kumar R (2015) Risking and wronging. Philos Public Aff 43(1):27–51

Liu, Athena N. C. “Wrongful life: some of the problems.” Journal of Medical Ethics 13 (1987): 69-73.

Loth Marc A., Courts in quest for legitimacy; the case of wrongful life (Rotterdam: Erasmus University, 2007).

Mackenzie Robin. From Sanctity To Screening: Genetic Disabilities, Risk And Rhetorical Strategies In Wrongful Birth And Wrongful Conception Cases Feminist Legal Studies 7: 175–191, 1999

Morreim E. Haavi, “The Concept of Harm Reconceived: A Different Look at Wrongful Life,” Law and Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1988): 3-33.

Morris Anne and Saintier Severine, “To Be or Not to Be: Is That The Question? Wrongful Life and Misconceptions,” Medical Law Review 11 (2003): 167-193.

Murtaugh Michael T., “Wrongful Birth: The Courts’ Dilemma in Determining a Remedy for a Blessed Event,” Pace Law Review 27, no. 2 (2007): 243

Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. (Oxford University Press 1986)

Ramos-Ascensão José, “Welcoming the more vulnerable: do parents have a right to selection of a healthy child?” Europeinfos – Christians perspectives on the EU, 2012: 5, accessed Aug 4, 2013, http://www.comece.eu/europeinfos/en/archive/issue153/article/5140.html

Robertson John A., “Extending preimplantation genetic diagnosis: the ethical debate – Ethical issues in new uses of preimplantation genetic diagnosis,” Human Reproduction 18, no. 3 (2003): 465-471

Sàndor Judit, “From Assisted to Selective Reproduction: Through the Lens of the Court,” The Faculty of Law – Norway, 2013: 14, accessed Jan 14, 2014, http://www.jus.uio.no/english/research/news-andevents/events/conferences/2014/wccl-cmdc/wccl/papers/ws7/w7-sandor.pdf

Savulescu J. Procreative Beneficence: why we should select the best children. Bioethics 200115413–426

Seana Valentine Shiffrin. Harm And Its Moral Significance. Legal Theory, Available on CJO 2012 doi:10.1017/S1352325212000080

Sheldon Sally and Wilkinson Stephen. Termination of Pregnancy for reason of foetal disability: Are there grounds for a special exception in Law? Medical Law Review, 9 (2) pp 85-109

Steinbock, Bonnie, Life Before Birth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)

Steinbock Bonnie & McClamrock Bonnie When is Birth Unfair to the Child? University at Albany, SUNY January 1994

Steininger Barbara C., “Wrongful Birth and Wrongful Life: Basic Questions,” Journal of European Tort Law 2 (2010): 125-155

Stretton, Dean. “The Birth Torts: Damages for Wrongful Birth and Wrongful Life.” Deakin Law Review 10, no. 1 (2005): 319-364

Vesta T. Silva (2011) Lost Choices and Eugenic Dreams: Wrongful Birth Lawsuits in Popular News Narratives, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8:1, 22-40, DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2010.543985

Webber Jay, “Better Off Dead?” First Things, (2002): 10

Weinberg, Rivka. Existence: who needs it? The non-identity problem and merely possible people
2012 Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702

The philosopher Julio Cabrera, which I have previously addressed, has another book translated into English. It is called Because I Love You, You Will Not Be Born! and it is a joint reflection about procreation, written with Thiago Lenharo di Santis. The book is half philosophical essay and half novel, aiming to examine what its authors view as the coldness and detachment with which thousands of humans are dumped daily on planet Earth, just for the distraction of their parents or as a mere involuntary product.

The first part is mainly dedicated to Cabrera’s structural mortality claim which I’ve addressed in the post about the book A Critique of Affirmative Morality.
The second part is dedicated to considerations about the decision to generate a new being from the point of view of the ones who are about to be born. This part is written by Thiago di Santis.
The third and last part is called Letters of Abstention and is a fictional correspondence between a young negative philosopher and an austere teacher.

Unfortunately there are relatively few antinatalist books so there is no reason to choose between them, yet if you have to choose just one of Cabrera’s books translated into English, I highly recommend reading Discomfort and Moral Impediment which is undoubtedly one of the best books I’ve ever read.
However there is an unmissable part in Because I Love You, You Will Not Be Born!, surprisingly in the exchange of letters part of the book, where one of the writers decides to synthesize the many questions and discussions detailed along the text, in a table. That is done in hope that after seeing everything together, it becomes clear how sadistic and unscrupulous the procreative attitude is.

Here is the moral mapping of procreation:

*If the concern for the son or daughter’s well-being is maintained
X1: This moment is considered to be “existential” in relation to the parents and “pre-existential” in relation to the child (therefore, prior to his existence).
Mother and father already exist and therefore have a physical apparatus developed (brain) and are able to consider the issue of birth consciously, to reason about the aspects involved and to make a decision. Observe that one can make the decision without consciously considering the issue and without reasoning about all the aspects involved (which, in fact, seems to be very common), but at least there is the possibility of making these types of consideration, since the physical apparatus is available for this.
The child, however, does not exist in X1. They have therefore no (cerebral) physical apparatus or any other to consider the issue, there is no consciousness, there is no reasoning, there is no decision-making. If such a tool is not available, it is absolutely impossible that there be any awareness or choice about the issue on the part of the new being.
X2: This moment is considered as the beginning of the existence of the child. From this will occur a series of processes of development of the new individual generated.
X3: This moment is considered as one in which the individual who was before in development is already developed.

The fact that the vast majority of people would still procreate even after reading this list is one of the most unequivocal proofs that us radical antinatalists shouldn’t focus on making lists of arguments aiming at convincing people not to procreate, but focus on lists of technological options aiming at making people unable to procreate.

Some antinatalists argue that the only way to justify creating a person is if the parents are willing to “fix what they broke”. Meaning, that people are permitted to create a person if they are ready and are committed to compensate their child for harms, including assisting suicide to their child if the child asks for it, regardless of it being illegal; and they are certainly not allowed to try to prevent their children from carrying out suicide if they choose to.

I sympathize with the logic behind the argument that given that parents risk their children’s well-being, let alone in an attempt to improve their own, then if their children’s well-being ends up being poor and undesirable in their own view, the parents are obligated to return their children to their previous state, but since this option is even theoretically impossible simply because there is no pre-existing state someone was in before being created or can somehow go back to, procreation is impermissible under this condition just as much.

Beyond the lawfulness issue and beyond the unlikeliness that parents would not try to prevent their children from carrying out suicide if they choose to, let alone provide them with assistance, carrying out suicide doesn’t compensate anyone for anything. Harms done are not retroactively being undone once a person doesn’t exist anymore. Existence can’t be undone. Things can happen but can never “unhappen”. There are no, and there could be no compensations for the harms endured in existence when it ends. Ending one’s existence can only stop the current harms and prevent the future ones, but it can’t compensate for past harms.

Suicide cannot compensate anyone for the suffering of existence, but can only stop the continuance of the suffering of existence. It can’t retroactively justify the existence of someone who doesn’t want to live, or wish s/he had never existed. The harm can never be compensated for nor justified, even if the parents provide assistance, and even if suicide was fast, fearless, absolutely sure, plain, painless and harmless to others, which it is definitely none of the above. Carrying out suicide is always difficult, scary, unsure, dangerous, potentially painful, and rarely unharmful to people who knew the person carrying it out, including the parents, and despite them (under the conditions of this argument) making a prior agreement to assist or at least not hold back their children if that’s what they wish for.

Even people who have decided to end their life, and even people whom their life was a continuance misery, are naturally and biologically built to fear death, and they are obviously afraid of pain, of permanently disabling themselves if they don’t succeed in carrying out suicide. Some fear that they are committing a sin, some fear of what they view as the unknown, some of breaking the law, of being socially shamed, of being blamed for selfishness, of the option of isolation ward in a psychiatric hospital, and etc. All that as well as the fact that people are biologically built to survive, make many people prisoners of their biological mechanisms and social norms. They are trapped in horrible lives without a truly viable option to end it, even if their parents would agree, and even if they would provide them with assistance.

People must overcome too many obstacles with each being too difficult, for suicide to really be an option. And even if it wasn’t the case, carrying out suicide, even if was absolutely safe, easy and free of any collateral damage, as aforementioned, doesn’t by any means compensate for a miserable existence.

No one should take the risk that their children would suffer so much that they would not only want to die, but that they would overcome all these obstacles and try to do something about it, or won’t because they are too afraid or because they care too much about the people who care about them. No one should put anyone in such a horrible position where they don’t want to live but are trapped in life.

Compensation to Others

Even if parents’ preacceptance that they might have to assist their children with ending their own lives if they want to, was a relevant “fix” and compensation for their children’s miserable existence, given that creating a person is not only gambling on that person’s life, but also, if not first and foremost, ensuring that more sentient beings, probably tens of thousands of them, would be forced to endure miserable lives so to support and pleasure the created person, and given that compensation is even less relevant in their cases, procreation is a unidirectional thing for tens of thousands, and is unfixable for each and every one of them.

Before discussing the relevancy and feasibility of compensating and fixing a potential problem of a person who doesn’t yet exist so to justify its creation, people must ensure compensation and that they can fix the certain problems of everyone who would be harmed due to that person’s creation. And obviously that is impossible. How can people compensate everyone who would be sacrificed and otherwise harmed by the people they will create? How can they compensate everyone who would be genetically modified so to provide the maximum meat possible for the to-be born persons? How can they compensate everyone who would be imprisoned for their entire lives? How can they compensate everyone who would be forced to live without their family for their entire lives? How can they compensate everyone who would suffer chronic pain and maladies for their entire lives? How can they compensate everyone who would never breathe clean air, walk on grass, bath in water, and eat natural food?

Procreation is not only taking a risk of causing harm to the person created, it is indifferently deciding to cause harms to everyone who would be harmed by the person created.
None of them can be compensated for any of it. Not the created person and not any of its victims.

The first broken thing that people must fix before creating more people is the enormous harm each of them is causing. And that is not likely to happen. Ever.
Given that no person is harmed by the life that s/he had never lived, but tens of thousands are harmed by the life that each person does live, not only that when it comes to procreation there is no way to fix what is broken, it keeps breaking and breaking more and more things all the time. And that requires a real fix.

Some pro-natalists are claiming that humanity is evolving all the time and things are getting better all the time. Medicine had been extremely improved, people are less sick, they are eating better than they used to in the past, they are richer than ever, there is much higher awareness to hygiene and pollution, and the world is less violent. Humanity is constantly improving, so we just need to grit our teeth for a little longer, and life in the future would be much better.

This claim is simply wrong if we consider every aspect of living and of every sentient creature, and if we remember that what matters ethically is harms to actual living sentient creatures and not statistical probabilities of harms.

So first we need to ask, life is better for whom? The lives of most people have not been significantly improved due to the increase of wealth and technology. The gaps between rich and poor people, within and between nations, have only become wider. Billions of people are suffering daily from malnutrition if not hunger in the most literal and harsh sense of not having anything to eat. And that is despite the soaring technological advances in food production along the past century. Billions of people are suffering on a daily basis from lack of water or from using contaminated water, despite technological advances in water pumping, desalination and water purification. Billions of people are suffering on a daily basis from various curable diseases despite the soaring technological advances in medicine. Billions of people are suffering on a daily basis from pollution, filth, pain, violence, frustration and hopelessness. This is the reality of the majority of the human race. Advances and improvements in the fields of medicine, hygiene, food production, and technology, don’t reach most people.

And since the good aspects of technology didn’t benefit most people, clearly the major problems in this world are not technical but social and political. And these issues have not been solved and there is no reason to believe they will ever be solved.

The fact that it is much easier to produce food, to develop medicines, that there is much more awareness of clean water, clean air, green areas, hygiene and etc., yet all the problems are still here, is not an indication of improvement but the other way around. The technological potential didn’t prove itself for being able to solve these basic issues and in fact it made a lot of things a lot worse. The air, water and soil are much more polluted. People are eating food which is less nutritious, less natural, more chemically infected, and is produced using various harmful methods. Despite technological advancements people are forced to work longer hours. Despite the advancements in the entertainment business and platforms, with so many people having a smartphone connected to the internet in their pockets, they are much more bored. Instead of making people more connected and knowledgeable they are more ignorant, more divisive, more cynical, more alienated and less compassionate.

Some problems have gotten much worse, and some have only been created in modern time such as mass surveillance, cyberbullying, loss of privacy, algorithmic discrimination (amplification of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination by AI systems), shaming – online and otherwise, impulsive consumerism, drug abuse, anxiety, neuroticism, systematical dissatisfaction, lack of meaning, existential detachment, depression, loneliness and etc.

And last but definitely not least in this brief list of technology’s effects, is factory farming and everything involved in it , most probably the worst effect technology has ever had on sentient creatures. Yet.

Secondly, we need to remember that even if the claim that life is getting better was true, it is so in terms of ratio, not in absolute numbers. Meaning, maybe it is true that the chances of a person nowadays to be severely harmed by something (for example an infection caused by not much more than a flesh wound), compared with a few centuries ago, are lower; but since there are many more people in the world today there are many more people who are harmed by all kinds of things (even becoming severely ill from an infection caused by not much more than a flesh wound) than there were a few centuries ago.
It might be true that the chances of a person to fall victim to a violent attack are lower than they were in the past, but there are many more people who are victims of violent attacks because there are many more people today. And since it is absolute numbers that count, real actual people, not probabilities which are not morally relevant entities, the world is not getting better. It is less important ethically that statistically there is a lesser chance of someone to be harmed, and it is not an indication of the world becoming better as long as these odds don’t reflect a decrease in the total number of harmed people. There are more victims today of most of the harms, including ones that should have been eradicated long ago such as various easily treatable diseases, lack of food, and lack of clean water.
Victims of harms are what we must count and there are more of these than there were in the past.

Thinking that things have gotten better because they have gotten better statistically is thinking about humanity as an ethical entity instead of thinking about humans as ethical entities. It is thinking in relative terms and in patterns of the human race as a species instead of thinking about individuals of the human species which are the truly ethically relevant entities for that matter.

Also, this is a very Western thinking, as in many places the chances to be severely harmed, if to follow the previous examples, by an infection caused by not much more than flesh wound or by a violent attack, have not been significantly improved.

And most importantly for that matter, this is a very speciesist thinking as the chances of a nonhuman animal to be harmed by a violent attack nowadays is immensely higher than it was in the past. There are many more animals who are created specifically and especially to be harmed and then consumed by humans, than ever before. There are many more victims, and each is suffering much more than ever, since factory farms are way worse than hunting. So when considering every aspect of living and of every sentient creature, even if we’ll ignore the fact that this claim is falsely formulated, it is wrong on every aspect.

Thirdly, although it is true that when it comes to some aspects of life, the chances of a human individual to be harmed are lower than they used to be, the chances of a human individual to harm numerous others by numerous ways are higher than they used to be.
That is, first and foremost, because most people still choose to feed themselves in the most harmful ways. But even the ones who don’t, are forced to participate in various harmful methods bound with modern agriculture and with modern food production. But it is not just food, it is everything people are doing. Humans’ daily use of technology means harming others on a daily basis. It starts with mining relevant components for technology which is often done by human bondage, exploitation of poor areas, logging, land clearing, and heavy metal pollution; and continues with more use of energy, more CO2 emission, more oil leaks, more use of water, more pollution of water, more pollution of air and etc.
The amount of chemicals each person is using is enormous and surely is greater than ever before.
The amount of plastic each person is using is enormous and surely is greater than ever before.
There is no doubt that it is better for a person to have the option of changing clothes every day, and taking a shower every day, but like many other things, this is an advantage only in the human column, and a great disadvantage in the animals column. For animals, humans’ frequent washing and use of detergents, means less water in general, and less clean water in particular.
Life may be more convenient for many more people than they were in the past, but this is not the case for other creatures. There weren’t so many disposable products in the past. Not so many roads. Not so much artificial lighting. Not so much noise. Not so many fences and obstacles. Not so many poisons.

And the fact that humans live much longer nowadays, means each has a much longer period of harming others simply by living one’s life.
Each person, even if not directly or intentionally (for example by choosing a vegan diet and a minimalistic lifestyle), causes much more suffering and to many more sentient creatures nowadays. Even if it was true that life has gotten better for people, life with people has gotten significantly worse. People’s lives may have improved in terms of their own private welfare, but they have dramatically deteriorated in terms of their harm to others.

Fourthly, even if it was true that it is better in the present than it was in the past, better doesn’t necessarily mean good. Something can be better than something else yet be terrible in itself. The fact that things could have been worse, or if it is true that they have been worse, doesn’t mean that now they are good. If at all true, all this claim can stand for is that it is better in the present than it was, and that it is better in the present than it could have been, but not by any means that it is good in the present.

Fifthly, even if it was true that it is better in the present than it was in the past, there is absolutely no guarantee that it would be better in the future. It also might be a lot worse. And it already is a living hell.

At this moment, there is a war going on somewhere, a nation is crying out for independence in another place, somewhere else there is a political repression, not far from there an ethnical repression, right next to it religious repression, and riots against corruption are being violently hushed by the authorities everywhere. Human history is an endless battle over things that should have been absolutely basic a long time ago and they are absolutely far from being so in the present, so why would they be in the future? If the present is not significantly better than the past why assume that the future will be?

If humanity has yet to succeed solving basic issues among itself, and when many of them become even worse, and new ones have emerged, what is the basis for the assumption that the future is going to be bright? On what grounds do they assume that present violent conflicts would be solved in the future, and more importantly that new ones won’t constantly emerge?
Was there any reduction in the scope of weapon manufacture in recent years? In arms trade? In developing more lethal and destructive weapons? Did people stop fighting over territories? Over resources? Over religious differences? Did humanity become wiser and more educated and realized that it is totally insane to fight over the “right way” to worship a fictional entity? Did humanity become wiser and more educated and realized that profits are way less important than welfare? Did humanity become wiser and more educated regarding how to raise happy people? Did humanity become wiser and more educated and figured out the purpose of the whole thing? Can it provide a reasonable answer to the so fundamental self-evident and primary question – what is the meaning of life?

And lastly, even if it was true that the present is better than the past and that the future would be better than the present, what for? To what purpose? There is no aim to achieve in the future, there is no important goal to accomplish, and no one who is waiting to exist in the future, so what logical explanation let alone ethical justification is there to sacrifice generations upon generations of humans, and many more of nonhumans, so maybe a tiny fraction of all the sentient creatures who would be forced to be created theretofore would live in a supposedly better world? That is morally reprehensible in every possible respect.