The Case For Not Being Born

Here is a provocative piece in The New Yorker by Joshua Rothman:

David Benatar may be the world’s most pessimistic philosopher. An “anti-natalist,” he believes that life is so bad, so painful, that human beings should stop having children for reasons of compassion. “While good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place,” he writes, in a 2006 book called “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence.” In Benatar’s view, reproducing is intrinsically cruel and irresponsible - not just because a horrible fate can befall anyone, but because life itself is “permeated by badness.” In part for this reason, he thinks that the world would be a better place if sentient life disappeared altogether.

You can read the rest @
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-case-for-not-being-born

I'm certain that robots will agree with this. So will the Bill Gates types who want to cull the human herd.

But the author does have a point. We have managed to turn something wonderful - life - into a disaster for most of its practitioners. Maybe we should spare the poor and only let rich people breed.

Just kidding ...