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Roderick

Is having children immoral?

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I love a good paradox. This is a great read, really fun.

I think one thing we can be happy about is that even in this line of thinking (that future generations can't be mad at us for any decision, since it created the circumstances for their existence), from the perspective of the active agent (us), it is still morally superior to 'do the right thing'. Stop the smog in LA, save the environment, give to the poor. The reason is that no matter what you do, everything is a choice. Not stopping the smog in LA will create as much ripples and new circumstances as stopping the smog in LA. Since the latter is morally better because it creates more pleasant living conditions (following the lsit Luftmensch wrote down), it is morally better, period. So we can, at least, be happy that it's still good to do good things, and not become indifferent because folks down the line won't be in their right to get mad at us for screwing up.

Maybe my view on life is a little pessimistic. I assure you I'm quite a cheerful person! But I do worry about the future, about future illnesses and general anxieties in life. Never to the point of not wanting to exist, but they are a concern. I think it's a good guideline to say; if you yourself want to live, perhaps it won't be too bad for your kid. Spinning the wheel of fortune is still a relevant objection to having children as a moral act, because no matter how small the possibility, there is inevitably the chance your kid will be clinically depressed and kill themselves. In that rare event, where a person actually acts upon the wish to not exist, creating them might not have been the right choice. Insofar as you can't know that beforehand, it's immoral only in the sense that you knew the possibility was there and took a gamble, knowing the odds were very much in your favor. I think that's as far as you can take this - it'll never be a completely binary thing in any Mass Effect sense, from pure Renegade to 100% Paragon.

As far as I see it now, the answer to my question, in this discussion, seems to be: It is moral to have children, considering the vast chance that the child will appreciate its existence and was glad it was born, under the majority of circumstances.

Also, my mind is still reeling from the Ted talks that, if they are to be believed, project that the world population will stabilize at a relatively managable size. That doesn't do the places any good that are already now rather over-populated (though even the Netherlands have plenty of regions that are sparsely populated), but it's a relief. Maybe it'll all be quite OK in the end.

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How does stopping the smog in LA create more pleasant living conditions? More pleasant than what, and for who? It's better than a smoggy LA, but that's not a relevant consideration for the people in clean LA, because they wouldn't exist in smoggy LA. And it's not better for the people in smoggy LA, because they won't exist in clean LA. So even though we want to say it's better, we can't find anyone who it's better for. And if something isn't better for anyone, how is it better?

Another way of stating the problem is just to look at Nappi's answer to your question. Nappi says that it's moral to have children because the majority of people want to live - their lives are good. You're overly pessimistic if you think that there's a pretty good chance your child's life is going to be so bad that you ought not to have had the child, because if you ask basically any person alive today, they are happy they were born and they wouldn't give that up even though they've experienced hardships.

Since this is true, it looks like people WANT to live, even if it's in smoggy LA. In fact, they'd prefer "living in smoggy LA" to "failing to exist in clean LA." If you gave them the choice, smoggy LA would be better for them.

If you added up how happy the people in smoggy LA are and how happy the people in clean LA are, then it's better for the people in clean LA to exist in that timeline than it is for the people in smoggy LA to exist in their timeline, but it seems like no matter what you do, whether you make LA clean or not, the people who exist because of your actions should be grateful that they exist, not mad at you for failing to clean up LA, right? Because people are happy they exist. I'm not so thrilled about the Holocaust, but in a way I have to be grateful, because without it, I wouldn't exist, and certainly I prefer existence to nonexistence, right? I haven't committed suicide and I don't regard the possibility of dying as something I am indifferent to.

As for the whole "what if my child is one of the small percentage of people who kills themselves," then even if it's true that having the child was immoral in one sense, which is "I ought not to have done it if I had known the child would kill themselves," it's unlikely to be immoral in the more normal sense of the word, which is "I did what I thought was best at the time." There's a small percentage chance whenever you drive a car that you will accidentally hit and kill someone. It's obviously immoral to kill someone with your car, but on the other hand, you can't know, when you get in the car, that you will hit and kill someone, so we don't say "driving cars is immoral" or even "driving cars is moral under the majority of circumstances but immoral if you're going to hit someone." Because we don't know if we're going to hit someone when we drive! Life is full of uncertainty and we have to make moral decisions based on what is likely to happen, not based on what could conceivably happen but which is super unlikely.

On the other hand, when the chance of something bad happening gets high enough, or when we are responsible for raising the chance of something bad happening, or when there's no benefit but still a chance of something bad happening, we usually do call the act immoral. So if it's impossible to drive a car without hitting people, or if you get drunk, or if you're just firing a gun into the air for fun in a crowded city, we'll probably condemn those actions. Do any of these cases apply to having kids? Well, I don't think the chances of your kid committing suicide are so high that it would be immoral to have kids, but maybe if your family has a history of depression and pretty much everyone self-terminates before 40 then it would be immoral to have kids? I don't think you're planning to be responsible for your kid's suicide (in fact I don't think you're planning on your children committing suicide at all) so the second case doesn't apply. And certainly having kids is a huge benefit - they make peoples' lives worthwhile, give them meaning, etc.

So it looks like the answer to your question should be it is moral to have children unless you're pretty sure they're going to commit suicide. If we were omniscient your answer would be better, but we aren't omniscient. We can only make moral decisions based on what we know. And from what we know, almost everyone is happy to be alive.

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I can totally live with that answer.

As for LA, I can number a few reasons why clearing the smog up would be morally better:

- Since we all agree that living in clear air is better than living in smog, it would show a level of consideration towards future generations to make their life as pleasant as we can. Leaving it smoggy when we know that is an undesirable state to be in (even if it is still more desirable than not existing!), would be callous and unkind. Not to any particular person, but in a general sense, relating to our moral fiber.

- From a utilitarian perspective, the people existing in Clear LA will be happier than people from Smoggy LA. Clearing up the smog will create more happiness in the future world, which is moral.

(Which isn't to say I don't understand the concept! I think it's very smart and would like to thank everyone contributing here. See, Nappi? That wasn't so hard :fries: )

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It's a paradox because you're mixing definitions. If history came about such that I didn't exist, I wouldn't know the difference, much like I didn't mind the 14 billion years before I came to exist. The smoggy LA is only the best of all possible timelines for you personally. Broadly speaking, the smog-free LA would have resulted in a healthier, happier present. The people who would have existed in your place would have been healthier and better off. Effectively, you're saying it's okay for better off people to have never existed as long as you get to be alive. I kindly object to that sentiment.

Or I would, if the past was not immutable.

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I think everyone would agree that it's at least OKAY that potential people don't exist so that we exist - you and I exist because our parents didn't have a different child at a different time, and even if those children would have been better off than you and I, we don't think our parents did anything wrong, right? So when you generalize that point, doesn't it seem like there's a sense in which we don't harm future people by bringing it about that they exist in a future that isn't the best that it could be, simply because their existence DEPENDS on that future? Which definitions am I mixing?

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I think it's only a paradox if you insist that quality means something only to specific individuals. And if you zoom out from that level, we don't need to think about potential existence of the merging of exactly that specific sperm & egg cells.

You are right that from the perspective of a specific individual, they should be greatful just for their existence, but we don't need to think about that specific individual before it exists -- we can use abstraction.

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The idea that things can just be good without being good for any specific person would help solve the issue, yes. But do we think that things like lack of pollution are just good on their own? Or are they good because pollution is bad for people? What is "pollution" other than a description of an atmosphere containing things that are created by and bad for humans?

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Eh, sure, but that's a separate issue unless you want to just accept that the pollution isn't bad for humans, it's only bad for nature. That would solve the nonidentity problem but at the cost of saying that pollution is never bad for future generations of humans.

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That debate would be valuable if anyone here was a qualified environmental scientist and understood what variables are studied and why.

As far as moral concerns, I would state that its our goal to create as good a world a possible for all people, in as inclusive a definition of "people" as possible. That's kind of a rough description and someone else could state that thought better.

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I think it's a bit ridiculous to say that your existence is justification for everything in the past. It's very self-centered. If someone could have prevented the holocaust and World War 2 with no other meaningful impacts other than my non-existence (and that of millions of others), I think that it would be the correct thing to do.

If we're supposed to be okay with potential people not existing, then we should be just as okay with ourselves not existing.

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It's not justification for stuff that has happened in the past, it's a reason for not being able to claim that things in the past harmed you. Because if they hadn't happened, you would not have existed, which would be worse for you than existing (or at least not better). But yes, there's a sense in which it's ridiculous, which is why we have a paradox rather than an easy answer (the easy answer being "well yes of course that makes sense").

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I am awesome therefore my children will be awesome therefore it is my moral duty to make as many as I can.

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But do we think that things like lack of pollution are just good on their own? Or are they good because pollution is bad for people?

Well, without going into the "bad/good on its own", what I meant was that instead of thinking "I'll leave a better world for my children X, Y and Z", I can think of "I'll leave a better world for my offspring", or just "I'll leave a better world for people". It doesn't have to be a specific individual because we can abstract out the very specific individuals.

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Nobody disagrees that you're leaving a better world for whoever ends up in that world than you would if you didn't improve the world. That's not the puzzle. The puzzle is that if you chose to leave a worse world, it's unclear why anyone should be mad at you, because a worse world where they still exist is better for them than a better world where they don't exist.

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I guess. I think it's not a real issue to bother thinking about, though.

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Well, now you're pulling the rug from under philosophy in general!

The issue was worthwhile to discuss, in my opinion, because it provided a clear answer to the specific, if somewhat esoteric, question I started this topic with.

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I guess. I think it's not a real issue to bother thinking about, though.

Well then you can stop posting about it! Nobody is under any obligation to find anything interesting. This whole forum exists because a bunch of people like to talk about video games, a topic 95% of the world couldn't give less of a shit about. The Idle Thumbs, and most of us here on the forums, have spent more time thinking about any given game than most people would find valuable spending on all video games ever, but that doesn't mean anything about us except that we find certain things interesting. You don't need to go into a bunch of gaming forums where people are discussing Spec Ops or Hotline Miami and say "well I don't think you need to bother with this, even the best game narratives are pretty worthless compared to books," because that's not really adding much to the conversation and there's no point in wandering into a thread about morality and choosing one small issue in that thread and deeming it unimportant because you don't find it interesting. Plenty of people do, and there's nothing gained by telling them to not bother thinking about it.

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Hngh. Sorry it sounded that way. I hope I don't need to add "IMHO" to every sentence. It's what I personally don't want to bother thinking about (or maybe I do a little bit since I'm in this conversation), I'm not telling the rest to stop this thread. I agree that it might be an interesting puzzle/paradox from some perspective.

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Well, now you're pulling the rug from under philosophy in general!

The issue was worthwhile to discuss, in my opinion, because it provided a clear answer to the specific, if somewhat esoteric, question I started this topic with.

What was that answer? All I saw was more questions and hypotheticals.

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The nonidentity issue illuminated how as long as life is worth living, hardships and all, it is better than nonexistence. Therefore it isn't immoral to create life. I think that's a pretty smart and convincing answer, even if the nonidentity problem itself has a paradoxical nut still to crack.

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That was tangentially related, but as far as I'm concerned, even that one's answered to some degree.

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Children suck and so do the lot of you.

Kids are cool though.

(Specifically the barrier between kids and children exists when they learn of mischief. Before that it's all tears and bullshit.)

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Slightly disagree, Orv. When they can express affection it already becomes awesome. It's all uphill from there though until puberty.

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