I don't understand how it would be an "exception" to my tweet above. Parasitical bugs are well known for killing off their host and, in the process, killing themselves off. All of life is vicious, predatorial, unnecessary and stupid.
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Killing host and self is indeed futile and pointless, as is all insect and human behaviour. However, would you describe it as futile and pointless for an antinatalist scientist to finally end eons of agony on earth by successfully rendering all animals including humans infertile?
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Well, it's gonna happen sooner or later, anyhow. Either way, the entire experiment called "life" is an exercise in futility. If we end it now or it ends later via natural process of entropy, it was all for nothing.
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If it happens sooner there will be billions of beings spared from the agony they would have endured. I agree that even Schopenhauer espousing antinatalism is futile (because it's all talk). But if a scientist rescues all sentient beings millions of years early that'll be amazing!
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If it could be done, then, I'm for it. But our championing that particular cause doesn't give it any value except what we project onto it. But, killing off all life will be difficult. There are hard to reach entities on the bottom of the ocean & so on.
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Right. Meanwhile, if "value" is just something we project into things, isn't that true of "futility" as well? Also, when Schopenhauer decries humans as "living graveyards" of the killed animals they eat, isn't that just projected "negative value"?
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I think "futility" suggests no value, lacking in value. And Schopie's "living graveyards" is a good analogy of how we devour other living things. It's neither "negative" or "positive" but it is descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive.
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What if I express it this way: If all human activity is as meaningless and all insect activity, doesn't that entail seeing antinatalism and pronatalism as being equally futile and empty?
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If you follow it out to its logical conclusion, everything is futile. The planet will soon be devoid of life and eventually the sun will explode and consume much of our solar system. You & I will soon be dead & forgotten. It makes no difference. All is vanity
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Imagine the universe will end in 100 years and you're the only inhabitant. An ovum is about to be robotically fertilised in a laboratory. The result will be a human destined for a lifetime of unbearable pain. But you can destroy the lab before fertilisation. Would that be futile?
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Yes, because eventually that human is gonna die and the earth become vaporized by the sun as it explodes into a red giant
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Let's imagine you must create one of two universes. Both will eventually explode into nothingness. One includes unbearable pain, whereas the other has no sentient beings. Does the transient nature of these universes make it a "futile" act choose the latter?
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