what i never understood about antinatalism is if not asking to be born is meant to be taken seriously or not, even if one could talk to a fetus and it could understand you, how can someone who has never had any experience ever possibly consider the pros and cons of life?
i may be misunderstanding.
The way I tend to see it is if you view it fundamentally- like initiating an experiment. If you are able to bring a sentient being into the world, knowing it could have a good life or suffer deeply but, at least some suffering is unavoidable- would you?
The being will almost definitely experience the death of others and the death of itself. It's body will be vulnerable and there are many risks you won't be able to protect it from. It will also very likely need to work to pay for its own life and, if it hates the experience, it will likely still be trapped here. So- is it fair to set such an experiment in motion? My argument would be- no. It's too risky to just enter a living creature into such a lottery.
However, once the being has been forced into existence here- is it then reasonable to start dumping expectations on it? It needs to learn how to become independent. It needs an education and later a job and, if it decides it hates life and doesn't want to comply to the rules, it will be punished. It will have one hell of a job if it wants to leave too. So- it's more of how unreasonable it is to birth a sentient being into slavery- effectively. Our freedoms are often hugely limited.
The counter argument would be- think of all the things the child would miss out on. Perhaps they would have in fact enjoyed life. But, can you regret not being born? I don't really see how, if we don't exist at that point. It's so much safer not to be born- surely? And not even initiate the risk of things going badly.
I suppose it's about risk assessment and trying not to inflict harm on others. Say you were controlling a rollercoaster and you know there is a design fault. As there is with life/ the world. We know multiple things can go horribly wrong with both.
You could initiate the ride and give people a wonderful few minutes of joy. You could also be maiming someone for the rest of their life! They don't have the knowledge to make an informed decision to ride it. Only you know about the fault. So- do you put them at risk, or not? I'd imagine very few people would in fact take that risk. Sure, life has more nuances to it but some unpleasant things are guaranteed.
It's also not just about not inflicting life upon a child, it's also not inflicting another person/ consumer/ polluter on this planet. A lot of antinatilists have strong environmental motives too.
