Philosophical Pessimism
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- "Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them."
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0:00 - Introduction
2:30 - Poor quality of life
15:44 - The superiority of the empty world
26:53 - Meaninglessness
36:15 - Denial of progress
Objections
44:06 - Subjectivity of value?
46:30 - Defeatism?
48:48 - Does pessimism make life worse?
For other videos exploring pessimistic themes, see:
Buddhism and Well-Being:
ua-cam.com/video/XnWVukn227A/v-deo.html
Schopenhauer's Pessimism:
ua-cam.com/video/5MuAJ9OR0Vk/v-deo.html
Anarcho-Primitivism:
ua-cam.com/video/Ex55jjSASHA/v-deo.html
Anti-Science:
ua-cam.com/video/ttL5_TFF4EY/v-deo.html
Pessimism and the poor quality of life:
ua-cam.com/video/ADiOPuujcdQ/v-deo.html
bro stop re-igniting my love for philosophy, it's like thinking of an ex that got me into a horrible employment position but I can't stop thinking about her
It pleases me to know that I don't suffer alone, lol.
Lmao best comment I've seen in a while :)
obligatory Princess Bride quote, "life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something."
Pessimism is so cool. I always feel so happy after reading Schopenhauer.
Same
Same, it's so weird, I guess it feels like I'm finally not being lied to.
Ironic
The better your life is, the more you fear death
The perfect video to watch while eating little vegan sausges and drinking coffee! Thanks for all the terrific content, Dr. B, I've become more skeptical after watching your videos--whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate, of course!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
I guess I’m a Philosophical Pessimist! Especially relate to the final progress argument.
This kind of debate about value and attitude is the sort of philosophy I love. I’ll be looking into it more for sure. Thanks for highlighting the topic!
LETS GOOOOOO, epic and bonkers new Kane B video. This is so epic, holy fuck, holy fucking fuck!
Your enthusiasm is appreciated!
The pain i feel from watching this video is good. I feel a sense of contentment knowing that the contents ment something important to me in the broader scope of my life. Pessimism almost took my life four times but this video helped me understand what it is. It is a method of phylisophical interpretation and a tool amongst many.
As always, another fabulous video. Really, really enjoy your lectures.
I have to say that I'm always a bit startled whenever I hear tell that pessimism of any kind, philosophical or otherwise, makes people feel "sad", or "hopeless", or "defeated", somehow. It has precisely the opposite effect on me.
I was quite depressed this morning, and then I started listening to this video. My mood improved markedly while listening to it, and after about halfway through, I was actually feeling happy, and this lasted me the entire day.
Listening to Philosophy Overdose's videos of Schopenhauer being read aloud have precisely the same effect. Pessimism helps me to realize (again) that whatever slings and arrows of outrageous fortune I might be experiencing, it's because, well, that's kinda how things seem to be set up, somehow, and any comfort or contentment I might be experiencing is quite a gift, given the historical average life of a human being.
I experience much the same thing upon listening to your videos on scepticism and the philosophy of science. I actually find it rather comforting to realize that it's highly questionable that we *actually* "know" anything, or at least hearing the idea that "knowing" is decidedly problematic. I find it liberating, actually.
I live in the US. The zeitgeist here is "Optimism All the Way!" and "Science is Truth! Truth is Science!" Hearing something different from that liberates me from the hegemony of American corporatism, which I would posit is good for one's mental health.
Philosophical Pessimism, particular Schopenhauer's essays, saved my life. I am eternally grateful to that man.
That was absolutely excellent. I'm especially struck by the fact that although I am a philosophical pessimist, there is a pragmatic argument for optimism. And I think that's how I'd like to live.
You said in your FAQ that you didn't read much Nietzsche (with the implication that you didn't find him worthwhile) but listening to all of this gives me the strong impression that only Nietzsche managed to reconcile the valid points of pessimism made.
keep going. i love your videos! you are definitely doing something meaningful for a lot of people.
Love your videos, thanks for keeping me company at night!
Love to see more content like this
Me too!
beautiful work, thank you so much!
Finally, you made a video addressing this
I find myself leaning more towards a kind of philosophical Pessimism, but I don’t wish to be. I am trying to find a way out rather than accepting/coping with the pessimism, so to speak.
wonderful video thank you
Thanks!
This was a good watch.
thanks for the video
love you man
26:29 when you mentioned that even a utopia would have some problems, I was reminded of Nozick's experience machine and thought if the offer were made to a pessimist, their refusal to enter might not prove what Nozick wanted it to.
Kane! Amazing video. Could you please share references you used to make it? I'm especially interested, where you found the objections and the responses to them.
A lot of it comes from Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been" and "The Human Predicament", plus summaries of some of the ideas discussed in the videos I linked in the pinned comment (Buddhism and Schopenhauer for the stuff on the quality of life; primitivism and anti-science for skepticism of progress). As for the objections section, I'm afraid I don't remember. I've encountered people who accuse pessimists of defeatism, but I can't recall any specific sources off the top of my head. The wager against pessimism is based on the research on optimism bias, some of which suggests that it serves a positive function. See Tali Sharot's work.
Thanks!
Thank you!
Great video. Rigorous and heartfelt, a real example of the quality we have come to expect from you.
I think the historical progress rejoinder is the appropriate response to the prima facie powerful arguments of the pessimists. Something more Hegelian than Millian though - able to see the dialectic of progress and regress in moments like the agricultural revolution, or the disaster of the 20th Century.
We are animals. All biological existence is "pointless" unless you count simple transmission of the genes as a point. What makes humans distinct is the potential self-conscious, rational appropriation of that animality - to sit in the driver's seat of our own evolutionary history.
In many cases I think pessimism serves a function of reifying our current failure to live up to the potential of our history, as an conclusive truth of human existence being broken as such.
7:01 and, sadly, the discontent don't have a candy of Damocles hanging over their head
(and immediately after I wrote that, a pessimistic thought occurred to me: if they did, it might be more like a torment of Tantalus situation than a "don't threaten me with a good time" one)
Philosophical Pessimist -- It means you're bad at parties
Marty: Let me tell you, you ain’t great outside of parties either
I often have this motive in my dreams that i call "a fate worse than death". It is a situation that is so horrific that it should not be lived through. Is there any concepts in philosophy like this motive?
It's called life, haha.
My stance on there being no trend of progress across history is double edged. I do very much believe that hunter gatherers enjoyed the apex of human existence. They only had to "work" for roughly 20 hours per week or so. The spent rest of the time having fun, telling stories, playing games, and having sex with each other. They were healthy, strong, wise, and had deep connections. Meanwhile the modern person is significantly more lonely, has to work more, and even outside of work he'll spend lots of time doing other things he doesn't want too.
But Pandora's box is already open. We cannot go back, we cannot stagnate. Doing so will mean we're crushed and dominated by those who choose to keep going forward and their unbeatable technological advantages. Our only hope is advancing. Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I think that through technological advancement we've made the ultimate tradeoff as a species. Millennia of more pain and suffering for the average person than hunter-gatherers experience for the eventual result of a functionally infinite amount of time experiencing the maximum achievable pleasure.
I don't believe it's necessarily guaranteed or even likely we'll achieve utopia eventually, but it helps me sleep at night to think those of us alive today might just be living in the "1 hour of pain" for the species as a whole.
@@Riskofdisconnect I have the opposite reaction. It's infuriating to think that the vast majority of people will live in blissful utopia, while I'm one of the unlucky few who's stuck with this garbage. I don't have any desire to bring anybody else into existence, but if we do choose to continue reproducing, I hope that everybody else suffers as much as me.
@@aniruth4742 I agree that some people have a romanticized view of hunter-gatherer life, but this goes both ways: plenty of people have a romanticized view of industrial civilization. As for which is better, I think it's going to depend very much on which parts of industrial civilization we're looking at. A person living in the contemporary UK? Yeah, probably better off than even the luckiest hunter-gatherers, at least per many of the standard ways of assessing well-being. An Victorian-era chimney sweep, an Indonesian sulfur miner, a person living in the slums of Dharavi? I'm not so sure.
@@KaneB i'm lucky enough to gain joy from believing I'm helping others, so I'd feel a lot better about a possible utopia than this hell forever for everyone. I can understand the grievance though, I'm not beyond dragging my friends into the lake so we all get cold and wet.
@@aniruth4742
I wonder how much dying a painful death matters when considering the quality of someone's life. Especially if it's a quick death.
If you got to spend 30 years having purpose, being happy with your tribe, generally being very healthy, worrying little, and feeling little pain, should we say you lived a bad life because you spent the final moments of it being crushed by a Mastodont?
The worst thing a hunter gatherer could go through that wasn't their own death is the death of a tribe member. When considering that we in the modern day still have to deal with loved ones dying quite often I don't really see the difference between that and when a hunter gatherer experiences it. It's also to be argued that hunter gatherers could move on from it better than most modern people could. They wouldn't become depressed or anxious about it. Strong, long term depression and anxiety are mostly modern diseases after all. People of the past simply didn't have the time for it. Hunter gatherers very probably also had afterlife fantasies that helped elevate the pain. Humans seem to have religious thinking as a part of their neurology after all.
Philosophical religious/eternalism optimism: all souls are eternally dammed but for a human life if a person seeks the good life. Religions tend to exploit this through the faith for profit which has a consequence that the good life is relegated for those at the top 5 percentile of the organisation. This seems also to be true for secular organisations too. Hence individual pessimism is a default when it comes to good faith in the political community of choice.
How do keep pumping these videos out so fast?
Dude is a machine
I guess I’m a philosophical pessimist 🤷🏻♂️ I didn’t choose to have this view. Life has lead me here. I honestly wish I could think differently, but one can’t force oneself to believe in a certain way
Just finished the video; i agree -srcsm
In a recent tube video an eminent primatologist argued with his host who challenged the claim that there is no free will by claiming he could freely change his mind: however the primatologist went into detail how we through endocrinology are determined to behave and think, and claimed to not understand the appeal philosophers make to argue for soft determinism or compatiblist theories. Is there a knock down argument for compatiblist free will with determinism?
16:55 and they might be considering it from a sort of Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance position: it's long odds, sure, but I might be the one getting the torture if I create that world
How do you feel about Epicureanism, Kane?
It was a very interesting video with fascinating ideas, but there is one thing I don't understand:
When you were talking about desires I am not quite sure about that, that in section of "No desire for P", "has p" and "does not have P" is GOOD. I would say that is NOT BAD because I don't feel any loss but also I don't have any positive feeling about having or not having it. I believe this would change the argument about empty world in some ways.
Of course, not having P is bad but having P with a desire of P is better (even if just for a short period of time) than having P without the desire of P.
But tell me of somebody disagrees, I am happy to hear other opinions.
There was a "pessimist" philosophy youtuber who always had Max Ernsts paintings in his video. I cant remember who he was thought and cant find the channeö
Given the choice of non existence and a world where everyone is happy and one person is tormented, i would take existence on the condition that once we know who is selected for torment, i have the option of taking their spot.
Trust me you wouldn’t want that 😂
@@DrGoodcap I don't think I do trust you about what I want.
@@uninspired3583 so you’re saying you would take a life of torment over non-existence ? To each his own .
@@DrGoodcap knowing my kids will not suffer anything, yes it seems like something I would consider.
@@uninspired3583 you’re assuming in such a world you would have kids , and if so- then the thought of a universe where your kids would be supremely happy in the face of their father being tormented seems unsettling to say the least . As a son I would never wish that upon my father , I would rather we both not exist . But again , to each his own
I'm uncertain that having no desires at all versus having desires and having those desires satisfied is supposed to be equal for an existing human. A person who never has any desires will stop doing anything and die a painful thirsty death. He might not desire to satisfy his thirsty or stop the pain but he will still feel it. It is better to be in motion and experience frustration on occasion than it is to be motionless and experience meaningless pain.
id say that it's not that the options are equal, only different & not obvious which one is preferable.
A couple of points: First, if we think that desire satisfaction is not all that's relevant to well-being, then desires might be instrumentally useful in securing the other goods. Perhaps, for instance, a long, healthy life is better than short life in which you die of easily preventable problems, regardless of your desires. But presumably, having appropriate desires will help a person to achieve the long, healthy life. The question however is whether the satisfied desire for P is in itself better than never having the desire for P. If a person could avoid dying of thirst without having the desire to avoid this, would the person who has the satisfied desire to avoid it be better off?
Second, we have to assume in your scenario that the person is not remotely bothered by pain or death, and that the person does not have any desires that would be frustrated by dying. So yes, he feels the pain, but he doesn't mind it. This person has a very unusual psychological profile. As long as we're not projecting normal preferences onto this person, I don't have the intuition that he is worse off than the rest of us. We also need to be cautious here because many of us have desires regarding how other people behave. We want to live in societies with others who are healthy, intelligent, curious, etc.; and allowing people to let themselves die of thirst might frustrate that desire. When we evaluate the case you're describing, there's a risk that our judgment will be influenced by these irrelevant factors.
21:30 people aren’t sad about a lot of things, including the torture of other people or the panic attacks of others. This is a bad argument because it relies too much on human intuition and may be a “Monty Hall Problem “
I have a desire to have a friend like you
Another response to the charge that pessimism will make us miserable and dysfunctional can be found in the ancient Greek philosopher Hegesias. He was a Cyrenaic and thus an ethical hedonist who believed the Good is pleasure and the Bad is pain, and he was a philosophical pessimist who believed pain outweighs pleasure in both body and mind. Nevertheless, he argued that the wise person will choose to live so as to reduce the suffering of life, both by avoiding pain and by pursuing pleasure. Despite his pessimism, Hegesias believed that a hedonist sage may be able to achieve a life in which the pain and pleasure balance out. But even if the pessimist rejects this ideal, the motivating force of Hegesias' negative hedonism remains intact. In short, the Hegesiac response is: life may be bad, but we can make it less bad, and possibly even OK. Personally, as a pessimist myself, I find this encouraging 🙂
I basically hold the Nietzschean view that life is suffering but that suffering produces things of immense beauty and complexity that are worthwhile in themselves. Many of the greatest artists suffered intensely but would not have been able to create what they did without it. On an evolutionary level you can see the same process; despite the immense and constant nature of suffering the depth of biological forms and their ecological interactions is inherently valuable. The fact that consciousness exists at all is of value, especially rich and deep conscious experiences even if they have a negative affect. I think most people feel this intuitively given the fact that they fear oblivion and severe (painless but intelligence reducing) brain damage. Moral theories that don’t account for this and lead to the conclusion that it would be better for nothing to exist at all don’t capture our experience and should be discounted.
Did you know Nietzsche was on drugs when creating his theories? He was first philosopher with heavy reliance on many psychoactive substances of his era
Bro suffering good bro bro bro it is not bad bro whatever does not kill me makes me stronger bro
My intuition is that you and Nietzsche are simply selfish assholes, no better than any regular rapist.
You are willing to cause others atrocious suffering for some tiny benefit to your own aesthetics sense.
I like Nietzsche, but I think his reaction to Schopenhauer is just cope.
after many years of your "getting knowledge" your reflection is "I know that I know nothing". somebody already had that idea before, long time before...
Where is the next video
35:40 or because they falsely believed that Marx was in the business of describing a communist utopia (a misunderstanding many people today share when they say those societies failed to achieve their goals) - they may have been inspired by Marx, and they may have described themselves as Marxist based on their misunderstandings of Marx, but that signifies nothing
Schopenhauer’s pessimism was greatly influenced by the fact that he had all the traits to be diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum (like many other geniuses such as Isaac Newton). I haven’t seen any papers positing this link between Schopenhauer and autism but I think it is a possibility worth exploring. (Tony Attwood’s The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome is a great resource, along with Schopenhauer biographies.) If this is true, autism could have influenced his whole philosophy, as much as it did much of his behavior (rigid routine, getting along better with dogs than people, hyperfocus, etc.).
4:55 I feel like it would be hard to choose to endure an hour of torture even in exchange for an eternity in heaven
I would take that deal. But like, ten years in heaven? Now I'm not so sure.
That opens up a lot of cans of worms around choosing and personal identity.
In the moment of torture you cannot choose to continue it for any price whatsoever. And really all experience is subjectless and momentary.
33:00 failure -
I would take an hour of intense pain for 2 weeks of pleasure. But I live with chronic pain. I am used to adjusting to new levels of pain. It would be worth it to have 2 weeks pain free.
I think one thing to maybe consider is that pain is remembered much more strongly than pleasure, often to the point of mental trauma. An hour of intense physical and mental torture is likely enough to scar ones mind forever, maybe to the point of debilitation, while two weeks of intense pleasure will likely be remembered but it's long-lasting effects will be much less severe.
Interesting. I can understand why, if a person has chronic pain, they might be willing to make what I would consider enormous sacrifices in order to be free of it even temporarily. Of course, this is arguably just more grist for the pessimist's mill.
@@Riskofdisconnect I suppose we could just stipulate that the torture does not cause any lasting psychological trauma. Even in that case, I wouldn't accept 1 hour of torture in exchange for 2 weeks of bliss. It is an interesting point though that even relatively brief negative experiences can tarnish an entire lifetime. There doesn't seem to be any analogue of this with pleasurable experiences.
@@Riskofdisconnect
I don't think we have any data on two weeks of intense pleasure.
You should change your thumbnails for match your most recent video on philosophy believe or not thumbnails can 5-10x the amount of views your video gets
I'm aware of this and I've experimented with it before, but I've not been able to figure out what makes for an attractive thumbnail.
@@KaneBbig red arrows, circles and funny faces
I really hope that at some point humans will stop existing so that space will be silent once again. Maybe there will be other life after us but life and civilization of one specie without end sounds like torture
I disagree with the asimmetry: in my opinion there's a logical error in thinking of a non existent being as evaluating pain and pleasure: they just aren't a thing at all, so that the balance would be 0 in both cases (+1-1=0 for the first and 0+0=0 for the second). To make a comparison, let's consider this example: there are two kinds of lights, let's suppose, one of which is dangerous for the eyes and the other one is good for the sight. Well, if we have a blind person she will not think of absence of bad light as good, it's just indifferent, it's not like there's any sense if there's no one experiencing it to give a value to the lights. Sorry for the grammar, English isn't my first language.
Pessimism is the only logical position you could have considering the material constraints we find ourselves in... anything else is a massive cope.
Yep!
@@Tymmy777 Depression and pessimism are not the same.
Accepting pessimism is the equivalent of doing bad in school and deciding you're retarded and accepting you will fail.
So very true. It is refreshing knowing that I am not the only one who believes life is overwhelmingly tragic for most sentient beings. And it is tragic that there is no god, as much as it is tragic that there could be a god or creator.it is tragic in both settings.
@@artelc Emotion is a more energy efficient way of being... that's why most people are guided by emotions. Thinking on the other hand is very costly and from a strictly biological point of view is not the preferred mode by your brain. Basically we learn to live first and to think later. Thinking on its own is an anti-biological process and as with any anti-biological process, all the other biological processes are trying to get rid of it, that's why everything seems bleak to you, it's because it is but you are not supposed to notice, you are supposed to be engulfed in little transient moments and to chase the next high until you die.
I'm a bit confused about Fehige's argument. Maybe I misunderstood something, but it seems to me that your clone who gets the Ferrari experiences more pleasure than you, even if you receive enough money to compensate the price of the Ferrari. Here is why I think that:
First, if your clone desires the Ferrari, he will probably get some further enjoyment out of using it. Drving around, showing off or whatever people do with Ferraris. Even if he just keeps it in his garage, he can get some amount of continuous pleasure out of it by admiring it in the same way others might take pleasure in decorations (like plants or pictures) they have around their house. That way his desire would continuosly be satisfied, which I think would exceed the pleasure of you randomly receiving a large amount of money.
Second, even this is not true and your clone only experiences a fleeting spike of pleasure when receiving the Ferrari and then quickly gets bored of it, his desire will be satisfied. I imagine its like a thirst that has been quenched after drinking water. In the instant the desire is satisfied there is greater pleasure than in a neutral state where no desire is present. It's like eating a great meal when you're starved versus eating it when you're only a normal amount of hungry.
Maybe I just have weird assumptions about how pleasure works or maybe I misunderstood something about the argument, but that's how I see it. ^^"
Fehige's claim is that other things being equal, a satisfied desire for P is not better than never desiring P in the first place; in the scenario you describe, other things are not equal. The question is whether a satisfied desire, in itself, is better than never having the desire. In practice, there are often various additional benefits of satisfied desires. Of course, we might think that these additional benefits are relevant when assessing whether the empty world would be the best world. Fehige's argument was originally given in the context of desire-satisfaction theories of well being. He assumes that the goodness or badness of a world is "a matter solely of the preferences it contains and of their frustration or satisfaction." From a hedonistic point of view, the mere fact that Clone Kane experiences pleasure from the Ferrari would make him better off; not so on a desire-satisfaction view.
Bear in mind, however, that the majority of us have the desire to have pleasurable experiences. So when Clone Kane satisfies his desire to have the Ferrari, and this brings him pleasure, he additionally satisfies his desire for pleasurable experiences. I also have the desire for pleasurable experiences, but my desire is currently unsatisfied. So even on Fehige's view, this is a relevant difference between Clone Kane and me that makes Clone Kane better off. In which case, the scenario is no longer probative. We need to imagine that the only difference between us is that Clone Kane has a satisfied desire for a Ferrari.
@@KaneB Thanks for the clarification! I think I understand now. The issue is solely the desire being fullfilled, assuming the level of pleasure is equal. I probably got too focused on the example.
It still seems to me that Clone Kane would somehow be better off, even if you both experienced the same level of pleasure at all times, but I have a hard time grasping why. A desire being fulfilled somehow seems intrinsically good to me, but I'm not sure if that's actually true.
Thanks again for the answer! Also I wanted to say that I really appreciate your content. There is some good philosophy content on this platform, but I feel like you manage to explain things well without compromising on the nuances. :)
So what does KaneB think about it? Are u a philosophical pessimist or optimist? And why? I feel that this field is very foggy because we know way too little and too fallible to support pessimism or optimism. All these arguments feel super-simplified.
Personally my attitude is in between: I am neither a pessimist nor optimist. I once looked at a bug for an hour. I was taken by his relentless effort to move on despite all kind of obstacles. I find the living nature is a "hint from god" how to live: fill the unforgiving minute with 60s worth of distance run, done.
I'm mostly miserable and therefore my heart inclines to pessimism. But I don't feel comfortable speaking for anyone else, so that's all you'll get from me. I find pessimism appealing but I don't endorse it on reflection (neither do I reject it on reflection).
Hi bro , I would be very happy if you add Turkish subtitles to your videos :), other Turks will come too.
I disagree sir. In regards to yourself not making an impact, or most people that try to become a philosopher will fail and even those that do succeed will not leave an impact on knowledge is simply a slippery slope fallacy. Just because there is only a few of many philosophers throughout the ages that make an argument so impactful that we are still pondering it does not mean that it will not continue to do so.
We need philosophy more so now than ever before. There is a preponderance of false Information around us, and the best way to combat that is by exploring epistemology. Remember that many of the most important philosophical writers were not recognized until they were dead. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK 👍.
How does he know about my desires for pee?
I find very unpersuasive the idea that things like climate change and biodiversity loss mean that modern technology doesn't represent an improvement in life quality. I strongly suspect that if most people had to choose between the pre-modern world and the modern world where poverty, hunger and many diseases are being eradicated but where the environment is damaged, they would choose the modern world in a heartbeat. Climate change is bad but there is no reason to think it that increases in temperature will completely undo the progress we have made so far, especially when we consider that GDP is likely to keep increasing in the future.
>> I find very unpersuasive the idea that things like climate change and biodiversity loss mean that modern technology doesn't represent an improvement in life quality
That's not the claim. Rather, the concern is that these negative impacts might lead to reductions in quality of life in the future.
Right but this is very implausible. Economists have tried to estimate the effect of climate change and they usually find that it will reduce global GDP by something like 0-10% by 2100 from what it otherwise would be. That's nowhere near enough to make growth negative, since global GDP grows at something like 3% every year. Yes GDP isn't everything but as far as I know there is no mechanism by which climate change could actually lower the average living standard in the future. It is an idea that is well outside the consensus in climate economics.@@KaneB
@@philbelanger2 Climate change is only one among a bunch of problems. Anyway, I'm more interested in what's written in e.g. the recent IPCC report than whatever the consensus is among economists.
The IPCC has estimated the impact of climate change on GDP and their results are not noticeably different from what others have found.@@KaneB
@@philbelanger2 I don't care about the impact on GDP.
I've had a few goes trying, but I've never got the hang of Benatar's asymmetry - I just don't get it. The absence of pleasure isn't bad if no one's there to be denied the pleasure: yes, agree. But why would the absence of pain be good if no one's there to not experience the pain? This just makes no sense to me at all. I can only get on board with a weighted balance of negative and positive conscious states over time. And this has to balance many aspects of experience such as pleasure in the moment vs. remembered positive experience (I think I would weight remembering more highly than experiencing); similarly how we think of the future (with excitement vs. dread) is important to an assessment of overall conscious state. The language of "pleasure vs pain" doesn't capture what is important to me.
Why do philosophers go on about desires and their satisfaction or frustration? This language seems to me a really bad way of thinking about how human consciousness actually feels. Today I felt like shit after a bad day at work - no desires were being frustrated but I felt bad. I really didn't want to exercise because I had no energy but I knew that if I could make myself lift weights I'd feel better later. Now, I've exercised, had a hot shower a tasty dinner and couple of glasses of wine, I'm watching a great Kane B vid, and I feel good. It's not because my desires are satisfied, it's because my behaviours and environment and drugs have changed my brain state from a shit one to a nice one. And this is just experience in the moment - it won't have any impact on my 'remembering self' when I reflect on whether my life is good or shit, it's just a normal evening. If I want to have an impact on how I assess my life, I have to do more hefty activities than drinking wine and watching youtube.
do you believe the pessimists claim could be evidenced against by appealing to strong lexical superiority of higher and lower goods?
What the dog doin'?
8:31
I believe it is better to live a miserable life than to never live at all. I think most people believe this intuitively: few people encourage suicide. Regrettably, I cannot rationalize that position. I merely find it absurd for the living to hate life, so I hold it as self evident.
lol cope
people don't encourage suicide out of wanting to have the moral high ground, also the deepest fear of the unknown is death.
@@blackcelneet You're suggesting that people would encourage suicide, but don't because of what others would think of them. That's got to be true for some people, but I believe more people think suicide is bad in itself.
@@cloakbackground8641 they say it's bad because of ignorance as well
@@blackcelneet You mean that people are firmly committed to "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know?" That could be. Though even if they learned what waits beyond the veil-which most faiths claim to know a bit about-I'd still expect more people to consider suicide bad in itself.
I feel like this whole video is an advertisement for transhumanism
Transhumanism will bring more suffering, because whatever technology we invent is being used for evil, because of greed and desire for more power.
Why do you speak so fast…
Just 25 minutes of the video. But I had to write my impressions:
1. I would take the hour of pain in exchange for the hour of pleasures
2. Mars is better off with pain and pleasure even with a bad ratio, as Warhammer 40K had shown
3.That utopia for 1 person suffering is a bargain
4. For a lot of people think you actually ought to bring a child to the world if you and the society have the capacity to give them a good life.
5. the guy with a Ferrari is clearly better off, because he can have the pleasure of driving his Ferrari.
LOL
No you wouldn't. You wouldn't even retain your sanity to enjoy any kind of pleasure after being brutally tortured for a couple minutes let alone 25.
please dont give birth please .
It would be good for people who have already been
born to find and enjoy the benefits of life." I aim for
that kind of attitude
However, I think the decision to give the life of
another person(a child) to this world should be
"conservative."
Future generations are born entirely because of the needs of the current generation. It is a heinous lie to give birth to future generations while claiming that children will be happy just like me and have no right to take that happiness away from them.
Because of the nature of my work, I felt it when I saw
50 dead bodies and people dying. The process of
birth, old age, illness, and death itself is painful and it
is only a matter of time, and difficult situations come even if you want to ignore them.
Would you rather start a gamble that will cost you a
lot of money someday just because you're happy?
Due to the irreversible nature of life, there is no future with guaranteed comfort.
if childbirth has the characteristics of gambling with the lives (children) of others for which you cannot take responsibility, it is not an act that can be ignored and said that you did a good job.
Rather, wouldn't the best a moral being with reason
be able to remind us that 'birth is not an act for the sake of the child' and demand a strong sense of responsibility?
-----
cf. i'm korean national police.
as i'm not a native speaker, my English is poor.
Please forgive me if there are sentences that are
difficult to read.
Why assume pain is bad?
The short answer is that I can't cover everything in these videos, so often I'll just take for granted things which could come under critical scrutiny in other contexts. In general, most people seem to try to avoid pain; in general, most people seem to judge that it's bad when they experience pain. Of course, there are important exceptions to this, such as masochists; and plenty of people are okay with other people experiencing pain in specific situations, e.g. criminal punishment. If there's any conversation to be had about the quality of life, then we're probably going to need to judge some things as good or bad, and "pain is bad" is a rule of thumb that most people will get on board with.
Because pain is defined as such; it is like a special interpretation of the general concept of „bad“.
Why assume bad is bad?
Nietzsche said that bad isn't bad, so how dare you use words?!
Ive always thought of pain as neutral. I think of it now as a signal. Pain has an acquired taste. Some tastes bad, some good.
Boo pessimism, assumes existence of good and bad rather than schema combonations
I am tempted to downvote this ;) jk thanks for another fantastic video sir
Dislikes count as engagement just as well as likes do, so feel free lol
@@KaneB nothing good will probably come from it anyway, so I'll give it a go ;)
pessimism is just attention seeking
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) - Is it better to desire the p and be satisfied once acquiring the p or to never desire the p to begin with?
Pretending that life is not a tragedy is the biggest cope ever. Antinatalism is the only solution to life's question.