Death and nonexistence are equivalent for the being. They are the ground state.

While you can argue that the state itself may be equivalent, I do not see why you would not consider the process. Nonexistence does not involve experiencing anything. There is neither suffering nor joy. However, a being that dies has to live first. In life, they experience substantial suffering. So, if you were to look at the being’s existence (or lack thereof) as a whole, nonexistence is not the same as existing and dying.

Is it immoral to give somebody dinner even though you don’t have much to give them or there is a risk of it being poisoned? Is it more moral not to give them anything at all and refuse them?

This is an entirely different scenario. By denying food, you impose suffering (hunger) on an already existing being. In the scenario I am presenting (nonexistence), there is no experience and no deprivation. Only by bringing them into existence do you add the capacity to suffer. And only in the case of existence would your moral dilemma hold any validity.

It was the peak of meaning for that rock.

How is it the peak of meaning “for the rock”? If we agree that the rock is not sentient, cannot experience, and is not morally considerable, how can we conclude that it is the peak for the rock? The meaning is entirely external to the rock, and I don’t see how the absence of this external meaning matters if there is no subject to experience it.

Ethics cannot come to this conclusion because the universe didn’t care about ethics when it created life. It just happened.

I do not understand your argument here. This sounds very much like an appeal to nature. Are you making the point that all ethical conclusions must be in alignment with nature? Rape, cannibalism, and infanticide are all natural and are observed across multiple species. The universe doesn’t care about these things. Why should we care about any of them? I do not see how something being natural makes it obligatory.

I do not regard the “passing on of the problem” to be a valid argument against procreation. The problem is carried by humans as a collective and through the years it has been getting better and better.

Would it be morally permissible to commit an immoral act if the sufferer were to be mildly compensated? Consider torture. In the first year, you feed them only water and poor prison bread. In the second year, you might find the meal too inhumane and add an apple. In the third year, you give them porridge. In the fourth, you give them a pie occasionally. Would you deem the torture moral simply because it has gradually improved for the sufferer?

Neither do I think that “prevention of potential suffering” is a valid argument. There is no joy without suffering and no life without both. Without bad there is no good. Life is about falling and getting back up. It is the essence of life. It is what gives life its worth.

I agree with you that joy cannot exist without suffering, and that experiencing joy requires experiencing suffering. However, you are an already existing being. In the interests of an existing being, it is rational to enjoy life (ignoring suicide). Nonexistent “beings”, however, are not subject to your predicaments. They do not need to experience joy or suffering, nor do they need to learn the necessity of “falling and getting back up”, or find the meaning of death. You are projecting your views on the beauty of the universe onto a being that neither experiences nor needs to experience it. There is nothing in it for a nonexistent being.

I personally can understood when you are 100% certain that the kid will have a birth defect that you might not want to have the child suffer under it. However, in many cases even those people are enjoying life just fine. People with down syndrome are famous for enjoying the little things in life and being full of happiness, despite the suffering.

Given my previous examples of unavoidable suffering, I view the certainty of suffering as absolute. Moreover, I do not believe that just someone enjoying their life is a sufficient justification for an immoral act. Consider slavery. Enslaved people may find community among fellow sufferers. They might sing, dance, or express gratitude for what they have. Would that make slavery morally permissible? They play the hand they are dealt with and make the best of a difficult situation. The act of making the best of a bad situation does not negate the immorality of the act that imposed that suffering upon you.

In any case, the worth of the life of the child was to me a given and not even up for debate. I do not believe that children with bad parents shouldn’t have been born. Imagine telling somebody with bad parents “it would be better if you weren’t alive”. That’s obviously not moral. They would agree with you if they hated themselves, but I would not regard this as “good for their mental health”. They too deserve a happy life, despite their bad parents. Their life still has a lot of potential and it could still be worth it, despite all the trauma.

Again, I believe you are conflating existing beings with nonexistent ones. I would consider a child’s life utterly valuable once they exist. However, I maintain the view that it would have been in their best interest not to be brought into existence in the first place. Also, the phrase “it would be better if you weren’t alive” is highly ambiguous. “Weren’t alive” can imply death, which seems to negate the value of their already existing life. That is not what I am doing here. To someone who would not misconstrue me or be emotionally hurt, I’d rather say something along the lines of “I am so sorry, it would have been in your best interest not to be brought into existence”. And yes, everyone deserves a happy life; but unfortunately, they do not get it. Instead, they experience substantial suffering that could have been avoided in the first place.

Regarding humanity as a collective, I somewhat agree with you. Creating the next generation reduces the probability of the current generation dying a miserable death. However, my point regarding this was that “kicking the can down the road” is not a good and permanent solution; it merely increases the collective suffering in the long run.

I would disagree with your assessment that “telling people to stop procreating” is inherently malevolent, provided it is communicated in a reasonable, rational, and well-meaning manner. I agree that attributing negative value to procreation, and a subject acting on that attribution, could potentially deprive them of the happiness they might otherwise have experienced. However, I believe that bringing a being into existence is not in that being’s best interest. They are not missing out on anything, as they do not exist yet and therefore do not experience anything. So, the only one “losing” here is the parental subject, who may walk into a lonely life (which, in itself, is debatable).

If, however, a parent brings a child into existence, they expose that child to a high likelihood of numerous adversities: depression, anxiety, diabetes, cancer, insomnia, hunger, poverty, asthma, accidents, bereavement, and more. Beyond these, there are also political, economic (as you alluded to), and environmental conditions that make a child’s life significantly harder. Moreover, by bringing a child into existence, you are imposing on them the risk of “growing old living a miserable, lonely life”—in case they cannot have children, or do not want to, perhaps for reasoning similar to mine above.

So, the solution you propose to avoid loneliness is to pass the question onto another being. Would it not be more favorable to not impose so much suffering on another being, just to avoid our own loneliness? If it is loneliness we wish to combat, should we not explore other suffering-free solutions?

As for your equivalence of the poet’s words and “bad parents”, I interpret them slightly differently. The poet says:

They may not mean to, but they do.

This suggests that the act, in itself, stems from ignorance, and not malice. I do not interpret this as “bad parents”, but rather as ignorant beings. Most people do not engage in the moral calculus of bringing a new being into existence; they do not assess the pros and cons of the matter. For most, they do it because it makes them happy, is socially acceptable, and increases the probability of having a safety net in their old age. This doesn’t necessarily make them “bad” in my view, but rather ignorant. I find myself fortunate that I was able to weigh this before procreating. For the few who have thought about this, cannot come up with a counter-argument, and still choose to have children, I would personally consider them immoral and self-centered. For those with strong counter-arguments, I would want to hear them. Perhaps, it will change my mind on the topic as well.

None of my views promotes violence of any kind. I am not taking this stance due to hatred of children (I do not hate them). I simply think that they enter a lose-lose scenario by coming into existence.

^ To anyone reading this: I am so sorry for opening up a debate in a shitpost, lol. As for the em-dash, I generated it with the compose key; these are my words, not an LLMs.

Why is it disgraceful and offensive? I mean, you could argue it’s disgraceful if said in a militant manner in an unprompted scenario, but in a general discussion or a debate, why is it considered disgraceful and offensive?

Ngl, the recent influx of AI-generated projects is slightly unnerving. While I don’t know the extent of your technical expertise, programmersd21, I’ve noticed many vibe-coded projects pop up, where the maintainer doesn’t actually understand their own codebase. All the philosophical arguments against AI aside, this paradigm might introduce severe security and maintainability flaws (I do not know to what extent this is applicable to this particular project).

I am not an expert in Rust. But, skimming 2 random files in under 5 minutes revealed code that I wouldn’t let pass a review:

1. https://github.com/programmersd21/wallr/blob/72e10a02ae9fdd65ba2f5a440f45906d0fffc6a4/wallr-core/src/wallpaper/mod.rs#L156

This function called apply_wallpaper doesn’t apply a wallpaper. Instead it checks if the file exists, and logs stating it will apply otherwise.

2. https://github.com/programmersd21/wallr/blob/72e10a02ae9fdd65ba2f5a440f45906d0fffc6a4/wallr-core/src/video/gpu.rs#L37

This file contains the same adapter enumeration logic, but it is implemented differently across the detect_adapters and select_adapter functions.

Also,

~/wallr $ rg detect_adapter
wallr-core/src/video/mod.rs
12:pub use gpu::{GpuSelection, detect_adapters, select_adapter};

wallr-core/src/video/gpu.rs
35:pub async fn detect_adapters(instance: &wgpu::Instance) -> Vec<AdapterInfo> {

I do not know Rust, but this looks like dead code to me (these are the only two mentions of that functions; commit 72e10a02 btw). Please correct me if I’m wrong.

If my assessment above is incorrect due to me misunderstanding the code, I retract my statement towards this project. My concerns still exist though. Perhaps it’s truly time to stop writing code that is maintainable by humans. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Thanks. Now I have student loans, my degree has been made worthless, I’ve been made redundant at my job, I’ve run out of savings (did I mention student loans?), and I’m getting deported soon!

Adam Something did a video about this 3 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fcWOivJ6bs

Really? So what?

A lot of people are either poor or simply don’t have a need for art, which is why they don’t buy it. The buyers are the appreciative, non-poor individuals. Before GenAI, artists had a market, they produced work for these buyers, whether for legitimate use or pure appreciation.

Now, GenAI is eroding that market. Legitimate users just use GenAI for “good enough” results, and appreciative buyers lower their standards by flooding themselves with GenAI content.

Meanwhile, the poor folk push back against the normalization of such art which wrecks the art industry. They’re doing what they can.

fastfetch?

Scυnthorpe

May be they forgot to add “Make no mistakes” in their prompt.

Looks like an Epstein file to me.

Just for awareness, this project is heavily vibe/agentically coded:

https://github.com/nordstjernen-web/northstar-browser

Claude is the primary contributor, making most of the commits. I usually see it as the co-author, but for this project, it is the sole author of most commits.

Make of it what you will.

(you forgot 3 zeroes in Picometer)

I see. I wasn’t aware of the Scυnthorpe problem. Thanks for the link.

I see that lemmy uses a slur_regex to replace slurs with *removed*: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/439734dd638a2c06a2f907beab7dcf4646e88f86/crates/utils/src/utils/slurs.rs#L5

I don’t know what lemmy.ml’s regex is, but I know that cυnts aren’t appreciated there, lol.

Don’t worry friend, I got you. I looked it up and I reckon he is referring to “Scunthorpe”.

https://www.viking.no/e/england/e-pl-england.htm

I think you should be able to edit permissions in the extension’s manifest.json. I don’t know if they will be overwritten by updates though. I was working on an experimental local add-on, so I had more control over it.

See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json

I’m still young, but I think there is a non-zero and significant chance of me dying alone. Even the thought of it scares me. Also, I think it is a terrible thing for a child (no matter how old) to go through. Man, I’m never having kids, lol!

I somewhat agree with you. The meaning you describe seems personal (correct me if I am wrong), i.e. we assign meaning to our own lives. The meaning I was referring to in my previous comment was a more absolute take on it; the kind of meaning people refer to when they are searching for it. From my perspective, people search for an all encompassing absolute meaning (or rather a guidebook) which tells them that they are here for something. I disagree with that perspective, and I think there is no such meaning or guidebook. We are not here for any grand purpose, we just exist because someone else got together and thought it’d be nice to be a parent (in the best of situations). I agree with you however, in that, we must assign meaning to our own lives, just so our lives won’t feel empty. It is more like drawing your own scenery on a canvas instead of looking for the perfect one.

I understand that this is a bleak perspective, but I see this as the true nature of suffering; and by acknowledging it, we can be more compassionate to our fellow sufferers. Although the perspective itself is bleak, the conclusion need not be. You can learn to live, stuff your life with pleasurable moments, and make the most of it, whilst helping others do the same.

Life. Life itself is suffering. Life is the worst thing to have happened to anyone.

Regarding purpose, no one has any purpose. Purpose is assigned to tools; not to sentient beings with consciousness. Life is utterly meaningless, and it is due to this lack of meaning, that we search for superfluous things like purpose.

The true nature of life is suffering. The default state of life is pain. Everything you do from there is just to temporarily alleviate that pain. You keep doing that until you die.

We have friends and lovers because loneliness is painful. We eat because hunger is painful. We sleep because deprivation from it is painful. We laugh so that we can escape from crying.

People say suffering is a hurdle, and see it as something essential for character development, and whilst I acknowledge the essentiality of some types of pain, I also see it as something contingent on life. We suffer because we are alive. All sentient and conscious beings suffer. It just comes with life.

Note that I am not however, promoting termination of life. By terminating your life early, you would be depriving yourself of all the potential pleasures you could have had (regardless of the pain around them). Once you are here, your optimization problem should be maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain. So, whilst the asymmetry still exists, the potentiality for pleasure might (/should?) be enough of an reason to continue living. I do acknowledge that exceptions do exist where the asymmetry is so skewed for some, to the extent that there is little to no potential pleasure for them, in which case, it might be preferable for them to terminate their own life (think extremely painful chronic/terminal illnesses). I’m sorry if this feels a bit loosey-goosey.

With all that said, I believe we are all sufferers from the incurable disease of life. And the only thing to do from here is to vehemently struggle and rebel against suffering. To help our fellow sufferers and maximize the pleasurable moments. To do everything we can to cope with life whilst still being aware of the true suffering it stands for.