Assymetry

[Kumachan]

The idea is that pleasure and pain in life are not balanced - theres always more shit, disappointment, pain in life than theres fun, pleasure. Theres chronic pain but thres no such thing as chronic happiness for example.

Also, no amount of pleasure would ever make up for a really painful nasty experience... Would you take five minutes of the worst painful experience in exchange for a day of highest pleasure?

You know how they say: "that's life!" - its always in response to things going badly not the other way around...

 

[Nem]

This is true, life is a shit hole and it contains a healthy amount of shitty people that add to the shit fest
Peace/hugs

 

[Meretlein]

Do you read Benatar?

Another thing he also pointed out is that bad things like hunger come naturally while we have to work to stave off the bad and find good.

 

[Kumachan]

havent read the book tho, but yes thats what antinatalism is based on

 

[Mr2005]

Oh I saw it and thought there's someone else with the same appearance issue

 

[Deleted member 1465]

I've noted this too. The bad stuff goes on forever and the good stuff never seems to last.

Here is the theory:
There is an evolutionary bias to remembering the bad stuff in more detail then the good stuff. This is because remembering the bad is more useful in survival. Nature doesn't give a toss if you feel good or have fun, it just wants you to survive long enough to reproduce. Remembering fear and pain and suffering does more to ensure survival than remembering joy or happiness or fulfilment. Paradoxically though, it actually makes you want to survive less. Again, nature doesn't give a toss about this.

Under this paradigm:
The tendency that everything has towards entropy, ensures that nature always has an uphill battle. You have to struggle to survive and if you stop fighting and relax, you are screwed. Life is motion and peace can only come with oblivion, which you won't be around to experience when it happens.

Life is suffering. It is up to each individual to try and glean some measure of value out of that suffering. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is inherently not worth it, it just means that it can be really hard.

 

[palatinus]

I would take five minutes of the worst painful experience in exchange for a day of the highest pleasure. Normally it's five minutes of a small laugh in exchange for not-quite-the-worst pain all day.

 

[a.n.kirillov]

Do you read Benatar?

Another thing he also pointed out is that bad things like hunger come naturally while we have to work to stave off the bad and find good.

Im reading him right now he is very technical and precise but also gives many good arguments you could use against the common bloke. Especially the absent pleasure on Mars one or the born with a missing limb vs amputation of a limb one.

Just don't tell someone to read Benatar to convince him if antinatalism; I can't see how it would convince anyone in it's entirety. It's too easy to dismiss as contrived because it's so technical.

The point you make is basically how Schopenhauer and later Efilism understood pleasure, as a negative, an alleviation of pain or a deprivation and I agree with that. Every pleasure is either the alleviation of an acute deprivation or a dispositional one (aka your brain telling you you will likely be starving in the near future, thus encouraging you to overeat and get fat).

 

[Epsilon0]

I quoted him in another thread:

There is such a thing as chronic pain, but there is no such thing as chronic happiness.

 

[a.n.kirillov]

I quoted him in another thread:

There is such a thing as chronic pain, but there is no such thing as chronic happiness.

Chronic pleasure*

 

[Epsilon0]

Yes, you are right! It's pleasure.

 

[s1mplem3]

It wouldn't be interesting to live if had only cool things happen to us.

 

[a.n.kirillov]

It wouldn't be interesting to live if had only cool things happen to us.

You are correct in that it is impossible to imagine pleasure or good things without bad things or pain. But that doesn't justify bringing someone into existence. The axiological asymmetry claims that absent pleasure for a never existent being isn't bad while the absence of pain of a never existent being is good.

 

[palatinus]

It wouldn't be interesting to live if had only cool things happen to us.

the "not bad, just banal" stuff would give the necessary point of reference

 

[Deformationalplagio]

Oh I saw it and thought there's someone else with the same appearance issue