• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Just to clarify, I’m not advocating for any baby to be taken off life support, that’s a pretty abhorrent thing to accuse me of, if that’s what you meant.

    I work in critical care and routinely bring people back from the brink of death. With a living being, unless otherwise stated, their consent to life saving treatment is implied, and I’m happy to give it.

    Philosophically, I’m just not convinced that there is such a thing as an implied consent to “make me exist when I don’t exist already”.


  • That’s just how evolution works- something that already exists and is driven to stay alive is more likely to pass on its genetics than something that is not driven to stay alive. This fact has nothing to do with the philosophy of consenting to exist in the first place.

    Edit: missed your first question. Something that does not exist cannot desire.


  • If my understanding of longtermism is correct, it’s more of a function of utilitarianism. If one wants to do the most good for the most people, then it makes some amount of sense to focus on the far future where presumably there will be more people. Their consent is irrelevant, which is kind of the opposite of what I’m saying, which is that consent is relevant.