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What is antinatalism? Is that like being child-free?
It's the belief that's it's immoral to create a child. This is a pretty broad definition so even I might disagree with other antinatalists while still being one.
Me being antinatalist is conditional and the condition is if the world is becoming worse for regular people. Others believe humans are evil or are a cancer and while I can sympathize to some degree, I think it's a step too far. XD
Having said that antinatalism and child-free are not mutually exclusive because an antinatalist could adopt a child.
I see, very interesting. I think I can gel with some aspects of antinatalism, like in your example of the world becoming worse for regular people yet still being open to adoption.
You can also ask an adjacent question, which is whether we should attempt to continue to exist as a species. My personal take would be a hard no - I think it would be preferable to seek to end our species within the next few generations - but some would argue that we should attempt to colonize space and maximize our presence.
Why wouldn't this always be true, since we all suffer? How do you determine the max level of expected suffering to make it moral to have kids?
The maximum level is the level at which a) the average sentient being of that generation can be expected to live a net positive life, b) the addition of another does not reduce the positivity of other lives, and c) the individual being itself would live a net positive life. What is considered a net positive is its own question since pleasure exceeding suffering is subjective, but there's a strong argument to be made that there is an increasing net negative, and that's not nearly limited to the climate change argument (in fact that's probably one of the weaker angles one can take).
You can also go sliding scale, though you'd have to compete with the eugenics argument (which is possible), and say that some children are worth bringing into the world and others are not. For example, huge net negatives would be someone who sucks up so many resources that they make the average human life worse or someone whose circumstances make them far more likely to live a qualitatively poor life.