Criticisms of Antinatalist Advocacy
We want to help antinatalists to do more good in the world. To do that effectively we believe we must be open to feedback so that we can correct our errors.
From our perspective, constructive criticism isn’t something to avoid or reject - it’s something to embrace so that improvements can be made. One of the values we decided to embody when starting Antinatalist Advocacy was ‘Humble’ as we recognised that we do not have all of the answers to important questions.
We believe this approach will contribute to the long-term growth of the antinatalist community’s capacity to do good. To this end, we have (so far) hosted two occasions where we’ve received criticism and feedback from good-faith actors – both on our approach and actions. First, we hosted Lenny and Conundrum on The Antinatalist Advocacy Podcast for a criticism panel that focused on Antinatalist Advocacy specifically. Second, we hosted Rivka Weinberg, author of The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible, to present criticisms of our core ideas that guide our thinking (antinatalism and Effective Altruism).
We are very grateful to our guests for raising constructive critiques of our endeavours at Antinatalist Advocacy and suggesting changes to our approach and presentation going forward. In response to this feedback, we have adapted various aspects of our website. This includes creating this Criticisms page, reframing our approach to Wild Animal Suffering as a cause area, altering our definition of antinatalism, and more.
Responses to other criticisms
We have jotted down our responses to criticisms raised against us and our approach below. If you have any criticisms you think we’ve missed, or indeed any other feedback for us at AA, please feel free to reach out via our 'Contact Us' page.
Why would you take inspiration from the Effective Altruism community? They suffer from ‘x’ issue.
The Effective Altruism (EA) community, like many communities, suffers from inadequacies – some small and some large. We believe the principles of EA to be valuable and important though and worth employing when approaching efforts to doing good in the world. This does not mean that we wish to replicate every part of the wider EA community; after all, there is a difference between a set of ideas and the community that forms around them.
How can you measure the good you are doing when you are dealing with non-existence? Other communities are improving the lives of tangible beings.
Concern surrounding the uncertainty of how much good is actually being done through efforts to prevent new beings from coming into existence is a valid one. How many beings have my actions prevented from coming into existence? What magnitude of harm would they have experienced were they to have come into existence? These questions may ultimately be unanswerable. However, this should not preclude us from pursuing doing good by preventing beings from coming into existence and trying to do so effectively, given the harms different beings are likely to suffer should they be created.
If you have any thoughts as to how we can address this uncertainty, please contact us.
If you want to be effective, why do you focus on antinatalists? They’re a small group of people.
Our aim is to help antinatalists be more effective in doing good. There are many organisations that seek to encourage people generally to adopt the principles of Effective Altruism in their efforts to do good in the world. Some of these organisations have specific target groups. For example, Animal Charity Evaluators and Animal Advocacy Careers seek to help facilitate those concerned with the rights and welfare of non-human animals to do good for animals more effectively.
We’ve seen that many antinatalists wish to do good through their actions. Antinatalist Advocacy exists to help them go about this more effectively. It also seems to be the case that antinatalists are well-placed to do a lot of good in the world for two key reasons: (1) they tend to recognise the harms of coming into existence, and that the only way to guarantee this harm will not occur is to refrain from creating them, and (2) many antinatalists are also childfree and so may therefore have more time and resources at their disposal to do good.
Why is wild animal suffering one of your cause areas? It isn’t part of antinatalism.
Wild animal suffering is an issue that, although important, is not part of antinatalism. Whilst some wild animals are brought into existence by humans through conservation efforts (which would not be permissible under antinatalism) the vast majority of wild animals are not brought into existence by moral agents. However, we have included wild animal suffering as one of our cause areas for, what we believe, is a good reason.
We think the suffering of wild animals has a unique relationship with antinatalism. If all humans chose to cease reproducing, the suffering of wild animals would be a major issue of moral concern that would be left unaddressed as there would be no humans around to alleviate their suffering. As a result, we believe antinatalists should bear this issue in mind and take it into consideration when deciding where to focus their efforts in doing good.
We believe it is also important to recognise that antinatalist thought has contributions to make in the alleviation of wild animal suffering. Such an example can be seen in Magnus Vinding’s essay The Speciesism of Leaving Nature Alone and the Theoretical Case for “Wildlife Anti-Natalism”.