Creating harm is bad. However, not creating pleasure is not bad. For example, if I breed a cat and then torture it mercilessly before killing it, I have done something cruel. Alternately, if instead of creating a cat and feeding it ice cream and rubbing its chin every day, I do not create the cat at all - I haven’t done anything wrong; I haven’t harmed anyone. This is an asymmetry of sorts. So, if the choice is to create a cat that has percent X of living a life of torture and percent 1 - X of living a life of ice cream, no matter what X is (as long as it is nonzero) it will be wrong to create the cat. If X is zero, at best it is a wash. Creating the cat can never be a benefit to the cat.
And I am not sure how one even “weighs” out the “net” benefit vs harm of life experience. How many sunsets does one need to see before burning to death becomes worth avoiding the non-harm of not existing?
As to the question, “what is the meaning of life” - I consider that about as intelligible a question as “what is the meaning of wind”. My recognition of the nonsensical nature of the idea behind a meaning or purpose to life doesn’t mean much of anything, I think.
As to your idea that by creating a new person you leave them the choice whether to exist or not, that is nonsensical on its face. Further, what you are really arguing is that if a person doesn’t want to live they can just put a shotgun in their mouth and blow their skull caps off (and hopefully die). But obviously if they get to that point, you have already harmed them. And of course suicide is usually harmful in and of itself.
Evolution by natural selection has imbued us with an almost impossibly strong instinctual belief in the desirability of life. Which makes sense. So I recognize that there are very good reasons that people might be resistant to what otherwise seems the clear logic of antinatalism.
Contemplating the end of all human life also naturally repels me and makes me sad. But I believe that with enough intellectual fortitude one can look past one’s own sadness to see that really my own sadness at the idea is not justification for causing others to suffer.
Anyways, the quality of my argumentation is starting to falter I think, as I frankly grow exasperated from the effort. I know in matters this important I should have more fortitude. But I do reject the idea that the proper way to look at it is net pleasure vs pain, so to speak. The links I have previously provided I think address that issue more fully and coherently.
A few years ago, a twelve year old down the street from me died after 3 days in ICU with 3rd degree burns over 90% of her body. In your world, things like that happen again and again, forever. In my world, they never happen again. The cost of my world? Only my own confused sadness about the prospect. I feel no more sorry for the people who would have otherwise been created but then wouldn’t be than I feel sorry for the sons and daughters I could have created so far but haven’t.
