I am not familiar with this debate, but it seems to me that “creating a happy person” is not even something we know how to accomplish by choice. You can choose to create a person, create a new life, but you certainly can’t guarantee that they will be happy. The human condition is hazardous, disappointing, with terrible events and fates scattered throughout it. For me, the hazard is great enough to be an antinatalist.
I concede the bare possibility that (as you have suggested elsewhere) this life could just be a prelude to a bigger one that somehow makes up for what happens here, or the possibility that, after some friendly singularity, we could know enough about the being of our world that creating a definitely happy life really is an option.
But neither of these corresponds to the life that we know and endure right now, which to a great extent is still about the struggle to survive rather than the pursuit of happiness.
I am not familiar with this debate, but it seems to me that “creating a happy person” is not even something we know how to accomplish by choice. You can choose to create a person, create a new life, but you certainly can’t guarantee that they will be happy. The human condition is hazardous, disappointing, with terrible events and fates scattered throughout it. For me, the hazard is great enough to be an antinatalist.
I concede the bare possibility that (as you have suggested elsewhere) this life could just be a prelude to a bigger one that somehow makes up for what happens here, or the possibility that, after some friendly singularity, we could know enough about the being of our world that creating a definitely happy life really is an option.
But neither of these corresponds to the life that we know and endure right now, which to a great extent is still about the struggle to survive rather than the pursuit of happiness.