Why continuing is easier than starting
Once you exist, you hold an option on future states. The asymmetry between starting and continuing is rational, not psychological.
Intuition
Once you’re alive there’s more rational incentive to keep living than there would have been to start living in the first place — and this isn’t sunk cost bias but a real structural difference in the decision architecture.
Once you’re alive you hold an option — the right to keep experiencing future states. That option has value independent of current conditions because the future is uncertain and you can’t re-enter once you exit. From outside existence, you don’t hold the option, so the comparison is asymmetric for a structural reason, not a psychological one.
Equations
Pre-existence (no option value):
EV(exist) = G − B + w(E − C)
In-existence (option value added):
EV(continue) = G_future − B_future + w(E_future − C_future) + OV
The option value itself:
OV = ∫ max(future good states, 0) · f(states) d(states)
You integrate probability-weighted future good outcomes across all possible states; bad states contribute zero because you retain the choice to exit later.
Variables
- G — expected good experiences
- B — expected bad experiences
- E — positive externalities generated for others
- C — costs imposed on others
- w — weight on others’ utility relative to your own (0–1)
- OV — option value
Try it
Inputs
Output
G − B + w(E − C)
G − B + w(E − C) + OV
The structural gap option value creates between starting and continuing.
Key insights
- OV is only zero when the future is perfectly certain to be uniformly bad — almost never true.
- Depression artificially truncates the right tail of future good states, collapsing perceived OV without changing actual OV.
- Pre-existence EV can be negative while in-existence EV is positive — entirely because of the OV term.
- This vindicates the asymmetry without appealing to sunk cost.
Consent-adjusted natalism extension
EV(create life) = p · k · (G − B + w(E − C)) + (1 − p)(−B)
where p is the probability the person would endorse their own existence, k ∈ [0,1] is a quality-of-circumstances scalar, and (1 − p)(−B) is the moral penalty for imposing harm on a non-consenting subject.
Anti-natalism and pro-natalism disagree specifically on: whether G − B is reliably negative in bad circumstances, what p actually is empirically, and how much unique irreplaceable value each life generates.