Ngl, the recent influx of AI-generated projects is slightly unnerving. While I don’t know the extent of your technical expertise, programmersd21, I’ve noticed many vibe-coded projects pop up, where the maintainer doesn’t actually understand their own codebase. All the philosophical arguments against AI aside, this paradigm might introduce severe security and maintainability flaws (I do not know to what extent this is applicable to this particular project).

I am not an expert in Rust. But, skimming 2 random files in under 5 minutes revealed code that I wouldn’t let pass a review:

1. https://github.com/programmersd21/wallr/blob/72e10a02ae9fdd65ba2f5a440f45906d0fffc6a4/wallr-core/src/wallpaper/mod.rs#L156

This function called apply_wallpaper doesn’t apply a wallpaper. Instead it checks if the file exists, and logs stating it will apply otherwise.

2. https://github.com/programmersd21/wallr/blob/72e10a02ae9fdd65ba2f5a440f45906d0fffc6a4/wallr-core/src/video/gpu.rs#L37

This file contains the same adapter enumeration logic, but it is implemented differently across the detect_adapters and select_adapter functions.

Also,

~/wallr $ rg detect_adapter
wallr-core/src/video/mod.rs
12:pub use gpu::{GpuSelection, detect_adapters, select_adapter};

wallr-core/src/video/gpu.rs
35:pub async fn detect_adapters(instance: &wgpu::Instance) -> Vec<AdapterInfo> {

I do not know Rust, but this looks like dead code to me (these are the only two mentions of that functions; commit 72e10a02 btw). Please correct me if I’m wrong.

If my assessment above is incorrect due to me misunderstanding the code, I retract my statement towards this project. My concerns still exist though. Perhaps it’s truly time to stop writing code that is maintainable by humans. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Thanks. Now I have student loans, my degree has been made worthless, I’ve been made redundant at my job, I’ve run out of savings (did I mention student loans?), and I’m getting deported soon!

Adam Something did a video about this 3 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fcWOivJ6bs

Really? So what?

A lot of people are either poor or simply don’t have a need for art, which is why they don’t buy it. The buyers are the appreciative, non-poor individuals. Before GenAI, artists had a market, they produced work for these buyers, whether for legitimate use or pure appreciation.

Now, GenAI is eroding that market. Legitimate users just use GenAI for “good enough” results, and appreciative buyers lower their standards by flooding themselves with GenAI content.

Meanwhile, the poor folk push back against the normalization of such art which wrecks the art industry. They’re doing what they can.

Though there also seems to be a certain flavor of antinatalism which is something like “our universal shared conditions are going to get so bad that everyone will suffer” due to global warming, lare-stage capitalism, whatever. That one I can understand.

The flavor of antinatalism I presented above is not different from this. The two are not mutually exclusive. In my previous comment, I was more concerned with showing how the default state of life is negative. All these factors just add to the severity of how bad life is (and can be).

But if I start asking people on the street if, based on their subjective lived experience, they agree with that statement, I can guarantee that not everyone would.

People tend to remember pleasant experiences more accurately than unpleasant ones. This phenomenon is known as the Pollyanna principle. When you ask strangers about their lives, they are likely to focus on positive moments and downplay suffering. Yet, if you probe them, you might see that the reality of human existence includes chronic stress, job dissatisfaction, loneliness, loss, bereavement, discrimination, injustice, regret, disease, and ultimately death. These hardships are not uniformly distributed across a lifetime; they are usually amplified towards the end. For example, illness becomes more acute in old age, and many old people experience helplessness, loneliness, and memory loss, despite having had children.

And that’s the rub for me: I see antinatalists taking this position as if “life is suffering” is subjectively true for all humans, and I don’t think that’s true, or at least not to an extent that leads to the conclusion that no one should reproduce in order to save the next generation from the suffering.

It is about preventing needless suffering. So, if suffering constitutes an overwhelming part of life, one should not procreate in order to avoid it. Sure, we may have our coping mechanisms to get around the suffering, but why learn and deploy them when it can be avoided altogether? It is not for the benefit of the child that they are being brought into existence.

So it seems to me that one driver of antinatalism is people with depression incorrectly assuming that the next generation will experience life the same way they do. All it takes to prove that assumption wrong is a single person who disagrees that their subjective lived experience is one of constant suffering.

I can similarly argue that people without depression assume that the next generation will do well too. You have already mentioned global warming and late‑stage capitalism. Given threats like these, I find it unreasonable to presume that future lives will be unproblematic. Reflecting honestly on ourselves and our circumstances reveals that we should not expose future generations to life and the world. You do not necessarily need to be depressed to recognise that things are bad.

Also, I am not particularly arguing for “constant suffering”. My claim is that it is unethical to subject a sentient being to suffering when that suffering could be avoided.

That is not an unfair assumption to make. It is possible that people with depression have a disposition towards pessimism, nihilism, and antinatalism; however, I would like to know how that invalidates the position. Note that this philosophy has been exposed to people without depression as well, and so far, it has been incredibly hard to refute without assuming life, humanity, or sentience as positive things.

Philosophical pessimism, particularly Schopenhauerian thought, asserts that suffering is the default state of life, and happiness is merely a temporary alleviation of it. This makes sense when viewed through an evolutionary lens. Suffering is what drives us to avoid death, while pleasure serves as reinforcement that the death-defying action is favorable to our continued existence.

Consider a primitive person being hunted by a predator. That person experiences suffering, which prompts them to escape. They outrun the predator and avoid death. Then they experience happiness, which acts as reinforcement to continue the escape behavior. This is why we experience pain more intensely than pleasure. If it were not so, the primitive person would have died and we would have never been here. This principle applies to hunger, loneliness, insomnia, and similar biological drives.

Some propose the argument that life would be worth it once suffering is solved. Under the reasoning I presented above, I do not see how this could be “solved”. How will you solve death economically? How will you remove or solve bereavement? How will you permanently solve disease?

Let us say you selectively keep pumping dopamine and serotonin, and selectively inhibit their reuptake whilst constantly monitoring pleasure and pain. Will this not be detrimental to your survival? What if you run into scenarios where it is necessary for you to “escape”?

As I see it, suffering is necessary for survival; it needs to be the default state, and it is experienced more intensely than pleasure. We, as already existing beings, need suffering, but it need not be imposed on the non-existent.

(Sorry if I went into a tangent, lol!)

As I understand it, being childfree simply means not having and not wanting children. There doesn’t need to be a philosophical reason for that; reasons such as finding children annoying can be enough. Antinatalists, however, are philosophically opposed to procreation. They believe that suffering is an overwhelming part of life (stemming from disease, financial status, bereavement, and many others), and they argue it would be better if someone were never exposed to it in the first place. Existing beings, though, learn to deal with it.

Because antinatalism is a philosophy and childfree is a life choice, you will see people across the entire spectrum.

1. Some people are childfree (do not have or want kids) but are not philosophically inclined to any specific position. They do not necessarily want the human race to end.
2. Some people are childfree and antinatalist (philosophically opposed to procreation). Antinatalists may or may not care about extinction. Some ideally want human extinction (anthropocentric extinction), while others want the extinction of all sentient beings (sentiocentric extinction). Some others do not care about extinction at all because it is not practically possible. It should be noted that antinatalists favor voluntary extinction through peaceful means only.
3. Some people are not childfree (they have children) but became antinatalist only after having them.

Personally, I started out as childfree and later became an antinatalist. I don’t like how noisy children are. I can spend some time with children, but after a certain threshold, I get really tired and annoyed. Also, my depression and anxiety play a large part in my decision not to bring children into the world. I don’t want them to go through all this bullshit (and this is where antinatalism comes in).

If I ever “change my mind” like countless people suggest, I’ll just adopt.

Not sure what you mean by that. Neither I nor antinatalism advocates for ending existent life. It is just about not causing additional suffering by bringing new beings into existence.

If anything, I believe that we should acknowledge that we are all in this suffering together, and be compassionate to fellow living beings.

I do want the human race to end though. Not painfully, but rather phasing out gradually (although I do realize that antinatalism is such an unpopular opinion that it isn’t really possible). No hate for children or any other being though. I just want there to be less suffering.