Principles of the movement

Suffering-Focused Ethics (SFE)

First, let's define suffering so that no one can wordplay and confuse this ideology.

Suffering, in our definition and throughout our movement and website, is defined as any bad feeling a sentient being wants to avoid. We differentiate it from pain. For example, a person who is a masochist doesn't want to avoid certain pains, but even they don't want to suffer. So, any bad feeling a conscious being wants to avoid is suffering. And this can be anything from physical pain to mental and emotional distress that sentient beings want to avoid.

Suffering, by the above definition, is the only bad thing in this world. Why is starvation bad? Suffering. Why are diseases bad? Why is crime? Why is child rape bad? Why is animal abuse bad? Why is predation bad? Why are natural disasters bad? Because of suffering.

So if suffering is the only bad thing, then suffering-focused ethics is the only logical ethics. Especially when the good things don't justify the bad. The good things in this world can never justify bad things, just like sex can't justify child rape. Tasty food can't justify predation or animal slavery. Video games can't justify mental disorders.

So the only bad thing in this world is suffering or potential suffering.

And suffering-focused ethics, unlike many other ethics, is not based on an “it is what it is” kind of attitude that every other ethics follows. For example: religious ethics says “being gay is bad because God said so,” or purist ethics like “don't have sex until marriage; it's a sin,” or patriotic ethics “not loving your country is bad”—these don't have any justification. But SFE is supported by science and materialism. Sentient beings wanting to avoid suffering is a material reality; i.e., it's real, not imagined like religion or nations. Sentient beings are real. They suffer. A religious book or country flag or nature or the virginity of a person doesn't suffer! But sentient living beings do! Which makes them the only valuable realities of this world. Nothing is more valuable than a single sentient being.

So to summarize:

• Suffering is bad

• Suffering is the only bad

• SFE is the only logical and factual ethics

• Sentient beings are more valuable than any non-sentient objects.

Materialism

This is the most obvious yet ignored logic. Materialism is simple. It means there is no magic. It's the very foundation of science itself, the study of our material reality.

Materialism posits that the world around us is made of physical laws and there is nothing supernatural there. It's man who made supernatural concepts, but science is breaking these. We believed we have a soul. But now science has found out where we reside: the brain.

Actual science research is diligent and rational. It doesn't assume and fill in the gaps. It takes actual time to research and find the truth; i.e., the physical laws that govern us. Religion, spirituality, etc., are lazy and impatient; they just fill the gaps with whatever magical stories they find with no proof.

Why is materialism important to extinctionism?

Because the extinctionist movement always needs to stay rational. There are a lot of bullshit ideologies out there like afterlife, karma, free will, theism, spirituality, etc., that have absolutely irrational people. They are useless to a rationality- and science-based movement. So if someone wants to help the movement, they should be rational and science-oriented.

There is no magic. Yesterday, a solar eclipse was God’s wrath that demanded sacrifice. Today, it's the moon coming between the sun and Earth.

Everything has a discovered or undiscovered physical property, and it behaves according to those properties and laws. There is nothing beyond physical realities and laws. Magic is physically impossible.

I'll give a brief debunking for all the non-materialist supernatural ideas.

Afterlife/Rebirth:

It's proven by science that our information—the “me”—resides in our brain. After it dies, there is nothing. Your brain rots in the mud. Just like permanently deleting a file. There is nothing anymore. Information can be destroyed. Afterlife or rebirth is a coping mechanism that arises from not being able to contemplate nothingness or fear of nothingness.

Karma:

Another coping mechanism that arises out of an inability to punish bad people. You can't do anything to a sadist who tortures animals, so you wish bad things on him. But there are many people in history who have caused a lot of deaths and lived happy lives and died relatively painless deaths. Some people believe that you will get punishment in your next life. But I don't know what the point is of a system that makes people do horrible things and then wipes their memory and punishes them. And the most suffering is not even caused by people; it's caused by nature.

Spirituality:

This is not an ideology, really, because it has so many definitions from so many people. This is a multi-billion dollar business in the 21st century. People who have mental problems and insecurities are drawn to spiritual cults which promise “mind liberation.” But the actual materialist remedies for mental problems lie in psychiatric medicine and therapy. There is no magic that can “liberate your mind”; the disorders are caused by imbalances in the brain.

Neurobiological Determinism

Our brain is a physical object. The physical differences in our brain create the mental differences. Some people are good at math, some are not. Why does this difference happen? Because of differences in their brains. The person good at math has the physical presence of certain genetics, and certain parts of his brain develop better than those who are bad at math. These physical differences are the things that make the difference in personality, behavior, etc. The physical brain of a dog has fewer abilities than a human, so humans become more intelligent than dogs. People with mental disabilities have physical defects in their brains; that is what is causing their mental disability. People good at art or bad at it, whether they are more resilient, whether they have more willpower to go to the gym—everything is decided by the physical ability of the brain. Mental abilities or disabilities rise from physical abilities and disabilities of the brain. So from here, I'll refer to mental disabilities as physical disabilities.

Same way, even ethics, empathy, and rationality that are required for someone to be an extinctionist are also decided by the same physical brain. For example, a sadist sees a tortured dog and says “hey, this isn't bad” because he has neurological defects in some nerves connecting the mirror neurons to the amygdala that generates an emotional response and creates empathy. That's the difference between me and a sadist. I see torturing puppies as bad. Furthermore, he might have sadism disorder (again, a physical disorder) which forces him to torture puppies. Theoretically, if the same defects are applied to my brain, I'll be a sadist too. Because my brain is just another object doing a process like it's supposed to. You change an electrical circuit to power the light instead of the heater; the electrical circuit doesn't have the free will to power the heater anymore. Just like that, if my brain circuits are changed, I don't have the free will anymore to not torture the puppy. Just like a legless person can't run, a sadist can't empathize with a tortured dog.

This is a scientifically proven fact. There has been a number of research studies done on racism. For example, Phelps et al. 2000 and William Cunningham and colleagues 2004. These works discuss the bias and activation that the amygdala creates after seeing photos of people from other races. Richeson et al. 2003 explores the PFC as the brake. So when amygdala activation spikes, people become aggressive towards other races. Then the PFC has to cool it down. What happens if it doesn't? They will behave aggressively towards other races. What if the dlPFC counteracts the amygdala activation? Then those people will still be racist on the inside but would control themselves intelligently from aggression. What’s the role of the mPFC? People with better mPFC can do a moral judgment thinking, “These are just people from other races; nothing to be aggressive about” (Harris and Fiske 2006). See how the development and the dominance of different regions of the brain create different behavior? So your ethics, empathy, and rationality are literally decided by the physical ability of your brain. More amygdala dominance = more aggression. More mPFC development = good moral judgments. These are undeniable scientific facts proven by research.

So what decides these personalities and physical traits of the brain?

Genetics: The genes you inherit from your parents. This is why the observable phenomenon of inheritance occurs: “He is kind like his mother,” “He looks like his father.” Apart from this, you can even sometimes have your own mutated genes that create a new trait or a disability.

Development: The inputs to your brain when it develops. Like whether you were given good nutrition, did you have a non-traumatic childhood, did you have lots of social interactions, etc.

So two rational ethical people reproducing and giving a good environment to the child—like nutrition, emotional availability, etc.—will make it more likely the child is also ethical and rational.

So what this means for extinctionism?

This absolute truth of deterministic neurobiology has a lot of impact on the ethics, strategy, and science of the movement. And not adding this to the principles would surely negatively impact the movement’s decisions in the future. Current applications:

Ethics: Neurobiological determinism directly means that a sadist will be a sadist, a rapist will be a rapist, and their physical defects prevent them from being ethical. So this gives absolute authority for an ethical and rational person to stop a rapist or sadist, completely destroying any place of subjective moral acceptance. They are defective machines causing harm that need to be stopped. Also, it guarantees that as long as existence exists, there will be rapists, sadists, and criminals. People with physical defects will reproduce and create more and more people with defects; they are going to be immoral and unethical and irrational.

Strategy: Many movements follow a conversionist approach. But neurobiological determinism as an absolute fact completely destroys this approach. Many movements—like animal rights, for example—say “convert to veganism”; antinatalism says “convert to antinatalism.” But the truth is you cannot convince someone to follow an ethics if they are physically defective. How can a person who is physically racist, physically sadist think about the good of animals? The movement’s strategy should be to simply reach the empathetic and rational people. The able ones. They will immediately start working for the cause.

Scientific strategy: The movement should support human—especially extinctionist—reproduction. Yes, reproduction is bad. But sometimes it becomes a necessary evil when we consider other sentient beings. Also, as we discussed before, the child of an empath is more likely to be empathetic. A child of a rational person is more likely to be rational. Anyway, the physical defects are going to reproduce and replace you, so what is better? An empath reproducing or a narcissist? Imagine a world overrun by Islamists, a world where the narcissist gene pool dominates. It would be an absolute dystopia, setting the society and the movement back centuries.

Note:

I'm not arguing quantum determinism here. But neurobiology, which comes under classical mechanics, is completely deterministic. Neurobiology operates under classical mechanics.

Consequentialism

This is a very, very simple principle that can be best defined by an idiom: “Ends justify the means.”

Many oppose this by saying “Ends don't justify the means,” but these kinds of ideals can be good in theory, but practically it won't work. For example, if you think murder is wrong, the first thing you should do is murder Hitler! Practically, only consequentialism can achieve anything. Because the world is going to keep giving you Hitlers.

Take the anti-slavery movement, for example! Did they want wars? Did they want riots? Absolutely not! They would have been very happy if white supremacists just gave up their slaves. But that'll never happen. So they thought: what's worse, continuing slavery to infinity or a final war to end it? That's consequentialism. If someone thinks murder is wrong and ends don't justify the means, they would be idiotically trying to convince murderers to put their weapons down, which would achieve nothing. More people will be harmed.

So how does this apply to extinctionism?

This principle is absolutely necessary for extinctionism’s ethics and strategy, now and in the future. Because the movement is the means to a permanent end of suffering. Permanent peace.

We already apply consequentialism in extinctionism.

First example is extinctionism itself. Is painful death bad? Yes. So what's worse? Ending deaths forever by extinction or continued deaths? Obviously, any sane person would choose fewer deaths and suffering. Is reproduction bad? Yes, it imposes life and suffering on a sentient being. But 99.9 percent of sufferers are animals, and suffering may be widespread in the universe. So we think about the greater good and continue human reproduction until we determine what's the most vast and thorough extinction possible. We extinctionists don't fight for small causes because allocating whatever small manpower we have to a movement like LGBT or feminism can maybe reduce suffering a little bit, but it would be like choosing a smaller cause over a bigger cause. The movement for total extinction can be delayed or jeopardized because of that. So we choose bigger suffering (the biggest).

Consequentialism is vital to strategy and ethics. It's always unethical to choose more suffering instead of less.

Materialism and determinism lead to the inevitable strategic conclusion of consequentialism. This nature has suffering built into it. And things will happen according to what natural laws dictate. And they dictate that suffering is inevitable. Life is not so black and white; it's not going to allow you to achieve everything peacefully. Racists are going to stand in our way. Nature is going to keep propagating suffering. So sometimes we will be forced to choose the lesser evil, like the above example. And we should do it without hesitation. A permanent end to suffering is something far more important of a consequence than any means.

Scientific Method

Why is the scientific method important? Because this is the ultimate movement; we want to deliver ultimate peace. And we cannot be hasty about it.

As in our manifesto, we want to cause the most vast and thorough extinction possible. So who determines that? The answer is science. Nobody can walk in and say “this is the most vast and thorough extinction possible” without scientific evidence. If that happens, the entire movement will fail. Some random nihilist physicist will come and say “just nuke em”; that's all that is possible. This physicist is obviously irrational and going to lead to suffering and not extinction. Only the scientific method can determine it. Not one person or a group.

There is a clear difference between the scientific method and a scientist. Scientists (individuals) should not be trusted. Therefore, we only accept rational publications and independently reproduced, empirically verified experimental results.

If some idiot starts a journal for homeopathy or other pseudosciences, those cannot be taken into consideration. And extinctionism always rejects pseudosciences like homeopathy, astrology, palmistry, anti-vax, parapsychology, etc. Letting these things into any movement will be like burning the entire movement with your own hands. These are rationality killers. They will never lead to a solution. So extinctionists only trust the rational scientific method.

Atheism

Theism is based on belief; it's based on faith. Religion and the idea of God were completely created by humans. Humans have a tendency to fill in the blanks with magic when they don't have answers. We tend to fit answers when we have absolutely zero evidence. That's how we made religions.

4000 BC logic: “He is cursed; must be because he disrespected the moon goddess.”

Current science: “It's a disease caused by microorganisms that are invisible to the naked eye.”

All phenomena in material reality have a scientific explanation. And people who fill in the blanks with God, Batman, or Godzilla don't have any place in a rationality-based movement.

It's very absurd that even in the 21st century, people worship a being that supposedly created existence, rapes their children, abuses animals, created animals to kill each other, created natural disasters, etc. I can't think of any grand plan that can justify children getting raped and puppies getting tortured and predation.

Also, there is the question: what sort of a hyper-intelligent being created a pointless, irrational existence that just causes suffering for no reason?

It's very absurd that 90% of people are theists in the 21st century. And to make it worse, they believe in a benevolent, good God. There are even more absurd beliefs in theism, like prayers. 99% of theists believe in a benevolent God who will bless them with a car or a house but wouldn't liberate sex slaves and starving people.

No God is coming to save the sufferers; it's our moral obligation as humans, since we are the only ones who exist and the only ones who can help other beings.

So why is this important to extinctionism?

Extinctionists need to be rationalists who believe in material evidence and not hope for miracles. A theist extinctionist can just claim tomorrow, “My God came in my dream and told me extinction isn't a worthy cause anymore,” and our principles are designed to exactly prevent these kinds of morons from joining the movement.