A key turning point in my life was when my wife declared that her biological clock said she wanted kids now. I hadn’t been thinking of kids, and the prospect didn’t inspire much passion in me; my life had focused on other things. But I wanted to please my wife, and I didn’t much object, so we had kids. I now see that as one of the best choices I’ve made in my life. I thank my wife for pushing me to it.
1. What do you mean by "raise good kids?"2. To convince the average person to give away 500,000$ requires gaining their allegiance over a long period. To get them to have a child requires you to gain their allegiance over a much smaller time period, and if they come to regret their choice, well, too bad.
I'm skeptical that having ones own children is actually an effective way of improving future wellbeing through the narrowish lens of children. Wouldn't it be more effective/scaleable to use the $500,000 (average cost to raise a child in Aus) to say start a charity that encourages good people to raise good kids? I think you'd get more than 1 kid out of that.
Care to make a substantive agrument, or elaborate your last one? I may be a little thick so I can mostly parse name-calling from it, again.Yep, it's a biological process. Not sure which angle (if any) you are going for. Yep, breeding is natural and necessary for survival. So is eating, and even defecating. Makes about as much sense to glorify it or call it selfless as working to procure, eat and excrete a sandwich. Both are driven by biology and contribute to humanity's survival. And, as with some other biological impulses, if your brain is wired to love calories in the form of say sugar, that doesn't make it a deserving act to stuff yourself on cake (I personally love brownies, ate 5k calories of them in one evening once long time ago). In fact, the more "grown up" act is to resist the impulse. Similarly with child bearing - it's reverse from the original comment - even if we assume cool activities or science, arts etc are channeling the desire to be a parent (including the raising-of part), surrendering to that supposed desire is the equivalent of my 5k brownies binge; calling it "growing as a human" is laughable.
"Breeding as described above is the worst kind of selfish act..." Oh brother. With regard to particulars, like tribalism or vicarious fantasy, you have a points, but to say that procreation, in a general, overarching way is some sort of penultimate greed behavior is drama queen, ideological claptrap. This is just anthropomorphic fallacy nonsense on your part that imputes a kind of willfulness to biological tendencies and processes. Nonsense, really.
It's really tempting to just respond "NO U" cause that's all that your response amounts to. But I am going to clarify... I actually saw the other comment from the original author later, about finding "your ... tribe", and if I was building a straw man on purpose, I couldn't have picked better wording for it. No; selfless, other-focused things range from contributing to science or arts to benefit all of humanity, to charitable work or contributions to help other people who are not related to you and/or are not like you. Breeding as described above is the worst kind of selfish act - basically a milder form of familism, nepotism, whatever - focusing, to some non-0 degree, on "your personal tribe" - I quote from Theresa's post - to the exclusion of the rest of the world. It is more selfish than painting a still life to post it on Instagram or sharing a Strava track on Facebook.
And, to pick a closer example, what about adoption? It's basically the same thing, except you don't get the hormonal kick and don't propagate your genes... both of which are 100% selfish. If you were doing it for the holier-than-thou reasons like "growing up" and becoming "other-focused", you'd at worst, adopt.But of course really it's about, to various extents, surrendering to biology (no better on my book than binging on cake because calories are a primal drive) and becoming more conservative and busy.
The least selfish thing is the full process of propagating genes. The most selfish thing, however, is mere initiation of gene propagation, neglecting all the follow up work.
I didn't make any points against anti-natalism, you imbecile. I personally have no children, you brainless moron. I've blocked you so you no longer exist for me.
You are saying it like it's a bad thing. I'm pretty sure nothing good in the world came from the people with "adult" mindset, be it in arts, sciences, technology or even society itself. Most good things are done because they seem to the doer "cool" (or worthy, or some other abstract equivalent), or because they want to have positive impact, again in an abstract way; once you become "adult", as far as I see, you just basically become more busy and more conservative. So I wouldn't call it "stuck" - it's more like with kids, you surrender to biology and "waste" the energy that you could have used at, at worst, neutral activities. I personally have no desire to contribute to the world in a way that I don't find intrinsically motivating, but I view having kids as doing damage (not even considering my own time and resources).Also in a sense, having a kid and pouring a ton of resources into it just because it shares your genes is about the most selfish decision one can possibly make. If you claim to be other-focused, why not put the same amount of resources into effective altruism or just you know, some other existing people, instead?
I wanted to please my wife, and I didn’t much object, so we had kids. I now see that as one of the best choices I’ve made in my life. I thank my wife for pushing me to it.
Same here. I only wish we'd started sooner so we could have more.
Re those who "plan to have an enormous positive influences on the universe" - surely anyone who expects to achieve such an audacious goal won't have any trouble at all acquiring the relatively trivial resources needed to raise a few kids, right? Right?
"Study anthropology" --- not sure what your point is.
re pain -- there is chronic pain, but no chronic pleasure. So much of motivation of life is the "stick" -- hunger, discomfort, emotional pain, etc. We are acutely aware of these things when we feel them, but satiation, comfort, a benign emotional state -- these things we don't notice as much. As Schopenhaeur said, evil/badness is what is "positive," and happiness is "negative." In fact, so much of "happiness" amounts to elation from being relieved from pain/bad things.
1. What do you mean by "raise good kids?"2. To convince the average person to give away 500,000$ requires gaining their allegiance over a long period. To get them to have a child requires you to gain their allegiance over a much smaller time period, and if they come to regret their choice, well, too bad.
I'm skeptical that having ones own children is actually an effective way of improving future wellbeing through the narrowish lens of children. Wouldn't it be more effective/scaleable to use the $500,000 (average cost to raise a child in Aus) to say start a charity that encourages good people to raise good kids? I think you'd get more than 1 kid out of that.
The phrase "growing as a human" has to go. I'll give you that one. If I ever said such a thing, well, I was wrong. Carlin wouldn't approve.
Care to make a substantive agrument, or elaborate your last one? I may be a little thick so I can mostly parse name-calling from it, again.Yep, it's a biological process. Not sure which angle (if any) you are going for. Yep, breeding is natural and necessary for survival. So is eating, and even defecating. Makes about as much sense to glorify it or call it selfless as working to procure, eat and excrete a sandwich. Both are driven by biology and contribute to humanity's survival. And, as with some other biological impulses, if your brain is wired to love calories in the form of say sugar, that doesn't make it a deserving act to stuff yourself on cake (I personally love brownies, ate 5k calories of them in one evening once long time ago). In fact, the more "grown up" act is to resist the impulse. Similarly with child bearing - it's reverse from the original comment - even if we assume cool activities or science, arts etc are channeling the desire to be a parent (including the raising-of part), surrendering to that supposed desire is the equivalent of my 5k brownies binge; calling it "growing as a human" is laughable.
"Breeding as described above is the worst kind of selfish act..." Oh brother. With regard to particulars, like tribalism or vicarious fantasy, you have a points, but to say that procreation, in a general, overarching way is some sort of penultimate greed behavior is drama queen, ideological claptrap. This is just anthropomorphic fallacy nonsense on your part that imputes a kind of willfulness to biological tendencies and processes. Nonsense, really.
It's really tempting to just respond "NO U" cause that's all that your response amounts to. But I am going to clarify... I actually saw the other comment from the original author later, about finding "your ... tribe", and if I was building a straw man on purpose, I couldn't have picked better wording for it. No; selfless, other-focused things range from contributing to science or arts to benefit all of humanity, to charitable work or contributions to help other people who are not related to you and/or are not like you. Breeding as described above is the worst kind of selfish act - basically a milder form of familism, nepotism, whatever - focusing, to some non-0 degree, on "your personal tribe" - I quote from Theresa's post - to the exclusion of the rest of the world. It is more selfish than painting a still life to post it on Instagram or sharing a Strava track on Facebook.
And, to pick a closer example, what about adoption? It's basically the same thing, except you don't get the hormonal kick and don't propagate your genes... both of which are 100% selfish. If you were doing it for the holier-than-thou reasons like "growing up" and becoming "other-focused", you'd at worst, adopt.But of course really it's about, to various extents, surrendering to biology (no better on my book than binging on cake because calories are a primal drive) and becoming more conservative and busy.
Go sit on a lubricated spike.
Eat a dick.
Whaaaaa?
You’re completely off base and stupid Sergey.
The least selfish thing is the full process of propagating genes. The most selfish thing, however, is mere initiation of gene propagation, neglecting all the follow up work.
"not sure what your point is"
Yes, I know you're stupid.
"there is chronic pain, but no chronic pleasure"
No one said otherwise, dummy.
I didn't make any points against anti-natalism, you imbecile. I personally have no children, you brainless moron. I've blocked you so you no longer exist for me.
You are saying it like it's a bad thing. I'm pretty sure nothing good in the world came from the people with "adult" mindset, be it in arts, sciences, technology or even society itself. Most good things are done because they seem to the doer "cool" (or worthy, or some other abstract equivalent), or because they want to have positive impact, again in an abstract way; once you become "adult", as far as I see, you just basically become more busy and more conservative. So I wouldn't call it "stuck" - it's more like with kids, you surrender to biology and "waste" the energy that you could have used at, at worst, neutral activities. I personally have no desire to contribute to the world in a way that I don't find intrinsically motivating, but I view having kids as doing damage (not even considering my own time and resources).Also in a sense, having a kid and pouring a ton of resources into it just because it shares your genes is about the most selfish decision one can possibly make. If you claim to be other-focused, why not put the same amount of resources into effective altruism or just you know, some other existing people, instead?
I wanted to please my wife, and I didn’t much object, so we had kids. I now see that as one of the best choices I’ve made in my life. I thank my wife for pushing me to it.
Same here. I only wish we'd started sooner so we could have more.
Re those who "plan to have an enormous positive influences on the universe" - surely anyone who expects to achieve such an audacious goal won't have any trouble at all acquiring the relatively trivial resources needed to raise a few kids, right? Right?
I've decided that it's rude to talk about anti-natalism under this otherwise kind-hearted post. Sorry Robin.
Your points against anti-natalism are largely incoherent and undeveloped.
"Study anthropology" --- not sure what your point is.
re pain -- there is chronic pain, but no chronic pleasure. So much of motivation of life is the "stick" -- hunger, discomfort, emotional pain, etc. We are acutely aware of these things when we feel them, but satiation, comfort, a benign emotional state -- these things we don't notice as much. As Schopenhaeur said, evil/badness is what is "positive," and happiness is "negative." In fact, so much of "happiness" amounts to elation from being relieved from pain/bad things.