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Sure, as more time goes on and the thing starts to become more evident. It will become clearer that bringing a human being into a dying world is a deeply immora

Sure, as more time goes on and the thing starts to become more evident. It will become clearer that bringing a human being into a dying world is a deeply immoral thing to do. It will not be soon though.

adamrezich 5y ago
what happened in the past few years to get so many people, especially ostensibly smart people in tech circles, to buy into this death cult nonsense? I genuinely do not understand what can lead to such a mindset.
- 0xb0565e486 5y ago
  Cant comment for the “tech circle” you’re referring to, but from where I’m from “the environment” was a topic taught in school from the get go and taking a stance that we aren’t “destroying the planet” was pretty much out of the question and frowned upon. I specifically remember one of my teacher saying they wouldn’t have children because the future was going to be unbearable for them.
2III7 5y ago
The world is not dying. It is only changing for the worse for us. Not making children right now or in the future is a suicide for mankind which doesn't solve the problems we have created.
tsol 5y ago
>bringing a human being into a dying world is a deeply immoral thing to do What does this actually mean? What is a dying world, exactly? Historically, the world has been an awful place to be. Most of Human history, 200k years or so, we were essentially nomadic tribes killing and eating each other(sometimes literally*). Since civilization has begun, we've been ostensibly more moral-- yet the majority of humans who have existed in the past 10,000 years were laborers we know very little about. When you read about what people in Greece and Rome were like? That's mostly the well off nobles. Rarely did anyone bother to write about the lives of slaves, and subsequently we know next to nothing about them except that many of them had very harsh lives. We don't know what day to day life was like for the majority of Roman, for example. Countless kingdoms have fallen-- Cesar had a book he published about some of his expeditions in genocide(or read another way, in conquering the enemy). When a city was sacked by the enemy; all resistance was killed, women were used, and then those remaining men women, and children were sold into slavery to fund the winning kingdom. Their stuff was sold too, as you won't be surprised to hear. If they really hated the other side, like when Rome felled Carthage, they would salt the earth after. While expensive, it guaranteed nothing would grow there for a long time after-- a testament to the power of the conquers to eliminate any opposition. My point being.. I don't know why it's more unethical to birth humans into this world, than any of our ancestors. Logically, every human experiences unhappiness. How is it ever moral to birth humans into a world when humans experience pain? Human existence itself isn't purely logical and cannot be understood like that * https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/06/prehistoric-cannibalism-not-just-driven-by-hunger-study-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/06/prehistoric-...
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Your argument only works when the general trend is toward the better. After 50+ years of not doing anything about it, it's now a near certainty that the next 50 years of "progress" will be more like going backwards 100+ years.
  - tsol 5y ago
    No it doesn't? My argument is that human life has been full of unavoidable difficulty for 200,000 years, so if bringing kids into a painful world is unethical then having children has always been an unethical decision. Even if we as a society go back 200 years, the decision to have kids is still just as unethical as it ever was. Which is to say, having children isn't an ethical decision it's an emotional decision. Or I can put it this way-- The most ethical thing any human can do really is to commit suicide so you don't further consume finite resources. But the desire to live is a strong emotional desire and even the most logical person will justify their own life while simultaneously consuming resources and contributing to the problem they lament.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      No, it really does. Maybe you can emotionally justify bringing additional people into a problem created by people, but, I can't. And, if you can justify it, quite frankly, I think that makes you a bad person. 200 years ago, nobody had any reason to suspect that life would be significantly worse in 50 years. Today, we do. 200 years ago, we hadn't poisoned the planet with "forever chemicals" (PFAS) and microplastics. Oh, and let's not forget the economic mess we're leaving to future generations, either. 200 years ago, there was no reason to suspect the next generation would be worse off than this one. One could afford not to take ethical considerations into account when having children then, because there was no reason to suspect it would be unethical. As for suicide, sure, I can justify that on ethical grounds. I'm not sure I want to continue much past whenever my dog dies. She's 7. OTOH, I can't see where I'm ethically required to commit suicide to solve a problem I didn't create.
      - 5y ago

adamrezich 5y ago

what happened in the past few years to get so many people, especially ostensibly smart people in tech circles, to buy into this death cult nonsense? I genuinely do not understand what can lead to such a mindset.

0xb0565e486 5y ago
Cant comment for the “tech circle” you’re referring to, but from where I’m from “the environment” was a topic taught in school from the get go and taking a stance that we aren’t “destroying the planet” was pretty much out of the question and frowned upon. I specifically remember one of my teacher saying they wouldn’t have children because the future was going to be unbearable for them.

2III7 5y ago

The world is not dying. It is only changing for the worse for us. Not making children right now or in the future is a suicide for mankind which doesn't solve the problems we have created.

tsol 5y ago

>bringing a human being into a dying world is a deeply immoral thing to do What does this actually mean? What is a dying world, exactly? Historically, the world has been an awful place to be. Most of Human history, 200k years or so, we were essentially nomadic tribes killing and eating each other(sometimes literally*). Since civilization has begun, we've been ostensibly more moral-- yet the majority of humans who have existed in the past 10,000 years were laborers we know very little about. When you read about what people in Greece and Rome were like? That's mostly the well off nobles. Rarely did anyone bother to write about the lives of slaves, and subsequently we know next to nothing about them except that many of them had very harsh lives. We don't know what day to day life was like for the majority of Roman, for example. Countless kingdoms have fallen-- Cesar had a book he published about some of his expeditions in genocide(or read another way, in conquering the enemy). When a city was sacked by the enemy; all resistance was killed, women were used, and then those remaining men women, and children were sold into slavery to fund the winning kingdom. Their stuff was sold too, as you won't be surprised to hear. If they really hated the other side, like when Rome felled Carthage, they would salt the earth after. While expensive, it guaranteed nothing would grow there for a long time after-- a testament to the power of the conquers to eliminate any opposition. My point being.. I don't know why it's more unethical to birth humans into this world, than any of our ancestors. Logically, every human experiences unhappiness. How is it ever moral to birth humans into a world when humans experience pain? Human existence itself isn't purely logical and cannot be understood like that * https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/06/prehistoric-cannibalism-not-just-driven-by-hunger-study-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/06/prehistoric-...

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Your argument only works when the general trend is toward the better. After 50+ years of not doing anything about it, it's now a near certainty that the next 50 years of "progress" will be more like going backwards 100+ years.
- tsol 5y ago
  No it doesn't? My argument is that human life has been full of unavoidable difficulty for 200,000 years, so if bringing kids into a painful world is unethical then having children has always been an unethical decision. Even if we as a society go back 200 years, the decision to have kids is still just as unethical as it ever was. Which is to say, having children isn't an ethical decision it's an emotional decision. Or I can put it this way-- The most ethical thing any human can do really is to commit suicide so you don't further consume finite resources. But the desire to live is a strong emotional desire and even the most logical person will justify their own life while simultaneously consuming resources and contributing to the problem they lament.
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    No, it really does. Maybe you can emotionally justify bringing additional people into a problem created by people, but, I can't. And, if you can justify it, quite frankly, I think that makes you a bad person. 200 years ago, nobody had any reason to suspect that life would be significantly worse in 50 years. Today, we do. 200 years ago, we hadn't poisoned the planet with "forever chemicals" (PFAS) and microplastics. Oh, and let's not forget the economic mess we're leaving to future generations, either. 200 years ago, there was no reason to suspect the next generation would be worse off than this one. One could afford not to take ethical considerations into account when having children then, because there was no reason to suspect it would be unethical. As for suicide, sure, I can justify that on ethical grounds. I'm not sure I want to continue much past whenever my dog dies. She's 7. OTOH, I can't see where I'm ethically required to commit suicide to solve a problem I didn't create.
    - 5y ago