4 ms·

My genes are so great you won't have a future humanity without them. You're welcome to save the future by not passing yours on.

jameskegel 9y ago
Can you stop responding with asinine remarks to everything?
- zanethomas 9y ago
  by following your example?
  - dang 9y ago
    We ban accounts that post like this. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
freeflight 9y ago
> You're welcome to save the future by not passing yours on. It is weird how you make it sound so bad and insulting. Do you want to suggest that we humans live for no other reason than to procreate? Don't you think we, as a species, should be able to think a bit further ahead, instead of basing all our behavior and goals on procreating, like we are some kind of mindless virus? Rabbits might not be sentient or "smart" enough to realize when they are overpopulating a region and having a negative impact on the environment. But we humans most certainly are "smart" enough to realize it, yet we still act like rabbits to it.
- zanethomas 9y ago
  It seems you think we humans live for some reason, or reasons. Can you provide one or more such reason?
  - vilmosi 9y ago
    There's no reason. If rabbits overeat their environment and they die of hunger, and humans do the same on a planetary scale, it means we're not even as smart as rabbits, don't you think?
  - freeflight 9y ago
    While I'm no biologist, I do think Dawkin's Selfish Gene gives a good blueprint for what motivates "life" in general: Spreading itself no matter what. The vast majority of life is being kept in check by geographical and other constraints, but we humans mostly have managed to bypass those constraints, at the cost of massive environmental long-term debt. So the smart thing to do, as supposedly the "smartest beings on the planet", would be to come up with another, maybe even sustainable, reason for existing than merely "propagating ourselves" like there are no limits to those finite resources we are mostly wasting to do that, at least right now. In those rare cases where we decide to agree to "live for bigger and more complex reasons" we often manage to build amazing things; Like whole Empires, a "Land of the free" or space stations zipping across the skies at 17.000 miles per hour. Imho that's one of the reasons why people like Elon Musk can have such an, sometimes nearly cult-like, impact: He offers visions for a "unified humanity goal" without using the clutches of religious dogma or much nationalistic fervor. His ideas appeal because they still hold true to your original "biological cause" for existing: Colonizing Mars would be an epitomal achievement for "terrestrial life".

jameskegel 9y ago

Can you stop responding with asinine remarks to everything?

zanethomas 9y ago
by following your example?
- dang 9y ago
  We ban accounts that post like this. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

freeflight 9y ago

> You're welcome to save the future by not passing yours on. It is weird how you make it sound so bad and insulting. Do you want to suggest that we humans live for no other reason than to procreate? Don't you think we, as a species, should be able to think a bit further ahead, instead of basing all our behavior and goals on procreating, like we are some kind of mindless virus? Rabbits might not be sentient or "smart" enough to realize when they are overpopulating a region and having a negative impact on the environment. But we humans most certainly are "smart" enough to realize it, yet we still act like rabbits to it.

zanethomas 9y ago
It seems you think we humans live for some reason, or reasons. Can you provide one or more such reason?
- vilmosi 9y ago
  There's no reason. If rabbits overeat their environment and they die of hunger, and humans do the same on a planetary scale, it means we're not even as smart as rabbits, don't you think?
- freeflight 9y ago
  While I'm no biologist, I do think Dawkin's Selfish Gene gives a good blueprint for what motivates "life" in general: Spreading itself no matter what. The vast majority of life is being kept in check by geographical and other constraints, but we humans mostly have managed to bypass those constraints, at the cost of massive environmental long-term debt. So the smart thing to do, as supposedly the "smartest beings on the planet", would be to come up with another, maybe even sustainable, reason for existing than merely "propagating ourselves" like there are no limits to those finite resources we are mostly wasting to do that, at least right now. In those rare cases where we decide to agree to "live for bigger and more complex reasons" we often manage to build amazing things; Like whole Empires, a "Land of the free" or space stations zipping across the skies at 17.000 miles per hour. Imho that's one of the reasons why people like Elon Musk can have such an, sometimes nearly cult-like, impact: He offers visions for a "unified humanity goal" without using the clutches of religious dogma or much nationalistic fervor. His ideas appeal because they still hold true to your original "biological cause" for existing: Colonizing Mars would be an epitomal achievement for "terrestrial life".