17 ms·

It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. There are too many people on the planet.

by skh 8y ago

linguistbreaker 8y ago
I've thought this too but then you are leaving the future to those who breed more irresponsibly. Another way to look at it would be that we have a responsibility to raise more responsible people.
- CalRobert 8y ago
  I suppose the question is whether the future is a gift or a curse. Though I agree. It's odd - I've known people who seemed offended by Idiocracy, but couldn't really come up with any flaws in its basic premise (in short, well-educated highly-productive people (for traditional values of productive which is its own debate) tend to have fewer kids, and people are usually like their parents, so over time we'll have fewer people like that).
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  > I've thought this too but then you are leaving the future to those who breed more irresponsibly. The movie "Idiocracy" addresses this very issue. It's a comedy, and I really enjoyed it.
  - joecool1029 8y ago
    >It's a comedy I think you meant prophecy.
- skh 8y ago
  Yes, this is true. For me the way that I deal with the reality of a planet becoming a shitty place to live is to not have children. It is the best way for me to cope with the situation. People can choose to do otherwise.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Have you considered letting your children decide whether they want to be alive on whatever the future has in store for this planet? Life is optional; they can opt out at any time. But my hunch is that they'll appreciate being alive and decide to make a go of it, however tough it is. After all, there is no alternative; the only life they can have is the one you give them.
    - skh 8y ago
      I have not considered letting things that don't yet exist decide if they want to exist.
- Nagyman 8y ago
  Hrm, I'm thinking that all the time one spends raising a single child could be spent educating a lot more children to be responsible. Raising != educating of course, but raising individual responsible children doesn't scale the same way that education can.
  - artur_makly 8y ago
    do both and gain extra insights into humans overall.
gdubs 8y ago
You could also eat a mostly vegan diet, get the world to move towards sustainable farming practices (and away from monoculture crops), and support scaling up nuclear, renewables, and a massive infrastructure overhaul.
nf05papsjfVbc 8y ago
While I'm very happy having chosen the path you suggest, I never suggest it to anyone because I think it is not realistic. What do you think the odds are, that the average person can win against one of the strongest primal drives with which every living being is born. Also, people (on average) do need to procreate if society has to continue its existence.
- syncmaster913n 8y ago
  I would agree that having sex is one of the strongest primal drives. However, a drive to have sex =/= a drive to have children. Can you provide a source that shows having children is a natural, inborn drive of humans?
  - nf05papsjfVbc 8y ago
    You are looking at it the other way around. The drive is ultimately to spread one's genes. We just invented a way to get enjoyment out of the process without creating offspring. I leave it to you to reach for your favourite search engine or to visit library if you wish to verify that propagating one's genes is one of the primal drives of living beings.
    - syncmaster913n 8y ago
      You might have a fundamental misunderstanding of how genetics and evolution work. The spreading of genes is a consequence of having sex, not its goal. There is no higher power that determined "spreading one's genes" as some sort of ultimate drive, then set about finding ways to make it happen. You can think of it this way: - Presumably, some mammals would have been born that did not enjoy sex. Those would not procreate and their gene would die out. - Other mammals would enjoy sex. They would procreate, and their genes would spread. It's the sex and enjoyment thereof that is the driving force behind procreation. When you hear people saying "the ultimate drive is to spread one's genes," that's just a hand-wavy explanation used for simplification (which, unfortunately, many people have come to interpret too literally - as is often the case when simplification is involved). It's the same type of simplification as when a nature documentary says "Nature found a way to do X". As if nature is some conscious entity with a will that is working towards achieving some goal.
astazangasta 8y ago
This line of reasoning is spurious. The people who consume the most resources also have the lowest fertility rates. What we can do other than despair and contemplate genocide is transition to a carbon neutral economy. It really only requires political will.
- otikik 8y ago
  Sorry but your comment doesn't help me. I can not "transition my society to a carbon neutral economy". I don't know how I can "create political will". Can you be more concrete?
  - astazangasta 8y ago
    You posited an individual act that could only have a result if realized collectively. I posit the same. Make carbon neutral choices as much as possible, in your personal and professional life; conservation works. As for political will, it is the same: composed of individual wills. Bill McKibben points out that a major impediment to a carbon-neutral future is that fossil fuel reserves are capital; the powerful people that own them need us to remain dependent on fossil fuels so their capital continues to have value. These people mobilize huge resources to support their goals; in the last generation trillions of dollars, representing engineering, resources and manufacturing, that should have gone to developing a carbon neutral economy was squandered in useless wars to secure access to fossil fuel resources in the Middle East. At the same time these forces are extremely vulnerable to collective action in the form of an organized populace. Creating political will means: educate yourself and your neighbors and discover ways (protest, lecture, lobby) to stymie their agenda and advance your own.
    - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
      We could always transcend from carbon based life forms to a hybrid silicon-carbon based lifeform by becoming part AI.
    - magduf 8y ago
      >Creating political will means: educate yourself and your neighbors and discover ways (protest, lecture, lobby) to stymie their agenda and advance your own. Tons of people have been trying this for decades now, and all we have to show for it is Trump and climate denialism. Educating people doesn't seem to actually work in practice.
otikik 8y ago
Your comment arrives a bit too late. I already have one child. What else?
- skh 8y ago
  That's basically it. Assuming you live in a rich country the facts are that we way over consume. The people who say they are vegan and recycle and whatnot are still way over consuming for the most part. All of those cars, clothes, devices, etc. that they possess are very harmful to the planet. Limit yourself to one child since that is below the replacement rate for population growth. That's my suggestion and my way of dealing with the reality of the world we live in.
Zoh0eich 8y ago
There's more one can do than just that. I do not own or use cars. I try limit my meat consumption (not entirely successful on that front). I changed energy providers to buy from renewables sources. I do not travel by air. I don't have air conditioning. I also sit on a pile of money, not sure what to do with it. Index stocks contain fossil companies which I don't want to support. Maybe I'll throw some at those silicate weathering pilot projects.
- skh 8y ago
  What you write is true but I don't think will be duplicable on a large scale without regulations and pricing negative externalities into products. The free rider problem is a negative aspect of human psychology.
  - Zoh0eich 8y ago
    The question is what someone who is aware of the issues and willing to act can do. Just because there are those who act irresponsibly does not prevent you from adjusting your behavior.
    - skh 8y ago
      It does actually prevent me for adjusting my behavior. I'm a victim of free rider thinking. I'm not going to fall on my sword so to speak and sacrifice whilst almost no one else does.
      - Zoh0eich 8y ago
        Please reflect on what you are saying. You stylize yourself as victim when you are actually benefiting from making harmful decisions and then rationalizing that harmful behavior with "but everyone else is doing it too".
        skh 8y ago
        I haven't stylized myself as anything other than a person who advocates not having children. I over consume. I've come to grips with this fact. I deal with it by not having children as a means of assuaging my guilt. I've got just one life and I'm going to enjoy it as much as I can. I'm not going to sacrifice for the greater good when it's just me and a handful of other people doing it.
toasterlovin 8y ago
It may seem counterintuitive, but if you care about the environment, you should have children. I wrote a whole blog post on this, but the gist is that people are going to have children whatever you decide to do. If people like you, who are thoughtful and conscientious about the future of our species, decide not to have children, then the world will just be filled with the offspring of people who don't really care about the future of our species. And those children will share both the nature and nurture of their parents. My blog post: http://www.richardjones.org/kids-are-good-for-the-environment/ http://www.richardjones.org/kids-are-good-for-the-environmen...
- skh 8y ago
  What you write makes sense but I don't feel right about having children. The world sucks and it will suck much more in the coming decades. I have no desire to put my progeny through that mess.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  This only makes sense if you assume "caring about the environment" is highly heritable and that individuals "caring about the environment" in the abstract somehow translates into large-scale public policy that's better for the environment (I would suggest available evidence shows that it does not).
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    As I pointed out, children get their nature and their nurture from their parents. And I don't know how you can reconcile the success of the environmental movement in the developed world in the past 5 decades with your position that somehow people caring about the environment doesn't have any real world effects.
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      CO2 emissions are not just rising but rising faster. We haven't even gotten the second derivative pointed in the necessary direction.
kamaal 8y ago
>>It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. And then who pays for your social security checks, pensions and other debt that was raised to fight wars?

It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. There are too many people on the planet.

by skh 8y ago

It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. There are too many people on the planet.

I've thought this too but then you are leaving the future to those who breed more irresponsibly. Another way to look at it would be that we have a responsibility to raise more responsible people.

CalRobert 8y ago
I suppose the question is whether the future is a gift or a curse. Though I agree. It's odd - I've known people who seemed offended by Idiocracy, but couldn't really come up with any flaws in its basic premise (in short, well-educated highly-productive people (for traditional values of productive which is its own debate) tend to have fewer kids, and people are usually like their parents, so over time we'll have fewer people like that).
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
> I've thought this too but then you are leaving the future to those who breed more irresponsibly. The movie "Idiocracy" addresses this very issue. It's a comedy, and I really enjoyed it.
- joecool1029 8y ago
  >It's a comedy I think you meant prophecy.
skh 8y ago
Yes, this is true. For me the way that I deal with the reality of a planet becoming a shitty place to live is to not have children. It is the best way for me to cope with the situation. People can choose to do otherwise.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Have you considered letting your children decide whether they want to be alive on whatever the future has in store for this planet? Life is optional; they can opt out at any time. But my hunch is that they'll appreciate being alive and decide to make a go of it, however tough it is. After all, there is no alternative; the only life they can have is the one you give them.
  - skh 8y ago
    I have not considered letting things that don't yet exist decide if they want to exist.
Nagyman 8y ago
Hrm, I'm thinking that all the time one spends raising a single child could be spent educating a lot more children to be responsible. Raising != educating of course, but raising individual responsible children doesn't scale the same way that education can.
- artur_makly 8y ago
  do both and gain extra insights into humans overall.

gdubs 8y ago

You could also eat a mostly vegan diet, get the world to move towards sustainable farming practices (and away from monoculture crops), and support scaling up nuclear, renewables, and a massive infrastructure overhaul.

nf05papsjfVbc 8y ago

While I'm very happy having chosen the path you suggest, I never suggest it to anyone because I think it is not realistic. What do you think the odds are, that the average person can win against one of the strongest primal drives with which every living being is born. Also, people (on average) do need to procreate if society has to continue its existence.

syncmaster913n 8y ago
I would agree that having sex is one of the strongest primal drives. However, a drive to have sex =/= a drive to have children. Can you provide a source that shows having children is a natural, inborn drive of humans?
- nf05papsjfVbc 8y ago
  You are looking at it the other way around. The drive is ultimately to spread one's genes. We just invented a way to get enjoyment out of the process without creating offspring. I leave it to you to reach for your favourite search engine or to visit library if you wish to verify that propagating one's genes is one of the primal drives of living beings.
  - syncmaster913n 8y ago
    You might have a fundamental misunderstanding of how genetics and evolution work. The spreading of genes is a consequence of having sex, not its goal. There is no higher power that determined "spreading one's genes" as some sort of ultimate drive, then set about finding ways to make it happen. You can think of it this way: - Presumably, some mammals would have been born that did not enjoy sex. Those would not procreate and their gene would die out. - Other mammals would enjoy sex. They would procreate, and their genes would spread. It's the sex and enjoyment thereof that is the driving force behind procreation. When you hear people saying "the ultimate drive is to spread one's genes," that's just a hand-wavy explanation used for simplification (which, unfortunately, many people have come to interpret too literally - as is often the case when simplification is involved). It's the same type of simplification as when a nature documentary says "Nature found a way to do X". As if nature is some conscious entity with a will that is working towards achieving some goal.

astazangasta 8y ago

This line of reasoning is spurious. The people who consume the most resources also have the lowest fertility rates. What we can do other than despair and contemplate genocide is transition to a carbon neutral economy. It really only requires political will.

otikik 8y ago
Sorry but your comment doesn't help me. I can not "transition my society to a carbon neutral economy". I don't know how I can "create political will". Can you be more concrete?
- astazangasta 8y ago
  You posited an individual act that could only have a result if realized collectively. I posit the same. Make carbon neutral choices as much as possible, in your personal and professional life; conservation works. As for political will, it is the same: composed of individual wills. Bill McKibben points out that a major impediment to a carbon-neutral future is that fossil fuel reserves are capital; the powerful people that own them need us to remain dependent on fossil fuels so their capital continues to have value. These people mobilize huge resources to support their goals; in the last generation trillions of dollars, representing engineering, resources and manufacturing, that should have gone to developing a carbon neutral economy was squandered in useless wars to secure access to fossil fuel resources in the Middle East. At the same time these forces are extremely vulnerable to collective action in the form of an organized populace. Creating political will means: educate yourself and your neighbors and discover ways (protest, lecture, lobby) to stymie their agenda and advance your own.
  - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
    We could always transcend from carbon based life forms to a hybrid silicon-carbon based lifeform by becoming part AI.
  - magduf 8y ago
    >Creating political will means: educate yourself and your neighbors and discover ways (protest, lecture, lobby) to stymie their agenda and advance your own. Tons of people have been trying this for decades now, and all we have to show for it is Trump and climate denialism. Educating people doesn't seem to actually work in practice.

otikik 8y ago

Your comment arrives a bit too late. I already have one child. What else?

skh 8y ago
That's basically it. Assuming you live in a rich country the facts are that we way over consume. The people who say they are vegan and recycle and whatnot are still way over consuming for the most part. All of those cars, clothes, devices, etc. that they possess are very harmful to the planet. Limit yourself to one child since that is below the replacement rate for population growth. That's my suggestion and my way of dealing with the reality of the world we live in.

Zoh0eich 8y ago

There's more one can do than just that. I do not own or use cars. I try limit my meat consumption (not entirely successful on that front). I changed energy providers to buy from renewables sources. I do not travel by air. I don't have air conditioning. I also sit on a pile of money, not sure what to do with it. Index stocks contain fossil companies which I don't want to support. Maybe I'll throw some at those silicate weathering pilot projects.

skh 8y ago
What you write is true but I don't think will be duplicable on a large scale without regulations and pricing negative externalities into products. The free rider problem is a negative aspect of human psychology.
- Zoh0eich 8y ago
  The question is what someone who is aware of the issues and willing to act can do. Just because there are those who act irresponsibly does not prevent you from adjusting your behavior.
  - skh 8y ago
    It does actually prevent me for adjusting my behavior. I'm a victim of free rider thinking. I'm not going to fall on my sword so to speak and sacrifice whilst almost no one else does.
    - Zoh0eich 8y ago
      Please reflect on what you are saying. You stylize yourself as victim when you are actually benefiting from making harmful decisions and then rationalizing that harmful behavior with "but everyone else is doing it too".
      - skh 8y ago
        I haven't stylized myself as anything other than a person who advocates not having children. I over consume. I've come to grips with this fact. I deal with it by not having children as a means of assuaging my guilt. I've got just one life and I'm going to enjoy it as much as I can. I'm not going to sacrifice for the greater good when it's just me and a handful of other people doing it.

toasterlovin 8y ago

It may seem counterintuitive, but if you care about the environment, you should have children. I wrote a whole blog post on this, but the gist is that people are going to have children whatever you decide to do. If people like you, who are thoughtful and conscientious about the future of our species, decide not to have children, then the world will just be filled with the offspring of people who don't really care about the future of our species. And those children will share both the nature and nurture of their parents. My blog post: http://www.richardjones.org/kids-are-good-for-the-environment/ http://www.richardjones.org/kids-are-good-for-the-environmen...

skh 8y ago
What you write makes sense but I don't feel right about having children. The world sucks and it will suck much more in the coming decades. I have no desire to put my progeny through that mess.
ForHackernews 8y ago
This only makes sense if you assume "caring about the environment" is highly heritable and that individuals "caring about the environment" in the abstract somehow translates into large-scale public policy that's better for the environment (I would suggest available evidence shows that it does not).
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  As I pointed out, children get their nature and their nurture from their parents. And I don't know how you can reconcile the success of the environmental movement in the developed world in the past 5 decades with your position that somehow people caring about the environment doesn't have any real world effects.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    CO2 emissions are not just rising but rising faster. We haven't even gotten the second derivative pointed in the necessary direction.

kamaal 8y ago

>>It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. And then who pays for your social security checks, pensions and other debt that was raised to fight wars?