4 ms·

I really get nervous that this is such a widely held POV. Yes, things are bad, probably they're going to get worse (but there's also a good chance they get bett

I really get nervous that this is such a widely held POV. Yes, things are bad, probably they're going to get worse (but there's also a good chance they get better!), but not having kids seems extreme and a lot of folks seem to be tilting towards a degrowth mindset. Maybe I'm a techno-optimist but I think we're way beyond just being able to pause where we are or go back to stone age living and we should push forward and try to make a better world with technology and science. Maybe finally get some of those fusion reactors!

JohnFen 5y ago
In my opinion, a really huge factor making everything worse and harder to resolve is that there are simply too many people. A degrowth mindset is an important part of pushing forward to make a better world.
yodsanklai 5y ago
> we should push forward and try to make a better world with technology and science I'd argue that technology and science is the problem, not the solution. For instance, fusion reactors would simply give us more energy to destroy ecosystems faster than what we can do now.
lkrubner 5y ago
The so-called Great Stagnation, the lack of big technology breakthroughs since 1970, the stagnation in physics, the stagnation of wages, the slower rate of growth of productivity, the lack of automation, the political paralysis that has lead to 50 years of under-funded infrastructure, all of these things combine to make a pretty good case against techno-optimism. Many people found it natural to be techno-optimists in 1930, for obvious reasons, given what they had just lived through. But nowadays techno-optimism is a matter of pure faith, like a religion. The best book on this subject is "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War" by Robert J. Gordon. https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/dp/0691175802/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1B18IXJ9WV19A&dchild=1&keywords=the+rise+and+fall+of+american+growth&qid=1633961741&sprefix=the+rise+and+fall+of+american+%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/d...
- nkohari 5y ago
  I've heard this argument before, but it's incredibly hard for me to buy it. The 50 years since 1970 have brought us the personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone, each of which has entirely reshaped the world. That's just from the perspective of the average person; there have also been huge leaps in manufacturing, energy, medicine, biotechnology, genetics, and so on. Many of these problems are political/societal, and not technical: the stagnation of wages in particular. I would argue that instead of a lack of change being the problem, the issue is that society is still trying to desperately adapt to the increased rate of change that's happened during the last century.
  - lkrubner 5y ago
    The rate of technological growth has slowed down by any measure that historians and economists know how to use. The book does a much better job making this argument than I can in this short Hacker News comment, but here is a summary of the argument that I recently wrote: Peter Drucker has argued that the 60 years leading up to 1914 were the most innovative years in human history. A person born in 1860 and dying in 1940 would live through the first lightbulb, the first power plant, the first power grid, the first electrified city, the first electric street cars, the first combustion engine, the first cars and trucks, the first telephones and then the growth of the telephone networks to include every household, the first great oil boom, the first submarines and the exploration of the underwater seas, the development of germ theory, the sterilization of the hospitals and so the first safe surgeries, combined with the first true anesthesias, the first airplanes, the first radio as telegram and then in 1920 the ability of radio to carry the human voice, the invention of the television, the first sulfa drugs followed by the invention of the first true antibiotics, the first plastics, the invention of textiles made of plastics (nylon), and so much more than I can list. A person born in 1860 and dying in 1940 was born during one epoch of the human race and died in a completely different one, much more so than any person born in any other year. The best and most recent book on this subject is "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War” by Robert J. Gordon. [ Also, you write about "personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone" as three separate inventions, but it's really just 2: computers and better multi-plexing, and even the multi-plexing is because computers got better. ]
jdavis703 5y ago
Some of this fear may depend on the environment one lives in. Where I live we’re breathing in wildfire smoke, which most likely will be shown to be bad for kids. Even on a good day, the zip code I can afford to live in (as a well paid software engineer) has some of the highest rates of childhood asthma from highway and port pollution.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Degrowth is the only way forward if human civilization is to resemble anything we see today. We are far too behind in technology to make any dent on climate change without first reducing economic activity enough to be near 0 emissions, and even then all proposed solutions are extremely risky. I have no opinion on whether this will require human population reduction (and I hope not) but definitely economic reduction is in our future. Whether that will be through catastrophic climate change + large-scale migration + war, or whether it will be through conscious effort to avoid such worse case scenarios is still up to us. For now, it seems we are chosing the former.
tomrod 5y ago
I think the negative climate view is one facet of a larger set of factors facing modern parenting. (1) Stagnant real wages with decreasing buying power means that even with two incomes financial stability can be tenuous (2) decrease in community interaction means parents must give more focused attention on their kids, versus letting them run with the neighborhood kids. (3) housing prices push necessary space into extravagant luxury (4) political gridlock leads to a sense of ennui and fatalism. The information sources used to get clarity about the world are or are accused of profiteering and muckracking, leading at least one side of the political aisle to have existential fear about crowds, the other to have existential fear of their neighbors (5) brazen disregard of the law being applied to elites degrades the reliability of justice. People pick up on this (6) technocrats think the solution is more technology. Were we facing an issue as simple as lowering fixed costs and improving systemic inefficiency, as an economist I'm on board. However, I think the issue is more political (power-structure) than economic, and technology favors the currently empowered (as they have funds).
- giantg2 5y ago
  "brazen disregard of the law being applied to elites degrades the reliability of justice. People pick up on this" Not just the elites. Law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion can be (is) abused at all levels. It can create bias based on income, race, status (ie if you are part of that same system as a LEO etc), political identity, etc. Rule of law has become a joke and it's essentially an oligarchy since the people in power can choose to ignore the law and we lack proper oversight of the people who run the system.
- jacobsenscott 5y ago
  Obligatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM
- tacocataco 5y ago
  Another thing I would add is full automation. Yeah it's unlikely I would live to see the automation of entire career paths, but not for my kids. Right now, the working class is needed for it's labor. I'm sure you've all seen the hiring signs. That isn't going to last forever. Can you expect a better life for your kids if they may not have a job? So much would have to change to make full automation a good thing for everyone.
ajmurmann 5y ago
I am torn between degrwoth and rejecting it. I am absolutely with you on the techno optimism. I have no doubt that we could exceed our current standard of living while cutting down dramatically on carbon emissions. I have two worries thought that keep pushing me towards degrowth: Timeline and incentives. It might already be too late to stop catastrophic climate change, so we need to cut down dramatically right now. Not in 5 years or later. Without things like high carbon tax and credits in place we just don't have the incentive structure to get enough innovation and wide adoption to make a difference with technology in a meaningful timeframe. Instead we still have countries subsidies or give tax cut to fossil fuel companies. It's bonkers. We could solve this with technology in the needed timeframe, but I don't see the political will and ability to create the right incentives and get this done globally in the needed timeframe.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Do we have the production capacity and technology to eliminate carbon emissions in 5 years? Or will it require lifestyle adjustments? My understanding is that the manufacturing/production sector probably could not handle such a large change so quickly. For example, sourcing materials for vehicle batteries and infrastructure updates to support charging. We could probably cut back dramatically, maybe even to zero, in 5 years. But it would require more than just the technology today. It would require massive political and lifestyle changes.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  If it's this hard to get political consensus on carbon neutrality, degrowth will be quite the tall order. The reactive pushback against it could do more harm than good. If the political left starts going against the "jobs" narrative and actively pushes against economic growth, there's just no practical way to win an election like that. Instead of degrowth, what about just taxing high-income conspicuous consumption, for example a tax on luxury cars, boats.
- zip1234 5y ago
  Any solution requires political will. The simplest, easiest, highest likelihood of success solution is a pollution (carbon) tax. If it started small and ramped up a little each year, people may not even notice too much.
joeberon 5y ago
I actually think a LOT of young people are techno-pessimistic (i.e. see technology as a thing that has ruined their lives, many people with extreme attention issues exacerbated by technology, etc.)
- giantg2 5y ago
  I can't imagine growing up under constant surveillance today. I assume this limits their ability to develop as adults when they feel that any "unapproved" comment could lead to reprimand, legal issues, etc. Essentially none of the freedom that privacy provides, and the growth that comes from learning how to responsibly use that freedom.
  - joeberon 5y ago
    Yeah I just watched a video about this actually, about how we all continuously monitor our own actions and motivations based on society much more than before, due to continuous feedback through our phones and computers, both social media and while at work with various continuous metrics. Even small amounts of regular surveillance add up to total continuous self correction and self-shaming. For that matter, I can't even relax on Sundays anymore.
shmel 5y ago
Why do you think it is extreme and why does it bother you whether other people have kids at all? Any argument I can think of is a variation of "we are all in this together", be it "survival of the humanity" or "who will fund my retirement?" However, the general trend of ignoring the climate change shows that most people absolutely don't want to experience a mild inconvenience for the sake of greater good. So, why should I have kids in such environment?
fighterpilot 5y ago
It's a widely held view only on the left. An interesting thing will be the consequences on demographics. Conservatives have lots of kids and if the liberal birth rate keeps dropping, what will things look like in 50 years?
comeonseriously 5y ago
> technology and science Kind of hard when so many reject these things.
ALittleLight 5y ago
An optimistic take is that the pessimists will have a smaller share of the future since they aren't reproducing.
lamontcg 5y ago
> I really get nervous that this is such a widely held POV. Start doing something about climate change then. Something that seems to be missed in these discussions is that the argument over how bad the impacts will actually be (vs how bad the childfree people think it'll be) aren't actually relevant. It is a problem and the issue is that we've largely tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. That creates a feeling that we're incapable of solving any of societies problems which is probably the psychological root of the issue. And wanking about fusion reactors doesn't start fixing anything. We can't even do anything to eliminate and shut down scam phone call schemes, which is a problem created entirely by technology. Start doing things to address climate change, address wealth inequality, address private issues caused by technology and other technology ills rather than just blindly hoping that more technology will magically fix the problems caused by prior technology. Those would all increase confidence. Right now what we have is a crisis of confidence in society on the whole.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  Technology is the only fix to climate change.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    It won't magically happen by itself.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    Technology alone can't fix climate change. We're too far down the path now. We need technology and a radical change in how we live.

JohnFen 5y ago

In my opinion, a really huge factor making everything worse and harder to resolve is that there are simply too many people. A degrowth mindset is an important part of pushing forward to make a better world.

yodsanklai 5y ago

> we should push forward and try to make a better world with technology and science I'd argue that technology and science is the problem, not the solution. For instance, fusion reactors would simply give us more energy to destroy ecosystems faster than what we can do now.

lkrubner 5y ago

The so-called Great Stagnation, the lack of big technology breakthroughs since 1970, the stagnation in physics, the stagnation of wages, the slower rate of growth of productivity, the lack of automation, the political paralysis that has lead to 50 years of under-funded infrastructure, all of these things combine to make a pretty good case against techno-optimism. Many people found it natural to be techno-optimists in 1930, for obvious reasons, given what they had just lived through. But nowadays techno-optimism is a matter of pure faith, like a religion. The best book on this subject is "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War" by Robert J. Gordon. https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/dp/0691175802/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1B18IXJ9WV19A&dchild=1&keywords=the+rise+and+fall+of+american+growth&qid=1633961741&sprefix=the+rise+and+fall+of+american+%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/d...

nkohari 5y ago
I've heard this argument before, but it's incredibly hard for me to buy it. The 50 years since 1970 have brought us the personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone, each of which has entirely reshaped the world. That's just from the perspective of the average person; there have also been huge leaps in manufacturing, energy, medicine, biotechnology, genetics, and so on. Many of these problems are political/societal, and not technical: the stagnation of wages in particular. I would argue that instead of a lack of change being the problem, the issue is that society is still trying to desperately adapt to the increased rate of change that's happened during the last century.
- lkrubner 5y ago
  The rate of technological growth has slowed down by any measure that historians and economists know how to use. The book does a much better job making this argument than I can in this short Hacker News comment, but here is a summary of the argument that I recently wrote: Peter Drucker has argued that the 60 years leading up to 1914 were the most innovative years in human history. A person born in 1860 and dying in 1940 would live through the first lightbulb, the first power plant, the first power grid, the first electrified city, the first electric street cars, the first combustion engine, the first cars and trucks, the first telephones and then the growth of the telephone networks to include every household, the first great oil boom, the first submarines and the exploration of the underwater seas, the development of germ theory, the sterilization of the hospitals and so the first safe surgeries, combined with the first true anesthesias, the first airplanes, the first radio as telegram and then in 1920 the ability of radio to carry the human voice, the invention of the television, the first sulfa drugs followed by the invention of the first true antibiotics, the first plastics, the invention of textiles made of plastics (nylon), and so much more than I can list. A person born in 1860 and dying in 1940 was born during one epoch of the human race and died in a completely different one, much more so than any person born in any other year. The best and most recent book on this subject is "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War” by Robert J. Gordon. [ Also, you write about "personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone" as three separate inventions, but it's really just 2: computers and better multi-plexing, and even the multi-plexing is because computers got better. ]

jdavis703 5y ago

Some of this fear may depend on the environment one lives in. Where I live we’re breathing in wildfire smoke, which most likely will be shown to be bad for kids. Even on a good day, the zip code I can afford to live in (as a well paid software engineer) has some of the highest rates of childhood asthma from highway and port pollution.

tsimionescu 5y ago

Degrowth is the only way forward if human civilization is to resemble anything we see today. We are far too behind in technology to make any dent on climate change without first reducing economic activity enough to be near 0 emissions, and even then all proposed solutions are extremely risky. I have no opinion on whether this will require human population reduction (and I hope not) but definitely economic reduction is in our future. Whether that will be through catastrophic climate change + large-scale migration + war, or whether it will be through conscious effort to avoid such worse case scenarios is still up to us. For now, it seems we are chosing the former.

tomrod 5y ago

I think the negative climate view is one facet of a larger set of factors facing modern parenting. (1) Stagnant real wages with decreasing buying power means that even with two incomes financial stability can be tenuous (2) decrease in community interaction means parents must give more focused attention on their kids, versus letting them run with the neighborhood kids. (3) housing prices push necessary space into extravagant luxury (4) political gridlock leads to a sense of ennui and fatalism. The information sources used to get clarity about the world are or are accused of profiteering and muckracking, leading at least one side of the political aisle to have existential fear about crowds, the other to have existential fear of their neighbors (5) brazen disregard of the law being applied to elites degrades the reliability of justice. People pick up on this (6) technocrats think the solution is more technology. Were we facing an issue as simple as lowering fixed costs and improving systemic inefficiency, as an economist I'm on board. However, I think the issue is more political (power-structure) than economic, and technology favors the currently empowered (as they have funds).

giantg2 5y ago
"brazen disregard of the law being applied to elites degrades the reliability of justice. People pick up on this" Not just the elites. Law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion can be (is) abused at all levels. It can create bias based on income, race, status (ie if you are part of that same system as a LEO etc), political identity, etc. Rule of law has become a joke and it's essentially an oligarchy since the people in power can choose to ignore the law and we lack proper oversight of the people who run the system.
jacobsenscott 5y ago
Obligatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM
tacocataco 5y ago
Another thing I would add is full automation. Yeah it's unlikely I would live to see the automation of entire career paths, but not for my kids. Right now, the working class is needed for it's labor. I'm sure you've all seen the hiring signs. That isn't going to last forever. Can you expect a better life for your kids if they may not have a job? So much would have to change to make full automation a good thing for everyone.

ajmurmann 5y ago

I am torn between degrwoth and rejecting it. I am absolutely with you on the techno optimism. I have no doubt that we could exceed our current standard of living while cutting down dramatically on carbon emissions. I have two worries thought that keep pushing me towards degrowth: Timeline and incentives. It might already be too late to stop catastrophic climate change, so we need to cut down dramatically right now. Not in 5 years or later. Without things like high carbon tax and credits in place we just don't have the incentive structure to get enough innovation and wide adoption to make a difference with technology in a meaningful timeframe. Instead we still have countries subsidies or give tax cut to fossil fuel companies. It's bonkers. We could solve this with technology in the needed timeframe, but I don't see the political will and ability to create the right incentives and get this done globally in the needed timeframe.

giantg2 5y ago
Do we have the production capacity and technology to eliminate carbon emissions in 5 years? Or will it require lifestyle adjustments? My understanding is that the manufacturing/production sector probably could not handle such a large change so quickly. For example, sourcing materials for vehicle batteries and infrastructure updates to support charging. We could probably cut back dramatically, maybe even to zero, in 5 years. But it would require more than just the technology today. It would require massive political and lifestyle changes.
fighterpilot 5y ago
If it's this hard to get political consensus on carbon neutrality, degrowth will be quite the tall order. The reactive pushback against it could do more harm than good. If the political left starts going against the "jobs" narrative and actively pushes against economic growth, there's just no practical way to win an election like that. Instead of degrowth, what about just taxing high-income conspicuous consumption, for example a tax on luxury cars, boats.
zip1234 5y ago
Any solution requires political will. The simplest, easiest, highest likelihood of success solution is a pollution (carbon) tax. If it started small and ramped up a little each year, people may not even notice too much.

joeberon 5y ago

I actually think a LOT of young people are techno-pessimistic (i.e. see technology as a thing that has ruined their lives, many people with extreme attention issues exacerbated by technology, etc.)

giantg2 5y ago
I can't imagine growing up under constant surveillance today. I assume this limits their ability to develop as adults when they feel that any "unapproved" comment could lead to reprimand, legal issues, etc. Essentially none of the freedom that privacy provides, and the growth that comes from learning how to responsibly use that freedom.
- joeberon 5y ago
  Yeah I just watched a video about this actually, about how we all continuously monitor our own actions and motivations based on society much more than before, due to continuous feedback through our phones and computers, both social media and while at work with various continuous metrics. Even small amounts of regular surveillance add up to total continuous self correction and self-shaming. For that matter, I can't even relax on Sundays anymore.

shmel 5y ago

Why do you think it is extreme and why does it bother you whether other people have kids at all? Any argument I can think of is a variation of "we are all in this together", be it "survival of the humanity" or "who will fund my retirement?" However, the general trend of ignoring the climate change shows that most people absolutely don't want to experience a mild inconvenience for the sake of greater good. So, why should I have kids in such environment?

fighterpilot 5y ago

It's a widely held view only on the left. An interesting thing will be the consequences on demographics. Conservatives have lots of kids and if the liberal birth rate keeps dropping, what will things look like in 50 years?

comeonseriously 5y ago

> technology and science Kind of hard when so many reject these things.

ALittleLight 5y ago

An optimistic take is that the pessimists will have a smaller share of the future since they aren't reproducing.

lamontcg 5y ago

> I really get nervous that this is such a widely held POV. Start doing something about climate change then. Something that seems to be missed in these discussions is that the argument over how bad the impacts will actually be (vs how bad the childfree people think it'll be) aren't actually relevant. It is a problem and the issue is that we've largely tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. That creates a feeling that we're incapable of solving any of societies problems which is probably the psychological root of the issue. And wanking about fusion reactors doesn't start fixing anything. We can't even do anything to eliminate and shut down scam phone call schemes, which is a problem created entirely by technology. Start doing things to address climate change, address wealth inequality, address private issues caused by technology and other technology ills rather than just blindly hoping that more technology will magically fix the problems caused by prior technology. Those would all increase confidence. Right now what we have is a crisis of confidence in society on the whole.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago
Technology is the only fix to climate change.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  It won't magically happen by itself.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  Technology alone can't fix climate change. We're too far down the path now. We need technology and a radical change in how we live.