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An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound to Happen?
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoAntinatalism [Efilism] is a philosophical view that deems procreation to be unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism
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- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoIt occurs to me that Efilists don't need to do much of anything. Normies (us) are making parenting more untenable every year. My parents (and their gen) parented some hours a week. My kids required 24/7 adulting. Free-ranging was eradicated by car culture and trespassing culture. Adult-free peer time - where critical social and personal growth happened - was replaced with a series adult-curated, adult-populated boxes. Kids spend their days moving from one box to the next. Compounding the above is the difficulty/impossibility for a modern couple to fully support themselves on two typical wages. I don't know that we need any Efilist's help to end procreation.
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- greatquux 1y agoIt's true, though I try not to do this, I really try. But it's so easy for some kids (like my 11-year old firstborn) to just go play Roblox or Pokemon or watch stupid shorts on YouTube unless I'm enforcing some activity for him. And yeah I have screen time restrictions. It's a constant battle with him. We spend quality time with him for sure, and the taekwondo and drum lessons are great extra activities. But he only has one best friend he has regular hanging out time with, and one neighbor kid he knows that he plays with due to less people around us having kids. Family has spread out too, also due to needing to have dual incomes and car culture. So yeah all these contribute to the birth rate going down, but it's not so much parents fault entirely as it is the modern world's.
- mschuster91 1y ago> Free-ranging was eradicated by car culture and trespassing culture. Add on top of that the disappearance of shopping malls, arcade centers and other "third places". The game arcades went during my parents' generation. My generation, we had electronics stores that had game consoles where one could play some car race game or whatnot against a friend. Today's youth? They got to deal with "mosquito youth repellent".
- wlesieutre 1y agoThe last arcade in my hometown hung on until 2003. Adults didn't like it because they heard someone bought weed there once. Which was probably true, but the drug fear mongering was another big piece of making sure kids didn't have anywhere they were allowed to exist without adult supervision.
- lesser23 1y agoThe term is helicopter parenting. Studies have shown children born after 1995 are significantly more stunted (they grow up more “slowly”) due to this. There are interesting consequences like, for example, the condition of college campuses and identity politics. There are also laws that punish parents for allowing their children unstructured, safe, adult-free time (the expansion of the definition of “neglect”). A great book called “The Coddling of the American Mind” covers this and more in great detail. These days, we have more than ever replaced the physical helicopter parent with devices.
- scripturial 1y agoWhere did these laws come from, why do they exist? My childhood (independent playing outside, going to the park by yourself, etc…) is not literally illegal, or did these laws always exist and no one cared?
- jleyank 1y agoKeep in mind that ancient times (60's and 70's) also saw save-somebody's-ass politics. There's been a strong undercurrent of (counter)culture on campuses since then. Perhaps that was always the case, as the students would be the ones being shot on the barricades. At least that's why musicals and histories say. Perhaps the lack of an external threat or insufficient motivation vs. failure leads to a lack of focus? Certainly, helicoptering does horrible things to the younger participants. Might that see-saw from generation to generation, or have we not seen those participants becoming parents yet? I recall "good luck, we'll do all we can do to help you. F*ck up, and you're on your own...".
- comrade1234 1y agoPrevious generations just yolo’d it when it came to having kids. My parents were definitely not financially secure when they had us and we suffered for it our entire lives and my brother and I were a huge burden. No easy answer. If you want kids maybe not think about it so much and just yolo it. For my wife and I we didn’t really want kids in he first place and we’re much better off for it.
- chmod775 1y ago> For my wife and I we didn’t really want kids in he first place and we’re much better off for it. And that's the crux of the issue: Individuals in most western societies are currently better off not having children, while society as a whole absolutely needs individuals to have a certain amount of children or run into serious issues down the line. Many societies (for example South Korea) are feeling this more and more. Way too many old people and not enough young to run the country and take care of the old. In those places not enough is being done supporting those who chose to have children for everyone's sake. Foregoing children and having saved for retirement does not mean much if in 40 years you're competing for the now extremely limited basic services against people who are in the same boat. Worse, young people may now decide that they don't feel like feeding and providing for a large population of old people through sky-high taxes and being the victim of rent-seeking. They just might throw in the towel and leave for a more functional country, using their now higher income to support their own parents, but none of the others. Who now takes care of the childless? It's going to be human misery on a scale you would expect to see in a modern society.
- delta_p_delta_x 1y ago> It occurs to me that Efilists don't need to do much of anything. Quite. The fertility rate is plummeting worldwide. I'd suggest these 'Efilists' visit South Korea to get their fix of low fertility. Even the nice Scandinavian countries are struggling to get their fertility rates anywhere near replacement—they are all at around 1.4 to 1.5 children per woman. At this rate we will erase ourselves in about 200 years.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago> At this rate we will erase ourselves in about 200 years. Not at all. Two hundred years is, what, 8 generations? (1.5/2)^8 = 0.1. We'd have a tenth the population in 200 years, so 800 million people. That may erase modern civilization, but it won't erase us.
- protocolture 1y ago>At this rate we will erase ourselves in about 200 years. Hang on let me check how much horse manure london is covered with rn and get back to you.
- UncleMeat 1y agoThe global population is still rising. Erase ourselves?
- delta_p_delta_x 1y agoPerhaps I was being a tad hyperbolic, but yes, the human population is strongly expected to collapse after a peak some time this century. To precisely what extent is still debated, but there is consensus that it will happen. Many studies have consistently revised and brought forward their 'peak population' estimates over the past two decades. In 2000, the estimate was around twelve billion by 2150. In 2025, whether humanity will reach even ten billion by 2075 is in question. It is highly expected that many sub-Saharan countries will reach replacement rate by the mid-century. China's population has already started falling. Many Indian states are below replacement. Nigeria—a good proxy for the rest of Africa—was expected to reach ~900 million by 2100 in 2012; in 2024, that estimate was essentially halved. There is a strong correlation between education levels and emancipation (especially for girls and women), improved sanitation and health care (which means easier access to contraceptives), and fertility rate. This is what drove the fertility rate collapse in the post-war period for much of the West and East Asia. Further reductions are a result of worse work-life balance (in the case of the 'Asian tigers'), a desire to enjoy one's freedom in young adulthood (coupled with a desire to 'stick it to society'), a lack of 'a village to raise a child' in urban lifestyles, and more.
- skissane 1y agoIf normies don't procreate, then the non-normies will – e.g. high TFR ultra-conservative religious minorities such as the Amish, ultra-Orthodox Jews, traditionalist Catholics, quiverfull Evangelicals, Salafists, Velayat-e Faqih Shi'a, etc You may eventually find that the normies dwindle and begin to die out, while the non-normies grow and spread and spread – those non-normies may eventually become the new normies
- rayiner 1y agoMore resources for my kids.
- saagarjha 1y agoYou mean more work for them to support all the retirees.
- rayiner 1y agoAssumes that someone will support the retirees. Especially in multi-ethnic societies like the U.S., you’ll have a majority non-white working population with a majority white retired population. The lack of affinity between the groups will make it much easier to sharply cut retirement benefits.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoThe largest voter bloc will be old people, or soon to be old people. They don’t need affinity for each other, just themselves.
- skissane 1y agoMy mother turns 76 this year, and she’s still practising medicine - she no longer has a permanent position, but she’ll work two weeks as a locum in one place, take a few weeks off, spend another couple of weeks as a locum somewhere else, etc. In my grandparents’ generation, people often retired in their 50s and had another 30-40 years left to live. If you don’t stop working until more than half way through your 70s, you might only have another 10-15 years of life left to financially support instead of 30-40, which makes it more likely you’ll be able to do so with your own accumulated retirement savings instead of having to rely on the taxpayer
- jimbokun 1y agoAntinatalism is the default world view in most of the world. Birth rates are plummeting and most people are far more passionate arguing reasons to not have children than the opposite.
- rayiner 1y ago“Antinatalism” is arguably distinct phenomena in individualist societies like the U.S. versus collectivist societies like Asia. The latter were heavily propagandized in the 20th century to believe that lowering birth rates was key to societal progress. It’s not a moral stance against children.
- jimbokun 1y agoMaybe. It’s striking that birth rates are plummeting globally across very different cultures. It may be the reasons are completely different in different places, despite it happening everywhere all at once. Or there could be common causes that are at work all over the world.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoThat is because a woman’s cost of having a child is roughly the same across all cultures. Not just the biological costs and risks of pregnancy/childbirth/breastfeeding/infant rearing, but the financial cost that forces most to give up independence and have to rely on and compromise with someone else. If I was a woman, I could see having one kid, maybe two kids. Having 3 kids? Absolutely out of the question. I would never expect anyone to do what I saw my wife do (relatively uncomplicated pregnancies with secure finances) 3 or more times. And that is generally what you see, very few women having 3+ kids, and most with 0, 1, or 2. The large proportion of 0s and 1s really drags the TFR down to below replacement rate.
- rayiner 1y ago> but the financial cost that forces most to give up independence and have to rely on and compromise with someone else Yeah, that’s the natural state of human existence. That you say that as if it’s something obviously detrimental is bizarre.
- Aurornis 1y agoReading these comments as a parent is a reminder of much internet bubbles continue to exaggerate difficulties while ignoring anything that doesn’t fit the narrative they want to see. There’s a constant theme in the internet where people imagine the past as some golden era where life was easy and raising kids was a walk in the park. We’re supposed to believe that the modern era is uniquely terrible and raising kids is impossible. Yet looking back, history doesn’t match this narrative. I’ve worked with younger people who get ideas from Reddit that everyone in the mid 1900s was living in giant houses and living a life of luxury on the income of a mailman (literally a meme that circulates on Twitter and Reddit). They all seem confused when I explain how my grandfather on one side had to work two full-time jobs, one of which was in a mine. My other grandfather operated a farm and still had to get jobs to make ends meet. Their kids slept 2-4 to a room in small houses. They worked hard and struggled. Kids were getting jobs in their teenage years to make ends meet at the house. The list of counter-examples goes on and on, but they just won’t believe it. They’ve been so convinced by the internet that the modern world is uniquely bad and history was easy mode for raising kids. I think the weird internet communities discussed in this article are just an extreme version of this type of distortion: They gather together to reinforce some narrative, downvoting or banning the nonbelievers while rewarding those who amplify the message with upvotes, praise, and a sense of belonging. It’s scary stuff.
- sigzero 1y agoWow, I had to look that term up and yup, I had no idea there was such a thing.
- echelon 1y agoIt's gross. We should be doing the exact opposite. Intelligence is a unique spark within a cold and presumably dead universe. We should be trying to awaken the universe itself. We should be trying to extend human lifespans within the parameters of sustainability. We should be trying to extend our species beyond death and mortality and this single planet. If we master physics, we should reverse the light cone and bring back everyone who has ever lived [1]. We should turn every atom in the universe into us. And then we can try to prevent the death of the universe. Or build a new one. Or several. [1] "Down to what level?", you ask. "Beloved pets that died?" I should think even the ants. Bacteria. If we're gods, then why not?
- CuriouslyC 1y agoThe universe is on average cold, but it is most definitely not dead, we just have a chauvinistic view of "life" that serves more to make us feel special than due to any inherent logic or objective accuracy.
- echelon 1y agoWhat if every atom in the universe was a networked supercomputer? And who knows if our current views of physics and superluminal communication will stand the test of time. That's what I mean by dead. We aren't even alive yet. We're bacteria.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoYou forgot that we are the universe.
- CuriouslyC 1y agoI didn't forget, it's just not a useful thing to throw at people who have a dualistic, sapiocentric view of reality.
- incompatible 1y agoI prefer nihilism. Life is not good or bad, it just exists for no particular reason. Suffering and happiness are just signals in the nervous system, part of the information system that keeps a complex organism operating. There's no "morality" that requires that all life be destroyed, we can carry on living if we please.
- incompatible 1y agoA lot of things have been done in the name of "morality" that I find deeply unpleasant. Wiping out all life is just a particularly extreme example.
- chneu 1y agoMorality is a race to the bottom. It can be used to justify almost anything. Morals change depending on perspective.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThe more I think deeply about existence, the more it approaches nihilism. If I had a blog it would be called "Approaching Nihilism". Nihilism is the asymptote of philosophy.
- greatquux 1y agoAh, classic nihilism. I first encountered it in high-school literature class reading Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons". Good times. (Of course now you'd probably get a quick TikTok explanation and that's all.) I probably mix in a bit of that, a bit of "apatheism", some epicureanism (the original version), and a dash of solipsism (just a dash mind you), and I find myself pretty comfortable. Going to lots of jam band concerts helps too.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago‘It just exists for no reason’ is a boring axiom.
- EnergyAmy 1y ago
- colechristensen 1y agoIt is very strange to be so afraid of pain you try to prevent other people from ever living by bombing a fertility clinic.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoEven if you completely buy that line of thinking, your bomb is predictably likely to cause someone pain. So even if they believe it, they're acting inconsistent with their beliefs.
- zb3 1y agoHowever if that would end all future life, then the equation holds.
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- Johanx64 1y agoIt is very much consistent, a person - intent to have children isn't a single node. It's a whole tree. If you cut the tree at the stem you likely reduce net pain experienced by orders of magnitude. Most people don't think this way, but it is very much consistent with their views.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoBuddhism acknowledges that life is suffering. Life is never perfectly free, easy, or comfortable except for a lucky/selfish few thousand, but there is making it better and making it worse. Cutting off USAID food for starving people is bad.
- madaxe_again 1y agoChristianity holds that the suffering of Christ brought man closer to god. Hinduism holds that suffering cleanses the soul. I suppose the takeaway is that you take what you choose to take from your experiences.
- azan_ 1y agoThe manifest sounds like he was a victim of being terminally online. Sad.
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- 01100011 1y agoYeah this seems like it will be worse than the rise in cults in the 60s/70s. People applying logic to false axioms and building horrific worldviews that seem purely logical to them. I think we're due for a few doomsday cults. Unlike before, things like biohacking have brought down the barrier to lone whackos building terribly effective weapons out of sight in their garages. Buckle up.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoJust wait til these people have some time to stew in their LLM psychosis. It’s gonna be bad.
- xvector 1y agoThis guy was radicalized on Reddit. It'd be so easy to have an LLM filter out violent rhetoric that leads people down this path but I guess that'd hurt Reddit's bottom line.
- kouru225 1y ago[flagged]
- xvector 1y agoThis guy and his girlfriend(?) were radicalized on Reddit (as per his manifesto). When will Reddit be held accountable for encouraging violent rhetoric? No other major social media network gets the free pass Reddit seems to get. It's not hard to go to, say, r/Politics or AdviceAnimals and find people encouraging political violence.
- robotnikman 1y agoAnecdotal, but over the last decade I have definitely seen a rise in calls for violence on Reddit, and just more negativity in general. Mostly contained to the most popular subreddits thankfully, the small subreddits focused on niche topics thankfully stay on topic.
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- madaxe_again 1y agoI hold that these people are deeply mislead at best, not well at worst, as their argument is essentially reducto ad absurdum but taken seriously. It’s as though they’ve encountered a shard of philosophy and hold it as a universal truth. There’s also a facet of strict benthamite utilitarianism that falls into the trap of accepting reified societal norms as being objective reality - for instance, the core idea that pain and suffering are bad. On an individual level, I would hold that they are the whetstones that sharpen the soul - through crushing trauma we grow, and find new meaning, and experience “goods” in our existence hitherto unobserved or unappreciated for their nature. In a societal level, they are an essential facet of empathy, and the ability to build cohesive societies. There’s a commonality in popular philosophies in that they attempt to provide a universal framework, an imperative system of being - yet they almost inevitably lean on inherited dispositions and concepts with only selective examination of their foundations. This results in a tendency to either say that everything matters, or nothing matters. It’s hard for me to see much of a distinction between much of the large schools of philosophy and religion. Like with so many things, the truth, if indeed there is such a thing, lies in a murky middle ground, and is in the eye of the beholder. I suppose baudrillard, to my mind, has come the closest to explaining where we are, without attempting to systemise a way of being. Anyway. This kind of thing has happened, happens, and will happen, as long as there are humans to have ideas, and language to promulgate them. Fatalistic, perhaps, but manuscripts don’t burn - they just metastasise.
- Johanx64 1y ago> There’s also a facet of strict benthamite utilitarianism that falls into the trap of accepting reified societal norms as being objective reality - for instance, the core idea that pain and suffering are bad. Man, people DO vax poetic online, but when you introduce them to the blowtorch, some tweezers and a steel pipe, they don't need much convincing that pain and suffering is ... in fact ... objectively bad. They convert to recognizing the badness of pain and suffering..... very, very quickly. > I would hold that they are the whetstones that sharpen the soul You really have no idea what you're talking about, are you? How can anyone type this naive drivel?
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- burnt-resistor 1y agoTerrorist death cult. One of many who are a threat to all life. Billionaires exploiting oil ravaging the stability of the climate, "child free" virtue signalers (albeit more passively), religious nuts who insist on narrow theocratic orthodoxy, and those who outright harm others for their crazy ideas stochastically in the style of the Unabomber.
- roxolotl 1y agoIt’s wild how when you expose enough people to utilitarianism some of them become utility monsters. We’ve seen it with effective altruists(the modern ones not Singer’s initial conception), zizians, and I guess now efilists. We really need more modern moral theories which resonate with people. They all have downsides but the speed with which utilitarianism has been reduced to absurd once exposed to the internet is impressive.
- readthenotes1 1y agoOr perhaps we should review the ancient moral theories?
- EnergyAmy 1y agoWhy?
- jfengel 1y agoIt's always good to gain wider perspective. But those "ancient moral theories" existed in a time and place with which we have little familiarity, making them hard to adapt. And worse, their adapted forms already have outsized presence in our current world-views. They're often treated as if they were universals. I'd argue that we'd do better considering a wider range of moral theories from a diverse set of current cultures. Asian, African, and South American moral thinkers get short shrift in popular culture (as do native North American ones). Some of those theories also have ancient roots, but on a very different basis from the European ones we have a hard time escaping.
- rsynnott 1y ago> We really need more modern moral theories which resonate with people. They all have downsides but the speed with which utilitarianism has been reduced to absurd once exposed to the internet is impressive. I mean I think the internet is quite good at producing insane fringes for pretty much _all_ moral theories. There is no internet-proof philosophy.
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- mensetmanusman 1y ago[flagged]
- giardini 1y agowhat happens when an Efilist meets a Jain?
- disambiguation 1y agoNot exactly tech related, though it shines a light on the fringe cultural pockets facilitated by the internet - without which might not take form otherwise. As for the tragedy itself, it may be the author connecting the dots for us but it almost reads like Bartkus reacted to the emotional devastation of Sophie's cold, calculated act of assisted suicide. One version of the story is of violence in the name of an ideological crusade. The other, a broken heart and a cry for help.
- _zagj 1y agoEveryone assumed it was some ultra religious nutjob opposed to IVF, and instead it was an anti-natalist, vegan consequentialist redditor.