7 ms·

Real Biological Clock Is You're Going to Die (2018)

88 points by moultano 9mo ago

gavmor 9mo ago
> That entire group of middle-aged people, who made up the adult world when my father was a child, is gone. That really got me. How can I bring these people, this "adult world" forward in time as a gift to my children?
- carbonguy 9mo ago
  In one sense, you can't; the world they lived in lived with them, and when they were gone their world was gone with them too. In another sense, you can't *avoid* that world; the world they lived in was one they *created*, physically, and much of it is still here with us, shaping us as they shaped it. And remember, none of the people who came before us ever experienced anything but pieces of their world, just like we only ever experience pieces of our own. But you can at least try to show your kids as many of those pieces as possible.
- tazjin 9mo ago
  You don't need to. This is the first generation where there's millions of hours of online podcasts with tech bros for them to enjoy. In general, we're a uniquely well-documented set of generations, even if we exclude all the stuff that will be lost when Google/Facebook/VK etc. collapse.
  - gavmor 9mo ago
    > podcasts with tech bros That ain't me, and it certainly ain't the adult milieu of my childhood.
moultano 9mo ago
This essay was in part an inspiration for my (much more upbeat) essay which was on here yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452763, and I linked it at the end, but I thought it deserved a submission on its own.
- bythreads 9mo ago
  I liked it, made me reflect and consider - not always easy these days. Happy new years and thanks
- rhubarbtree 9mo ago
  I find your essay more downbeat. I actually disagree with it too, as it misses the fact that children aren’t really aware of their lives in the same way adults are. Life begins at 18 imo.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
tqi 9mo ago
While I understand and empathize with what this article is getting at ("If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children."), I strongly disagree. I think people should have kids when they are ready. Make an assessment to the best of their ability when exactly that time has arrived. Then, don't dwell on it further. Especially don't blog about it. There are no counterfactuals, this kind of reflection can only serve to make us miserable.
- android521 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - khazhoux 9mo ago
    It would be amazing if you could explain what woke means in this context.
- moultano 9mo ago
  I think most great parents didn't feel ready, and in some sense not feeling ready is evidence of the kind of conscientiousness that makes you a great parent. I think it is a valuable service to push people who want kids but aren't sure when to have them to have them earlier than they otherwise would. You never know how difficult it will be for you until you start trying.
  - rhubarbtree 9mo ago
    I’m about to become a parent, about 10 years later than I’d have liked. Main reason for that is just not meeting the right person, pandemic, money etc. But I only feel ready now. I’m a late developer in general (aren’t all software engineers haha arf) and I honestly felt too free spirited in the past. Many friends had kids a decade or more ago, and they are looking forward to their kids leaving home so they can travel etc. But I’ve already done all that, I have nothing to devote my life to now other than work and family. In my case at least, being ready was a real thing. It’s really about maturity and having had enough of a life myself.
sublinear 9mo ago
> But this idea of certainty is a sham, a distraction, something to turn your attention away from the only truly certain thing, which is that your time will run out. I hard disagree with this entire blog post. What an incredibly depressing, judgmental, and self-centered way to live life. It doesn't matter when you do things as long as you are satisfied with the results. You should focus more on deeply appreciating all possible results life has to offer than making any particular decision. This is how you find certainty. You must have imagination and see how things would change even if, for better or worse, most of those things never come true. As a matter of fact, none of them will except for the ones you choose. You must always be visualizing what comes next, or else of course you'd be lost and scared. Everything single second of your life is compromises before you even realize you're making them, and there are no right answers. If you can't handle that, you'll never feel happy.
- rand846633 9mo ago
  Funny, for me the article reads like a ode to saying yes to life, not the other way round..
  - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
    I see it as an argument to have kids earlier, which is rare outside of just "cus we did in our day". I feel there was a cut off maybe 90s someone has a baby you honour them 2000s onwards you feel sorry for them! Everyone wants freedom and pleasure because nothing lasts forever (!). So within agnostic/atheist etc. with the no kids movement it is good to have a balance and then people decide what to do. Make a decision considering the tradeoff.
empressplay 9mo ago
I have super-bad genetics. Not so bad that I have an entirely terrible life, but bad enough that I wouldn't wish them on a child. I know they would hate me, since I am aware of how bad my genetics are. People who have children think having children is the right choice, generally. They have to, to find meaning in all of the work of having and raising a child. That's understandable. But it is by no means the right choice for everyone. I had a lousy childhood -- not just because of my genetics. There's no license, no mandatory training for having a child. You can just have one. Many parents are not qualified, by any measure. This keeps therapists well-employed. Only have a child if you would like to be that child. Only have a child if you feel competent, and able, and certain that when they are an adult they will not resent you -- yes, it's natural to have some resentment for your parents, but this is not the sort of resentment I am talking about. Do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have a child if you're just looking for 'legacy'. Write a book. Give to charity. But this is a terrible reason to have a child! Don't.
- ggggffggggg 9mo ago
  > Only have a child if you feel… certain that when they are an adult they will not resent you. Resenting one’s parents, even like, a really really lot, is a small price indeed to pay to be alive. The other option is to not exist.
  - card_zero 9mo ago
    How can I not exist if I don't even exist?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- silisili 9mo ago
  > Do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have a child if you're just looking for 'legacy' Agreed with that. I couldn't even tell you the names of any of my great grandparents, much less anything above.
- simonask 9mo ago
lencastre 9mo ago
it’s never the right time, not everyone deserves to have kids, and not every kid deserves the parents they got, still, it has to be part of the meaning of life, to see something that is your blood, discover, play, become a responsible adult and one day hopefully decided that it is worth to also have children of their own happy 2026
- fruitworks 9mo ago
  no one deserves to have kids
leeoniya 9mo ago
> Did we choose the age at which we would have children? What does it mean to choose? we planned to have a kid by our early thirties. she specifically wanted one by 30. we were both healthy, financially stable with solid careers. then came multiple miscarriages, 10 years of background/foreground stress, and IVF. now we finally have two healthy ones. i think daily about those 10 years we've lost to spend with our kids while still younger and able to do activities that i still enjoy like snowboarding, mountain biking, etc. thankfully i'll still be able to do some of it, but man, it has been rough. my awesome father-in-law died of cancer 9mo before his grandson's birth; the only thing he ever knew were our ongoing struggles :( something else that happens is that all your same-aged friends with kids...they have different lives now. you can't talk to them about the same child struggles / tips in real time, the kids don't go to school together or know the same people; they're a generation apart. it becomes an isolating event when the delay is long enough. despite all that, when i think of where i was financially then and now (and what i did in those 10 years to get from there to here that would not have happened otherwise), and that if i had a kid 10 years ago it would be a different [probably worse] kid instead of the adorable 2.5yo that runs to me each morning now, i feel a lot better. my advice would not necessarily be to start earlier, but if you've decided to procreate and are consciously deferring it until the "right" time, just expect the really, really unexpected.
- duttish 9mo ago
  For decades the discussion in schools have been around "this is how you avoid unwanted pregnancy", safe sex and all of that. With our(northern Europe) crashing fertility rate there's now also discussions about adding on "when the woman is 25 this happens and you're this likely to get pregnant, at 30 it's like this...", just so that people can plan and try for the family they want. If one wants 3 kids and don't want IVF you should apparently start around when the woman is 25-28 or something like that? But who's financially secure at 25?
  - aziaziazi 9mo ago
    > But who's financially secure at 25? Those backed up by their government?
fellowniusmonk 9mo ago
I was born with a heart defect that will kill me young. I spent my youth waking up from surgeries until I became disappointed I'd woken up. This author is still just a tourist of death going through what I view as an early developmental stage of death realization and their view is effectively just myopic shaming because they had their first realization. My parents died before I turned 20 and 28. Death is horrible and loss is horrible but each person gets to pick their meaning generation, that's what makes humans fucking cool. We are like a random forest of meaning generation, an epicenter of complex meaning creation, the plurality and uniqueness of paths is critical, and each of us gets to decide what our meaning exploration/creation will entail, and no one can rationally shame us for that. We are all very special. Each and every person. We are the unique meaning generators of the universe, like stars emit photons we emit complex meaning, there is no entity we have observed that has explained to the universe the how and why of bird flight, we generated the how and why of that, we are meaning generating organs of the universe bootstrapped by simpler meaning in rna and dna and each one of us is rare. Complex meaning generation, storage and emission is still in it's infancy from our empirical observations we can't predict how far into the future meaning generation will reach or what it will accomplish, we can't ex ante predict how important we are, no one can tell us we won't be very important to the casual chain of the universe, it simply cannot be computed ahead of time. As a child I read the book version of A Baker's Dozen, a true story about an efficiency expert with a heart defect that had 12 children and dies at the end while calling his wife. Each person generates unique meaning in the universe and the one thing we get to do is decide what our unique meaning exploration path is, no person is guaranteed to see any time with their kids, guaranteed to want to have kids, guaranteed to have a kid they enjoy being around. Decide what you intrinsically find meaningful and generate meaning, the random forrest requires the diversity of search/creation paths.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 9mo ago
(2018) Some previous discussion: 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31121453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31121453
s0ja 9mo ago
Very interesting article! Really like when people use fonts with serifs. I noticed the usage of accent aigu instead of apostrophes, was that on purpose? An accent isn‘t an apostrophe, it takes up more space horizontally. Much more obvious in this font.
rokhayakebe 9mo ago
I feel we should have children as early as possible between 18 and 30, but we should also stay together with our parents. Grandparents can raise their grandchildren. They would do a better job. The problem is now everyone wants to go on their own, separate from the community, then call modern life difficult.
- chadcmulligan 9mo ago
  I read a book that discusses this - "The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous" by Joseph Henrich. I found it interesting though I've heard some criticisms of it.
- anal_reactor 9mo ago
  Because fuck community. It's extremely rare to meet people who don't suck. My parents were never interested in me as a person, they were interested in me fulfilling their fantasy of a picture-perfect family. My aunt completely exploited her husband and then he happened to drink himself to death which was completely and unavoidably his own fault. Now she's ruining her daughter's teenage years just so that she can score popularity points among other religious nuts. When I was a kid I was the least popular in my class and I know that when you reach the bottom, literally nobody cares about you, unless they can extract something from you. It's dog eat dog. Now I'm an adult and the more I interact with general population the more it feeds my narcissism. I genuinely tried becoming a better person so that I'd have more friends but at some point I understood "it's not me, it's them". There's only so much I can do before I realize, most people aren't worth being friends with. The few people that are worth it are ridiculously difficult to find and usually have their own busy lives and chances are, the ones you happen to meet live on the other side of the city which is one hour one way.
  - 4gotunameagain 9mo ago
    Don't look at the world through the lenses of your problematic upbringing. Healthy communities exist. They are increasingly rare due to the massive shift in the way of living, but they do exist.
matt3210 9mo ago
Speak for yourself, I plan to live forever
- gond 9mo ago
  — Riker (TNG, Generations)
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
  You will. Not you you. But you.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
I (male) was very lucky and this made me realise. Had kids lateish (30) but that is due to finding soneone to do that with took that long. Being shy etc. But now I feel in 40s I am too old to have a baby! I glad I didnt wait too long. Or dont have kids at all which is fine and max on the freedom to do whatever life. I think I agree decide if you want kids then if so have them early as possible but under proviso of a good relationship and no major issues like drugs/alcohol/violence etc.
- pseudocomposer 9mo ago
  Out of curiosity, what kind of physical shape are you in? I’m nearing 40 and have wanted kids my entire life, but similarly, haven’t found the right partner. If I ever felt I was too old to have kids I’d probably have no choice but to kill myself. But I’m also in excellent physical shape and feel no physically different than I did in my 20s (other than being stronger and more coordinated now).
  - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
    I have health issues so there is that. I think most 40 yo if they go to the gym on a good routine can have the energy. Add in a reasonable job (not an AI startup with a hammock in the kitchen). But 40 you are rolling the dice. 40+ you can die from things and it is not unheard of. It is quite old in a way. You can also have issues unexpectedly that depleat capacity. Just reread your comment. Don't kill yourself!!! Help raise your niece or nephew or friends kids. You can pass on social inheritence! And you can work in a cube at Google and send half the money to kids charities.
    - dmoy 9mo ago
      > And you can work in a cube at Google and Only if you have a time machine Ain't no more cubes at big tech companies, it's all open office
  - leeoniya 9mo ago
    > If I ever felt I was too old to have kids I’d probably have no choice but to kill myself sperm quantity and quality decreases with age. studies exist that suggest higher risk of autism when father's age >= 45. you're not too old, but you should probably test & freeze some good sperm before you might actually be too old by the time you find the right person. this way you won't ever feel like you're too old to have kids. then the question becomes more of "how long and in what manner will my remaining health allow me to enjoy them"
ahf8Aithaex7Nai 9mo ago
I like the text. A few additions: not everyone has to have children. Not all of us have the opportunity to do so. It is possible to live a fulfilling life even if you have not brought children into the world. If you do not have children and it is foreseeable that you will not have any, do not let anyone convince you that you are doomed to a marginal existence. A child does not only need parents. It also needs other adults: uncles, aunts, neighbors, teachers, etc. Children need a healthy society, and everyone who contributes to this is contributing to the well-being of children. For my taste, the text also lacks a political component. Parenting is not just a personal project. It is also a service to society. The parents of a child are raising a person who will participate productively in the economy of the future. It annoys me that this is treated as a free side effect. When you realize this connection, parenthood as an imperative for personal fulfillment takes on a strong ideological connotation. The fact that so many people remain childless today is a failure at the societal level and should not be compensated for by appeals at the individual level.
Slava_Propanei 9mo ago
[dead]
RamblingCTO 9mo ago
> You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children. Love the thought. But for me I wasn't able to commit to wanting to have children because I had to learn so much about dating and what I think I deserve and what I want. I just went with the "cool uncle" (which often times hides the "I think I don't deserve love and thus sabotage myself") narrative the last decade or so and had to have the bad experiences I've had 2025 to come to the conclusion that I want a wife and kids. Sometimes your life task dictates how it goes for you and a little less grip on this journey seems beneficial to me. This article came at a perfect time for me and I will go full steam ahead to find someone to make kids with o7
metalman 9mo ago
I can only pray that there is a special heaven where sociopaths go, that is also populated with all the nialists and narcists, together at last, all there dreams writ large.
hare2eternity 9mo ago
Being a parent gets harder the older you are, not just becoming a parent which is where the focus tends to be. Yes you have fewer financial resources and less life experience, but if you want kids the best time is as soon as you can. Kids don't care about how rich you are (so long as needs are met - those concerns come later and enough will never be enough for a teenager) and they don't know that we're all making it up as you go along. Have kids at 25 means that by your early 40s you are pretty much free again but parented in times of good health. Doing the school run now and seeing parents pushing 50 with primary school aged children makes me sad for them and their kids when I see how physically shattered they look through the fatigue and stress.
- ponector 9mo ago
  >> Have kids at 25 means Means your parents are 50 and have their jobs and not able to help even if they want (which not always the case). Means woman has no career and cannot really progress, she basically sacrifices a career growth for her children.
netsharc 9mo ago
A baby born this year will have their 74th birthday in 2100. Although with the climate the way it is, it'll get progressively harder to reach old age.
helph67 9mo ago
For those wishing to delay the inevitable... "Large observational prospective epidemiological studies with adequate control of confounding and two large randomized trials support the benefits of the Mediterranean dietary pattern to increase life expectancy, reduce the risk of major chronic disease, and improve quality of life and well-being." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5902736/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5902736/

88 points by moultano 9mo ago

> That entire group of middle-aged people, who made up the adult world when my father was a child, is gone. That really got me. How can I bring these people, this "adult world" forward in time as a gift to my children?

carbonguy 9mo ago
In one sense, you can't; the world they lived in lived with them, and when they were gone their world was gone with them too. In another sense, you can't *avoid* that world; the world they lived in was one they *created*, physically, and much of it is still here with us, shaping us as they shaped it. And remember, none of the people who came before us ever experienced anything but pieces of their world, just like we only ever experience pieces of our own. But you can at least try to show your kids as many of those pieces as possible.
tazjin 9mo ago
You don't need to. This is the first generation where there's millions of hours of online podcasts with tech bros for them to enjoy. In general, we're a uniquely well-documented set of generations, even if we exclude all the stuff that will be lost when Google/Facebook/VK etc. collapse.
- gavmor 9mo ago
  > podcasts with tech bros That ain't me, and it certainly ain't the adult milieu of my childhood.

moultano 9mo ago

This essay was in part an inspiration for my (much more upbeat) essay which was on here yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452763, and I linked it at the end, but I thought it deserved a submission on its own.

bythreads 9mo ago
I liked it, made me reflect and consider - not always easy these days. Happy new years and thanks
rhubarbtree 9mo ago
I find your essay more downbeat. I actually disagree with it too, as it misses the fact that children aren’t really aware of their lives in the same way adults are. Life begins at 18 imo.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

tqi 9mo ago

While I understand and empathize with what this article is getting at ("If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children."), I strongly disagree. I think people should have kids when they are ready. Make an assessment to the best of their ability when exactly that time has arrived. Then, don't dwell on it further. Especially don't blog about it. There are no counterfactuals, this kind of reflection can only serve to make us miserable.

android521 9mo ago
[flagged]
- khazhoux 9mo ago
  It would be amazing if you could explain what woke means in this context.
moultano 9mo ago
I think most great parents didn't feel ready, and in some sense not feeling ready is evidence of the kind of conscientiousness that makes you a great parent. I think it is a valuable service to push people who want kids but aren't sure when to have them to have them earlier than they otherwise would. You never know how difficult it will be for you until you start trying.
- rhubarbtree 9mo ago
  I’m about to become a parent, about 10 years later than I’d have liked. Main reason for that is just not meeting the right person, pandemic, money etc. But I only feel ready now. I’m a late developer in general (aren’t all software engineers haha arf) and I honestly felt too free spirited in the past. Many friends had kids a decade or more ago, and they are looking forward to their kids leaving home so they can travel etc. But I’ve already done all that, I have nothing to devote my life to now other than work and family. In my case at least, being ready was a real thing. It’s really about maturity and having had enough of a life myself.

sublinear 9mo ago

> But this idea of certainty is a sham, a distraction, something to turn your attention away from the only truly certain thing, which is that your time will run out. I hard disagree with this entire blog post. What an incredibly depressing, judgmental, and self-centered way to live life. It doesn't matter when you do things as long as you are satisfied with the results. You should focus more on deeply appreciating all possible results life has to offer than making any particular decision. This is how you find certainty. You must have imagination and see how things would change even if, for better or worse, most of those things never come true. As a matter of fact, none of them will except for the ones you choose. You must always be visualizing what comes next, or else of course you'd be lost and scared. Everything single second of your life is compromises before you even realize you're making them, and there are no right answers. If you can't handle that, you'll never feel happy.

rand846633 9mo ago
Funny, for me the article reads like a ode to saying yes to life, not the other way round..
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
  I see it as an argument to have kids earlier, which is rare outside of just "cus we did in our day". I feel there was a cut off maybe 90s someone has a baby you honour them 2000s onwards you feel sorry for them! Everyone wants freedom and pleasure because nothing lasts forever (!). So within agnostic/atheist etc. with the no kids movement it is good to have a balance and then people decide what to do. Make a decision considering the tradeoff.

empressplay 9mo ago

I have super-bad genetics. Not so bad that I have an entirely terrible life, but bad enough that I wouldn't wish them on a child. I know they would hate me, since I am aware of how bad my genetics are. People who have children think having children is the right choice, generally. They have to, to find meaning in all of the work of having and raising a child. That's understandable. But it is by no means the right choice for everyone. I had a lousy childhood -- not just because of my genetics. There's no license, no mandatory training for having a child. You can just have one. Many parents are not qualified, by any measure. This keeps therapists well-employed. Only have a child if you would like to be that child. Only have a child if you feel competent, and able, and certain that when they are an adult they will not resent you -- yes, it's natural to have some resentment for your parents, but this is not the sort of resentment I am talking about. Do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have a child if you're just looking for 'legacy'. Write a book. Give to charity. But this is a terrible reason to have a child! Don't.

ggggffggggg 9mo ago
> Only have a child if you feel… certain that when they are an adult they will not resent you. Resenting one’s parents, even like, a really really lot, is a small price indeed to pay to be alive. The other option is to not exist.
- card_zero 9mo ago
  How can I not exist if I don't even exist?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
silisili 9mo ago
> Do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have a child if you're just looking for 'legacy' Agreed with that. I couldn't even tell you the names of any of my great grandparents, much less anything above.
simonask 9mo ago

lencastre 9mo ago

it’s never the right time, not everyone deserves to have kids, and not every kid deserves the parents they got, still, it has to be part of the meaning of life, to see something that is your blood, discover, play, become a responsible adult and one day hopefully decided that it is worth to also have children of their own happy 2026

fruitworks 9mo ago
no one deserves to have kids

leeoniya 9mo ago

> Did we choose the age at which we would have children? What does it mean to choose? we planned to have a kid by our early thirties. she specifically wanted one by 30. we were both healthy, financially stable with solid careers. then came multiple miscarriages, 10 years of background/foreground stress, and IVF. now we finally have two healthy ones. i think daily about those 10 years we've lost to spend with our kids while still younger and able to do activities that i still enjoy like snowboarding, mountain biking, etc. thankfully i'll still be able to do some of it, but man, it has been rough. my awesome father-in-law died of cancer 9mo before his grandson's birth; the only thing he ever knew were our ongoing struggles :( something else that happens is that all your same-aged friends with kids...they have different lives now. you can't talk to them about the same child struggles / tips in real time, the kids don't go to school together or know the same people; they're a generation apart. it becomes an isolating event when the delay is long enough. despite all that, when i think of where i was financially then and now (and what i did in those 10 years to get from there to here that would not have happened otherwise), and that if i had a kid 10 years ago it would be a different [probably worse] kid instead of the adorable 2.5yo that runs to me each morning now, i feel a lot better. my advice would not necessarily be to start earlier, but if you've decided to procreate and are consciously deferring it until the "right" time, just expect the really, really unexpected.

duttish 9mo ago
For decades the discussion in schools have been around "this is how you avoid unwanted pregnancy", safe sex and all of that. With our(northern Europe) crashing fertility rate there's now also discussions about adding on "when the woman is 25 this happens and you're this likely to get pregnant, at 30 it's like this...", just so that people can plan and try for the family they want. If one wants 3 kids and don't want IVF you should apparently start around when the woman is 25-28 or something like that? But who's financially secure at 25?
- aziaziazi 9mo ago
  > But who's financially secure at 25? Those backed up by their government?

fellowniusmonk 9mo ago

I was born with a heart defect that will kill me young. I spent my youth waking up from surgeries until I became disappointed I'd woken up. This author is still just a tourist of death going through what I view as an early developmental stage of death realization and their view is effectively just myopic shaming because they had their first realization. My parents died before I turned 20 and 28. Death is horrible and loss is horrible but each person gets to pick their meaning generation, that's what makes humans fucking cool. We are like a random forest of meaning generation, an epicenter of complex meaning creation, the plurality and uniqueness of paths is critical, and each of us gets to decide what our meaning exploration/creation will entail, and no one can rationally shame us for that. We are all very special. Each and every person. We are the unique meaning generators of the universe, like stars emit photons we emit complex meaning, there is no entity we have observed that has explained to the universe the how and why of bird flight, we generated the how and why of that, we are meaning generating organs of the universe bootstrapped by simpler meaning in rna and dna and each one of us is rare. Complex meaning generation, storage and emission is still in it's infancy from our empirical observations we can't predict how far into the future meaning generation will reach or what it will accomplish, we can't ex ante predict how important we are, no one can tell us we won't be very important to the casual chain of the universe, it simply cannot be computed ahead of time. As a child I read the book version of A Baker's Dozen, a true story about an efficiency expert with a heart defect that had 12 children and dies at the end while calling his wife. Each person generates unique meaning in the universe and the one thing we get to do is decide what our unique meaning exploration path is, no person is guaranteed to see any time with their kids, guaranteed to want to have kids, guaranteed to have a kid they enjoy being around. Decide what you intrinsically find meaningful and generate meaning, the random forrest requires the diversity of search/creation paths.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 9mo ago

(2018) Some previous discussion: 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31121453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31121453

s0ja 9mo ago

Very interesting article! Really like when people use fonts with serifs. I noticed the usage of accent aigu instead of apostrophes, was that on purpose? An accent isn‘t an apostrophe, it takes up more space horizontally. Much more obvious in this font.

rokhayakebe 9mo ago

I feel we should have children as early as possible between 18 and 30, but we should also stay together with our parents. Grandparents can raise their grandchildren. They would do a better job. The problem is now everyone wants to go on their own, separate from the community, then call modern life difficult.

chadcmulligan 9mo ago
I read a book that discusses this - "The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous" by Joseph Henrich. I found it interesting though I've heard some criticisms of it.
anal_reactor 9mo ago
Because fuck community. It's extremely rare to meet people who don't suck. My parents were never interested in me as a person, they were interested in me fulfilling their fantasy of a picture-perfect family. My aunt completely exploited her husband and then he happened to drink himself to death which was completely and unavoidably his own fault. Now she's ruining her daughter's teenage years just so that she can score popularity points among other religious nuts. When I was a kid I was the least popular in my class and I know that when you reach the bottom, literally nobody cares about you, unless they can extract something from you. It's dog eat dog. Now I'm an adult and the more I interact with general population the more it feeds my narcissism. I genuinely tried becoming a better person so that I'd have more friends but at some point I understood "it's not me, it's them". There's only so much I can do before I realize, most people aren't worth being friends with. The few people that are worth it are ridiculously difficult to find and usually have their own busy lives and chances are, the ones you happen to meet live on the other side of the city which is one hour one way.
- 4gotunameagain 9mo ago
  Don't look at the world through the lenses of your problematic upbringing. Healthy communities exist. They are increasingly rare due to the massive shift in the way of living, but they do exist.

matt3210 9mo ago

Speak for yourself, I plan to live forever

gond 9mo ago
— Riker (TNG, Generations)
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
You will. Not you you. But you.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago

I (male) was very lucky and this made me realise. Had kids lateish (30) but that is due to finding soneone to do that with took that long. Being shy etc. But now I feel in 40s I am too old to have a baby! I glad I didnt wait too long. Or dont have kids at all which is fine and max on the freedom to do whatever life. I think I agree decide if you want kids then if so have them early as possible but under proviso of a good relationship and no major issues like drugs/alcohol/violence etc.

pseudocomposer 9mo ago
Out of curiosity, what kind of physical shape are you in? I’m nearing 40 and have wanted kids my entire life, but similarly, haven’t found the right partner. If I ever felt I was too old to have kids I’d probably have no choice but to kill myself. But I’m also in excellent physical shape and feel no physically different than I did in my 20s (other than being stronger and more coordinated now).
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo ago
  I have health issues so there is that. I think most 40 yo if they go to the gym on a good routine can have the energy. Add in a reasonable job (not an AI startup with a hammock in the kitchen). But 40 you are rolling the dice. 40+ you can die from things and it is not unheard of. It is quite old in a way. You can also have issues unexpectedly that depleat capacity. Just reread your comment. Don't kill yourself!!! Help raise your niece or nephew or friends kids. You can pass on social inheritence! And you can work in a cube at Google and send half the money to kids charities.
  - dmoy 9mo ago
    > And you can work in a cube at Google and Only if you have a time machine Ain't no more cubes at big tech companies, it's all open office
- leeoniya 9mo ago
  > If I ever felt I was too old to have kids I’d probably have no choice but to kill myself sperm quantity and quality decreases with age. studies exist that suggest higher risk of autism when father's age >= 45. you're not too old, but you should probably test & freeze some good sperm before you might actually be too old by the time you find the right person. this way you won't ever feel like you're too old to have kids. then the question becomes more of "how long and in what manner will my remaining health allow me to enjoy them"

ahf8Aithaex7Nai 9mo ago

I like the text. A few additions: not everyone has to have children. Not all of us have the opportunity to do so. It is possible to live a fulfilling life even if you have not brought children into the world. If you do not have children and it is foreseeable that you will not have any, do not let anyone convince you that you are doomed to a marginal existence. A child does not only need parents. It also needs other adults: uncles, aunts, neighbors, teachers, etc. Children need a healthy society, and everyone who contributes to this is contributing to the well-being of children. For my taste, the text also lacks a political component. Parenting is not just a personal project. It is also a service to society. The parents of a child are raising a person who will participate productively in the economy of the future. It annoys me that this is treated as a free side effect. When you realize this connection, parenthood as an imperative for personal fulfillment takes on a strong ideological connotation. The fact that so many people remain childless today is a failure at the societal level and should not be compensated for by appeals at the individual level.

Slava_Propanei 9mo ago

[dead]

RamblingCTO 9mo ago

> You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children. Love the thought. But for me I wasn't able to commit to wanting to have children because I had to learn so much about dating and what I think I deserve and what I want. I just went with the "cool uncle" (which often times hides the "I think I don't deserve love and thus sabotage myself") narrative the last decade or so and had to have the bad experiences I've had 2025 to come to the conclusion that I want a wife and kids. Sometimes your life task dictates how it goes for you and a little less grip on this journey seems beneficial to me. This article came at a perfect time for me and I will go full steam ahead to find someone to make kids with o7

metalman 9mo ago

I can only pray that there is a special heaven where sociopaths go, that is also populated with all the nialists and narcists, together at last, all there dreams writ large.

hare2eternity 9mo ago

Being a parent gets harder the older you are, not just becoming a parent which is where the focus tends to be. Yes you have fewer financial resources and less life experience, but if you want kids the best time is as soon as you can. Kids don't care about how rich you are (so long as needs are met - those concerns come later and enough will never be enough for a teenager) and they don't know that we're all making it up as you go along. Have kids at 25 means that by your early 40s you are pretty much free again but parented in times of good health. Doing the school run now and seeing parents pushing 50 with primary school aged children makes me sad for them and their kids when I see how physically shattered they look through the fatigue and stress.

ponector 9mo ago
>> Have kids at 25 means Means your parents are 50 and have their jobs and not able to help even if they want (which not always the case). Means woman has no career and cannot really progress, she basically sacrifices a career growth for her children.

netsharc 9mo ago

A baby born this year will have their 74th birthday in 2100. Although with the climate the way it is, it'll get progressively harder to reach old age.

helph67 9mo ago

For those wishing to delay the inevitable... "Large observational prospective epidemiological studies with adequate control of confounding and two large randomized trials support the benefits of the Mediterranean dietary pattern to increase life expectancy, reduce the risk of major chronic disease, and improve quality of life and well-being." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5902736/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5902736/