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FYI whomever is downvoting this - you can downvote it all you want. It doesn't make it any less true. I'll take the hit on my karma points on the off chance it

FYI whomever is downvoting this - you can downvote it all you want. It doesn't make it any less true. I'll take the hit on my karma points on the off chance it makes someone think, even for a second, about not perpetrating the selfish act of cruelty that is bringing a child into an impoverished existence.

throwit1979 14y ago
Heh. Daring to suggest people think before they procreate is certainly one of those things you cannot say. Ironic on HN, because http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
nisa 14y ago
See you on the other side of this discussion if you loose your wealth and your job for whatever reasons. You'll enjoy beeing jugded by your own words. Empathy and social justice are crucial for any society that wants to be respected. You are proposing barbary. Social Darwinism.
- downandout 14y ago
  I am dealing with reality.
  - nisa 14y ago
    We all have to deal with reality. The question is how we want to shape our societies and reality. Is it acceptable to have few lucky ones with huge incomes that are far beyond the necassary amount for living a fullfilled live and have the rest die on the streets? Or would it be more beneficial for the society at large if all have the possibility to live free from existential dangers such as homelessness, disease and hunger. Robots, computers and automatisation are great tools. At the moment the profit that these tools generate is not shared among all people. It's time to socialise the profits that are gained through automatisation in order to be able to live in peaceful societies. If you discard huge parts of the population as worthless you'll have to invest even more in your security. You will have slums, riots, terrorism and violence and walled gardens. That is not the reality I want to live in.
    - throwit1979 14y ago
      If you discard huge parts of the population as worthless you'll have to invest even more in your security. You will have slums, riots, terrorism and violence and walled gardens. OP is offering a possible partial solution to exactly the problem you present here. With fewer children born into poverty, some degree of abatement is likely. I'm not sure why you dismiss the notion out of hand, refuse to engage the actual idea, and then immediately mischaracterize the original position to be some absurd straw-man in which the OP is adjudicating the "worthless[ness]" of various people. It's almost as if people on the internet don't know how to properly argue the actual ideas presented, and instead prefer to just make shit up.
      - nisa 14y ago
        I've explained myself in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707453
- dusklight 14y ago
  How is he being barbaric by proposing that prospective parents should reconsider having children if they don't think their children will be able to have a happy life?
  - nisa 14y ago
    I've saw the post in the context of homelessness that is discussed in the article. I also don't share his woldview maybe I understood it in a wrong way but "The world simply doesn't need many of the people born into it." came across as justification for letting these people living miserable lives and deny them basic rights, like shelter and health care. The problem with such thinking is that it's often not up to us to decide if we are needed in this world or not. And it is also more often than not up to us if we have the energy and power to earn a wage that allows us sustaining our existence. My impression is that there is a general consensus that every human beeing has some basic rights (U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) and that we as a society should work to provide these rights for everyone even if we have to sacrify some personal profit for it. Because it can also happen to us. Op's post came across as If he does not share this views. I'd say if you deny basic human rights I can call you barbaric. There is a difference between saying it's not a good idea to get children if you are in a bad economic situation or saying that it's correct that these children suffer homelessness because their parents made a bad decision or are somehow not fit enough to procreate. If you start to talk about fitness (here indirectly measured as ability to earn money) as an indication who should procreate you have a form of social darwinism. And there are a lot of problems with such a thinking.
    - downandout 14y ago
      For the record, I was not justifying the miserable lives of many people. To the extent that society has the will and the means to provide basic "rights" as you describe, I have no objection to participating in that. But society's means and will to provide these things also seem to be running very thin. That leads to miserable lives for children that did not ask to be here in the first place.
hkmurakami 14y ago
Coincidentally, many of the twenty and thirty somethings in Japan who didn't manage to score a stable, well paying corporate job (due to the economic downturns of the 90s and 2008-current period) -- which is at times said to be upwards of 30% of the male population in said age group [1] -- have been expressing their despair at their financial situation and grim economic outlook for their country and collapsing social security systems and have exclaimed, "Why would I want to have my hypothetical child suffer an even more grim fate than I have?" A tragic mixture of having perspective, intelligence, and (relative) poverty. [1] I say "male", because even in this day and age, female unemployment is much more socially acceptable than its male counterpart.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  The U.S. has the same problem. Now that people have lost faith in the "middle class society" and we realize that 99% of us are poors at the mercy of bosses and health insurance, the IQ 120+ set is deferring childcare until they "make it", the odds of which are very low and most people won't because even at 140+ most people get screwed. So smart people are self-selecting out of the gene pool, not with that intention but by deferral. It's a nasty boiled-frog problem. One day we will wake up and the world will be terminally stupid. Now that the individual's economic future is so uncertain, and it's that way for everyone, people who don't think about the future are breeding at a much faster rate than people who do, and it's terrifying. For the life of me, I can't figure out why healthcare (which has long-term effects on peoples' intelligence levels, since a lot of that's not genetic) isn't a no-brainer, but also education. Free higher education is the absolute best eugenic program ever devised-- if your kids are smart, society will invest limitless resources in making them succeed-- because it hurts absolutely no one; it's pure carrot. Instead of getting soaked on tuition, parents whose kids get into top schools should get paid.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    also education. Free higher education is the absolute best eugenic program ever devised-- if your kids are smart, society will invest limitless resources in making them succeed-- because it hurts absolutely no one; it's pure carrot. Instead of getting soaked on tuition, parents whose kids get into top schools should get paid. The only countries whose education systems I'm familiar with are the US, Japan, and England. In Japan, public universities are of higher quality than their private counterparts, and their tuition is much cheaper. You do get the effect of smart kids studying their butts off to get into a public (national) university like Tokyo U. or Kyoto U. because they can't afford a private college tuition (though annual rates are in the range of $10-15k, much more reasonable than the US). Iirc England is somewhat similar, with reasonable rates for the best universities (Oxbridge, for instance)
pfortuny 14y ago
Take a peek at the meaning of "the Plague", something which happened in Europe way long ago. Those people were much worse than any of us and any homeless you can think of. They are quite probably ancestors of yours if you are a "standard" American. You are judging them all as bad. It seems funny.

throwit1979 14y ago

Heh. Daring to suggest people think before they procreate is certainly one of those things you cannot say. Ironic on HN, because http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

nisa 14y ago

See you on the other side of this discussion if you loose your wealth and your job for whatever reasons. You'll enjoy beeing jugded by your own words. Empathy and social justice are crucial for any society that wants to be respected. You are proposing barbary. Social Darwinism.

downandout 14y ago
I am dealing with reality.
- nisa 14y ago
  We all have to deal with reality. The question is how we want to shape our societies and reality. Is it acceptable to have few lucky ones with huge incomes that are far beyond the necassary amount for living a fullfilled live and have the rest die on the streets? Or would it be more beneficial for the society at large if all have the possibility to live free from existential dangers such as homelessness, disease and hunger. Robots, computers and automatisation are great tools. At the moment the profit that these tools generate is not shared among all people. It's time to socialise the profits that are gained through automatisation in order to be able to live in peaceful societies. If you discard huge parts of the population as worthless you'll have to invest even more in your security. You will have slums, riots, terrorism and violence and walled gardens. That is not the reality I want to live in.
  - throwit1979 14y ago
    If you discard huge parts of the population as worthless you'll have to invest even more in your security. You will have slums, riots, terrorism and violence and walled gardens. OP is offering a possible partial solution to exactly the problem you present here. With fewer children born into poverty, some degree of abatement is likely. I'm not sure why you dismiss the notion out of hand, refuse to engage the actual idea, and then immediately mischaracterize the original position to be some absurd straw-man in which the OP is adjudicating the "worthless[ness]" of various people. It's almost as if people on the internet don't know how to properly argue the actual ideas presented, and instead prefer to just make shit up.
    - nisa 14y ago
      I've explained myself in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707453
dusklight 14y ago
How is he being barbaric by proposing that prospective parents should reconsider having children if they don't think their children will be able to have a happy life?
- nisa 14y ago
  I've saw the post in the context of homelessness that is discussed in the article. I also don't share his woldview maybe I understood it in a wrong way but "The world simply doesn't need many of the people born into it." came across as justification for letting these people living miserable lives and deny them basic rights, like shelter and health care. The problem with such thinking is that it's often not up to us to decide if we are needed in this world or not. And it is also more often than not up to us if we have the energy and power to earn a wage that allows us sustaining our existence. My impression is that there is a general consensus that every human beeing has some basic rights (U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) and that we as a society should work to provide these rights for everyone even if we have to sacrify some personal profit for it. Because it can also happen to us. Op's post came across as If he does not share this views. I'd say if you deny basic human rights I can call you barbaric. There is a difference between saying it's not a good idea to get children if you are in a bad economic situation or saying that it's correct that these children suffer homelessness because their parents made a bad decision or are somehow not fit enough to procreate. If you start to talk about fitness (here indirectly measured as ability to earn money) as an indication who should procreate you have a form of social darwinism. And there are a lot of problems with such a thinking.
  - downandout 14y ago
    For the record, I was not justifying the miserable lives of many people. To the extent that society has the will and the means to provide basic "rights" as you describe, I have no objection to participating in that. But society's means and will to provide these things also seem to be running very thin. That leads to miserable lives for children that did not ask to be here in the first place.

hkmurakami 14y ago

Coincidentally, many of the twenty and thirty somethings in Japan who didn't manage to score a stable, well paying corporate job (due to the economic downturns of the 90s and 2008-current period) -- which is at times said to be upwards of 30% of the male population in said age group [1] -- have been expressing their despair at their financial situation and grim economic outlook for their country and collapsing social security systems and have exclaimed, "Why would I want to have my hypothetical child suffer an even more grim fate than I have?" A tragic mixture of having perspective, intelligence, and (relative) poverty. [1] I say "male", because even in this day and age, female unemployment is much more socially acceptable than its male counterpart.

michaelochurch 14y ago
The U.S. has the same problem. Now that people have lost faith in the "middle class society" and we realize that 99% of us are poors at the mercy of bosses and health insurance, the IQ 120+ set is deferring childcare until they "make it", the odds of which are very low and most people won't because even at 140+ most people get screwed. So smart people are self-selecting out of the gene pool, not with that intention but by deferral. It's a nasty boiled-frog problem. One day we will wake up and the world will be terminally stupid. Now that the individual's economic future is so uncertain, and it's that way for everyone, people who don't think about the future are breeding at a much faster rate than people who do, and it's terrifying. For the life of me, I can't figure out why healthcare (which has long-term effects on peoples' intelligence levels, since a lot of that's not genetic) isn't a no-brainer, but also education. Free higher education is the absolute best eugenic program ever devised-- if your kids are smart, society will invest limitless resources in making them succeed-- because it hurts absolutely no one; it's pure carrot. Instead of getting soaked on tuition, parents whose kids get into top schools should get paid.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  also education. Free higher education is the absolute best eugenic program ever devised-- if your kids are smart, society will invest limitless resources in making them succeed-- because it hurts absolutely no one; it's pure carrot. Instead of getting soaked on tuition, parents whose kids get into top schools should get paid. The only countries whose education systems I'm familiar with are the US, Japan, and England. In Japan, public universities are of higher quality than their private counterparts, and their tuition is much cheaper. You do get the effect of smart kids studying their butts off to get into a public (national) university like Tokyo U. or Kyoto U. because they can't afford a private college tuition (though annual rates are in the range of $10-15k, much more reasonable than the US). Iirc England is somewhat similar, with reasonable rates for the best universities (Oxbridge, for instance)

pfortuny 14y ago

Take a peek at the meaning of "the Plague", something which happened in Europe way long ago. Those people were much worse than any of us and any homeless you can think of. They are quite probably ancestors of yours if you are a "standard" American. You are judging them all as bad. It seems funny.