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> scared you into not fulfilling the genetic imperative, ending your own genetic line

> It's always a shame when an intelligent person chooses to ignore the sacrifice every one of their ancestors made to bring them to this point

Ok please don’t project your creepy literal-Darwinist ideology on other people. The parent comment literally said “one of many reasons.” I am not having kids because my “genetic imperative” is about the species itself, not my specific genes, and I sincerely don’t care about whether or not the Ojnabieoot Dynasty makes it to 2100. The idea that I’m “ignoring the sacrifices of my ancestors” is idiotic and unnecessarily insulting.

> to know that generations of people eked by just for you to play video games all day would be a truly disappointing conclusion.

Seriously what in the world is your problem? You don’t know anything about this person. This comment is pure toxicity, completely undermines the point I think you are trying to make, and adds nothing to the conversation.

> Ok please don’t project your creepy literal-Darwinist ideology on other people.

"Darwinism" is an "ideology" now? I thought believing in evolution was actually in-vogue! Do you actually not think intelligence is heritable, despite every study into the subject confirming that, as one of the most-reproducible pieces of social science research? Do you think we'll be better off if the smart people live lives of hedonism while only people who aren't as Climate Enlightened produce all the children?

No, the ideology is using an idiotic personification of Darwinism as a guideline for major life decisions like “do I want kids.”

I am not engaging with your blatant eugenics and ignorant Redditor’s understanding of intelligence and heritability. Needless to say, two commenters who don’t want kids does not mean that the unwashed hordes of dumb dumbs are going to take us over.

With all due respect, you long abandoned reason and now you’re just being an asshole. Someone decided not to reproduce - your opinions are of no value to their body.

From the evolutionary point of view, if some people are susceptible to believing in harmful ideologies that lead them to die off, maybe it's better to let them to die off instead of spreading their mind-virus further. There are many smart people who have many children like Elon Musk, Antony Davies or Kirk Sorenson.

Edit: some people interpret this as saying that not wanting children is a genetic trait, but what i was trying to say was that it's a counterproductive idea which will eventually burn itself out, and there are many smart people who are not suffering from it. So we won't run out of smart people.

The idea that susceptibility to dumb ideologies is a genetic weakness that “smarter” people are not susceptible to is completely at odds with current anthropological and sociological knowledge - ideology is part of the human condition, and being unable to determine whether or not your ideology is dangerous bullshit is part of the nature of ideology. Teichmuller, Nazi Germany’s greatest mathematician, was also an anti-Semitic loon.

Your comment about “smart people will have lots of kids who will save us” [paraphrasing] is ironically invalidated by Elon Musk himself, whose COVID tweeting and commentary is pure fact-free ideology (most infamously here: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12407546572631449... but he’s still going: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-and-kids-wont-get-...) It is worth emphasizing that these comments are just straight-up indefensibly dumb.

I was not saying that the idea of not having children is genetically determined. (There might be some genetical component related to being susceptible to depressions, but that's not the point).

I was trying to say, that the idea itself is often passed to children, via non-genetic means, and it will burn out the part of population bearing it.

But that's not fatal for humanity because there are many smart people who have multiple children, so independently of exact percentage of heritability of intellect we are not doomed.

And regarding to the snide comment about Elon, independently of his opinions on any issues, he have done enough to prove that he is smarter and vastly more useful to humanity than average people.

My point was that smart people like Elon are fully capable of believing suicidally stupid things.

If you knew their life would be misery and toil, would you have kids? I'm terrified for mine.

This is something I think about a lot. The most important is to keep things going. Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side. The only reason we’ve had all this wealth and ease to squander is because of those who went before us.

I am hugely optimistic about humanity and technology and believe we will get through this just fine. I say this to qualify my question here:

Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side.

Would it be worth it? There is likely no net loss for the universe if we or even the entire Earth disappeared overnight and that might be better than thousands of generations suffering painfully over thousands of years.

Are you happy to be alive, knowing that untold ancestors lived comparatively short and brutish lives

I have sorrow and compassion for all humans who have had a hard life, but I don't feel any obligations either to or from my ancestors.

I was questioning your assertion that centuries of "terrible lives" (which, to me, seems a regression for most) would be an acceptable price to pay for "better times" later on. Compared to the past 1000 years where life has, in the main, improved gradually generation after generation, I feel this assertion at least deserves to be questioned.

Terrible life is always better than no life because the person living it has the choice to kill themselves. If it lasts 1000s of generations, then obviously they will have chosen life, so it's worth giving it to them.

In the immortal words of the GOP, "Fuck you, got mine."*

*But no not necessarily, but at the same time I had a lack of autonomy in regards to those decision made.

Why do you think suffering is worse than not existing? If they find their suffering to be unbearable they can end their lives, But unlike us they will have more information to make such a decision. With suffering they have a chance to at least achieve something, so we should not be ones deciding to discard their lives.

If I have two children and do not wish to have a third, should I feel any guilt for the hypothetical "discarded" child's inability to experience life? I contend that as they will never exist, I have no obligation towards them.

If you have resources to support the third child, and you chose to not spend them on the child, you should feel some guilt for slowing down the progress of humanity. There is limited time until a meteorite hits the earth, or CO2 runs out, or some other life ending event happens on earth, and the more people live until that, the more possibilities we will be able to explore leading to higher likelihood that we discover new science and art increasing liveable space and improving everyone's life.

If you look at the history, every discovery was made due to very rare and specific combination of factors, and the only way to create such combinations is by trying many life paths in parallel.

> If you have resources to support the third child, and you chose to not spend them on the child, you should feel some guilt for slowing down the progress of humanity.

Perhaps concentrating attention on two children makes it that much more likely that they will have longer, fulfilling lives, and grace us with their eventual wisdom, rather than all three grubbing in the rubble of a collapsed civilization.

Sure, the odds of either path don't change much based on the single decision of whether to have another child, but every little bit helps, right?

Some billions of sperm would like a word with you.

Any cell can become a human if it is placed in a favorable environment. My argument is not about intrinsic value of sperm cell, fetus, or a newborn, my argument is about maximizing the amount of life in general. Every human alive by simply pursuing his own selfish goals, makes lives of everyone else better, by increasing the usefulness of research.

There is no other side. We've used all of the easily-accessible high-energy-density resources on the planet -- once technology drops below the critical level necessary to produce wind/solar/hydro/nuclear, we'll never be able to recover a high-energy society. We'll never get off the earth, let alone out of the solar system. And even if we waited millions of years, bacteria has learned to digest lignin, so there will never be another Carboniferous Period.

Imagine medieval peasant, which was most of the population ever. What they would give to live our lives! Toil? Are you kidding me? We have it better than some 120 billion human being before us. Concepts like basic freedom, education, healthcare were not a right that most ever had.

Watching half of your kids die before age of 5 from something a set of pills cures now? Your wife risking her life with every delivery? Dying of very minor wounds, when flu is killer that covid can only dream about?

I could go on like that for very long time... No, our life isn't a misery and toil in any western society, unless we make mistakes and chose such a path. My isn't for example, nor is most people I know.

Its kind of sad to see how weak we have become. 100 years ago a mutated flu killed 100 million people which was significant chunk of global population, right after the most horrible war mankind has ever experienced, and people got through. We can get through almost anything. Its properly sad what's happening. As a nature, travel and adventure lover my heart weeps, but I have no doubt mankind will get through this. There is still so much beauty out there. I am not naive anymore we will get much wiser while getting through this, but somehow we will manage. Till then, taking it day by day, enjoying the little things life so often gives us, enjoying friends and family... that's still a great life to live. Only few in the history had such a luck. I am definitely not terrified for my kids.

> Imagine medieval peasant, which was most of the population ever.

Maybe instead of using your imagination and whatever garbage you saw in a Hollywood movie, you can read accounts of how native people lived in places like North America up until a few hundred years ago.

I think you missed the point where majority of people now having access to things that were not invented/widely awailable as recent as beginning of last century. It is not specific to a place

Everyone's life is some variety of misery and toil. I'm not especially worried for my children because spending time on worry is illogical and counterproductive - sure, things could go badly, but as long as I am always doing everything in my power to ensure my children do well, I can rest with an easy conscience no matter what happens.

>sure, things could go badly, but as long as I am always doing everything in my power to ensure my children do well, I can rest with an easy conscience no matter what happens.

Sad. Sorry to hear it. It's always a shame when an intelligent person chooses to ignore the sacrifice every one of their descendents will make, just so that they don't have to risk the potential of having any hardship themselves.

[edited to note that I missed this was ironically reframing words back to the first commenter, which zaps my grump out of the water. Sorry!] Interpreting "I am always doing everything in my power to ensure my children do well" as "you won't risk having the potential of any hardship yourself" is startlingly ungenerous.

Did you read the previous comments?

I wrote two (I think) of the words in my comment, the rest were written by the person I was replying to about someone deciding not to have children.

Apparently I did not read back far enough! (And now can't, ironically, because I'm pretty sure the first comment that started it off is flagged.) Grumpy parent comment retracted.

when was the last time you experienced true joy?

Ironically enough, when I was writing that comment. If you read the comment chain you'll realise why.

A lot less misery and toil than almost everyone that came before them.

How do you know? We have 80 years to go in this century: there is no war yet but we have the covid pandemic, inequality, mental health issues ‘pandemic’, obesity/diabetes ‘pandemic’, rapid climate change.

We now close our eyes to stuff that does not bother us directly like devastating destruction of the amazon, attacks on armenia, several dictators using covid to assert unlimited powers etc, all of which would deserve global military intervention imho and thus wars, but do not, makes it a matter of who you ask if this is ‘worse or better’.

Agreed, over all it is better for ‘everyone’ but we have a solid 80 years to mess this up and turn the tables. Hope we do not but I for one do not think it looks good; this state is fragile, not robust.

We have the money and technology this time around to prevent things, but not sure if we will. Handling of Covid and the many dictators, racism, immigration issues etc are not good signs we learned much from 100 years ago. Covid being the most obvious (spanish flu followed the same curve); let’s see how the rightwing/populist will be handled in the coming 10 years to see if we even can learn.

It's nice that we have you to interpret the actions of our ancestors.

Well he/she is not alone. Birth rates are falling because people don't feel secure in their future. I can't think of a single thing that makes me hopeful about the future. Stagnant salaries, stagnant economy, weak global leadership, rising nationalism and sectarianism, climate change, increasing wealth inequality, people don't agree on basic reality (masks, climate change) and no where in our political spectrum do we see glimmers of hope of someone having a vision for what is the right thing to do.

I think we are about to see a huge insolvency event in the next few years that will further destabilize the economy on top of everything. A huge demographic shift is coming with the boomers retiring, and damn, they're getting out at just the right moment as we inherit the problems they started and/or ignored for decades. If you are in your 30s or younger, we are the world's biggest suckers.

I think you are too pessimistic. This year is bad, but most recent years have been much better. And in most places on Earth, the new generation will have a better life than the last one.