The Viral Vasectomy: Covid's Silver Lining – Peter Watts' Blog | Hacker News Reader

The Viral Vasectomy: Covid's Silver Lining – Peter Watts' Blog

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8 pointsolvy010 comments

>Anything that edges us, philosophically, even slightly closer to the Voluntary Extinction movement is not a bad thing in my book

OK, a batshit crazy person.

The Earth doesn't care for our presence or demise. The universe even less so. The Earth also doesn't care about climate change. It's just a rock plus some carbon-based lifeforms. Some will do just fine under climate change. In the end, all will perish along with the Sun or sooner.

It's up for us to care for us.

Caring for "Earth" or for animal life to the detriment of humans, is just a long-winded way to justify being suicidal.

It's also false consciousness. You don't really love Earth or animals, you just hate yourself and human life.

Might be the most vile and toxic thing I've ever read. Covid appears to make men sterile, and that is good? It takes another level of self loathing to wish sterility on other people.

Well, certain tweets from certain embassies have been close contenders recently.

> It takes another level of self loathing to wish sterility on other people.

I’m pretty sure loathing those other people would do the trick as well...

They are arguing for the world at large which to me is driven by self referential hate rather than any particulars.

>social stigma traditionally associated with childlessness

poor thing has a bit of a chip on his shoulder

Skipped right past the really odd glee and skipped right to "we might not survive as a species"

Yikes... it's the "Children of Men" scenario that I never thought could happen.

“...not only has there been a recent spike in people deciding to postpone (or even better, entirely avoid) procreation...”

- Aight, I’m out.

Judging by the other comments, others share my sentiments.

That kind of speculation is really dangerous right now, since there is really no basis in data, and it is going to be hard enough to get enough people to vaccinate as is.

Besides, I've never understood the Malthusian crowd. In practice, developed countries are shrinking, and there is no reason to believe that in the long run most countries won't follow. And even in the absolute worst case there will be homeostasis: more people lead to less favorable conditions for procreating lead to less people. It's not like we will ever reach solyent green levels of overpopulation where we have to push our way through crowds with excavators :-D

On the other hand, if reading this article gave you the creeps, maybe it is an additional reason to adopt a #ZeroCovid strategy...

Nietzsche wrote quite a bit on this - philosophical outlook and physiological heath are very strongly correlated. Of course people can hold philosophical views dispassionately, with no real investment in them, but when you see someone like this, it really is a sick person.

The best thing you can do for it is have some empathy for people that feel so miserable and who therefore remake the world in that image, and then move on. Reading it isn't good for you either - a single miserable person can ruin the day of many happy people.

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