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Comment by tokioyoyo | Hacker News Reader

There are literal hundreds (thousands?) of philosophical schools for “meaning of life”. It’s really not a new question, and there won’t be a right answer, ever. Trying to convince someone that it is the only route to find a meaning just sounds a bit funny for anyone who watches it from the sidelines.

My question, once again, is why tech circles started focusing on this and pushing it as ideology just recently? Wasn’t a thing in 2010s, people more or less respected personal choices as long as it doesn’t harm others directly.

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Interesting point in the timing. In general I think it's probably just growing awareness of the issue, also combined with a growing number of people in tech starting families (often quite late) and being like 'zomg why didn't I do this earlier.' Many people in tech are also fascinated with countries like Japan which are acting like a living warning to the rest of the world about fertility.

In general though I think cultural shifts often lack any clear reason. People like Musk or Gates chiming in on the issue are almost certainly effects rather than causes.

I guess that makes sense. Someone else commented how “maybe HN demographics just happened to be people who just had kids, thus the echo-chamber”. Which, would explain a lot.

Re: Musk — no real opinions about him wrt other ventures, but surely no sane person can look at him as a decent father figure, no? It just sounds like a “populate Earth for populating reasons!” completely disregarding the well being of the kids part. Which, I find, fairly sad.

I think it's more about concern for society and Western civilization in particular. Low fertility will cause nations, and cultures, to contract and eventually collapse. 'Eventually' not being some excessively distant reference - South Korea may well become a failed state within our lifetimes if nothing radically changes, seouly due to fertility. And most other nations will be right behind them.

As for anybody's parenting - I have certainly raised my children in ways that would offend the sensibilities of this group or that. But it's what I think is right. So under this mindset, and a bit of the Golden Rule, I do not criticize other's parenting outside of obvious extremes.

It is interesting that people have such strong views about South Korea or Japan's declining birth rate, but have very little to say about rich countries in Europe. Why is this? I never once heard anyone saw that Italy will become a failed states in X years in the future due to population decline. Recently, I saw a chart from Financial Times (here: https://www.ft.com/content/1b139d1a-07ea-4612-9c2b-62c430119...) that showed birth rates in Italy, Germany, Finland, and Spain are ultra low (less than 1.5). More likely: These countries will import more and more temporary, and possibly, permanent labour, to help in their industries. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are already doing it extensively, but it doesn't get very much press coverage.

>My question, once again, is why tech circles started focusing (emphasis mine)

One answer nobody else is willing to broach is that Elon Musk and friends are hyper-breeder crazies who think the white race will die out if white men don't all pump out as many babies with as many women as possible, and they literally own multiple tech and social media companies to push such a narrative.

HN is more influenced by chud ideology than it should be.

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