Reproductive Rights?

[Zephyr_Nova]

I used to think that philosophy was long dead, outmoded. But then I discovered Derek Parfit, and he blew my fucking mind. He argued quite compelling that making a decision that will cause future harm to yourself is as much of a moral matter as causing harm to someone else.

 

I just found out yesterday that Derek Parfitt is my bandmate's cousin! There was a good article on him and his wife published last month (hence my friend posting "check out this great article about my cousin" on facebook): http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/reason-and-romance-the-worlds-most-cerebral-marriage

 

Sorry for the detour, carry on...

[Georges Abitbol]

Interesting to read different opinions about this. Have you guys seen the show called Utopia?

[Hoodie]

 

 

3. 'Natural' anything is the worst argument ever.

 

I agree with you in general. The distinction between natural and synthetic is false, and even if it were a good distinction it wouldn't be useful.

 

But this isn't an argument about fabrics, foods, or breast implants. This is about a common human behaviour. In this context, "natural" doesn't just mean it's natural so it's good.

 

I'm just saying using "people should continue to do x because it's natural" is a terrible argument, due to all the natural things that are harmful. I'm not saying human drives and behaviors should be ignored --that's one of the most important things to address in these arguments. But the word "natural" should be avoided at all costs in a serious debate.... it almost always leads to things getting stupid and reasoning getting circular.

 

 

 

Well, trailer parks won't grow exponentially since in the West at least birth rates have declined hugely.

 

You're right about that. I was being kind of hyperbolic, but my point was that many of our brightest people are the ones making the decision not to reproduce, which isn't really going to help since the majority are going to keep popping out babies anyway. The core of my argument here is admittedly pretty cynical. I just imagine this trend getting us ever closer to something resembling the movie Idiocracy.

 

 

you can mold almost any child to be smart and hardworking with the proper environment and education, so i highly doubt idiocracy will ever happen. information technology and other modern advances have only been making us smarter! see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

[LimpyLoo]

Does anyone think that in 2014, facing climate change and overpopulation, there should be a limit to how many children someone can have?

 

I don't know, just curious what y'all think.

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

 

 

3. 'Natural' anything is the worst argument ever.

 

I agree with you in general. The distinction between natural and synthetic is false, and even if it were a good distinction it wouldn't be useful.

 

But this isn't an argument about fabrics, foods, or breast implants. This is about a common human behaviour. In this context, "natural" doesn't just mean it's natural so it's good.

 

I'm just saying using "people should continue to do x because it's natural" is a terrible argument, due to all the natural things that are harmful. I'm not saying human drives and behaviors should be ignored --that's one of the most important things to address in these arguments. But the word "natural" should be avoided at all costs in a serious debate.... it almost always leads to things getting stupid and reasoning getting circular.

 

 

 

Well, trailer parks won't grow exponentially since in the West at least birth rates have declined hugely.

 

You're right about that. I was being kind of hyperbolic, but my point was that many of our brightest people are the ones making the decision not to reproduce, which isn't really going to help since the majority are going to keep popping out babies anyway. The core of my argument here is admittedly pretty cynical. I just imagine this trend getting us ever closer to something resembling the movie Idiocracy.

 

 

you can mold almost any child to be smart and hardworking with the proper environment and education, so i highly doubt idiocracy will ever happen. information technology and other modern advances have only been making us smarter! see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

 

Aye, you're probably right. Idiocracy is the hilarious grossly exaggerated doomsday scenario end result... it's the whole society/western-culture-moving-towwards-that-in-many-ways that I find unsettling. It's just where my mind goes any time someone brilliant says "I plan on never having kids."

 

Does anyone think that in 2014, facing climate change and overpopulation, there should be a limit to how many children someone can have?

 

I do... but I have no idea how to make that work. There's going to be a lot of violent opposition to that, and the idea of governments having that sort of control over people is disturbing. I think the better solution is perhaps to get on space colonation asap. Terraform that shit!

[Tricone RC]

 

 

 

Well, trailer parks won't grow exponentially since in the West at least birth rates have declined hugely.

 

You're right about that. I was being kind of hyperbolic, but my point was that many of our brightest people are the ones making the decision not to reproduce, which isn't really going to help since the majority are going to keep popping out babies anyway. The core of my argument here is admittedly pretty cynical. I just imagine this trend getting us ever closer to something resembling the movie Idiocracy.

 

I know what you mean, but intelligence is only partly heritable at best, and knowledge certainly is not. So given a scenario where most parents are on average underaccomplished intellectually, I do not see that it follows that the population as a whole becomes more stupid. That would only really happen in the total absence of public education, etc

 

 

 

As for the topic as a whole it frustrates me when "overpopulation" is treated as some kind of absolute. It is not, it's subjective. If you want to live in a world where everyone has the ability to homestead in a forest, then yes the world is certainly too overpopulated to allow for that lifestyle. But different lifestyles, no less enjoyable, are still available to people.

 

Perhaps we are nearing a scenario where we will all need to eat less/no farmed meat, in order to be able to get enough food out of the available global acreage. So again, perhaps the world is overpopulated with respect to everyone being able to eat a lot of steaks and burgers. But there are other lifestyle options. I agree that it would suck if we all had to go veggie to avoid future famines, and personally I would rather that the human population just went down. But future generations growing up in a veggie world would think nothing of it, and would see it as their "normal".

[LimpyLoo]

 

 

Does anyone think that in 2014, facing climate change and overpopulation, there should be a limit to how many children someone can have?

 

I do... but I have no idea how to make that work. There's going to be a lot of violent opposition to that, and the idea of governments having that sort of control over people is disturbing. I think the better solution is perhaps to get on space colonation asap. Terraform that shit!

 

 

There's also a large part of the population that is violently opposed to evolution being taught in schools, or the idea that climate change is real...

 

Yeah, I really don't know. One thing I've learned about population ethics is that very often there aren't any (good) answers.

 

 

Some days I long to live in the pre-agricultural revolution world, in a little wandering community...

[Zephyr_Nova]

If you want to live in a world where everyone has the ability to homestead in a forest, then yes the world is certainly too overpopulated to allow for that lifestyle. But different lifestyles, no less enjoyable, are still available to people.

 

Perhaps we are nearing a scenario where we will all need to eat less/no farmed meat, in order to be able to get enough food out of the available global acreage. So again, perhaps the world is overpopulated with respect to everyone being able to eat a lot of steaks and burgers. But there are other lifestyle options. I agree that it would suck if we all had to go veggie to avoid future famines, and personally I would rather that the human population just went down. But future generations growing up in a veggie world would think nothing of it, and would see it as their "normal".

 

 

When i think of overpopulation as a problem, I'm not concerned about humans having to change their lifestyles to accommodate that. I'm more concerned with the harm it causes to the planet and the billions of other species on it. If we can terraform other planets and get ourselves off of here, cool. Let people breed like rabbits then. Until then I think having several kids in a family should be discouraged. I'm assuming you're being facetious about preferring that the human population goes down rather than having everyone convert to vegetarianism... I mean, I love eating meat, but if I thought that by becoming vegetarian I could magically make everyone else do the same, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But even then I don't think the planet has enough resources to sustain us (let alone the rest of the biosphere) if we keep reproducing at this rate, were we to stay here.

 

 

There's also a large part of the population that is violently opposed to evolution being taught in schools, or the idea that climate change is real...

 

Violently opposed? I don't really see many outbreaks of violence happening in America over those issues. Strongly opposed, yes, but I imagine a lot more people would be a lot more strongly opposed to having limits placed on their reproductive habits. I imagine it would get a lot uglier a lot faster. It would be hard for a government to impose something like that cleanly without having a fascist grip on the public. There could be tax breaks for people who have less children to discourage people from having too many. That seems like something people might begrudgingly accept. But yeah, there are no easy answers.

[LimpyLoo]

 

 

 

There's also a large part of the population that is violently opposed to evolution being taught in schools, or the idea that climate change is real...

 

Violently opposed? I don't really see many outbreaks of violence happening in America over those issues. Strongly opposed, yes, but I imagine a lot more people would be a lot more strongly opposed to having limits placed on their reproductive habits. I imagine it would get a lot uglier a lot faster. It would be hard for a government to impose something like that cleanly without having a fascist grip on the public. There could be tax breaks for people who have less children to discourage people from having too many. That seems like something people might begrudgingly accept. But yeah, there are no easy answers.

 

 

Oh I thought you just meant "strongly opposed," not literally violent.

 

 

I guess ideally, everyone would be intelligent and reasonable and educated and would look at the situation and make good decisions on behalf of themselves, the would-be child, and everyone else on the planet (and perhaps future generations).

 

If making new people entailed pressing a button on a sci-fi baby-making machine, then I think the ethics would be much less messy.

[Tricone RC]

When i think of overpopulation as a problem, I'm not concerned about humans having to change their lifestyles to accommodate that. I'm more concerned with the harm it causes to the planet and the billions of other species on it. If we can terraform other planets and get ourselves off of here, cool. Let people breed like rabbits then. Until then I think having several kids in a family should be discouraged. I'm assuming you're being facetious about preferring that the human population goes down rather than having everyone convert to vegetarianism... I mean, I love eating meat, but if I thought that by becoming vegetarian I could magically make everyone else do the same, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

 

That's a big concern of mine too - the spread of human influence leads to diebacks, especially of large animals. Continuing growth in population and economy could well spell doom for them. The woodland caribou in Canada is an example of that - it only lives in old-growth, so it is being pushed into ever-remoter areas and will probably go extinct at this rate.

 

Re vegetarianism, I would also like it if the whole world's population would switch to being veggies. It would solve a lot of problems with food security and land use. But even more than that, I would prefer a global population low enough such that anyone could eat whatever they wanted, without any deleterious effects on us or wider ecosystems. Obviously I'm not going to get that - but it would still be my preference

 

But even then I don't think the planet has enough resources to sustain us (let alone the rest of the biosphere) if we keep reproducing at this rate, were we to stay here.

 

 

I think we will be ok as long as the population does level off this century, and we don't get any unexpected upticks in the growth rate (e.g. if governments start to encourage bigger families to "solve" economic problems). The biosphere will take a kicking and I think quality of life will decline a bit in the future, but I certainly don't foresee any catastrophic population crash.

 

My biggest worry for the coming century is our economic system, which demands constant growth even though the natural trend in developed countries seems to be for the economy to approach a steady state (e.g. Europe, Japan). After that I worry about climate change: agriculture could take a good beating if we don't stop burning so much damn coal

[Zephyr_Nova]

Great points. I don't have much else to add... but I'm reminded how little I actually know about climate change. Will global warming serve to help postpone another ice age, will it accelerate us towards one? Does anyone even know? That's something I'd like to be better educated about.

[luke viia]

 

 

 

3. 'Natural' anything is the worst argument ever.

 

I agree with you in general. The distinction between natural and synthetic is false, and even if it were a good distinction it wouldn't be useful.

 

But this isn't an argument about fabrics, foods, or breast implants. This is about a common human behaviour. In this context, "natural" doesn't just mean it's natural so it's good.

 

I'm just saying using "people should continue to do x because it's natural" is a terrible argument, due to all the natural things that are harmful. I'm not saying human drives and behaviors should be ignored --that's one of the most important things to address in these arguments. But the word "natural" should be avoided at all costs in a serious debate.... it almost always leads to things getting stupid and reasoning getting circular.

 

 

 

Well, trailer parks won't grow exponentially since in the West at least birth rates have declined hugely.

 

You're right about that. I was being kind of hyperbolic, but my point was that many of our brightest people are the ones making the decision not to reproduce, which isn't really going to help since the majority are going to keep popping out babies anyway. The core of my argument here is admittedly pretty cynical. I just imagine this trend getting us ever closer to something resembling the movie Idiocracy.

 

 

you can mold almost any child to be smart and hardworking with the proper environment and education, so i highly doubt idiocracy will ever happen. information technology and other modern advances have only been making us smarter! see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

 

 

thanks hoodie, was just about to post something similar. *highfive*

 

fwiw i believe people should be able to reproduce how they please, as any animal should, but that small families should be incentivized by the government and excessively large numbers of offspring (i won't quantify that term here) should be economically penalized by the same entities, rather than made outright illegal. but that's in my fantasy world of socialist wonders, i expect nothing like that actually occurring in reality; furthermore i agree with zephyr that the free-for-all idea of space colonization promoting infinite human numbers shouldn't be entertained seriously until we actually have sustainable colonies in space.

[Tricone RC]

Great points. I don't have much else to add... but I'm reminded how little I actually know about climate change. Will global warming serve to help postpone another ice age, will it accelerate us towards one? Does anyone even know? That's something I'd like to be better educated about.

I am fairly familiar with the paleoclimate side of it (it's close to my line of work). Basically our current and near-future emissions scenario is a long way above and beyond almost anything that has ever naturally happened on Earth, at least in terms of sheer speed of change. There are a handful of other events from Earth history which broadly compare - the best of these are the hyperthermals of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, in which several gigatonnes of carbon (either as CO2 or CH4, in the long run it doesn't really matter which, since CH4 will oxidise to CO2 anyway) were dumped into the atmosphere on ~ten-thousand-year timescales. The exact causes are likely volcanism-related, most likely intrusions into hydrocarbon-rich sediments, or maybe kimberlite eruptions. Our current emissions probably match the largest of the hyperthermals in scale (the end-Paleocene thermal max), but we are doing it ten or a hundred times faster.

 

On the basis of comparisons to hyperthermals we should probably expect the climate globally to get generally warmer (duh) especially in polar regions, and hydrological phenomena should get a lot more extreme on account of higher atmospheric moisture content and the knock-on effects of that: so, heavier rain but also more intense dry periods. Basically, a monsoon pattern would become the global norm. They didn't cause mass extinctions on their own, but there was a fair bit of migration of plants and animals as they followed their preferred ecozones.

 

You can't see exactly what will happen or how it will play out, or exactly what the timescale is supposed to be, but that's the general view you get from looking at the last 200 million years. My main worry is what this shit would do to agriculture, and water supplies where they are dependent on snow/icepack e.g. India/Pakistan. If it happens over a few centuries then we might be able to adapt. We could probably cope with sea level rise if it was just from thermal expansion of the oceans, but we'd be in deep shit if we ended up causing ice sheets to melt. No idea how likely that is, that's beyond my area of familiarity

 

I'm kinda stuck in the middle with that issue. I think about it a lot. On one side you have "skeptics" parroting meaningless crap like "yeah but the climate has always changed" but at the same time a lot of the activist crowd really get on my tits too, by tying the issue in with rants about capitalism and social justice and the like. Even if you subscribe to those views, it must be obvious that the only real way we can decarbonise our economy is within our current economic system, so the political activists are seriously hurting the "cause"

[peace 7]

It seems ultimately... this thread is about: "Should people be allowed to be stupid and bad?" I'm not saying that reproducing is stupid and bad-- I'm saying the main problem with reproduction is that spreading shitty DNA in environments that foster stupid lifestyle and bad morals, creates humans who become strong in spreading bad vibez, man. I imagine most intelligent people who've thought of the "right to reproduce", have no problem with the creation of children, by parents who have international life experience, are well self-educated due to high perception and analytic ability (as well as formal bullshit), who've also experienced enough of life to have solid moral/spiritual/loving life values. Wanting to create such people, is wanting to make the world a better place. The problem is fucking retarded people, creating retarded infrastructures, further perpetuating retardedness-- which is basically the modern world, unfortunately. And there is no overpopulation problem on Earth-- there is a density problem, which is due to people being lazy and not wanting to live outside a short commute from work or entertainment.

 

So I believe the true issue here is modern society and its infrastructure. Bullshit rules of "education" by forced indoctrination into the fucked-values system from the beginning, and then it's just becoming part of a herd-- which is not bad- tribes are not bad- but in modern society, the biggest herds are the ones that are ruining the planet and harming the most humans, and getting brainwashed from a young age into believing that being part of such harmful herds is beneficial to one's happiness, is a lie-based practice that needs to end for the betterment of humanity.

 

Having children in a family setting is one of the most beautiful human experiences possible-- every person who turns out shit, is just an insult to the amazing magic from which they were birthed. Being born, being able to live, and being able to reproduce are not rights-- they are some of the highest human privileges possible which carry great cosmic responsibility.

[LimpyLoo]

Eh, I don't think anyone is worried about the spread of "shitty DNA"...(I hope not...I mean, that's kinda eugenics-y IMO).

 

I think the concern is anyone/everyone over-reproducing.

[MadameChaos]

Found this pretty interesting.

 

"Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended, which equates to about 80 million unintended pregnancies each year and, according to the United Nations Population Fund, an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either not wanting their last child, not wanting another child or wanting to space their pregnancies, but lack access to information and affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. Even in the United States, in 2011, almost half of pregnancies were unintended. The Worldwatch Institute has released State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity and in the chapter "Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9 Billion," Worldwatch Institute President Robert Engelman argues that, "If most or all of these strategies were put into effect, global population likely would peak and subsequently begin a gradual decline before 2050, thereby ensuring sustainable development of natural resources and global stability into the future."

 

http://www.everythingconnects.org/overpopulation-solutions.html

/thread

[Zephyr_Nova]

 

Great points. I don't have much else to add... but I'm reminded how little I actually know about climate change. Will global warming serve to help postpone another ice age, will it accelerate us towards one? Does anyone even know? That's something I'd like to be better educated about.

I am fairly familiar with the paleoclimate side of it (it's close to my line of work). Basically our current and near-future emissions scenario is a long way above and beyond almost anything that has ever naturally happened on Earth, at least in terms of sheer speed of change. There are a handful of other events from Earth history which broadly compare - the best of these are the hyperthermals of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, in which several gigatonnes of carbon (either as CO2 or CH4, in the long run it doesn't really matter which, since CH4 will oxidise to CO2 anyway) were dumped into the atmosphere on ~ten-thousand-year timescales. The exact causes are likely volcanism-related, most likely intrusions into hydrocarbon-rich sediments, or maybe kimberlite eruptions. Our current emissions probably match the largest of the hyperthermals in scale (the end-Paleocene thermal max), but we are doing it ten or a hundred times faster.

 

Thanks a lot for the detailed response --much appreciated! I have a friend who's been doing work in climate science for the last year or so (I think he's writing textbooks, simplifying complex topics so that laymen like me can feel like they understand them). Hopefully next time I see him I'll have something more to add to the discussion.

[Hoodie]

Found this pretty interesting.

 

"Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended, which equates to about 80 million unintended pregnancies each year and, according to the United Nations Population Fund, an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either not wanting their last child, not wanting another child or wanting to space their pregnancies, but lack access to information and affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. Even in the United States, in 2011, almost half of pregnancies were unintended. The Worldwatch Institute has released State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity and in the chapter "Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9 Billion," Worldwatch Institute President Robert Engelman argues that, "If most or all of these strategies were put into effect, global population likely would peak and subsequently begin a gradual decline before 2050, thereby ensuring sustainable development of natural resources and global stability into the future."

 

http://www.everythingconnects.org/overpopulation-solutions.html

/thread

 

BOOM! thanks for posting this!

[peace 7]

Eugenics is not bad unless practiced by means of direct execution. After all, with creation of societies based on principles, the inadvertent goal of all societies is to craft people who fit the ideal societal model. Eugenics happens whether direct or not.

 

As for overpopulation, this is (again I'll state) a problem of density due to laziness and people not willing to be inconvenienced by having to commute. Besides the obvious downsides of people not being able to enjoy a more "nature-filled" lifestyle that's only possible in less densely populated areas, a huge problem is that due to density and ability to "sell" much easier, production and infrastructure of such, accumulates around densely populated areas, which further perpetuates the problem of non-creation of villages in areas which are rich in space.

 

There's tons of info on population density on the interwebnetz-- one relevant point being that if population density equaled that of New York City, the whole of the Earth's population could fit into Texas. There is NO overpopulation problem on Earth-- there is an overpopulation problem in cities with money.

 

And I've considered myself with regards to this density problem (cuz Tokyo is dense as fuck)-- I've visited various countrysides of Japan, and in all places I've visited, rice is cheaper, vegetables and fish/meat is more fresh/local aaand way cheaper, land/housing- whether rent or buy- is from 50% to TEN TIMES+ cheaper than Tokyo. One can buy a house in the countryside for $100,000, that would cost over a million in Tokyo (for $100,000 in Tokyo, you could buy an apartment the size of a large walk-in closet). One can buy mass amounts of land in the country that is not even possible in Tokyo (unless you're willing to blow $10 million+). I've researched this when living in Egypt as well- maaaassive farm land in the deserts, for the price of a nice apartment in central Cairo. --For me, there really is no reason to live in dense "badass" cities. Internet has taught me that convenience has never equaled happiness. After I save tons of Tokyo money, I'm living on countryside land. Tokyo, New York, Honolulu, etc.... prices are ridiculous. Fucking retarded.

[luke viia]

 

Great points. I don't have much else to add... but I'm reminded how little I actually know about climate change. Will global warming serve to help postpone another ice age, will it accelerate us towards one? Does anyone even know? That's something I'd like to be better educated about.

I am fairly familiar with the paleoclimate side of it (it's close to my line of work). Basically our current and near-future emissions scenario is a long way above and beyond almost anything that has ever naturally happened on Earth, at least in terms of sheer speed of change. There are a handful of other events from Earth history which broadly compare - the best of these are the hyperthermals of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, in which several gigatonnes of carbon (either as CO2 or CH4, in the long run it doesn't really matter which, since CH4 will oxidise to CO2 anyway) were dumped into the atmosphere on ~ten-thousand-year timescales. The exact causes are likely volcanism-related, most likely intrusions into hydrocarbon-rich sediments, or maybe kimberlite eruptions. Our current emissions probably match the largest of the hyperthermals in scale (the end-Paleocene thermal max), but we are doing it ten or a hundred times faster.

 

On the basis of comparisons to hyperthermals we should probably expect the climate globally to get generally warmer (duh) especially in polar regions, and hydrological phenomena should get a lot more extreme on account of higher atmospheric moisture content and the knock-on effects of that: so, heavier rain but also more intense dry periods. Basically, a monsoon pattern would become the global norm. They didn't cause mass extinctions on their own, but there was a fair bit of migration of plants and animals as they followed their preferred ecozones.

 

You can't see exactly what will happen or how it will play out, or exactly what the timescale is supposed to be, but that's the general view you get from looking at the last 200 million years. My main worry is what this shit would do to agriculture, and water supplies where they are dependent on snow/icepack e.g. India/Pakistan. If it happens over a few centuries then we might be able to adapt. We could probably cope with sea level rise if it was just from thermal expansion of the oceans, but we'd be in deep shit if we ended up causing ice sheets to melt. No idea how likely that is, that's beyond my area of familiarity

 

I'm kinda stuck in the middle with that issue. I think about it a lot. On one side you have "skeptics" parroting meaningless crap like "yeah but the climate has always changed" but at the same time a lot of the activist crowd really get on my tits too, by tying the issue in with rants about capitalism and social justice and the like. Even if you subscribe to those views, it must be obvious that the only real way we can decarbonise our economy is within our current economic system, so the political activists are seriously hurting the "cause"

 

 

I dig this post, but re: that last paragraph, what makes you think the only way to 'decarbonise' is within the bounds of our current economic system? I don't mean to hurt the cause, and I'm known to rant about crony capitalism and trans-national businesses skirting environmental responsibility, but I'm genuinely curious about your opinion here. Can you elaborate for me? /sea lion

[Tricone RC]

 

I dig this post, but re: that last paragraph, what makes you think the only way to 'decarbonise' is within the bounds of our current economic system? I don't mean to hurt the cause, and I'm known to rant about crony capitalism and trans-national businesses skirting environmental responsibility, but I'm genuinely curious about your opinion here. Can you elaborate for me? /sea lion

 

Well, activists have wanted the downfall of capitalism for ever and a day, but for better or worse I think it's a reasonable assumption that it's not going to happen any time soon. Some kind of authoritarian commie government would be able to implement a Five Year Plan of decarbonisation, but how likely is it that anyone is going to willingly allow a genuinely authoritarian government to take control? So we are trapped in this system.

 

Another option would be if the whole of the developed world volunteers to be more frugal with energy and fuel, but that is pretty unlikely too. The only socially realistic way out is a techno-fix solution, e.g. if we build nukes like there's no tomorrow, or if we have a jump in solar/wind/battery tech efficiency.

 

Found this pretty interesting.

Back to population: Exactly, it's largely just a development issue. Get people access to good healthcare and the birth rate will fall. The key is that we make sure the developing world actually develops... So much stands in the way like shitty civil wars, bullshit religion, disease, and lack of energy supply (so it links back with the climate/energy debate, and not necessarily in a good way)

 

I am also really scared of dumbass governments in the West will encourage the birth rate to grow in the future, to spur economic growth. It would be a spectacularly short-sighted policy, but it is perfectly in tune with most conventional economic policy, which concerns me

[apriorion]

Wow, thanks much for the very thoughtful posts in this thread. I especially appreciated your input about the climate information, Triclone RC. The thing is, I don't want to get sidetracked too much by peripheral concerns. Yes, there are global climate considerations, and overpopulation is a lot more complicated than most people make it out to be. But those are relatively minor points in my argument: I cited them only because they are considerations that we can all share. But there's a more general concern here that I don't see addressed: that life is largely a miserable struggle. And there are many things we can point to: the environment is getting fucked, there are more and more people on this planet, a lot of these people are idiots--sure. This is like cosmic background radiation-type misery. But there are many more kinds of misery that are much more pressing right at the fore of our day-to-day lives. This is what I'm wondering about: should we reproduce? Or, let's make it more personal: should you reproduce? I asked myself this question quite a few times, in earnest. Here's what I've found, thinking carefully about this: lots of people take it as the default view that you ought to reproduce, no questions asked. As a matter of fact (and this is a point that was raised independently by Overall in the NYT "Stone" section in 2012), people will instead insist that you have reasons when you say you don't want to breed. The default is that there's something wrong with you if you decide to not have kids. This is part of a traditional view stretching back at least to Aristotle: people without kids have unfulfilled lives. Why? When (as Madame Chaos pointed out, with empirical support) most people have children as the result of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, why is it the case that someone who decides to not have kids is somehow an incomplete human being? The default seems to be: we should chastise people for not wanting to reproduce. Why? I am suggesting that people should have very good answers to the kinds of questions we're entertaining here before we celebrate their parenthood. Problem is, most people don't seem that reflective. I could draft up another list here pretty easily, but I think you get my point: introducing more children into this world without having a plan to combat the sources of suffering that our lives face is morally questionable. To take that a step further, I am arguing that these considerations count against the morality of reproduction, in the first place.

[Amen Lare]

That's not the general consensus that life is a miserable struggle. At best, it's viewed as struggle for "happiness". So you just can't apply your moral strategy to large values. Then there are totally different cultures, where it isn't even a question. So again, you decide for yourself and that's it.

[Guest BasDirks]

I was starting to feel bad about derailing the "Marriage" thread with the related but distinct topic of reproduction. So here is a thread to focus on that subject. Do you have a right to reproduce? I contend that you don't. Here is why:

 

--the harm principle: you have a right to do something so far as it doesn't harm anyone else. Being a bad parent could potentially fuck up another human being.

--there are a hell of a lot of people already; overpopulation concerns are relevant here; lack of resources might not be a problem for some areas of the world, but they certainly are for others

 

Sometimes people say that it's a "natural drive" to have children, or something along those lines. By this reason, those people argue that it's somehow morally acceptable for people to still have children. Problem is, it is very difficult to spell out what "natural" means here. It might mean

--what is most common among humans: that's bad reasoning, though, since there are plenty of things that average people do that are not morally acceptable; the point is to be better

--what is innate: that's also bad, because being an innate tendency (assuming we can even make sense of that in the first place) is also a poor guide to what is best.

 

I'm not attacking people personally here; rather, I'm asking you to reflect on this subject as rationally as possible and tell me where I'm wrong. If you want to call my ideas "retarded" or anything like that, fine. Just don't expect a response from me if you give something that weak.

 

Also, note that the point I'm making here is distinct from my two points in the "Marriage" thread. There, I argued (a) that people shouldn't reproduce (which is a stronger claim than the one I'm making here, which is instead just the claim that you don't have a right to reproduce), and (b) that parents should be licensed to have children (which is an even stronger claim than (a) or the present claim).

 

 

What is natural doesn't need to be defined in terms of language. Reproduction is not a right and it doesn't become one under the harm principle.

 

You're not actually making a point, don't flatter yourself. You're merely mixing a despicable worldview with awful philosophizing.

[apriorion]

Hmm. Someone accuses me of awful philosophizing but says this in the same post: "what is natural doesn't need to be defined in terms of language"?