[decafninja]

Watching her friends and my friends' wives go through it, we've been scared off.

Add to that, the usual HN phenomenon that we're observing how the world and our countries (USA & Korea) seem be going down the toilet, and that makes us feel hesitant to bring a new human being into the world, especially when there are kids already here that could use a loving family.

[legutierr]

The world has always been going down the toilet. The only difference now is that we have higher visibility of and lower tolerance for the bullshit. You shouldn’t be so pessimistic.

[adrianN]

The other difference now is that we're pretty close to wiping out crucial ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and show no signs of taking climate change as seriously as we should.

[legutierr]

I was downvoted in my other comment, so I think I should explain what I meant.

My point was that there is no “we” when we speak of humanity as a broad aggregate this way. There are specific constituencies—for instance, Bolsenaro and his supporters in Brazil—who are blocking the policies that most of us want to implement to stop climate change. It’s not “we” who are the problem, it’s “them”.

If you blame humanity in the aggregate you misdirect your energies and misidentify the solution.

The thing to do is to apply the appropriate political levers to weaken and oppose the constituencies who prioritize status-quo fossil-fuel energy policies over civilizational stability and the well-being of life on Earth. Blaming all of humanity is the equivalent of giving up and doing nothing, and makes the problem worse.

[d0100]

Leave it to "first world" countries that already killed off all their nature to grandstand on another country with still virgin land...

[bamboozled]

But still, the word has really been going down the toilet for humans for a long time, famines, wars, plagues, pandemics. It's all been going down the shit shoot for a long time. But then you see a nice sunset, eat a decent meal and feel lucky. If my children get to experience some of those simple pleasures, maybe it's mission accomplished ?

[legutierr]

Speak for yourself. I take it very seriously myself.

[osigurdson]

Great comment. Your absolutely right. I'm often personally far too pessimistic about the future (climate change, nuclear annihilation, etc). There is no real benefit to such pessimism.

[xeromal]

I agree with you in many ways, but I think humanity has never had this level of capability to destroy the earth. We'll either be unable to breathe freely or lose most of civilization in a nuclear war by the end of the century.

[DSingularity]

Why not one kid and try to use the excess parenting bandwidth to equip him/her to face the new world and maybe even fix it a bit?

[Dalewyn]

Not to detract, but "one kid" would only make the problem worse because a woman needs to give birth to at least two children in order for population counts at large to maintain parity.

That is, one kid per woman halves the population. If the axiom is at least maintaining, ideally growing the population, every woman needs to give birth to at least two and ideally three or more kids.

Of course, this isn't to say I'm telling other people what to do regarding offspring, because I hate that kind of intrusive attitude. I've already decided I'm having no kids, because fuck the human world; and anyone who comes bitching at me about it one way or another can take a hike and pound sand. So I'm not going to be hypocritical and turn around and tell other people what to do in the bedroom.

But if the purpose for all the noise behind childbearing is to take population count trends out of the negatives, advising "one kid" not only doesn't help solve the problem but actively makes it worse.

[Thorrez]

I don't understand. How is 1 biological kid worse than 0 biological kids? It sounds like decafninja is likely planning on having 0 biological kids.

[Dalewyn]

Within the wider context of population decline due to low birth rates, both are bad because both lead to population decline anyway. 2 kids is a hard minimum for maintaining population count, 3 or more kids for increasing population.

As for what decafninja (or any individual for that matter) decides upon in the bedroom, that's for him to decide and his business alone. I'm not going to comment because it's none of my business.

[CogitoCogito]

Why do we need to maintain our population count? Why is it a problem if it declines?

[imtringued]

Because the longtermists are betting on 10^58 humans being alive one day. If you don't have children and population growth isn't exponential anymore their whole ideology comes crashing down.

If people voluntarily self limit the size of the population that is a good thing because it means we won't need to shoot each other if it turns out we are straining the earth too much.

[Dalewyn]

You're asking the wrong guy; I don't care either way. :P

I'm just pointing out that in a wider discussion of "oh noes population decline oh noes low birth rates", it's not constructive to be talking about having 1 kid when there's a hard minimum of having 2 kids and ideally more.

[collegeburner]

from what i've seen only children tend to grow up more spoiled and with worse social and coping skills.