[refurb]

Nobody has a crystal ball. Look at any of the predictions made 50 years ago - this isn’t the first time the end of the world has been predicted.

Even some of the more basic predictions about the rise and fall of countries have been comically wrong.

But to feel so confident that you know what the future holds that you make major life choices based on it is rather… odd.

[BrandoElFollito]

When you look at the predictions from 1900, 1920 and 1960 (the ones I saw), they were unanimously optimistic: no wars, cancer cured, flying cars (or similar stuff at the beginning of the XX century). They indeed failed, but either because they did not predict great things such as the Internet, or because they were overly optimistic.

[mlrtime]

I agree, when I hear people say they won't have kids [today] because of climate concerns, it reads as fake virtue signaling. Meaning, the desire to have kids was very weak or 0, so coming up with any excuse [climate change] is a self superior moral decision, aka signaling.

[silverquiet]

When I hear people say that they will have kids [today] because of [reason], it reads as fake virtue signalling. Meaning, the desire to have kids was very strong or 1, so coming up with any excuse [reason] is a self superior moral decision, aka signaling.

I'm pretty sure you can apply this logic to any human decision. Honestly, I've come around to thinking that children are mostly status symbols within some communities (religiosity correlates about as highly as anything), and most reasons are post-hoc rationalizations of that.

That said, I'm pretty scared of climate change, and I'm probably not quite halfway through my lifespan. I can't imaging being a young child and facing down decades of this stuff. No thanks.