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Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

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Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#121

Post by archagon »

teekert wrote: post #38

Yes, let's die out! Let's not even let any kid get born that may invent the key to nuclear fusion. Sure, let's just choose some non-sentient animals and plants over ourselves killing any chance of betterment right here and now. Let's not even try to spread out over the stars, let's make sure that any life on our current planet dies as soon as this planet dies instead of taking it with us across the barren ocean that…

You have no ownership over your descendants. Nothing about you as an individual will be exploring those galaxies.

In the end, it's all an arbitrary sort of stew.

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#122

Post by maceurt »

crobertsbmw wrote: post #24

I’ve always believed that if you’re a smart, educated, motivated person (if your reading this than I’m assuming you are one) that probably the best thing you can do for the world is to have kids. Those kids will likely contribute to the world in all sorts of ways that we can’t imagine.

Furthermore, from my perspective I think that it is one's duty to have as many children as they think they can have within as long they it does not negatively effect the raising of their other children to a large degree, and it does not put one below the poverty line.

Raising children who are moral/ upright, and positively add to the economy adds to the world by an exponential factor.

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#123

Post by whatshisface »

ergothus wrote: post #112
whatshisface wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people would rather exist than not exist, and although it can sometimes seem like it, not everyone in the entire world is severely clinically depressed. Parents make decisions for their children all the time, and existence is one the the safest bets.

Do you have the maximum number of children biologically possible? If not ( and I assume you haven't ), then you've made choices that have prevented others from existing. Assuming you are okay with that ( and I assume you are ) then the decisions involved are not a simple as you portray.

>Do you have the maximum number of children biologically possible?

You can't reason about ethics from the standpoint that whatever you are doing right now is known to be ethical. If you did that, you'd just be constructing post-facto justifications for decisions you already made. There are plenty of things I should be doing from a utilitarian standpoint that I don't do (I'm not saving the maximum number of African children, for example).

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#124

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

misingnoglic wrote: post #105
LifeLiverTransp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "adopt" kids usually are the kids of alcoholic parents, who gave them a subtle but unrepairable "drink" too much. You will not be informed about that by government- and you will go through hell trying to repair what alcohol made unrepairable. Would advise that only if government guarantees no https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_spectrum_disorde...

Do you have any statistics on that, or is that just your personal bias?

Sorry its paywalled and german: http://www.spiegel.de/plus/alkoholgeschaedigte-adoptivkinder...

Summary of the story: Government knowingly passed retarded children - who destroyed several marriages and familys- simply because that sort of damage is not fixable with love and understanding. You can only tolerate it and adapt your lifestyle to the new member of the family.

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#126

Post by fulafel »

candiodari wrote: post #104
Angostura wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did any of those groups they have a scientific basis for believing that having kids would speed up the advent of the apocalypse or worsen its effects? Let's not draw false parallels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism So: yes. Many times. In fact it would be accurate to say that a portion of the population has believed this, now for hundreds of years.

Malthus lived in the 1700s. The 1970s neo-malthusianism (Limits to Growth, Club of Rome etc) didn't predict apocalypse in 25, rather "Given business as usual, i.e., no changes to historical growth trends, the limits to growth on earth would become evident by 2072" [1]. But they did indeed think population growth was a major problem and they were right of course.

The neomalthusian ideas didn't you should have no kids, but rather that you should not have a lot of kids.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#Conclusio...

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#127

Post by ergothus »

whatshisface wrote: post #123
ergothus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have the maximum number of children biologically possible? If not ( and I assume you haven't ), then you've made choices that have prevented others from existing. Assuming you are okay with that ( and I assume you are ) then the decisions involved are not a simple as you portray.

> Do you have the maximum number of children biologically possible? You can't reason about ethics from the standpoint that whatever you are doing right now is known to be ethical. If you did that, you'd just be constructing post-facto justifications for decisions you already made. There are plenty of things I should be doing from a utilitarian standpoint that I don't do (I'm not saving the maximum number of African c…

> You can't reason about ethics from the standpoint that whatever you are doing right now is known to be ethical.

An excellent point...but we DO reason about ethics. We can draw parallels from our decisions in other areas to see if we are being consistent. Even if we can't achieve objectivity we can try for it and thus get closer.

And from this I find I feel bad about the good to other living creatures I COULD be doing and am not....but that I don't feel sorrow for the lack of of sorrow and joy from creatures that are merely potential.

Perhaps you feel differently. Others certainly do. I just want to point out that it's something worthy of thinking about rather than tossing out a facile "existence is always better".

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#128

Post by seanmcdirmid »

your-nanny wrote: post #115
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Natural selection means that primarily those who think having kids is ok will propagate their genetic material. So in the long run, the answer is necessarily yes.

what if there is no longer run, because survival in the short term requires otherwise? island mamnal populations can take wild periodic swings of explosion and collapse. not necessarily the ideal way of going about it. in any case we shouldn't confusebindividual fitness with group level fitness

In the end, the only people remaining would still be those who thought it was ok to reproduce. Unless a world-wide authoritarian government implemented strict population control and decided who would reproduce or not. Scary thought.

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#129

Post by your-nanny »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #128
your-nanny wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if there is no longer run, because survival in the short term requires otherwise? island mamnal populations can take wild periodic swings of explosion and collapse. not necessarily the ideal way of going about it. in any case we shouldn't confusebindividual fitness with group level fitness

In the end, the only people remaining would still be those who thought it was ok to reproduce. Unless a world-wide authoritarian government implemented strict population control and decided who would reproduce or not. Scary thought.

I suspect that reproductive decisions are far less genetically deterministic than your account suggests.

Re: Is it still ok to have kids in face of climate change?

#130

Post by teekert »

archagon wrote: post #121
teekert wrote: post #38

Yes, let's die out! Let's not even let any kid get born that may invent the key to nuclear fusion. Sure, let's just choose some non-sentient animals and plants over ourselves killing any chance of betterment right here and now. Let's not even try to spread out over the stars, let's make sure that any life on our current planet dies as soon as this planet dies instead of taking it with us across the barren ocean that…

You have no ownership over your descendants. Nothing about you as an individual will be exploring those galaxies. In the end, it's all an arbitrary sort of stew.

It will be a stew with my optimistic DNA in it and none of those anti-procreation basepairs!
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