131–140 of 147 posts
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You need a large population to support big industries and it helps tech innovation as well.
Taiwan population is not that large (23M), and yet they can support a pretty convincing semiconductor industry. I agree that we need a reasonable amount of people to build and maintain large projects, millions, not billions.
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https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed... Apparently it's very normal. On top of that “abnormal” does not mean “unhealthy”, but then again, that's something psychologists very often don't understand either. Having an I.Q. above 145 is certainly not “normal”, but not a cause for concern either.
Perhaps it's culturally "normal", but it goes against evolutionary psychology, and it's probably unhealthy as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-h...
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Whatever happened to Toyota's palliative care robots? Remember about 15 years ago when they were doing all those demos and said they'd have them out within 10 years and would be $15,000?? Honestly, even if they were $50,000 it'd still be a lot cheaper than a nursing home and would allow people to live at home.
Why not just killbots? Much less dystopian than a future of elders left alone to be tended by palliative care robots.
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I agree, it's not surprising given birth control and economic pressures to join the workforce, but it is new and distinctly modern, and writing it off as "some people just don't want kids" isn't a satisfactory explanation. Something is deeply wrong in a society if it has all of the social safety net tools, like Finland does, to ease the burdens of childbearing and people still choose to not do it. It's a society in a…
The future looks bleak for humans. It might not be in fact but it looks that way. Climate change and “AI” disruption or worse…it takes a special individual to want to bring a person into these situations. People do, I did, but it’s not easy.
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I agree, it's not surprising given birth control and economic pressures to join the workforce, but it is new and distinctly modern, and writing it off as "some people just don't want kids" isn't a satisfactory explanation. Something is deeply wrong in a society if it has all of the social safety net tools, like Finland does, to ease the burdens of childbearing and people still choose to not do it. It's a society in a…
If society is already committing a fast suicide by destroying the habitability of the Earth, then doesn't it seem rational? Like imagine a meteor was going to destroy the Earth in a year - would it make sense to have children? 10 years? 100?
This sort of absurd hyperbole is a good sign you've been propagandized into believing something for the benefit of others.
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Why not just killbots? Much less dystopian than a future of elders left alone to be tended by palliative care robots.
You think that, given a robot, it’s more dystopian to have it care for someone, vs kill them? Weird.
I'd also note that plummeting birthrates are also happening in countries that are known for great social welfare, lots of government support for new mothers, and a more egalitarian society overall, like Finland. A lot of people simply don't want kids. Kids take a huge amount of time and investment for about 2 decades of one's life, and that can have a large, significant negative impact on quality of life, especially…
A lot of it is explained by rising marriage ages. Women lose the ability to have children at around 40, so the later they get married, the less chance they have of having children, even if all other things are equal. E.g. if we assume an even chance of having children per year, then we'd expect an increase of the average marriage age from 32 to 36 to halve the birth rate (as in the former there are 8 years in which t…
Probably, a woman's chance of getting pregnant decreases the older she is, even if she is still menstruating. That would complicate the numbers but would not contradict your argument.
This is why a province in China is offering a cash bonus to couples who marry before the woman is 25.
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It’s worse than that. Historically only 50% of men reproduced, and that hasn’t gotten much better. There are plenty of divorced men with more than one family, yet this is rarer for women. I’d estimate if 30% of women aren’t having children at least 50-60% of men won’t. God knows what kind of issues that will cause.
We'll just normalize MAID, and people will volunteer to shuffle off this mortal coil. Insert a WSB meme, drawn in mspaint, about a cheap handgun being your retirement plan.
I feel like the col is just an excuse for people that don't really want them anyway. Throughout history people have had children with very little material possessions. Talk to someone who went through the great depression about how you don't have enough money etc. to have kids. I think we've just brainwashed ourselves into believing you need to be ultra wealthy to give kids a good childhood. If you literally cannot a…
>Throughout history people have had children with very little material possessions. Talk to someone who went through the great depression about how you don't have enough money etc. to have kids. Historically (and in very undeveloped countries today) kids were assets; they could work in the parents' farm or shop, clean the house, tend to the animals, etc. In modern culture parents get essentially nothing from kids in…
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This is good except for two things: (1) women lose their fertility at "a certain age" and if they put off childbearing for too long they might lose the opportunity and (2) if you have children late your life will overlap less with them. For that matter there is the issue of chasing a toddler around when you are 50 and less energetic than when you are 30. It's probably not so good to have children when you are very yo…
Luckily mom was 10 years younger than me. And yeah I have some concerns about being "the old dad" but I'm not that old and at least right now I'm pretty active. Had to start using reading glasses last year, so I know that won't last. But it will last long enough.