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Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

richarddawkins.net

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Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#61

Post by kalms »

pathy wrote: post #8
wesley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is a 1 child policy like in China.

That does lead to other problems, like putting a strain on the welfare system of countries when there suddenly is a huge decrease in the number of people that support those who have retired. Look at Japan where there are fewer and fewer supporting more and more. It is kinda working for now but what will happen in 20 years? Who knows.

My guess? We'll gradually shift back into larger households, with several generations living under one roof. Not that bad, when you come to think of it.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#62

Post by ChuckMcM »

mikeash wrote: post #50
vadman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't entirely agree that "absolute numbers are pointless here". If you look at the amount of human suffering, your world is 2x worse.

By that reasoning, a world where there are only a thousand people, divided into two tribes constantly engaged in horrific war, is vastly better.

I think that is where we are headed.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#63

Post by illuminate »

yason wrote: post #34

Male energy is in crisis. In the modern world boys aren't allowed to be boys to make sure they will become men grown tame. Boys are grown by women—and these days also men who have adopted the women's way of growing kids. We think that male energy is aggressive and offensive, and it must be suppressed and tainted, while simultaneously we have lost our icons of what real manhood entails. We don't have rites of manhood…

"Male energy is in crisis"

Yes, and thank goodness strict gender roles are considered arbitrary and laughable if they weren't so damaging.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#64

Post by saraid216 »

vadman wrote: post #38
mikeash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually evidence related to the assertion at hand. For that, you'd need a historical comparison, which that list does not provide. You may be right about absolute numbers, but absolute numbers are pointless here. From what I've seen before, in terms of the relative number of people killed in war compared to the overall population, this is the most peaceful time known. If 2x as many people get killed in wa…

I don't entirely agree that "absolute numbers are pointless here". If you look at the amount of human suffering, your world is 2x worse.

Well, it is an issue that we are more likely to care when someone suffers, these days. That increases human suffering all by itself.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#66

Post by saraid216 »

yason wrote: post #34

Male energy is in crisis. In the modern world boys aren't allowed to be boys to make sure they will become men grown tame. Boys are grown by women—and these days also men who have adopted the women's way of growing kids. We think that male energy is aggressive and offensive, and it must be suppressed and tainted, while simultaneously we have lost our icons of what real manhood entails. We don't have rites of manhood…

You know what my favorite rite of manhood was? Taking a sharp rock and slicing the bottom of your penis. You should try it.

Source: Joseph Campbell.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#67

Post by pfedor »

rayiner wrote: post #35
grannyg00se wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is depopulation a crisis?

The most immediate answer is that it makes a European-style system of social insurance for older people difficult when the ratio of working people to retirees decreases. The broader answer is that it upends economic expectations. Say I'm thinking of building an office tower. If I know there will be fewer workers in 10 years, instead of more, I'm less likely to build it. If I'm pricing stock in a company, and I know t…

I won't be adding much but want to make a small correction: it makes any retirement system difficult. The non-European-style system in the US, where people just keep stocks in their 401k and IRA accounts, is equally in danger when the number of people shrinks, since the returns from those investments depend on the growth of the economy, the size of which in turn depends on the number of people.

I realize you addressed this in your second paragraph, so as I said this comment isn't adding much, but I think it's worth spelling out: anyone who wants to have a dream of retiring before they die, better pray that the "overpopulation crisis" actually materializes as severely as possible.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#68

Post by rayiner »

pfedor wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most immediate answer is that it makes a European-style system of social insurance for older people difficult when the ratio of working people to retirees decreases. The broader answer is that it upends economic expectations. Say I'm thinking of building an office tower. If I know there will be fewer workers in 10 years, instead of more, I'm less likely to build it. If I'm pricing stock in a company, and I know t…

I won't be adding much but want to make a small correction: it makes any retirement system difficult. The non-European-style system in the US, where people just keep stocks in their 401k and IRA accounts, is equally in danger when the number of people shrinks, since the returns from those investments depend on the growth of the economy, the size of which in turn depends on the number of people. I realize you addresse…

No, you're totally right. The whole "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" critique misses a basic point, which is that all systems of retirement are Ponzi schemes, or more charitably, systems built on paying it forward. The basic human life cycle, where the laboring generation takes care of children and the elderly, has not changed--we have just decoupled the process a bit using financial instruments and government programs.

When people "save for retirement" they put money in a 401k, they don't fill a cellar with creamed corn and MREs. Those investments are nothing more than earmarks on future production. The value of a stock is ultimately built on the right to receive a share of profits from the labor of the working generation. The same is true for bonds and other financial instruments.

No matter how you structure the retirement system, the physical reality is that the retired generation gets a cut of the goods and services produced by the working generation. As the latter gets smaller relative to the former, you have problems.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#69

Post by Mz »

m0th87 wrote: post #60
icebraining wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's sort of a dated rule. I've been here even longer than my account suggests, and the quality has most certainly degraded - both from comments like OP's, and from people defending it under the umbrella of free speech (kind of an absurd stance given every community enforces quality standards.) PG himself has acknowledged the degrading quality. Thankfully some work has been done to curb this trend, but it does seem…

PG himself not only acknowledges that quality has declined but also that he has no idea how to reverse it. I don't know if I can effect change here, but I do know how it is done and I have done it elsewhere. Raising the bar on treating other members with respect and tolerating a diversity of viewpoints is part of how that is done.

You are, of course, free to make fun of me while bemoaning the decline in quality. I am free to think you are clearly clueless if you cannot see a connection between the two things.

Re: Scientists warn of sperm count crisis

#70

Post by yason »

Mz wrote: post #59
return0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent thread was probably trolling, or not aware of some details about these rituals of passage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambia_people ) Gender role development is a touchy but very important subject (although i m not sure it's related to sperm count). Related: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/you-can-giv...

I have been called a troll (or treated like one). I am not. For that and other reasons, I am very reluctant to hang that on this person. HN is an actively hostile environment for some topics. Regardless, most people do not want to have a real serious discussion about a touchy topic like this, under any circumstance. That is the only piece I really take issue with. As someone who believes in a lot of things that would…

Comments like yours are exactly why I posted the original article. It's really nice to hear from someone at HN who sees beyond the controversy caused by a totally different mental model, as you put it. I'm surprised I wasn't downmodded more aggressively.

I wouldn't have answered to this thread unless you had written these two comments of yours: HN certainly isn't the place for serious discussion about such topics and while I don't necessarily like it that way, that's just the way it is. But I sometimes keep fishing for different responses.

Now, anything related to gender, sex, gender roles, and the masculine and feminine parts of a person's psyche and spirit seems to be a touchy subject: add in a few feminist and antifeminist preconceptions—or just any politically correct one—to the mix and what you have is the mother of all can of worms.

It's virtually impossible to discuss those in a large group unless there's a predefined consensus that limits what can be said. All we probably can agree with together is that there's a difference between the masculine and feminine, but there are indefinite ways of how that could unfold into a discussion. Yet it's a very fundamental dynamic of life that you're bound to deal with one way or another, regardless of if you're a man or a woman.

Further, there are so many angles into this gender topic that it's hard if not impossible to establish a definitive model of how to present my thoughts on such a topic myself. And that doesn't fly well at HN: generally people who are thinking more aloud than asserting their final conclusions don't fare well on internet forums.

So, a fruitful conversation of the subject is probably only possible with at most two people who trust each other enough so that they're able to just reflect the other person's thoughts instead of trying to argue them out.

I know there are tens of thousands of different people on HN and most do have beliefs and attitudes that don't fit in the canned scientific-consensus impression most people present on HN.

There is a wealth of intelligent people here and I sometimes wonder what they think of things that can't be said here.

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