The Population Bust

Post by yters » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

tapland wrote: post #169

yters wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of automating everything if there are no more people? I think ultimately people are the source of happiness for people. Material things are just an intermediary in the happiness exchange. So, if we get rid of people to replace them with material things we will become less happy. Plus, it isn't obvious that all the important stuff can be automated.

> So, if we get rid of people to replace them with material things we will become less happy. No. People who don't exist don't experience anything. And there are plenty of people who are born and who as adults wish they had never been, and a lot of us who are still ok with it but not very excited are still biased since we do exist. This is not a problem for those who are never born. They don't become people who can f…

What if the value of someone's life is independent of their own subjective perception of their own value? Many people, tragically, view themselves as valueless, due to many factors, but that's a reason to boost their self value, not a reason to give into their misperception of self.

If a person's body is unhealthy, we don't encourage them towards greater unhealthiness, but rather health. The same with mental health. We should encourage mentally healthy perspectives, which includes self value.

Post by Yetanfou » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 8:39 AM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #108

Yetanfou wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...but if you import an ideology into your culture you'll end up with escalating conflict. The refusal to see this has created something more akin to a powder keg than a melting pot (to paraphrase the old moniker) which has the - already partly realised - potential for some serious destruction.

You realize all of the larger cultures on Earth are melting pots, right? Sweden, France and Germany each by themselves are cultural mutts, for example. To deny this is to deny history and archeology.

The "melting pot" idea of multiculturalism has been proven to be inaccurate, a better term for the way things actually work is a "salad bowl" - just search on "melting pot or salad bowl" to read more on this subject.

The example of Sweden is indicative of what I tried to convey as it has made the "salad bowl" concept part of its constitution which states that the country should "actively promote the distinctive collective identities of national minorities and immigrants" ([1] gives some insight in how things came to be like the way they are in Sweden). In the space of a few decades the country went from being one of the most homogeneous on earth to a boiling kettle of contrasting and often clashing cultures to which the term "mutt" - a mixed breed which has characteristics of all its predecessors - is not applicable as the constituent cultures mostly hold to their own. It is at the interfaces between those cultures tensions arise, sometimes between native Swedes and immigrants but more so between different groups of immigrants.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt20q22fw.13 ("The Political Dynamics of Multiculturalism in Sweden")

Re: The Population Bust

Re: The Population Bust