Earlier quoted context omitted.
Childlessness seems to be an increasingly compassionate choice. Degrowth by force.
Childlessness is a beautifully self-removing trait.
Ideas aren't genetic.
The happiest I've ever been
211–220 of 402 posts
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#212The moving tiny rectangles framing is interesting, it gets to the heart of why I find all the anti-AI takes so difficult to comprehend. If you never made any effort to connect what you do with what value is added in real life, then it's no wonder better tooling is leaving you lost. Programming (other than code golf) has always been an implementation detail for solving problems IRL.
I’m sure the horses turned into glue were also very happy that the automobile made transportation so much more efficient, too.
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#213Every generation of builders believed their tools defined their value. Then the tools got easier, faster, automated, and the definition had to change. But programming didn’t disappear. Writing didn’t disappear. Designing didn’t disappear. AI flips the equation: when creation becomes cheap, value shifts from how much you can produce to what changes because you showed up. The ability to have a positive impact has actua…
What does this word salad mean?
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every single environment that has a critical mass of people will have an elementary and middle school. How could you possibly be priced out of this?
This entire concept doesn't exist in much of the world. The incredible prevalence of intramural sports, and the seriousness of it, at all kinds of age groups is a very US phenomenon. Let alone random neighborhood people coaching teams. In most of the world it's more club-based rather than school-based, and that's quite different.
But surely they still need youth coaches?
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem though is that relationships with others are risky. When I look at my social circle about half of my friends express some kind of regret related to their marriages. Call me an entitled prick, but I honestly believe that 90% of people are liquid crap. I realized that in order to have a good social life I need to filter very hard who I hang out with. Even if I could reproduce by budding, this is not an envi…
The world is always full of danger. This moment in time is exceptional only in the form of that danger, not in its substance. When those of us with noble traits -- intelligence, empathy, morality and so on -- refuse to reproduce, we do so at the cost of allowing the OTHERS who lack those traits to make up a larger and larger percentage of the population. They WILL reproduce. Food for thought.
Are we back to the beliefs into inherited nobility already?
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Childlessness seems to be an increasingly compassionate choice. Degrowth by force.
No choice is more selfish and misanthropic.
"Degrowth" is misanthropic, I guess, unless you think the world is overpopulated structurally somehow, as in you'd like more humans but only in due course and under more favorable (global?) circumstances.
But I think looking at this in global terms is wrong-headed anyway, whether you're for or against. The question is whether a specific person should be a parent here and now in specific personal circumstances. So of course it tends to be selfish. It's not entirely selfish since others are involved locally, including the future child. But "the world needs more children" or "the world needs fewer children" is barely relevant at all.
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#217Re: The happiest I've ever been
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ideas aren't genetic.
It doesn't have to be genetic to be 'self-removing'. What happened to the Shakers?
OK, religious ideas are kind of genetic via indoctrination. (Epigenetic? Heh.)
Meanwhile ideas can be "self-removing" due to being bad, but then you'd just say "that's a bad idea" not "that's self-removing", so genetic descent was implied.
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#219In the nicest possible way, this is basically the oldest lesson there is. You weren’t happy because you optimized your feelings or had the right opinions. You were happy because you stopped focusing on yourself and became responsible for other people. Six kids needed you, in the real world, every week. That kind of outward focus kills emptiness fast. Chasing happiness, moral righteousness, or political engagement jus…
The entire zeitgeist of software technology revolves around the assumption that making things efficient, easy, and quick is inherently good. Most people who are "sitting in front of rectangles, moving tiny rectangles" have sometime grandiose notions of their works' importance; we're making X work better for the good of Y to enable Z. Abstract shit like that. No man, you're just making X easier. If the world needs mor…
This is one of the reasons why I'm so disgusted by the mainstream voices around AI. As if I'm going to be "left behind" because my only priority isn't increasing shareholder value or building a saas that makes the world a worse place.
Re: The happiest I've ever been
#220I started coaching my son's little league baseball team a few years ago, mostly because that was the only way I could keep him interested it and I just wanted him to keep playing a team sport. But, that first season showed me how incredibly rewarding the whole process can be. Every practice, every game, you see them improve. And the more you work at designing a good practice, helping each player develop skills, the better they get! And, the joy...the pure, unadulterated joy of a short stop making a a clean throw to first for an out, a hit into the grass with a quick slide into second for a double, a dash across home after a wild pitch rolls into the cage for a run on the steal! I don't get paid, of course, but it's the best job I've ever had.