> You're constantly making and throwing away relationships.
Yeah, this lifestyle basically only works as a single young adult. Once you have a significant other, it's very, very hard. Once you have a kid, it's impossible.
> Yeah, this lifestyle basically only works as a single young adult. Once you have a significant other, it's very, very hard.
I've been doing it with my significant other for 5ish years now. I would say it's _much_ harder to do it solo and I would've settled down long ago if it wasn't for her.
No, we're both happy. I just mean if I was solo, the throwing away relationships part would get exhausting. When you travel with a partner, you at least have one person that's constant through out the whole thing.
Paul Erdős basically lived most of the second half of his (extremely productive) adult life like this (although he lived out of a suitcase rather than a backpack so he had slightly more room). Although granted he never married and had no children.
Relatively few people's economic output can compare with them producing new people. If your last name is not Feynman or Curie your most valuable contribution to the society is a couple of kids.
I'm not sure about this math. What percent of my kids' economic output am I supposed to take credit for?
And even if it's "all of it", if you can make some big company or semi-common job 0.00001x more efficient then that's a bigger impact than having kids.
It's good faith, I wasn't sure how literal you were being so I threw it in.
But importantly my kids might be more capable than me or less capable than me to effect change. Who knows!
> If you don’t have kids, their contributions won’t exist.
My choices alter a million things about the future. If we look at everything I was a critical step in causing then we're going to massively overvalue my contributions.
Also, shouldn't all my contributions be chocked up to my ancestors if that's how we're doing it? Leaving me with no points of my own?
This will only result in others reproducing more to replace those who are predispositioned to think like you.
Also, have fun not having anyone to take care about you when you grow old. And your retirement won't be worth shit either without a new generation to keep the economy going.
Yeah no thanks, fuck your anti-natalism. You might as well remove your own ecological footprint if you would deny your children's their existence for that reason.
While true, it's functionally irrelevant. Humans are animals, animals procreate. Telling people not to do it because reasons is going to be about as effective as telling them not to eat or sleep.
What I would like to see is a norm on numbers of children. Personally, I think that having more than the replacement number - i.e. more than 2 - is straightforwardly unethical given the stress our planet is under. But by the same token, 2 or fewer is fine. And it would be nice if those who choose to have none got a little more respect for it.
But humans can actually make conscious choices beyond their base animal pressures. We use prophylactics even though those go against our animal pressure to procreate. We help strangers even if it won't improve our own situation and without any expectation of future reciprocation. We have to eat and sleep to live, we don't have to have children.
We also have cultural pressures, which can shape individual behavior. We could have a culture where the default is not to have kids, but that you should not have kids unless you are stable and secure enough to have then and are prepared to invest sufficiently in raising them.
Worse, than that, if you preach antinatalism it has any chance of catching up with people of some knowledge and reflection, leaving the Earth to the children of those of less knowledge and reflection.
You mean by getting nuclear plants shut down, which are then replaced by increased gas and coal energy production because those are the only realistic alternatives?
Yeah, this lifestyle basically only works as a single young adult. Once you have a significant other, it's very, very hard. Once you have a kid, it's impossible.