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Star I think you are overestimating how evolved humans are and downplaying just how much natural instincts still effect our lives. We are capable of using our minds to try overcome some of our instincts but it is near impossible to do it completely. You can tell yourself that you love your adopted son and really try to love them the same as you would your own flesh and blood, but that often isn't enough, a lot of families find it just isn't the same, there is something missing.

It is much the same as feeling fear, it is a natural instinct which is completely mind over matter, there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Yet it is near impossible, if not completely impossible, to become fearless in every aspect of life.

Also, another question which would have been good for this thread is "how many children would you want?"

This post has been edited by matty_batty0: 09 July 2011 - 05:25 AM

Too many people in the world. Gotta think of the future, y'know? So I say no, I don't want children.

Another thought, Star, you said that we have instincts to have sex, not to breed. If that were the case then why do people want children at all? Looking at it from a logical point of view all a child is, is a financial burden, a consumer of time, and the destroyer of many careers. So why do people actually have children? To become immortal? whether this is the case or not it is still a fairly weak excuse in itself, there doesn't really seem to be any other reason why we have kids except for "because I feel like it", sounds like instincts?

This post has been edited by matty_batty0: 09 July 2011 - 08:34 AM

Oh, yes, I love children so I would love to have quite a few with the one I get married to.

I may be environmentally damaged, though. It is not directly uncommon for my extended family to have more than ten children.

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You are excluding the positive effects. Sure, when they are young you will use a lot of time to help them with money, time and work, but as they grow up this is reversed - they will help you, particularly as you yourself start failing. It is a give-and-take relationship as any other. This is also not limited to what they can do for you yourself when you get old; you bring to the world somebody who can be an emotional support for others, someone who can bring material (and non-material) values to society as a whole, and so on. The boons of having a child is endless, and if you are a good parent (note: the vast majority of people will be good parents) then the plus is for them as well. It is not for no reason at all that the instinct to procreate exists.

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I did some reading and came across this thread: http://answers.yahoo...6155639AAjF20x. The opinions of the people who wrote there seem to be split between "It's different, but I love them just as much" and "I really don't care, it's my child". There was one person who said something along the lines of "it's harder to recognize them as your kid because they don't look the same."

To be honest, if they said they loved me... and I loved them, that's good enough for me. I guess everyone has their own preference though.

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I know that adopting kids is almost impossible here, it's very difficult legally. I also imagine that the thought just doesn't occur to lots of people. Could there be some satisfaction in creating a life from scratch? I bet this is another part of it.

ChewySmokey, on 09 July 2011 - 03:39 AM, said:

oopsie~

Borg Lord, on 07 July 2011 - 07:49 AM, said:

Oh no!
It would be an absolute nightmare to the indevidual!
Who WANTS to die? Very few.
However, on the planet earth we have 6,947,922,566people.
2009 6,755,987,239
2008 6,681,112,529
The probability of a dencly ooverpopulated earth has been discussed many times.
We only get so much sunlight and can only turn so much of it into food.
It wont be long until we can't aford meat under our sunlight budget.

With the liklyhood of dieing at age 30 everyone gets a turn and we still get to live.

craft aids

and remove yourself

I don't know if i shold be worry for seeing "kids" with 15-17 wanting childrens or that some "kids" hate the simple idea of one infant. Wow, definetly something to think.
Myself? YEah, i want a little girl onde day, probably when i can take care of myself properly. I even know the name, Cecilia. Of course, still young, must enjoy life now, kids, way way WAY later.

I am going to have to guess that my name is being used as instruction and ask, who do you want to craft aids and remove themself?

Remove yourself, mind you.

I was humorously telling you to piss off while making a remark about how the world will eventually get rid of the extra population one way or another.

You may colour me informative

Wonder why?
You never really hade a problem with my existance before and I'm not really being much of a dick right now.

While on this note, there is a control for overpopulation.
If we get enough people running around then the flu(and other, worse, things) will mass multiply and lead to a world of enternal suffering until the population decreeses a bit. Of corse we will develop medication but the only real way to keep up with the massive amount of muation that would be going on in the bugs at that time would be to live in sterilised environments. Eventualy we will have a weaknd immune system and be forced to stay in said envrionrments. This is a very unstable form of living and will most likly lead to a collaps or sorts eventualy.

You're not being a dick really and ignoring surprise sex I don't have any problem with you or your existence per se

This post has been edited by esalaka: 09 July 2011 - 11:05 PM

.....
You realise this is a title right?
You know, those things that mods/admins give you because they are funny and/or embarassing?

Furthermore I was quietly pointing out that your opinion in particular has no basis other then matching the status quo mr sheep.
Other people who used to dislike me, I can understand.

Feal free to call me a dick now
or maybe consider the idea that I might be right.

I know it's a title. I also know where it originates.
Why am I a sheeple for randomly yelling things

the things people say are very confusing

And I don't see how my opinion even matches the situation here

Actually I don't even know what you're assuming my opinion to be or what we're even arguing about here

The one involving me fucking off but it's irrelevant so
moving on.

That was the humorous part of the post and totally not the point of it and actually just something I thought was silly and pointless to say

The thing is, the world's population is not increasing at the rate it once was. That stopped being a global problem once the world got modernised and Westernised - instead of having several children, people pursue careers rather than relationships. The single-child model is far more common now than it has ever been. Certainly, in the third world, and also in many other countries, the population is increasing but the rate is much lesser than it once was. In fact, recent population prognoses commonly expect the amount of people in the world to decrease starting a few years from now.

The problem is not place to live nor food to eat; we have more than enough to support every single person living in the world (and quite a few more) with the resources we have now. The problem is distribution and greed - for instance, more than enough food to bring a stop to all starvation in the world is sent into cows each day, just so that people can have their burgers.

And to answer something you said I suppose I wouldn't mind dying. Don't really have anything going on right now that I'd regret not doing – or that I would regret doing, for that matter.

Jeee–gus

Ok, that sort of explaines why your words didn't fit your long term opinions and there are no hard feelings but just to get this straight, you told me to fuck off and that was your joke?



@ilb
I beleive that I mentioned the whole "meat vs efficiency" thing though not in detail.
Do you really tthink that anyone is going to put down their burgur?

I don't think it was a joke as much as nothing

does a piece of writing have value if it's intentionally stripped of all content

Depends.
Did you read the whole thing and understand it?

...read what? the whole thing? what thing?

Whatever peice of writing you read that was intentionaly stripped of all content.

My post? Yes, I most certainly did.

I do want to have children. I always have which is an uncommon opinion for someone my age, but its steams mostly from the urge to nurture and teach someone and impart my wisdom, however limited it is, onto someone else. At the same time though I am scared out of my mind that I could totally screw the kid up and ruin his life. I assume that fear is common though so I try to not let it bother me.

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I do not expect everyone to, but I do expect that limiting the consumption could well be possible. ^_^

Also, we are steadily improving our ability to draw more nutrition and more gain from both fields and animals (not that way), so while a society without hunger is not close in the future it is certainly not unattainable.

Given my line of work, taking care of children might not prove feasible. But who knows.

I'm not sure the world needs another 2-3 of me. but hey, someone needs to replace me as the Regional Irish Smart Ass

ILB, on 09 July 2011 - 02:43 PM, said:

I was aware that for some cultures this is actually a fairly large incentive to have children, it seems pretty dodgy to me though. I mean a lot of the time children will help out their parents in their old age, but nowhere near as much as the parents would have made if they kept their careers, I am sure for some families it works but it just seems a lot like an unneeded gamble to me, besides chances are that many childrens version of "helping" their parents would be to spend greater than one hour looking for a good home to put them in.

Starwatcher, on 09 July 2011 - 03:12 PM, said:

Can I ask how you know this? I don't have the slightest clue as to how hard it actually is to adopt or the specific cost involved. It can be quite expensive can't it? If you have your own children you are normally given support by the government (here they do anyway), could be another large incentive why people don't adopt?...Also just a note, adoption does not particularly seem to be encouraged at all, have never seen a single advertisement for adoption, compared to some of the other weird things they feel the need to advertise it is pretty dodgy. You would think it would be heavily encouraged, maybe there is some statistic we are unaware of?

This post has been edited by matty_batty0: 10 July 2011 - 03:59 AM

Being an unwed mother is no longer the stigma it once used to be. There are more and more birth mothers choosing to keep their babies nowadays, so that there are fewer babies available to adopt out to childless couples. There's also more red tape involved in adoptions nowadays, which costs both money and time.

ILB said:

If by "a few years from now" you mean "possibly 2080 or so", then yes.

This post has been edited by wacko: 10 July 2011 - 04:13 AM

matty_batty0, on 09 July 2011 - 08:33 AM, said:

i know right? i keep wondering why people would want children

Craft aids, on 09 July 2011 - 09:39 PM, said:

meat is a more of a luxury anyway. we can get our protein through peanuts. we'll end up being vegans.

ILB, on 09 July 2011 - 11:15 PM, said:

haha i laugh now. but i'm gonna regret it later.

Craft aids, on 09 July 2011 - 11:23 PM, said:

to be honest i prefer chicken over beef anyways. i wouldn't have much problem putting down a burger

Rawrdinosaur, on 10 July 2011 - 12:12 AM, said:

he wants to live forever!

to be honest i'd like to live forever too. if i was going to have a kid he would be a robot or an AI program or both. lol. Id like to learn more about AI so i can almost create life.

This post has been edited by Meleeman: 10 July 2011 - 05:27 AM

*Ninja, on 10 July 2011 - 03:21 AM, said:

A ninja?

@meleeman. Damn you caught me if you boil it down that's what I want. Though what are children but little extensions of ourselves that hate us.

ILB, on 09 July 2011 - 11:15 PM, said:

Yes, because the only thing we use cows for is making burgers >.>

Craft aids, on 09 July 2011 - 11:23 PM, said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you using this to ultimately support your "convince everyone to die at thirty" idea? Given the choice between burgers and life, I suspect most people would choose life.

Also, to go back to a brief point about fear from long ago, I once managed to completely suppress fear through nothing but fear of fear. I drive rather poorly when I'm afraid (and driving used to terrify me, so I don't think it was a good idea for me to learn) but once I was able to transcend that going down a windy mountain freeway through the certain knowledge I was about to die. The experience was surreal, really, once I was back on flat ground and could afford to consider it.

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Well, statistically speaking in only about 15 generations or so, there's a good chance not a single gene you have inside you will be in any given desendent. Kind of depressing really.

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Everyone does, actually. Its a genetic imperitive.

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Well, to be fair, if your genes are superior, you can get them passed on more. Though that assumes natural selection continues to function on humanity.

Hence my mass genetic engineering! I will leave my mark on everyone forever! Mwahahah!

Plus I plan to live forever, so there is that too.

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Well maybe. We don't really know to what extent our genes control us. We do know that certain traits are highly heritable. Intelligence, for example, is more than 50% heritable - some studies indicate it might be as much as 80%. And intelligence has an extremely large impact on how you behave.

A lot of complex behavioral traits are probably in part genetically moderated.

I do love to spite my genes, but I know that I can never really be sure that that very urge isn't being given to me by my genes themselves.

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I disagree, actually. I'm pretty sure that animals do in fact understand that sex = babies. Its bred into us to expect that having sex makes babies.

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You could build a giant mountain out of rock. It worked for the Ancient Egyptians.

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Here's a scary thought though:

Of all the complex behaviors which may be genetically moderated, it is VERY likely that our desired family size is actually very directly controlled by genetics.

That is to say, ironically, by you not having children you're very likely making those who want to have too many children take up too much of the human gene pool.

So everyone who thinks it is irresponsible to have children due to overpopulation should have more children, because the people who ARE irresponsible will have them anyway and we don't want them to keep doing it, and the only way to fight back is genetics.

Or you know, genocide. But you guys never let me throw people in ovens anymore

Titanium Dragon, on 10 July 2011 - 10:01 AM, said:

Sounding a lot like "Idiocracy" there, shame on all those who thought it was a work of fiction.

This post has been edited by matty_batty0: 10 July 2011 - 01:37 PM

if i live long enough.... maybe

Titanium Dragon, on 10 July 2011 - 10:01 AM, said:

What evidence do you have that desired family size is probably primarily genetic? I would look at how whenever a country becomes developed, there is a brief explosion in the population when mortality rates fall, and then birth rates fall, and how the same sort of effect shows up in successive generations of families that emigrate from third-world and developing countries to developed countries, and would conclude that desired family size must be primarily social.

Do you care that your kids look like you? That's what it comes down to in the end.

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How do you know this? I don't feel this way, and I've read lots of stories of people who don't care either.

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I know you're kidding a bit here, but earlier you did say you were for genetic engineering in people. My reason for being against it, and against eugenics is that even if we had the knowledge to use it without hugely negative consequences, and there's no way to know when we have enough without implementing it. The Nazi's didn't know anything about genetic engineering, but they stained the subject of eugenics so badly that people like me fear using it again. Most Germans did start out as reasonable people - science used to rate parts of people from best to worst is a very dangerous combination. This isn't because the science is bad, it's because it's something that humanity didn't, and probably still doesn't, have the maturity to use safely.

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I doubt that animals have the cognitive complexity to understand this. In a class I took last year we were looking at human evolution, it took us over 7 million years and a 400 ml increase in cranial capacity to figure out that smashing two rocks together makes blades. Making the link in your mind between cause and effect takes a lot of hardware, isn't having sex to make babies an abstract concept like this one?

Besides that, I didn't know that babies came from having sex until someone told me. Am I just special?

Of course, I really don't know where to draw the line here. I'm sure you'd agree that insects don't know that mating results in reproduction, I doubt that mice do as well. What do you think?

This post has been edited by Starwatcher: 11 July 2011 - 12:40 AM

I'm a kid now, but maybe a couple thousand years from now, I might have a kid. But yeah, like some people said, it has to be with the right person, if not and you get a divorce, you might traumatize the child, and everything. That'd be nice.

I would love to have children... unless it's going to end up with a disease and suffer through life, then I would probably have an abortion.

Notice I said "going to end up with" and not "born with".

Borg Lord, on 10 July 2011 - 09:53 AM, said:

What?
Oh, I see.
My idea was not to convince anyone to die at thirty and, I say again, it would be a nightmare for the indevidual but even a horrid genetic code like that has it's advantages.
Back when I first brought up the idea I made it quite clear that I was arguing against supirior genetics, not starting the cult of the bosnian.
Trying to get everyone to kill themselfes is a bit difficult, don't you know?

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"Some cultures" meaning every single one but the recent Western culture. ^_^

You are also being needlessly pessimistic. Yes, having a child may deprive you of a few years of work. However, your career is not ruined if you bear a baby, nor will children somehow magically make all your money disappear. None the less, the view you pose at the end is false - far from everybody does that, and saying that "this is what will happen" is like saying that all husbands will be violent with their wives. Placing parents in a good home is also a very admirable thing - if you are unable to provide properly for them on a regular basis, particularly in terms of medical care, then homes for the elderly is the best choice. There, they will be taken care of, they will get food, they will have people their age (ehe) to speak with, and unless their children are complete douchebags, they will also receive regular visits. Also remember that old people are old for far longer than children stay young.

I cannot help but notice that your focus is almost entirely on the money, too. I do not disagree that income is important, but it is not everything. Children are a mental and emotional support far more than a monetary one (in their early days), and people I have talked with have never once complained that having kids ruined their chances of a promotion, or took away two years of pay for them, not anything like that. Instead they have said that they love their children. This is the basis of all human relations - not money, but feelings. Would you be angry with your best friends and somehow perceive them to be holding you back from your breakthrough on your own? What if they found a dime on the street and picked it up? Would you say that your parents are horrible persons because they do not allow you to go off and do stunts to earn money (despite them still supporting your living)?*

*Note: All questions purely of a theoretical nature.

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That long? I was sure the turning point was thought to be earlier. Perhaps I am using an outdated statistic.

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Now, did I ever say that? ^_^ The thing is, the greatest cow farms in the world are all for meat production and little else. They (the cows) alone consume staggering amounts of food that could have been distributed to feed the whole world, rather than just producing food for the few (given that there is less eating in the bovines). While certainly, we do use cows for milk, leather and several other products, none of them are an issue when compared to hamburger farming.

Wait, what?
There is no argument about meat vs efficiency. That arguent has already been had by smarter people with more proof.
You and most other creatures on the planet keep about 10% of the energy of what you eat. If you eat a cow you are getting 1% of the grass the cow ate. Simple, yes?
No?
Still confused?
http://en.wikipedia....sfer_efficiency
yay wiki.
Now an expert in biology and every other feild of studdy!

I was simply stating it, not arguing it.

ILB, on 11 July 2011 - 11:59 AM, said:

The world is becoming more and more westernised every day isn't it? Western values are slowly overtaking?

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Pessimistic yeah, needlessly? I don't know, I guess I have trouble having as much faith in the next generation as you do, or even in my own generation for that matter

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I was focusing on money because I was talking about logical benefits, since when is emotion ever logical

But really, they probably do provide emotional benefits, there is no real reason that they should though right? I mean you can't go to them for advice or have a beer with them after work, when people have a child they don't consciously think to themselves that they will be great emotional support, it isn't exactly incentive, it is more of something that just happens along with it, more of an instinctual thing.

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Back in school I was told by a teacher that this point had already been reached here, and that if it were not for foreigners entering the country then the population would already be in decline, a teacher wouldn't lie to a kid...would they?

Also, please excuse me if I am not making much sense tonight

This post has been edited by matty_batty0: 11 July 2011 - 02:15 PM

matty_batty0 said:

ILB and I were talking about world population, not Australia alone.

What is true for Australia is also true for Canada, the United States and many European countries: if it were not for immigration, population growth would be stagnant or even negative. However, India and many African countries still have the population juggernaut rolling, so that total world population will continue to increase for two or three generations at least.

('Juggernaut' is a lovely word, and comes from Hindi Jagannāth, which means "lord of the world", a title of Krishna, one of the avatars of Vishnu. Yes, I'm making you learn more things. Sue me. )

wacko, on 11 July 2011 - 05:09 PM, said:

Wait,

Vishnu is the Juggernaut?

(...Bitch)