
A Look at the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement - pmcpinto
http://www.theawl.com/2015/11/options
======
Udo
The entire point about being careful of our environmental impact is because
_we are destroying our own habitat_. Sure, the advent of human civilization
might be a mass extinction event, but the Earth had these before, and nature
will go on. Nature is going to be fine. It's _humanity_ who's potentially in
trouble, not the planet.

For us to die out voluntarily in order to preserve nature is completely
backwards. The correct way of thinking about this is we're changing nature
until it becomes hard or impossible for us to live here. So in a sense, our
default path is already one of self-extinction. If we turn that around (and
I'm cautiously optimistic we will), nobody needs to die out.

It's not us XOR the planet. It's us AND the planet.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Humans have a very strong cultural and genetic drive to ensure that their
family survives and thrives. This drive is strong enough that sacrificing
oneself for ones family is not surprising behaviour.

This drive has been exploited for good and evil by tribes, nations, religions,
social movements, football teams, et cetera.

Extending this sense of "us" to include all humans seems to be the logical
conclusion.

However, many people extend this sense of "us" to include all cuddly animals,
all animals, all multi-cellular organisms, any life, ... I think that's silly,
but perhaps 100 years from now people will think my attitude is just as
morally repugnant as my view of those who think black people are sub-human.

------
cLeEOGPw
I expect this movement to die off eventually.

~~~
x5n1
All things are temporary all we have is a little bit of time. Everything you
care about, everything you are, is eventually dust. All your ideas and your
history is very short lived.

So yes everything dies eventually, these guys are just looking to speed up the
process. As if that will "save" the planet.

We are animals, we should live like them and not worry about anything. You
think a squirrel cares about all the stupid shit other squirrels are doing to
the planet?

I don't control my own life. Hold on the universe... hah. I am simply here,
soon I won't be here. That's all that there is to this. We are infinitesimally
small and our lives are infinitesimally short. And the amount of power we have
in the human systems that we inhabit are much smaller than that. We are little
more than bees that are obsessed with things that should not concern us.

edit: in response to user temporal below, because it's rate limiting me.

> conscious, self-aware, sentient beings on this planet

no we are none of those things. we believe we are, but we are actually not.
our systems behave much like systems of any other animal we just consume
different things from other animals but we're little more than bees.

> . That is, perserving ecosystem is better than destroying it because we like
> it that way.

i like other bees don't care about the eco-system. i care about the nectar
from the flowers so i can go on. the nectar exists for me. and without me what
would be the point of the nectar?

~~~
simonh
> i like other bees don't care about the eco-system. i care about the nectar
> from the flowers so i can go on.

No ecosystem -> no flowers -> no nectar -> no honey bee.

You don't have to give a fig about the ecosystem in itself, as an object, to
care about the effects of damaging or destroying it on yourself and the rest
of us and our descendants.

I agree with you that we are animals, but even other animals care about the
welfare of each other and their descendants. Even squirrels will risk their
lives to protect their offspring, and bees will sacrifice their lives in
defence of the colony. Fortunately for us, we are able to anticipate and take
action to prevent longer term threats to our welfare and that of those we care
about. We should do so.

~~~
rralian
> You don't have to give a fig about the ecosystem in itself, as an object, to
> care about the effects of damaging or destroying it on yourself and the rest
> of us and our descendants.

But if the destruction is slow, you do have to care about the other bees.

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meric
Humanity is not the first life form to transform the Earth's climate, causing
tremendous damage to the biosphere[1], and we may or may not be the last. Just
like any other species we will last as long as we can last, and go extinct
when we can no longer maintain a hold on the universe.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event)

~~~
simonh
Fortunately extinction isn't the only possible outcome for a species. There's
also evolution. Otherwise there would be no living things left on the planet.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Unfortunately, as humans we care primarily about individuals who are alive,
not about species in the abstract. Which means any outcome involving humans
suffering and dying is an outcome we don't want.

~~~
meric
Sadly, the only possible outcomes without humans suffering and dying are
outcomes without humans.

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d_theorist
"humans are responsible for every environmental catastrophe"

My God; what incredible conceit.

Compared with the billions of years of eruptions, earthquakes, extinctions,
meteorite impacts, ice ages, droughts, floods, and just the relentless and
deadly drive of all organisms on the planet to survive at the expense of their
competitors, the effect of human beings on this planet is insignificant.

~~~
vansteen
I guess what you're saying can be discussed:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environment)

~~~
d_theorist
Humans have had an effect on the environment. On some scales, a big effect.
But it's _certainly_ wildly incorrect (and absurd) to say that all
environmental damage is caused by humans. And I think it's also pretty
unarguable that the vast majority of the damage (a concept that is I suppose
anyway subjective) over the lifetime of the planet is not human-caused.

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cousin_it
If you care about animal suffering, human extinction is exactly the wrong way
to solve the problem. Without humans, there will still be pain. Wasps will lay
eggs in caterpillars until the Sun goes out. Intelligence is our only hope for
abolishing suffering, not just for us but for all living creatures.

~~~
monort
I was pondering the same idea, but to stop animal from suffering in nature you
need to stop all food chains above plants. Right?

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's a tricky thing, an abortion-level tricky thing actually. At the top of
life's process you have humans, and human death is obviously Bad. At the
bottom of life you have simple chemical reactions, which are obviously Quite
Cool. The line will have to be drawn somewhere in between, but we need to
figure out where.

Personally, I expect it to be somewhere above plants and bugs and below
kittens. But then, I'm a bit biased about bugs - I tend to think about them as
either "those ugly annoying things" or "cool high-tech drones we'll hopefully
program one day". And I'm _definitely_ biased about kittens.

------
sergiosgc
The response to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement was written before the
movement appeared. By no other than the great George Carlin:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovbF0D2wySI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovbF0D2wySI)

tldr; The Earth is fine; _We_ are in trouble

------
Perceptes
Interesting to see an article about this on HN. I consider myself an
antinatalist. Antinatalism is a philosophical position that assigns a negative
value to birth, and by extension, that it's immoral to have children. However,
I think it's silly to try to promote it as a world view others should adopt.
It's contrary to our most basic biological instincts. There is absolutely no
chance for it to succeed as a movement. I also don't find the environment
argument compelling. Our world has no inherent value other than the utility it
provides for the creatures who live here. For me, antinatalism is just an
issue of individual morality and not something to push as a political or
social cause.

~~~
abalashov
Out of interest, what is the individual moral argument--unrelated to
environment or functional externalities like that--against procreation?

~~~
Perceptes
Essentially that you're rolling the dice in a lot of ways when you have a
child. They could be born with serious medical problems. Something terrible
could happen to them through no fault of their own, like being in an accident
or being the victim of a crime. Every human being will experience pain,
sadness, and suffering in some way at some point in their lives. At the very
least, they will have to face the foreknowledge of their own death, and the
loss of family and friends that die before them. Creating a child forces a
being to experience all these things that would otherwise never have had to.
In an antinatalist world view, the possibility or even guarantee of good
things happening to the child does not "balance out" or justify forcing them
to experience negative things.

I also don't want to have any part in contributing to humanity's self
destruction and inflicting of suffering on other living things. We are not
rational creatures. We largely do whatever we want, including hurting and
killing each other, and make up all sorts of justifications for why it's okay.
I'm no different in this regard, I just don't want to perpetuate that further.

I'm a vegan, and there is no possible way to live a normal life as a person
without having at least some negative effect on animal suffering by proxy.
More than likely, the child would be much worse than the best possible case,
and would eat meat, eggs, cheese, and use other non-food products made from
animals.

And beyond all of these reasons, there is just the fact that a person cannot
consent to being born. If I had a child, they would be quite likely not to
have such a pessimistic view of their own life, but there's no way to know
that in advance. I would be making the choice for them because of what _I_
wanted. I see having children as an extremely selfish and destructive act.

~~~
abalashov
Thanks for the explanation. It's something worth pondering.

------
adamstark
Luckily for us, they'll all be dead before they can do any serious damage to
humanity.

~~~
imartin2k
Elaborate, please. What damage would that be? Less people on Earth? How is
that damage to humanity?

~~~
TuringTest
I'd pretty much count extinction as damage to humanity.

~~~
tempodox
By then, nobody will be left to care.

~~~
imartin2k
After having read the book Sapiens, I finally understood how a thriving human
population happened basically at the cost of millions of other species that
went exctinct. So the philosophical question I see here is whether an extinct
humanity which would let other species live and thrive, would be a good or bad
thing. Not that I have an answer. But I find it worthwile to question the
paradigm of human reproduction for the sake of human reproduction.

------
leanthonyrn
Looks like we need to the millennium group: "As the 3rd millennium approached,
the Group's internal differences began to manifest into two factions—the
"Roosters", who believed in a religiously eschatological view of the end of
the world, and the "Owls", who believed the world would end with a secular
natural disaster. Attempting to instigate the end of the world artificially,
the Rooster faction began to develop a lethal virus; in 1998 they released
this virus in the Pacific Northwest, killing upwards of seventy people before
the outbreak was contained. A year later, a vastly depleted Millennium Group
staged one last attempt to trigger the apocalypse, resurrecting deceased
members in order to create the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; when this plot
was foiled by the FBI, it was believed to have caused the dissolution of the
Group."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Group)

------
iSnow
Interestingly, some Western societies and Japan are already below the balanced
reproduction rate. Not set to die out as fast as possible, but certainly on a
long-time trajectory to radically less people (migration not factored in).

Maybe, given enough gadgets and holiday opportunities, and the hedonistic
treadmill required to finance all this, H. Sapiens chooses to not reproduce
but live well instead.

~~~
Ygg2
Then someone eventually will see this and say we need more people for economy,
but they aren't bumping uglies. So let's cut out the middle people.

And then you'll have government mandated population quotas.

------
avz
Like all other animals, we don't generally pause to critically examine the
merits of the instincts that drive our behavior. Unlike all other animals,
we're actually capable of doing so! I applaud VHEMT for openly and critically
considering one of our basic built-in drives.

That said, I disagree with their conclusion. VHEMT is right that we are too
intelligent and successful for a mere animal. I don't think this means we must
die. I think it means we must become something more.

------
jsudhams
It is kind of stupid in my opinion. like x5n1 said we are too small but we
think we are making the difference who know the grass and dog might think the
same... We still dont know most of the things like. What is inside earth , how
water came, where are we now in universe, etc..etc... With out knowing all
atleast most of the parameters it is foolish to think we are causing the
damage. Who knows if there are invisible aliens doing or some unknown virus in
deep sea doing it... we dont know. we have long way to go and i happy for
humans to continue even if it is destroy entire earth livings things then who
knows we might mutate and learn to live the way we should like (no corporation
no jobs and abundent food and health care and entertainment)

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uhtred
Without humans there would be no one (as far as we currently know) to
appreciate and contemplate the beauty of the universe and planet earth. So it
would all be pointless.

~~~
it_learnses
Oh? And what does contemplating and appreciating the beauty of universe and
planet earth accomplish?

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's us who define the concept of 'accomplishing something'. The universe
without humans is pointless, because it's us (that we know so far) who say
what has a point at what hasn't.

~~~
it_learnses
Sounds tautological. Universe without humans is meaningless (in human terms)
because we define what meaning is (in human terms).

~~~
TeMPOraL
It does, but then again we don't know of any other source of meaning than
ourselves.

------
Chrossler
Seems like a really silly joke. Like one of those things that will get a
reaction from normal people so it makes it fun to participate in and not
fooled.

------
prodmerc
You could just drop the "stop breeding" part and we're still headed towards
extinction.

I guess this is a no-lose movement, how convenient :-)

