
Why it is important not to have children - NotUncivil
http://stallman.org/articles/children.html
======
a3n
"I therefore urge you to do as I did, and have no children."

Great, take smart people out of the gene pool. I don't think he's thought
through his cunning plan. As he says, he doesn't believe he'll cause everyone
to not have children. But the only people who even know who he is are the
relatively smarter part of the population, and therefore any of those who act
on his advice have just diminished humanity's potential.

My boy is the best thing that ever happened to me. I believe the world is a
better place for him being in it.

Rather than "not have children" be the solution (of smart people, no less!),
wouldn't it be better to figure out how to make the lives of all these
children more meaningful, and by extension the life and effect of humanity?

~~~
coldtea
> _My boy is the best thing that ever happened to me._

So your life was meaningless without having a child? And, following the same
logic, your son's life is nothing too, unless he gets a child too?

Or do you mean "it's the best thing that happened to you", but other things
were quite nice too?

~~~
a3n
Yes, other things were quite nice too. It wasn't the only good thing, just the
best.

~~~
coldtea
Fair enough.

I have a question thought -- not to you, in general.

If their kids are "the best that happened to them" (as most say), why do we
have so many cases of neglected or abused children, tons of estranged parents
and children ("haven't spoke to my folks for years"), crazy fights,
depression, etc. I guess it's human nature, but also it seems like "the best
thing that happened to me" is mainly about the kid being a baby and such (the
novelty factor?), and not so much afterwards.

~~~
a3n
Although I'm me, I'm also in general, so I'll take a stab.

You take notice of the examples toward either end of the spectrum, people like
me who say it's the best ever (and he's 15, not a baby), and slobs who beat
and neglect their kids. The majority are in the middle, silent, and they love
their kids, even if they never say so.

People suck. At least, they can. For the abusers, they probably can't
understand that their kids _could_ be the best thing that ever happened to
them. And even for the people who aren't outright assholes, it's stressful to
be married or cohabitating, especially with kids. Some people don't hold up
well. We're not all the same.

I see no reason not to have kids, not by policy anyway. Some people don't want
them or aren't suited to it. To borrow the bumper sticker: "Don't like kids?
Don't have one." But having kids is undeniably a natural state. Life is hard,
and the universe is cold, so why not claim this little bit of birthright?

And yes, I think over-population is not going to be a problem. As education
rises, birthrates fall. If anything, population loss will be the longer term
problem, as Japan is just beginning to see the first waves. Their problem is
not just longevity, it's that fewer young people are marrying and having fewer
children. In the end we'll learn to deal with that too, but it will be quite a
disruption after centuries of societies that implicitly assume growth and
families.

------
tokenadult
He is entitled to his own opinion. I am glad for the four children I have, who
I expect will be net contributors to the well-being of humanity.

AFTER EDIT:

The one reply to my comment here asks a pertinent question, which I hope I
have given an adequate answer in a new reply. Meanwhile I will revise this
comment to note that, as a subsequent comment has pointed out, there are
already many countries in the world with negative population growth and a
likely trend that the entire world will reach a peak population and then begin
to have declining population while my children are middle-aged (and when I
may, perhaps, still be alive). So, yes, RMS is certainly welcome not to have
children if he is concerned about what bearing children might do to his family
life or to the world as a whole, but I hope HN participants will be open to
the possibility that some people choose to have children with their eyes open,
knowing the trade-offs, and have a channel through having children to help
you, me, and the whole world.

~~~
gnosis
If you want to have children so that they will help humanity (just about the
only unselfish justification for having children), why not adopt instead?

~~~
tokenadult
I was certainly willing to adopt children if I had no prospect of having
biologically descended children. Having received my higher education at a
world center of much research on adopted children and the influence of
adoptive parents on those children,

[http://www.amazon.com/Born-Together-Reared-Landmark-
Minnesot...](http://www.amazon.com/Born-Together-Reared-Landmark-
Minnesota/dp/0674055462)

I have been aware that while adoptive parents can certainly do much to remove
children from the deprivation of orphanages and the like, they sometimes can
do less than they hope to influence the development of children not closely
related to persons in their own family lineage. I commend anyone who chooses
to adopt children, and I commend anyone who declines to have children, but I
also commend anyone who has children and takes great care in bringing them up.
New human beings with fresh ideas and well developed ability and inclination
to contribute to human society are still a net benefit to humankind, whoever
takes responsibility for bringing them up.

My oldest son, the hacker, is already a self-sufficient adult, and I think he
thinks deeply and seriously about how to be a benefit to the world as a whole.
(The "world as a whole" means more to him than to many Americans because he
has lived overseas when he was young.) My younger children appear to be on a
similar track, and I had so many children precisely because I observed how my
multicultural, "interracial" family seemed to be influencing each child from
birth to the age when the next child was born.

~~~
tshepang
Why is "interracial" in quotes?

~~~
tokenadult
We are all part of the same human race. But it is a fact that my marriage to a
woman from Taiwan would have been illegal in some states of the United States
until the 1960s, when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional silly state
statutes that treated "races" as actual discrete categories. I'm proud to say
that Minnesota never had such idiotic laws.

------
busticket
Stallman might not have thought this through or not realized how the pressues
of evolution will eventually nullify his choice. For all those who make a
conscious decision to avoid having kids, those who are genetically fitter at
resisting the urge to reproduce are therefore less likely to pass on their
genes. Also, of course those who don't bother resisting or have less genetic
inclination to avoid reproducing are more likely to. Thus the next generation
will inherit the genes of parents with less resistance to reproduction. Thus
if the theory of evolution is true, and all other things are equal, the next
generation will be more likely to reproduce. This cycle would repeat until the
genes of those who decline to reproduce to save humanity are no longer in the
gene pool. Thus Stallmans choice is only effective over a very short number of
generations. Not only that, if those who are more likely to decline to have
kids is a good quality, they are actually hurting future generations by
removing themselves from contributing it to future generations. This is of
course their right. This is not a new idea, the idea that population controls
are doomed to failure is main idea of the novel 'The Mote in God's Eye' by
Niven and Pournelle. The problem is real of course. However, when considering
reproduction, which is so intimately tied with evolution, perhaps one should
be aware of the consequences of evolution or possibly even use it when trying
to solve the problem. Unless those who have fewer offspring are more likely to
pass their genes on to the next generation, those in the next generation will
have genes that favor more offspring.

------
lifeformed
I don't think overpopulation should ever be a factor in determining if you
want to have a child or not. A layperson has no responsibility nor influence
in that matter - that's something for policymakers and implementers to handle.
You should decide on a child based on your situation and desires.

Also, more people isn't always a bad thing, even in an overpopulated world. If
a person is a net gain for society, then it would be a loss not to have him
born. If you're healthy and are willing and capable of raising a child in
nurturing family, please do so. A well raised person can offset his impact on
the world and contribute even more than they take.

~~~
zurn
> A layperson has no responsibility nor influence in that matter - that's
> something for policymakers and implementers to handle

If you start from belief that you and your children won't be able to influence
policy and government, and people also can't make a difference by acting
locally and practicing what they preach... you paint a pretty bleak picture.

~~~
lifeformed
It's always commendable to do your own share, but at the individual level, a
single layperson choosing not to have kids won't have any significant affect
on overpopulation. What matters is the actions of a large group of people,
which is determined by culture makers and policy makers.

I'm not saying it's worthless to practice what you preach - rather, we can't
rely on individual convictions as the solution to our collective problems. It
certainly helps, but the majority of the solution will have to come from
elsewhere.

~~~
lutusp
> at the individual level, a single layperson choosing not to have kids won't
> have any significant affect on overpopulation.

Sorry, that's irrational. The only choices are individual ones -- governments
can't really control what individuals do. Look at China's failed one-child
policy.

Overpopulation results from billions of people rationalizing that their
individual choice can't possibly matter.

> we can't rely on individual convictions as the solution to our collective
> problems.

What? Did I hear you right? Don't you understand that democracy is designed to
honor and respect individual choices? The collective problem of overpopulation
results from many individual choices to have children.

> the majority of the solution will have to come from elsewhere.

Healthy, non-dictatorial governments wait for the people to tell them what
values to reflect and enforce. By contrast, dictators rely on the kind of
person who says, "Let the experts solve these problems, individuals don't
count."

On the positive side, education works wonders. Many studies show that educated
women have smaller families.

------
mistermann
> First of all, it disregards the tremendous disaster that global heating and
> destruction of the natural world are leading towards. 30 years from now,
> large parts of humanity will probably find it hard to get water or food, let
> alone contraception.

Large parts of humanity have always had a problem getting water or food and it
had nothing to do with global warming, rather politics, governance, and
culture. These will always be a bigger problem.

~~~
coldtea
> _Large parts of humanity have always had a problem getting water or food and
> it had nothing to do with global warming, rather politics, governance, and
> culture._

Yes. But not relevant. One has to remove such constants in order to see what's
new.

So, while "Large parts of humanity have always had a problem getting water or
food and it had nothing to do with global warming", now it also HAS to do with
global warming.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification>

------
dsowers
Wow, all of the fathers are coming out of the woodwork to justify their
decisions. I, for one, agree with him. Some levels of dedication aren't
possible when your attention is diverted to offspring constantly.

~~~
datapimp
it is true. they're not.

as a father, i may go out of my way to disagree with him to justify my own
past decisions. as an unattractive social reject, i may go out of my way to
agree with him.

we are naturally going to have very intense feelings and be very egotistical
one way or another about the subject of spreading our own DNA.

------
jakeogh
"The human population is expected to grow by 2 or 3 billion by 2050"

That is the UN's low estimate.

The median UN human population projection estimates that we peak at 10 billion
people around 2100.

Chart at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe> (I wont
pretend wikipedia is a source, the chart could be completely wroing, I have
not crunched the numbers at
<http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm> myself)

In my personal experience, often when discussing war people will resort to the
"there are too many people" excuse if I first convince then that other
justifications to kill are invalid.

There is an organization that argues the other side of Stallman's reasoning:
<http://overpopulationisamyth.com/category/categories/pop101>

------
digisign
He's right, yet to anyone who's seen the movie Idiocracy the problem is
obvious. The "hicks, vatos, and homeboyz" aren't going to stop breeding.

~~~
coldtea
> _The "hicks, vatos, and homeboyz" aren't going to stop breeding._

Or people thinking like you, for that matter.

What exactly makes you think you are worth more than a "hick, vato or
homeboy"?

A high IQ? I'd take kindness, altruism and consideration for others any day.

Not to mention your comment borders on full blown racism, stopping just short
of the "n" word.

<http://xkcd.com/603/>

~~~
mixmastamyk
A rather poor critique. Ad hominem, GP doesn't mention himself, though might
be implying Stallman adds more to society than gang-bangers. I'd tend to
agree.

I want...

Classism, lack of education perhaps, you could be much more accurate and not
undermine your argument by throwing racism around.

Societal decline is an effect, he was talking of a cause... that the educated
tend to have fewer children, which is not in dispute.

XKCD creates a strawman and defeats it with "I don't like you!" Not his best
work obviously.

------
miles
Rather similar to VHEMT's reasoning:

<http://www.vhemt.org/biobreed.htm#schopenquote>

though RMS states his goal is simply _less_ humans, not _no_ humans.

~~~
mkingston
I'm not sure what the official stance on this is, but I always thought "fewer"
was used in the case of discrete subjects, and "less" in the case of
continuous. So it's always amusing when someone talks about "less people".

~~~
miles
Thanks for pointing that out, mkingston! I went with "less people" because it
sounded funnier (to me) than "fewer people" (which did sound more
grammatically correct).

------
bayesianhorse
I don't buy the overpopulation argument. There is good evidence to suggest
that after 2050 the human population is going to decline and might reach as
low as 2 billion people in the very long term.

~~~
coldtea
After 2050? How many would have to die from diseases, hunger and political
tensions (countries grabbing for resources) until then? What impact will 40
more years of population increase?

~~~
gonvaled
Well, that is the point. Human nature is such that population has always
stabilized slightly _above_ carrying capacity (being the amount of population
that the ecosystem+technology can sustain).

We always slightly overshoot (carried by technology), and stabilize by those
things you are mentioning (hunger, war, diseases, infant mortailty, ...). We
just slightly overshoot not because of restrain, but because it is physically
impossible to overshoot too much, since mortality increases very strongly
(exponentially?) once we are above carrying capacity.

A civilized society would stabilize its numbers slightly _below_ carrying
capacity, so that suffering can be minimized and quality of living vastly
improved. The more gap we allow between carrying capacity and actual
population, the better our quality of life would be. But I guess we are not
there yet.

~~~
coldtea
> _We always slightly overshoot (carried by technology), and stabilize by
> those things you are mentioning (hunger, war, diseases, infant mortailty,
> ...). We just slightly overshoot not because of restrain, but because it is
> physically impossible to overshoot too much, since mortality increases very
> strongly (exponentially?) once we are above carrying capacity._

In order to make sense of the importance of anything in time, I remove the
constants and just check for the differences.

So, if we "always slightly overshoot" and stabilized by "hunger, war,
diseases, infant mortailty, ...", the fearful thing is that in this particular
era we also have:

(1) An astounding number of people in "third world" countries.

(2) Mass ecological harm.

(3) Global warming and continuous extreme weather conditions, like successive
breaking of the records for the hottest summer temps recorder (whether one
believes it's connected to (2) or not, which I do).

(4) Weapons that can wipe out the population or even the rock we are standing
in several times over (from bio to nuclear).

------
tbrooks
> Having no dependents, I could dedicate myself to what seemed right rather
> than to whatever someone with money wanted me to do.

I don't buy the false choice of GNU/no children or children/no GNU. Why does
it have to be either/or?

~~~
datapimp
it just is either or -- or probability wise close to it. from the time and
demand it takes to be a good parent, to the many things you have to do to
afford children, to the fact that being responsible for somebody makes you
largely beholden to people with money and health insurance, it just is.

at least for the salary earning classes.

people's range of behavior is narrowed by the hierarchy of needs. having a
child amplifies this effect.

if you want to do something revolutionary that potentially threatens the
status quo, it is better to be either independently wealthy or have much fewer
economic needs and pressures.

~~~
Kudzu_Bob
If you want to do something revolutionary that potentially threatens the
status quo, first you have to be born.

~~~
coldtea
Sure. But the question on this thread is if you also have to have offspring,
which is orthogonal to being born yourself.

~~~
Kudzu_Bob
Some people want to make the world a better place by having families. To me
this makes at least as much sense most plans for world-improvement.

~~~
coldtea
What about having families makes the world a better place?

Plenty of abusive, criminal, ..., families. Matter of fact, every negative
historical figure was also born into a family.

~~~
Kudzu_Bob
"What about having families makes the world a better place?"

Families are vital. That everybody from Genghis Kahn to Jonas Salk was born
into one ought to be the tip-off.

------
geon
Well, if that is how you feel about children, not having them is probably a
good idea. I'm not criticizing him, even if it might sound like that, just
pointing out that his decision might be righ _for him_.

------
maerF0x0
i hope we overpopulate the heck out of this planet, maybe once we're shoulder
to shoulder on every sq meter we'll have the necessary impetus to get off this
damned rock...

~~~
coldtea
Yes, because "impetus" is all it takes, and the laws of physics like the speed
of light, energy needs, scale of such a project etc, have little play into
this...

------
joelberman
If you accept natural selection as a theory, the answer is obvious.

~~~
aba_sababa
Not that there is a "right" or "wrong" answer if you want to invoke that.
There is no "winning" at evolution.

------
flagnog
Isn't it crazy that the more education a woman has, the fewer children she
has? You would hope that the more educated would have more, since they would
be better able to care for and educate their children.

Darwin would get a chuckle out of this.

------
jeffehobbs
This guy. Remember the Monsters of Springfield episode of "The Simpsons"?
Where the song was "Just Don't Look, Just Don't Look"? That's how I feel about
him. After a decade of rediculous statements and _vastly_ decreasing returns,
it's time to stop paying any sort of attention to RMS.

~~~
coldtea
Your comment has almost zero content.

------
olgeni
In the beginning there was God, and the Word, and whatever.

Then, they were replaced by the Selfish Gene, and Science looked like a winner
for a while.

Then came Stallman, with His Bright Idea: the Forrest Gump Gene That Watches
Other Selfish Genes Thrive, And Then Dies.

In the end, Selfish Parrots will eventually inherit the world, and Science
will triumph again.

