
Kids? Just Say No - uoaei
https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral
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stephenr
> People should never, under any circumstance, procreate

The human race would have a serious problem in about 70 years if we all
adopted this approach.

> Certainly, sentencing someone to such a world is the worst of all crimes,
> and a serious moral violation.

If the "feedback" is in fact genuine I feel for him/her but to associate the
unfortunate aspects of their life as a "sentence" by the parents is
particularly selfish IMO.

No parent wants their child to suffer, and to imply they should have foreseen
the situation and just not had the child is quite selfish and doesn't consider
the anguish the parents must feel as they see the child they raised in misery.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
> No parent wants their child to suffer

Some do, the ones who know that their child will have a range of illnesses,
disabilities, etc. but decide to keep it in the name of their selfishness (or
faith, or whatever reason they have), instead of aborting.

They make the decision to have a suffering child out of moral comfort, so
some, yes, deliberately want their child to suffer.

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candiodari
This ignores a basic truth of evolution. You think you can "choose" against
children, for the environment. But that is not allowed.

If you take that choice, long term, it'll simply result in others, presumably
less ecologically conscious, doing it for you.

Furthermore, one can easily argue that fluctuating numbers of animals is far
worse than just large numbers of them. Animals will adapt to having larger
numbers (by, for instance, shrinking their bodies). Fluctuating numbers, well,
read the history of environmental protection at Yellowstone park for instance
to hear what can happen.

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c_r_w
This is basically the exact opposite of the Repugnant Conclusion, which states
that many poor lives is better than fewer happy lives. This ran on HN within
the last year.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-
conclusion/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/)

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relics443
Sometimes I feel like those advocating for not having children are doing the
world a favor by following their own advice.

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hackeraccount
I can't put my finger exactly as to why but his argument reminds me of that
part in the book Catch-22 where one person argues that they don't believe in
God because the world is so terrible and the other counters that they don't
believe in God either - but they don't believe in a good and just God not in
an evil and cruel God.

Maybe it's because the logic seems to be that existence is terrible so we're
doing the unborn a favor by saving them from it. Given the shortness of our
time (something the author mentions) it seems like no great harm is done. And
in any case wouldn't it be more fair to give the unborn the opportunity to
make the choice of existence or not themselves?

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LyndsySimon
I read the article once, and didn't find it interesting. The TL;DR that was
apparent to me was "existence is pain".

I read the article again, this time in Mr. Meeseeks' voice. It was
substantially improved.

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Overtonwindow
This article troubled me. There are many good reasons to have children, and
likely many bad reasons. I think everyone's situation is different, and
there's no definitive answer for either side.

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vgrocha
This is being alive and has always been: a struggle for survival. With all the
capital we accumulated as a civilization this might no longer be evident: we
are all competing and collaborating in order to obtain scarce resources (like
food, shelter, etc.)

People who don't embrace this and won't have kids will just exit the gene
pool. Life will go on.

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taylodl
"thoughtful people should pause and reflect rather than hastily dismiss it as
mad or wicked"

Here's the problem: I want _thoughtful_ people to _have_ kids. Otherwise only
the less intelligent, thoughtless folks would be having kids and the human
race will be marching on to madness.

