These announcements always make me ponder about the people we'll put on bank notes or erect statues in honour of in 50 years and are alive and persecuted today but not recognized by society.
Vinyl records, yes (mostly). I'm pretty sure the other two things are still in pretty wide use.
[0] https://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/media/ebooks-sales-real-boo...
[1] http://www.insideradio.com/who-s-listening-am-radio-by-the-n...
Counter: obsolete things last longer than you think.
Riposte: obsolete things are not used by most people.
Counter-riposte: still used by many people.
Counter-counter-riposte: technically, many != most.
Somewhere, I think the original point was lost. This has been HN comment theater, the greatest arena of technical-yet-irrelevant correctness you can find.
Which is really very weird because a fifty now is only worth what a twenty was when I started work. And back then twenties were commonplace and fifties weren't especially rare.
I suspect they only exist now to facilitate sketchy payments by HMG.
You know what the NAD has never done? Just stopped playing for no reason. Stopped playing because someone called. Stopped playing because a video played on a website. Stopped playing because the battery ran out. Stopped playing because my wifi did whatever. And so on, so forth.
We listen to vinyl for the same reason.
> We listen to vinyl for the same reason.
Agree with your points entirely, except, you can't even get a whole album play through on vinyl without interaction.. modern information density is much improved.
HD vinyl [0] should be interesting, if just for that reason alone. Old tech, modern twist.
edit: Then one second later I scroll down and read about Zimbabwe using Tesla Powerwall batteries to keep their digital currency available.
I wish there was more focus in this discussion on Turing's incredible accomplishments and less on the lurid details surrounding his death. I'm fine with taking a stand to promote LGBTQ rights and left another comment here doing so, but I think it robs Turing of some of the respect he is due to frame the discussion here with an excess emphasis on his persecution.
It seems more like an acknowledgement that his past persecution shouldn't have any bearing on our perception of his myriad accomplishments. FTA:
>Alan Turing provided the theoretical underpinnings for the modern computer. While best known for his work devising code-breaking machines during WWII, Turing played a pivotal role in the development of early computers first at the National Physical Laboratory and later at the University of Manchester. He set the foundations for work on artificial intelligence by considering the question of whether machines could think.
I mean, we sometimes call general-purpose computers "Turing Machines", and we use "Turing Tests" to determine if an AI can demonstrate enough intelligence to pass as human.
That's an unnecessary exaggeration. ULTRA was incredibly helpful to the Allies, but there is little reason to believe that without it the world "would probably look very different today". In all likelihood the worst scenario is that the war would've ended a bit later, and with somewhat more favourable conditions for the USSR in terms of their positions in Europe.
Moving on from that, one of the people behind ULTRA went on to develop what we would recognise today as the cloud. In terms of cryptography, ULTRA was classified for decades after as the techniques developed were still in use.
Several US states were the first governments to abolish slavery in the entire New World. Even if we're explicitly talking about national level abolitionism, the United States was average in terms of the time it took to abolish slavery in the Americas. Slavery continued until 1873, 1886, and 1888 in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil respectively. Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela abolished slavery in the 1810s and 1820s but only prohibited the enslavement of newly born children while allowing the continued enslavement of existing slaves.
Hyperbole about slavery in America's founding aside, being the first President of direct African heritage is an achievement that would be worthy of being put on a banknote.
And just how long does it take to found a country? In 1789 there were around 4 million people in the US, and slavery was legal in most of the country whether measured by area, economic output or population.
Even if you take 1810 as the cutoff that's 34 years after independence. Would you say 34 years after the founding of some 20th century nation states (some of which collapsed a lot sooner than that) that it was too early to tell what principles they were founded on?
It's also a very narrow view to say that a southern state producing cotton where slavery was legal, and a northern state where slavery wasn't legal but where cotton production with southern material contributed significantly to the economy weren't both involved in slavery.
34 years is a heartbeat in the overall span of history. Furthermore some states, including some of the most populous ones like Massachusetts abolished slavery less than 5 years after the founding of the United States, and many did so before 1800. Many of the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended slavery to be phased out, and Jefferson banned the importation of slaves during his presidency. It's difficult to claim that the US was founded on slavery when states started to ban slavery almost immediately after its founding and key founding figures took steps to curb slavery.
To say that slavery was a "founding principle" of the United States does not have much justification beyond the fact that slavery existed at the time of the United States' founding. By that metric, effectively all countries founded during the New World revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th century were founded on slavery.
Everything you've said here and in the sibling comment makes the case for the irrelevance of those declared policies. If they were important you'd expect the US to have abolished slavery relatively early, or for it not to have been such an important issue as to have precipitated a civil war within its borders.
To say that a country is "founded on" something speaks to its early development. For instance the modern Icelandic state is arguably founded on its fisheries, and the US can be said to have been founded on sustenance agriculture, the economic surplus of slavery etc.
The reality on the ground is that most of the US was the first country in the Americas to take steps towards abolition, most of the country by population had banned slavery within a few decades, and it was banned nation wide within a century. I had assumed people were talking about "founded" in terms of founding principles, because trying to justify the claim that the US was founded on slavery based on "reality on the ground" is even harder to defend.
> If they were important you'd expect the US to have abolished slavery relatively early, or for it not to have been such an important issue as to have precipitated a civil war within its borders.
It was. The first state to ban slavery was Vermont in 1777 literally one year after the country's founding. Massachusetts, then one of the most populous colonies (I think 2nd or 3rd highest population) banned in in 1780. The majority of the country by population had banned slavery well within one lifetime after it's founding.
The fact that the country was willing to go to wage a Civil War to bring about the end of slavery is testament to the fact that that the country was not founded on slavery, I cannot fathom how one can convince oneself that this indicates the opposite.
> To say that a country is "founded on" something speaks to its early development. For instance the modern Icelandic state is arguably founded on its fisheries, and the US can be said to have been founded on sustenance agriculture, the economic surplus of slavery etc.
By this logic, the US was founded on subsistence farming, logging, fur trapping, manufacturing, shipbuilding, whaling, and countless other industries. Furthermore, using this logic one can claim that the entirety of the Americas, Africa, much if not all of the Middle East, and many European countries are "founded on slavery". The fact that the only way to defend the claim that the US was founded on slavery is take such an expansive view of what it means to be "founded on slavery" that it becomes almost universal demonstrates that there isn't much justification for this claim.
Honestly I can't fathom how saying the US was founded on slavery is a controversial point.
The context of this thread is a discussion of the design of the British pound, and whether Obama being on the dollar would be seen as being notable by future generations because he's black given the deep history of slavery in the US.
I think you're trying to defend a strawman when purely discussing the US's slavery practice in the context of the Americas. If we're only doing that we'd focus on countries like Haiti and Brazil instead, but we're not. Furthermore it's a given that it's not notable that a black person's on Haiti's money given their demographics.
To say that a country is founded on something is to describe its overall character at the time. Almost a 100 years after the country's founding almost 1/5th of the population was enslaved[1]. More than half of the US's export earnings were from the products of slavery, dwarfing any other sector.
Comparing this to whaling would be comical if the subject matter wasn't so sad, and so is cherry-picking the early abolishment of slavery in a few northern states who didn't have a notable population of slaves to begin with. It would be like Nebraska having outlawed whaling while most of the US's population & economic output was supported by whaling.
Because it is incorrect. Slavery ran contrary to what the US was founded on, which is why those states that persisted in practicing slavery ultimately could not co-exist with the rest of the US.
> The context of this thread is a discussion of the design of the British pound, and whether Obama being on the dollar would be seen as being notable by future generations because he's black given the deep history of slavery in the US.
Yes, and in doing so the above commenter wrote that the US was "founded on the enslavement of black people". This is incorrect.
> I think you're trying to defend a strawman when purely discussing the US's slavery practice in the context of the Americas. If we're only doing that we'd focus on countries like Haiti and Brazil instead, but we're not. Furthermore it's a given that it's not notable that a black person's on Haiti's money given their demographics.
Some attempt to portray the US as uniquely persistent in its practice of slavery, and I pointed out that this is incorrect.
> To say that a country is founded on something is to describe its overall character at the time.
The US was overwhelmingly Christian at the time of its founding, and continued to be so for well over a century. The US was not at all founded on Christianity, it is an explicitly secular state (superficial things like the pledge of allegiance notwithstanding). This line of reasoning does not hold up to scrutiny.
Most people would say that a country is founded on something if that something is foundational to the country. Sparta was founded on slavery, for example. Slavery was foundational to Spartan society - a Sparta without slavery was an impossibility. One of the reforms of Lycurcus (arguably Sparta's most important founding figure) was to make the people Sparta conquered slaves owned by the Spartan state. That is an example of a country founded on slavery.
> Almost a 100 years after the country's founding almost 1/5th of the population was enslaved[1]. More than half of the US's export earnings were from the products of slavery, dwarfing any other sector.
It is intellectually dishonest to cherry-pick exports as though it is indicative of all economic output, as you do below. Slavery did not comprise the majority of the US GNP. Even if the analysis is exclusively limited to the South, slavery only compromised just over a quarter of economic output [1]. The industrialized North had an outsized share of GNP as compared to the south - estimates I find put the north at 3/4 to 4/5th of the US's total GNP in 1860.
> Comparing this to whaling would be comical if the subject matter wasn't so sad, and so is cherry-picking the early abolishment of slavery in a few northern states who didn't have a notable population of slaves to begin with. It would be like Nebraska having outlawed whaling while most of the US's population & economic output was supported by whaling.
The majority of the US economic output was not supported by slavery. Slavery contributed about 25% of the South's economy, which in turn contributed 20-25% of the total US GNP, so the share of GNP produced by slavery was ~6%. Most of the output of slave labor was exported, so even if you want to expand the scope of what was "supported by slavery" to include manufactured goods produced from cotton picked by slaves it is still a slim share of the overall economy. The notion that "most of the US's population and economic output was supported by [slavery]" is not even remotely true.
1. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/
My understanding of your argument is that because certain nice and lofty things were said in certain founding documents we should look at it as a matter of historical inevitability that practices like slavery and racial discrimination were ultimately abolished.
I just don't buy that, and I think if you try to make this argument for any other country you'll see how silly it is.
I could similarly argue that say the oppression of the Soviet Union of its own citizens didn't have anything to do with its nature or foundational structure, it was just some temporary mistake. If you read the Soviet constitution it's even more unequivocal about condemning that sort of thing than the equivalent American documents.
For something like 1/3 of the history of the country millions lived out their lives as slaves, if we're being conservative for 2/3rds structural racial inequality was the law of the land.
If you'd have talked to supreme court justices, and some of the authors of those founding documents (many of whom had slaves) they'd have been appalled by this modern reading of the text. "All men" is much closer to the contemporary reading of "all [male] citizens [who hold property/are head of households]".
> The majority of the US economic output was not supported by slavery.
The page you're linking to makes the opposite case if you take it as a whole instead of selectively quoting from it. It argues that a buyout of the slaves would have been impossible due to the high price. Furthermore it's talking about numbers at the time of the civil war, almost 100 years after the period we're discussing, at that time the country had a more diversified economy.
If a sector of your economy is so integral to it that the government wants to get rid of it but can't see itself abolishing it without a war with itself it's pretty foundational to the economy.
> The notion that "most of the US's population and economic output was supported by [slavery]" is not even remotely true.[...]
Based on your reductive analysis of GNP by sector, but that's not how economies works. Low prices in one sector (e.g. due to slave labor) cascade to other sectors. The page you linked to explains this, it's like oil prices today. The benefit to the economy from reduced oil prices is higher than just the dollar value paid for the oil, it makes everything else cheaper.
But really. I don't see how we're going to get anywhere here (although I'd love to continue the discussion in this increasingly stale thread). How much slavery contributed to the economy is a supporting fact, but it's clearly not the main point. Although I'd be curious at what percentage of GNP you'd concede it. 25%? 50%?
The point is that a phrase like "built on slavery" accurately characterizes the country at the time both economically and socially as compared to other notable countries.
> I just don't buy that, and I think if you try to make this argument for any other country you'll see how silly it is.
Pointing to founding principles is but one of a variety of items I've been using to demonstrate the falsehood of trying to asset that slavery was foundational to the United States (early abolition movements, the fact that slavery comprised ~6% of GNP, that founding figures expressed desire to end slavery, and more). If genuinely believe, "that because certain nice and lofty things were said in certain founding documents we should look at it as a matter of historical inevitability that practices like slavery and racial discrimination were ultimately abolished" describes the points I've been making then I doubt you've been reading my comments in any detail. Did you just forget all the other points I've been making?
> I could similarly argue that say the oppression of the Soviet Union of its own citizens didn't have anything to do with its nature or foundational structure, it was just some temporary mistake. If you read the Soviet constitution it's even more unequivocal about condemning that sort of thing than the equivalent American documents.
One could make a decent argument that the worst aspect of Soviet oppression was a temporary mistake. The worst of Soviet oppression took place during Stalin's purges, and the Soviet government essentially disowned him after his death. Which was more oppressive, the Soviet Union outside of Stalin's reign, or the Tsarist regime that the Soviet Union replaced? Remember under Tsarist Russia a huge portion of the population lived as serfs, which were human property (serfs could be purchased and sold, perhaps not quite identical to slavery but at least in a similar stroke). Both were very bad, and I would be appalled if I had to live under either, but many see the Soviet Union as an overall positive delta.
> For something like 1/3 of the history of the country millions lived out their lives as slaves, if we're being conservative for 2/3rds structural racial inequality was the law of the land.
To be more specific, for 1/3rd of the history of the country, millions lived out their lives as slaves in ~40% of the county in which slavery was legal. Re-framing this to "structural racial inequality" is diverging very far from the claim that the united states was "founded on the enslavement of black people", which is the claim that I am disproving.
> If you'd have talked to supreme court justices, and some of the authors of those founding documents (many of whom had slaves) they'd have been appalled by this modern reading of the text. "All men" is much closer to the contemporary reading of "all [male] citizens [who hold property/are head of households]".
So now we're talking about the lack of female suffrage? This is diverging even further from the claim that slavery was foundational to the United States.
> The page you're linking to makes the opposite case if you take it as a whole instead of selectively quoting from it. It argues that a buyout of the slaves would have been impossible due to the high price.
Sure. That doesn't change the fact that slavery comprised 6% of GNP. But because the South only had 20-25% of the country's GNP, this represented 20-25% of the South's economy. It's not surprising that they would choose to fight. But that does not change the fact that slavery did comprise 6% of GNP - very far from the 25-50% you speculate below.
> Furthermore it's talking about numbers at the time of the civil war, almost 100 years after the period we're discussing, at that time the country had a more diversified economy.
Quite the opposite. Slavery during the time of the United States' founding was much less economically productive than it was during the antebellum period. Cotton, slavery's primary product, was not profitable until the cotton gin was invented which boosted cotton production by a factor of 25-50. Tobacco plantations were more popular than cotton before the invention of the cotton gin. Some scholars even speculate that slavery would have petered out without conflict were it not for the cotton gin. If you want to measure the economic output of slavery at the time of the US founding, it's drastically less as compared to 1860.
> If a sector of your economy is so integral to it that the government wants to get rid of it but can't see itself abolishing it without a war with itself it's pretty foundational to the economy.
Slavery became foundational to the Southern economy, but this was a development that occurred after America's founding. As as explained above, slavery was not economically very productive at the time of the United States' founding. "King Cotton" didn't come about until the invention of the cotton gin and westward expansion.
> Based on your reductive analysis of GNP by sector, but that's not how economies works. Low prices in one sector (e.g. due to slave labor) cascade to other sectors. The page you linked to explains this, it's like oil prices today. The benefit to the economy from reduced oil prices is higher than just the dollar value paid for the oil, it makes everything else cheaper.
> (and later) Although I'd be curious at what percentage of GNP you'd concede it. 25%? 50%?
Slave labor produced cotton, most of which was exported. While some of this did get sold internally to the North, the article I linked writes, "The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed an enormous increase in the production of short-staple cotton in the South, and most of that cotton was exported to Great Britain and Europe." The article does mention that "all regions benefited from the South’s concentration on cotton production" such as the north selling manufactured goods to the South. But it does not claim that this was anywhere near the majority. Again, the entire Southern economy comprised 20-25% of the country's GDP, and slavery accounted for 25% of that figure (5-6% in total). While the indirect contribution you refer to existed, it was not remotely close to the majority. Attempting to quantify this is difficult, because defining what kind of economic activity counts as being supported by slavery is ambiguous, but not scholar would put this figure near the 25 or 50% you speculate.
> But really. I don't see how we're going to get anywhere here (although I'd love to continue the discussion in this increasingly stale thread). How much slavery contributed to the economy is a supporting fact, but it's clearly not the main point.
Then what is the main point? So far we have established that:
* Slavery was not one of the principles the US was founded on.
* Abolition movements started effectively immediately after the US's founding, and the majority of the country was slave-free within half a century.
* Slavery, and economic activity related to slavery, did not comprise even remotely close to the majority of economic activity in the US.
* Most of the country's founders expected slavery to be abolished, including some that owned slaves themselves (e.g. Jefferson)
The only potential justification you have presented that slavery was foundational to the US is the fact that slavery existed at the time of the US's founding - that is insufficient to claim that this was foundational to the US, especially in contrast to the points I listed above.
> The point is that a phrase like "built on slavery" accurately characterizes the country at the time both economically and socially as compared to other notable countries.
No, it does not. America at it's founding at best tolerated slavery, and within a matter of decades society did not tolerate slavery. Economically, it comprised a relatively small portion of the economy. The comparison to other countries is even more egregious, and speaks to a profound ignorance of the role of slavery in other countries [2].
1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/maps-reveal-slavery-e...
^ This is actually a very good visualization top to show just how much larger slavery was in 1860 as compared to 1790. In the latter slavery was pretty much exclusive to a couple narrow stretches of land on the coasts of Virginia and Georgia. Also note the difference in the legend between slave and free people.
2. https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/fdscontent/usco...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...
(I guess that wikipedia is good for something)
edit: Specifically, this machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe
Alan Turing is known for
- Being a primary figure in the effort to break the enigma machine code so that messages could be decoded without stealing the secret keys used. This was tactically valuable.
- Creating one of 2 mathematically equivalent logical models of computation eventually shown to be equivalent.
He is thus of pivotal importance in the development of modern computers, the defeat of the nazis, and codebreaking.
If you haven't heard of any of this it behooves you to read up a bit.
That is obviously what I'm referring to, what are you on about? It would behoove you to refrain from needlessly condescending replies.
Did the original post say "his enigma machine" implying turings enigma machine? or did it say Enigma-"like" machine.
I certainly make enough typographical mistakes myself no particular shame in that.
All I meant to say is that machines designed/built by Turing were in fact very, very useful in their time. I was too lazy about it though and should have looked up the name in the beginning.
- A greater number of people took psychedelics because they could now order them via the mail and pay in crypto
- Psychedelics change people's lives meaningfully
- the kind of people who buy drugs on the internet are the kind that are demographically likely to experience positive life changes from psychedelics.
I'm not saying your wrong. I'm more saying send me the link to the book when you write it.
What about pragmatic discussions in domains where clear data isn't accessible?
Deriving high probability conclusions from high probability premises?
>A greater number of people took psychedelics because they're more accessible due to anonymous, location independent markets
Likelihood of this not being true approaches zero IMO.
> Psychedelics change people's lives meaningfully
Sufficient research exists to back this up. Michael Pollan's book cites many.
> the kind of people who buy drugs on the internet are the kind that are demographically likely to experience positive life changes from psychedelics.
You may want to note: most would agree by volume, those buying psychs online are also distribute them with their social sphere. The dark net facilitates local area networks of psych access. There's no a 1st order relationship here.
Offer me immortality and I shall go explore the stars.
Oh is that all?
Like my Gammy said, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.” And if you gave my Gammy immortality, she would’ve just smoked more cigs and played more nickel slots.
Aubrey de Grey is most likely going to be remembered like the guy saying machine vision is a weekend project before any serious research took place.
Even if I don’t live forever, maybe my kids will. That will meet my success criteria.
Longer lifespans is already a goal, but aging is unlikely to be “solved” in in the next 100 or even 1,000 years. People took much longer than that to figure out how to fly and we have been trying to solve aging for as long if not longer.
Consider buildings age as do diamonds. To fix aging we need to get bodies to do things like regrow teeth and replace the circulatory system. Growing extra lungs to replace lungs being filled with junk etc etc. When we start syncing redundant brains, that’s when we can start ending aging.
Re brain syncing, the early tentative experiments are ongoing https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-neuralink-works-monkeys-...
Significant life extension will likely be built off the same accumulation of knowledge, not some rainforest frog extract the ancients could have refined. The only way I can imagine we don't have this in 1000 years is if someone's nuke finger gets twitchy.
Want to accelerate research? Make "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" required reading/watching for all schoolchildren: https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY (That this might be controversial is itself interesting.)
Yet, for the first person to ride a hot air balloon took ~2000 years in 1783. Some of this came down to advances in material science, but far less than you might think.
If my brain has been downloaded (for lack of a better word) into another, am I living on in that other body or does someone else have my memories?
I've often wondered this about Star Trek-style teleportation. Are those red-shirts really moving instantly from one place to the other or are they being incinerated on a coloured circle and cloned somewhere else?
but the best evidence you have that you are the same entity as yesterday's "you" is that you remember some events from the day. the teleportation paradox is no harder to resolve.
And I'm really creeped out right now. I was about to type this example too and then didn't at the last.
As a side note - My mind tends to race at night. Life has me so busy during the day that when I'm trying to sleep is the only time I get to do much thinking. Thing is, because I'm already tired I never remember much of it the next morning other than "I had a really good think about something last night". Given that I'll not remember, and no-one else will have known, it does seem philosophically compatible and biologically possible that the current me is in effect "dying" every night to make way for a "rebooted" version tomorrow. This is not inconsistent with what we know sleep to be.
The only difference is that there's still only one me.
With the transporter analogy, though, the physical matter is reconstructed at the other side from different matter, which means its a copy. The film "The Prestige" covers this difference brilliantly if you've ever seen it.
Finally, if this comment makes no sense, it's because I'm in bed and my mind is racing.
According to quantum mechanics this is exactly what is happening
It's already at the point today where real estate and other relatively scarce resources are much more available to and owned by the wealthy who then use this to extract rent from the younger generations. Give those people another 80 years or so to do play the game and we will all end up in hock to them. You'll be born in debt to someone who was born a century or more before you.
> The color blue makes me feel sad
Downvoted! I love the color blue.
Edit: and now I'm being downvoted for this observation. Maybe Alanis Morissette would say this is ironic
Imagine he were right (he's not, for myriad reasons), and he found a way for everyone to live to be 500.
He's made clear statements about ceasing pro-creation in favour of extending life spans well beyond what we experience now.
What of all the people who would have lived a full life but would never get the chance because of people like him?
Savage indeed.
It's the year 2400 and recent developments in technology mean that a person (let's say John) can choose to live for 500 years, in favour of a chain of offspring.
John makes this choice.
John's father Harry would have made that choice had the technology been available, and would have enjoyed a longer life in favour of fathering John.
The only reason John exists is because the technology was not available to Harry - so what right did John have to exist that his unrealized offspring would not also have? (Given that their reasons for existing/not-existing are the same).
To discuss Johns hypothetical rights when he came into existence at point B makes sense. At point C he never did so its meaningless to discuss his rights. At A its possible to discuss B in context of B but impossible to be indebted NOW to entities in contexts in which they don't exist.
The breakdown is where we reason from B to A and assign every hypothetical being that could have possibly arisen the privileges of an actual existing person in A. B's possibilities are only reasonable in context of B.
To imagine otherwise we are stuck with accepting the murder of a googol potential slightly different children that could have resulted rather than the relatively few we had. Only slightly less absurd we could be morally obliged to have as many children as possible even if the result is that they are on net less successful and more miserable to avoid the greater loss of existence.
Reason it out yourself and consider the plethora of absurdities.
That's not the point, though.
John's kids are hypothetical. But so is John. As is Harry.
As is a 500 year old Aubrey de Grey.
Rights are what people decide they and others should or shouldn't be entitled to based on a consensus of what most of us consider to be, you know, morally right.
If there was consensus on the rights of people yet to live (who may or may not ultimately be born) there wouldn't be differing views on pro-life/pro-choice - and the terms would likely not exist.
To come back to the crux of your argument, though - I don't believe our John is any more responsible for a single potential offspring that doesn't come to pass than a father is for every sperm that doesn't fertilize an egg. That would be, as you've said, absurd.
My point was that suspending the natural cycle of life in a way that prevents pro-creation is, in my view, morally wrong. Something I imagine we disagree on.