The ‘elite’ couples breeding to save mankind | Hacker News Reader

The ‘elite’ couples breeding to save mankind

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25 pointsaskin4it54 comments

    "As she says this, her five-month-old daughter Titan Invictus – the couple 
    refuse to give girls feminine names, citing research suggesting they will be 
    taken less seriously"

I'm glad that they're giving their kids serious names, rather than something ridiculous like Susan or Jane.

They’re virtue signaling about gender disparities but really that name signals elitism more than any gender.

Maybe you're revealing more about yourself then they are?

Names aren't always heavily segregated by gender. And what is lost with neutral/inverted names? You can't bucket someone so easily?

Exactly. I bucket Titan Invictus together with my very great friends in Rome named Sillius Soddus and Biggus Dickus.

They happen to be respectable and fierce ladies actually. I also know a boy named Sue. Great guy, lots of character. Some minor issues with the parental unit.

Why is it so ridiculous? Common names are boring and become useless when your the third 'Paul' in the Super-K photo department or English class.

Names should be unique and fun. And if the children decide they don't like them, well, let them pick their own.

It's ridiculous because names are mostly for the benefit of other people, and unfortunately society isn't so tolerant that everyone will accept it. If you call your daughter Titan Invictus you're going to have her go through life with people trying to stifle a laugh when they hear her name, or asking "Sorry?" or coming back home and telling their spouse about the kid with the absurd name in the class they're teaching.

People are also unlikely to change their name, firstly since it's their name that they've had for years before being old enough to realise that people think it sounds stupid, and secondly because they worry about hurting their parents' feelings.

As the world becomes more interconnected people will need to accept that names will vary widely.

BTW my SO was a teacher in an area that had very creative and diverse names. She thought it was great. And certainly easier than a classroom with four 'Brian's.

Interconnected? This is not a case where somebody turns up from Bihar or Ukraine and brings a long and unfamiliar name to the class full of Annes and Johns. "Titan" goes back to Greek mythology, "Invictus" to Latin. The best thing I can say about the names is that a girl's classmates are less likely to think "'invictus' = unconquered? Let's test that hypothesis out back."

Sure, but if you are going to give someone a "unique and fun" name specifically saying you are against feminine names because research says they are taken less seriously, but aren't really putting much consideration into whether "unique and fun" names are taken less seriously than classic boring names, something is clearly wrong with your logic.

Cultures can and will change. What names are common or 'acceptable' will change too. Older folks often have 'strange' old names long out of fashion. Are they to be taken less seriously? It all strikes me as grade-school gate keeping.

If folks only take certain names seriously then they are the ones with a problem.

Look: it seems like you just don't understand what people are talking about. The original article said that feminine names aren't taken seriously, and then gave a "unique and fun" name to their kid. that is inconsistent. Pointing out that it is inconsistent isn't claiming anything about how people should or how people might eventually treat such names: the logic is bad and your opinion about the future is just noise... as if you are being triggered by this topic and simply can't prevent yourself from arguing about it, even though it is off topic, as that's the argument you wish people were having :(. (Awkwardly, is I try to parse your contributions to this thread in "charitable" light I actually end up in a worse place, where you would have to actively believe that in the future people will clearly accept unique and fun names and yet they will never accept feminine names. But not only does that feel like a shitty thought process, as far as I have seen you haven't tried to make that argument and if you were paying attention you would have said it, right?)

I have a somewhat rare name in my country, and the times I've had to repeat my name when introducing myself, or just had people outright asking "what kind of name is that" makes me sick of it. I sincerely don't like my name.

I agree. I have a unique name as does my daughter. That said, you have to be careful with them…and it’s not the place to make a political stance.

Getting a name akin to a ship from WH40k is not serious. You are not a space ship, Titard.

i have a unique name. good luck when you have to order a sandwich or coffee, or answer the phone. the only benefit is getting the whatevermyfirstnameis@ email address at work. if i ever have kids, they will be getting boring-ass names.

That kid is being called Tit Anne or just 'Anne' by the third grade. But she'll know they are thinking the first part.

By the time that kid reaches 3rd grade, kids won't be mocking others with nicknames, for fear of being cancelled. /s (I hope?)

If self censorship starts that early then damn.

Africa continues to produce plenty of people. While the article seems to dismiss racism out of hand, it is the only intellectually consistent explanation for these “pronatalist” beliefs. Likewise, there are millions of people in Southeast Asia who would love to live and work in Japan. Japan’s shrinking population could be reversed almost instantly if it changed its immigration policies.

The notion that you can move around people as if they had no ancestry or culture, and immediately adapt them to any other place seems wrong though.

At some point it seems better to give strong intensive for people in one’s country to have babies.

> The notion that you can move around people as if they had no ancestry or culture, and immediately adapt them to any other place seems wrong though.

I don't think anyone serious has ever believed that. The whole US idea of a "melting pot" is basically an overt acceptance of the fact that that isn't what happens.

Not so fast. New evidence suggests Africa’s birth rates are falling fast.

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/04/05/...

Suppose humans go extinct. Why is it such a bad thing? Species go extinct all the time. Why are we so special?

We have zero respect for the planet or other species (if we did, we wouldn’t raise animals in horrific conditions just for their flesh). Maybe other species will thrive, when we are gone

I think that this kind of self-hatred is a much greater threat to humanity than a falling birth rate. We properly fear the danger of non-aligned artificial intelligence but the more immediate danger is non-aligned human intelligence. As human knowledge and power grows, of the workings of the atom and the cell in particular, the means to destroy ourselves becomes more attainable, ever more with reach of people like the above who either don't value, or negatively value human life.

For shorthand, I'm more afraid of 12 Monkeys (1995) than Children of Men (2006).

Strikes me more as self reflection and critique than hatred. The former could be pretty handy if the goal is to live more sustainably than less aware predators.

Do other apex predators treat their prey with more respect? The fact that you can even consider the rammifications of our meat industry and express your condemnation of it is prima facie evidence of why we are so special.

We should do better because we can do better

do we know they don't treat their prey with respect? why do we assume to be so. We can't know what they are thinking so assuming they are dumb and we are superior is not the right thing. Maybe they do have feelings. Its just that we don't know if they have or not.

If nothing matters then why are you still here? And if our species doesn’t matter why should it matter that other species might thrive without us? Are they more valuable than humans?

As usual I’m not sure the title is accurate - don’t get any real sense of elitism (maybe strangeness but relatively benign).

Elitism in a sense of social status, I think. The husband has worked as a VC in Korea.

Yeh I'm not sure how that fits in. I get they might be "elite" in terms of social status as another commenter says, but their movement isn't really about that at all to what I can see

They must have seen that documentary, Idiocracy.

Mankind does not seem to be at risk from falling birth rates. If you can think of a plausible such scenario I'd like to hear it. Sure, certain cultures are at risk. But anti-natalists tend to edit themselves out of cultures, leaving the more fecund natalists to spawn the future. Raising families, breeders are disproportionate sources of both future memes and genes relative to non-breeders. The more effective anti-natalists are, the greater the rebound from their resulting self-elimination.

Indeed, the future belongs to those who show up.

I have heard the argument that as Africa continues to develop, birth rates will fall in Africa the same way that they fell in east Asia - leaving no large regions in the world with growing populations, and thus no pool of immigrants that highly industrialised countries can pull from - leading to highly industrialised countries collapsing and whatever existential risk comes from that. I personally don't buy it, as trends don't continue forever. Birth rates will never fall to zero, and we'd likely come up with a solution to the dependency ratio problem before the least-developed country in the world industrialises

You have a world where women are expected to sacrifice early marriage and child-rearing for their careers and the cost of living is so high that even people in the higher earning brackets are reluctant to have children early, then population becomes a problem.

Dear pretentious narcissistic elites, if you feel the world population is collapsing pay your staff better wages and increase the stock of available housing, something which the so called developed world is extremely loth to do.

My god, the people in this article look exactly like the kind of people you'd expect to call themselves "elite". How narcissistic.

Is that kid wearing his grandpa’s glasses? Adorable.

If we're so interested in eugenics why are we breeding from people whose eyes don't work? /s

Also those baby names when they really do look like people who will complain about non-traditional-eurocentric names.

Honestly reading this was giving me "great replacement" vibes :-/

What's the meta narrative? Convincing formerly pro choice youngins to do a 180 and make some babies (from affluent stock...)

What's the 180 exactly?

Pronatalists believe having more children is imperative to save society. This seems somewhat opposed to being pro-choice, where the decision to procreate is purely a personal decision; the impact of your personal decision on society is not a factor.

Pro-choice doesn't mean you do or don't consider impact on society. It just means you get to choose, using whatever criteria you decide are important. You might make your choice based on impact to society (however you choose to define that), you might not. The point is it's your choice and no one else's, using criteria you chose. That in no way forecloses any particular way of thinking about whether to make any particular choice.

Sure, but I think there is a distinct difference between believing in an individual's right to choose and believing people must have kids to save society. The latter belief implies that making a certain choice is "wrong" and the other is "right". That doesn't necessarily mean all pronatalists are automatically pro-life, however.

Galton's law is going to give these people a rude awakening.

Explain

It's a regression to the mean argument. Tall people won't have even taller children. They'll have shorter children because the average must be maintained. So very exceptional people will have less exceptional children. Giraffes disagree.

It is not a 'law' in the Physics sense. People have done some very interesting things with selective breeding in plants and animals. It will largely work for humans too just that some effects may be dampened (or accelerated) by culture.

Is this satire?

> ‘I encourage people who are responsible and smart and conscientious to have children, because they’re going to make the future better’

Sounds ideal, but one paragraph later;

> Easily the most famous person to espouse pronatalist ideas is Elon Musk.

Hahahaha!

I'm going to start a "school for children of giant entitled wankers who think they're saving civilization"...

'Elite' couples? If they're anything like the 'elite' <u>worldwide</u> that've been leading mankind into war and starvation (and all the terrible waste that inevitably follows) increasingly since the beginning of recorded history?

We need a lot of work on that definition.

The meek shall inherit the earth. Hard to compete with millennia of ritual.

> …reprotech…

Basilisk? Can you hear me?

Hurry.

Please.

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