Hacker News Reader

Comment by LoganDark | Hacker News Reader

I wish the world weren't so bad that potential parents don't want to bring new lives into it... honestly, if I were a mother considering whether to have a child, I wouldn't want them to have to grow up in this terrible day and age. They'd end up more traumatized than I am. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

View on HN

> I wouldn't want them to have to grow up in this terrible day and age.

Today is very clearly the best time to be born, so much so that I'd argue if you could choose to have kids in an older time period or today, it's borderline abusive to choose the past.

Medicine/immunization, child mortality rates, human rights, ...

https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2018/6/7/the-best-tim...

Both could be considered abusive depending on your perspective

Your comment seems to be coming from a genuine place, but you could really use some historical perspective.

The only real perspective I have is that a bunch of today's issues didn't exist in my own childhood, and a bunch of my childhood issues haven't been solved. That means there's been a net increase in issues.

For example the internet is much unfriendlier to children nowadays, social media is far more predatory than it used to be. The housing crisis is worse (the exact same place is nearly twice as expensive as it was when we first moved in about 10 years ago). Also, the AI dystopia and surveillance state bullshit seems to be worsening at an exponentially increasing rate.

Read some history! The last 500 years are humanity’s Golden Age of Golden Ages. 100 years ago half the people you love would‘ve died in childhood.

So what? If people think that their children's future will be worse than their own, it doesn't really matter what people experienced 500 years ago. A common sentiment among parents is giving their children more opportunities and a better life than they had. If some people don't feel like they can do that (regardless of whether it's true or not), I imagine that's a powerful demotivator around having kids.

Yeah, so if you are familiar with human history and the exponential curve of increasing human wellbeing that we're riding and you still feel strongly that the future will be worse, then the conclusion should be that you're probably in an irrationally negative emotional headspace for some reason, not that you're right!

(I say that without judgement, having been in that exact headspace myself not too long ago.)

If you're actually familiar with human history then you'll know that it's uneven with horrifying dark periods and isn't some consistent curve that goes up.

In the lead up to the 2008 financial disaster all the bulls were saying "the housing market only goes up" without any understanding of the underlying shifts that would come to bear. It's easy to predict the status quo, they didn't need any thought, they could be replaced with a rock with "housing goes up" written on it.

For the first time in decades, risk of global conflict is rapidly rising. Two revanchist empires in the east are eager to reclaim lost territories and see their chance as the American hegemony that presided over the long peace faces stagnation & decline. This is the stuff that makes world wars. Who wants their child to live through that?

But fine, anyone can write "human well-being only goes up" on a rock.

Nobody has kids based on their relative circumstances to some arbitrary point in history, only those that have played out in their life and might in the future.

Gaining perspective by inspecting arbitrary points in history can be quite useful.

Perhaps emotionally or spiritually, which may be important, but I don't think enough to be practical. Those arbitrary points in history existed under their own constraints and opportunity or difficulty, and looking back further wouldn't necessarily have had much of an impact unless the future from that point looked quite promising.

I can only speak from personal experience, but I have found it to be immensely valuable in:

* Appreciating what I have today

* Not fearing the future in regards to global warming, war, and other instability

* Accepting that my life could turn completely upside down in an instant, e.g. due to economic instability, war, etc.

Yeah... I really don't understand why so many people revel in doom about today & the future.

What period of time would you rather live in, as an average person? What period of time did the average family have a better time?

I don't think that holds true here. At many points in history (including recent history) people were happy to have kids because they believed they could give their children a better life than they themselves have.

But it sounds like the GP is looking to the future, and is pessimistic about their ability to do that. History doesn't matter too much here, even if I agree with you that much of history was a cesspool of pain and misery compared to these days. If people don't see a viable, prosperous future for their kids, as good as or better than their own lives, that's what matters.

Now, I say this without passing judgment on whether or not this future pessimism is warranted. Even if it isn't, what matters is how people feel about it.

Even in the past they knew about the heat death of our sun.

If you could choose any time period (and assuming median standard conditions, so cannot choose being king), which period would you think was best for raising children?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com