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Comment by Conscat | Hacker News Reader

I will be childfree, so will my sister. Both of us are queer. As far as I know, all my three cousins (two of whom are queer) feel the same. There's no reason to expect that your children will want to reproduce, and it is pretty selfish to project your own dissatisfaction with life onto another human that way.

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If someone cares more about themselves than continuing their family line or the human species, it’s arguably more selfish.

…continuing their family line…

I’m not Henry VIII, just some rube from Indiana. Our family is nothing special.

…or the human species

Nor is this some post-apocalyptic future where children are scarce.

Children kind of are scarce, though? Most countries aren’t reproducing at replacement levels. Were that to continue forever, the human population would go to zero.

School districts around me are closing schools because there aren’t enough kids to fill them.

Murray Rothbard argued there should be a thriving market for children. There's certainly something to it, there are so many places where children or at least female ones are viewed as completely without value and yet others who view them as both scarce and valuable. We are currently struggling much in this world with the problem of ensuring children end up where they are most cherished and valued.

It sounds terrible, but I'm inclined to agree with him the children would be better off if there really were child auctions.

Why should somebody consider their own "family line" special? That seems pretty arbitrary - perhaps hardwired in some way but not in any sense a moral imperative.

When there's an imminent danger of the human species ending because of a lack of babies, we can talk about the other point.

Family like any other material possessions is just another building block for the ego. Trying to believe you own something or is something when nothing is permanent and everything is part of everything else.

It's also selfish to bring humans that goes through immense suffering in their life so that you get meaning out of life or get joy from kids.

I find discussions of selfishness interesting in the context of a biological imperative.

Raising kids mostly feels to me like I have a horrible heroin addiction. Loads of cash and time, reduced access to jobs, increased risk of intrusion by authorities and I struggle to see any personal benefit but lots of personal losses. Nonetheless my brain has tricked me somehow into it, at some basic biological level, and it seems this trickery at least at the population level is a necessary condition of life to the point free will is a total joke to consider as part of the equation.

At an individual maybe there is some selfish choice but at a population level having a kid is about the biological equivalent of taking a shit -- people don't take a shit because they are selfish they do it because it is biologically required and humans simply evolved to match this requirement.

This sounds like the free will argument. we're just complex receptors to stimuli, we don't choose anything, we receive inputs and react accordingly. "it's just biology"

in this sense there's no discussion on why humans chooses kids or heroin, or taking a shit. The answer is "they don't"

so this isn't about kids. you've made up your mind about all reality.

>in this sense there's no discussion on why humans chooses kids or heroin, or taking a shit. The answer is "they don't"

This is false equivalence, taking heroin isn't a biologicals imperative, reproduction is obligatory to life.

My thesis is humans have no real choice at a population level not to reproduce, your fallaciously equate that to a reductionist view on everything else including things not obligatory to life.

The way I understand your position is "we're wired to do/choose X"

The big discussion is why have kids. And your position then is we're wired to, just like taking a dump.

It's not a good argument in my mind because the position voids every decision. There are no decisions. No free will. We can discuss that, i suppose.

edit: saw your update. I don't know I think it tracks. Asking why does someone do something implies a choice, to argue it's not a choice is a different argument. A good one even, but it's different.

My discussion was this:

>I find discussions of selfishness interesting in the context of a biological imperative.

Why is an interesting discussion, but not identical here. The charge I was responding to was specifically addressing selfishness.

I am totally open to the idea one can act selfishly both under the pretext that there is or isn't free will, which moots any attempt you're making here to shoehorn the argument into that.

ok then "selfishness" is now the unanswerable topic. it's too complex. Classic "there is no altruism". All acts are selfish if one derives any benefit from them. are there acts that people do by choice that give them no benefit?

i don't think this is reductionist btw. Philosophy tends to make people eye-roll. These are unanswerable questions! Discussion is the fun part.

I would break this into a few categories

Selfish non-choice. Ex: The fetus takes nourishment from the mother, even in the case she would rather abort and doesn't consent to the continued hosting of the fetus.

Selfish choice: Ex: I must take a dump, but the place I choose to take a shit is on my bosse's chair because I don't like that his is better than mine.

Non-selfish choice: Fireman is driving home after his shift ended, saves baby from fire.

Non-selfish non-choice: Woman involuntarily starts screaming after witnessing an unrelated car drive into a lake. Passers-by hear the scream and alert emergency services.

Humans reproduce. It's just what we do. We've been doing it basically as long as we've existed!

It's some kind of weird hubris when people think they've awakened to some grand truth that life is suffering and therefore reproduction is cruel.

Do humans reproduce. Yes.

Is life full of suffering. Yes.

Is life full of joy. Yes

All are true.

You’re projecting your values. There’s very strong arguments to be made in both directions without being responsible for a family line (however you might choose to define that) or an entire species.

Legitimate and honest question which is not an attempt to insult or devalue you: Do you personally consider 4/5 cousins in a generation of a family being queer (to my understanding this means not heterosexual) to be a statistical anomaly, or have you pinpointed a cause or causes for this outlier?

Feel free to not answer if it's a painful thing.

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