Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

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7Wannabe5
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I interact on a regular basis with immigrant children from all over the planet. I can't even tell you how many times a tiny child who can barely put together 3 words in English has said something like "You have pretty hair like Elsa" to me. I don't think we are quite yet in need to worry about the death of all Western "culture" mode :roll:

One thing I have noted, but will not quite be able to fully articulate/expound upon, is that there is something inherently different about today's racism compared to the racism of my childhood. Like racism used to be heavier and believe itself to be more informed, and now it is lighter, or maybe more diffuse, and also knows itself to be more clueless. Like the N-word used to clang like a hammer on a railway tie, or a steel door slowly, but surely, slamming shut, but now it buzzes shrilly to quick cut, like a cheap,noisy hand-held sports game with a short-circuiting error function.

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Jean
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by Jean »

I don't care about our actual culture. Most of it is shit.
But if Rhinos are put on an alp and are being milked and are dressed with bells for parade, they won't become cows.

BRUTE
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by BRUTE »

brute is confused as to why there is such a strong "all or nothing" culture about culture. clearly, many parts of any culture are terrible. most cultures have at least a few great parts, though.

brute enjoys individualism and capitalism in western culture, the family and sense of community/duty, and much better diet/physical culture in many parts of Asia.

wouldn't it be obviously better to simply copy other cultures instead of arbitrarily deciding that this set of cultures is set in stone, and humans have to choose all or nothing?

jacob
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by jacob »

@brute sounds like one of those cafeteria-style culture-consumers (like me) who values personal autonomy and thinks of people as "individual individuals" who exist in isolation of each other picking and consuming "behaviors" according to their preferences insofar as they can afford to do so. E.g I'll take some Japanese Sake from this culture; some SubTropic maniana from that culture; and some "show up on time from that culture" ... and then build/consume my own personally perfect combination and that'll be great...

Whereas the majority of humans think of culture [in terms of skin-albedo or football shirt-uniforms] as some kind of identifier for team-affiliation rather instead of some historical genotype-latitude thing that serves as a measure to include/exclude individuals by some measure they can't personally control because they were born that way (and thus be pissed about insofar others superficially judge them accordingly). In which case ... Under no circumstance can they ever even be associated with that OTHER thing as long as it's branding wrongly. Like, ACA is cool ... but ObamaCare is the worst, because that [Care] concept has Obama in the word... It's very different worlds.

Standard normal humans prioritize mostly "group-belonging" over "individual autonomy". Wise-choice too, because standard-normal-humans are mostly mince-meat when left to their own devices happily shooting themselves in the foot in the name of comfort and convenience. As seen elsewhere ... all those ideal ideas go right out the window once more "genetic concerns" enter the picture.

brute might be temporarily confused(?) because many humans (who prefers the former) has elevated "freedom" to a slogan... using pretty much the opposite of what they think and do as a battle call: "That's what you are. But what am I?" Everybody who graduated from 3rd grade understands how this works and how well it works. Or maybe not .., C'est la vie ... plus la change... le blah le blah, eh?

On the opposing side of team-oriented humans who prefer other humans to side with their shirt-color for the good of ... whatever ... there's also the SJW and other single-issue religious [ehh uhh ... freedom] peeps who think that sociological problems are most easily solved by convincing the other 80% to change their personal values to ... whatever [mine is]. Ha! Fat chance! But such is democracy ... It's a rather imperfect clusterfuck.

So here we are ... for the past 10-20 years, already. So humans have figured that maybe multi-culturalism should solve this problem? If only all humans "diversified" their cultural values and learned to enjoy a wide variety just like a rare minority has already figured it out... then the random human could enjoy some aspect of whatever value they were holding. Does that sound familiar? ;-) Yes! ... but no. Not gonna work. Because only a minority of humans are sufficiently open-minded. Most are not!

Humans are too crude to for this level of complexity. Humans could ... but they don't.

George the original one
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by George the original one »

Jacob, LOL!

There's a story by A.E. Van Vogt (I think... couldn't find it the last time I looked) about aliens taking over the world and reorganizing human civilization such that the cultural differences are stamped out. Reclassifying people to do the work they enjoy doing, etc. Naturally there are humans trying to organize a rebellion and the aliens fall into the trap of having to grant cultural privileges to get cooperation. Like allowing a cultural minority to continue speaking Frisian so they'd do some strongarm stuff...

Ultimately these little privileges provide the crowbar to repel the alien takeover even though humanity would have been better off with the aliens in charge.

Edit: "Pendulum" is the story. Thanks, google!

BRUTE
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 4:19 pm
Humans could ... but they don't.
if they don't, is it accurate to say that they could? determinism is strong in brute.

enigmaT120
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by enigmaT120 »

I thought I had all of A.E. Van Vogt's stuff in my library, but that one doesn't sound familiar.

Isabel
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by Isabel »

Having fewer children won´t change anything. Such actions (convincing people not to have children) will not work. Only China like measures would have some effect but they will not be introduced on the global level.

It seems however that population issue will solve itself gradually as nature is taking its course. There are already visible processes where this is happening:

1. Antimicrobial resistance is on its rise and will only increase.
2. Infertility is on the rise. There are studies that male sperm count halved over the last 50 years. Therefore in the developed countries it is already difficult to conceive. In Denmark every 5th male is already infertile. (This is mostly due to phtalates in plastics, which are emulating estrogens in the body).

Therefore over the years (also due to other civilisation diseases) human population will probably decimate quite naturally. There must be no major war or famine.

ducknalddon
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by ducknalddon »

I suspect birth control will have more effect than disease or famine, most of the developed world is already below replacement level and the rest are catching up fast.

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fiby41
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by fiby41 »

Social security provided by govt is more effective birth control than biological/medical birth control.

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C40
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by C40 »

There's another element being left out here. Even if having fewer children helps, and even if a large mass of the population decided to have fewer children, it's still not that likely to happen.

Yesterday I was talking to a person who is a very real expert on this subject, and she told me that 55% of births are unintentional (I assume her number was for the U.S.). Dare I say myself, a large portion of those unintentional births are also unwanted. A lot of people who don't even want kids are having them. We were talking birth control, and she explained how poor women's methods are, other than the IUD. Women who take the pill and who are perfect about taking it still average about two accidental pregnancies over their lives that occur while they have been taking the pill. The ~97% or however much effectiveness rate of the pill is still pretty bad when considered over the entire range of a woman's reproductive capability.

While riding in the car with my brother in law for about 2,500 miles over the last couple weeks, I asked him, more or less, "If you became god tomorrow, what would you do to improve the state of man kind".. one thing he said, the main thing he said, is compulsury sterlization for all men when they turn ~14 years old, using an easily reversible method (like the gel(?) injections developed by an Indian guy)) so that births would only occur more deliberately. (and that, ideally, after reversing, it would generally be compulsory to get the sterilization injection again after a some reasonable period of time for creating one child). Regardless of how far past hope we are on climate, this did seem like an impressively simple method to improve the world. (This was a purely theoretical thing and of course there would be complications and ethical challenges relating to actually trying something like this)

enigmaT120
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by enigmaT120 »

It's those darn ethical challenges that always hinder my plans.

Riggerjack
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by Riggerjack »

Oh.I got past the ethics, no problem. It's the technical challenges that are in my way now.
Stupid Google doesn't know how to make super-mumps, either! :twisted:

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C40
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by C40 »

PHOTOBUCKET SUCKS

radamfi
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by radamfi »

C40 wrote:
Thu Jul 20, 2017 10:27 am
Women who take the pill and who are perfect about taking it still average about two accidental pregnancies over their lives that occur while they have been taking the pill. The ~97% or however much effectiveness rate of the pill is still pretty bad when considered over the entire range of a woman's reproductive capability.
When combined with another form of contraception effectiveness is closer to 100%. Obviously abortion is available to terminate the remaining pregnancies. In most developed countries, abortion is not controversial.

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C40
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by C40 »

Yeah. IUDs work very well and seem to be used much more in recent years.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Seems to me that compulsory sterilization would likely prove to be fraught with unintended consequences.

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C40
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by C40 »

There are probably some dystopian sci-fi movies starting out that way

7Wannabe5
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Maybe all the sperms could be mixed together into a universal impregnating concoction that would be expensive to purchase. Sexual selection would be reduced to tadpole-like vigor. No child a bastard. Every child a bastard.

Dragline
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Re: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children

Post by Dragline »

You could call it "Impregnation Nation". :lol:

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