After having read the book Sapiens, I finally understood how a thriving human population happened basically at the cost of millions of other species that went exctinct. So the philosophical question I see here is whether an extinct humanity which would let other species live and thrive, would be a good or bad thing. Not that I have an answer. But I find it worthwile to question the paradigm of human reproduction for the sake of human reproduction.
All things are temporary all we have is a little bit of time. Everything you care about, everything you are, is eventually dust. All your ideas and your history is very short lived.
So yes everything dies eventually, these guys are just looking to speed up the process. As if that will "save" the planet.
We are animals, we should live like them and not worry about anything. You think a squirrel cares about all the stupid shit other squirrels are doing to the planet?
I don't control my own life. Hold on the universe... hah. I am simply here, soon I won't be here. That's all that there is to this. We are infinitesimally small and our lives are infinitesimally short. And the amount of power we have in the human systems that we inhabit are much smaller than that. We are little more than bees that are obsessed with things that should not concern us.
edit: in response to user temporal below, because it's rate limiting me.
> conscious, self-aware, sentient beings on this planet
no we are none of those things. we believe we are, but we are actually not. our systems behave much like systems of any other animal we just consume different things from other animals but we're little more than bees.
> . That is, perserving ecosystem is better than destroying it because we like it that way.
i like other bees don't care about the eco-system. i care about the nectar from the flowers so i can go on. the nectar exists for me. and without me what would be the point of the nectar?
Do you believe that or are you just summarizing their position?
Those guys are missing one crucial insight - values are features of mind, not of matter. And since as far as we know, we're the only conscious, self-aware, sentient beings on this planet, it means values are in our minds. That is, perserving ecosystem is better than destroying it because we like it that way. Yes, in a way, it's all about us. If humans were to go extinct, the Earth would be like a Disneyland with no children to enjoy it. Without purpose.
> no we are none of those things. we believe we are, but we are actually not
I don't see how you can know this. More justification is required. Saying something doesn't make it true. This sounds a lot like nihilism, so if so, why bother?
By that I am guessing he means that we are different from all the other beings on this planet. That we are "conscious, self-aware, sentient beings". I am totally not conscious of what is going on in my environment right now, and even if I were there isn't much I can do about it more than a few feet from my house. It's like my neighbor is doing this or that to destroy the planet, meh. Self-aware? Nope. I am aware I exist but lots of stuff is going on in my head that I am totally unaware of, why I feel the way I do, I don't know. I am further conditioned by the system not to respond to much of the stimulus with threats of death or imprisonment... much like in nature. Do I feel, yes I feel, but there isn't much to do about how I feel other than work more so I can buy more.
My thesis: people in terms of the amount of agency they have are little more than animals. They gather resources so they can continue to live. They have little agency to do anything about anything. They are conditioned to worry about things that they have no control over. They see this as a sign of intelligence, I don't. For me as a human being worrying about shit the system is doing is above my pay grade... much like other animals on this planet.
> We are animals, we should live like them and not worry about anything.
Why does living like animals specifically mean not worrying about anything? Why not "we are animals, we should live like them and not cook food, wear clothes, write novels, perform life-saving surgery..."
Not cook food (raw vegans), wear clothes (nudists), write novels (a few people write), perform life saving surgery (a few people perform surgeries).
All these things are things and realities people consume because they can consume them -- they have the ability to buy these things by performing work.
Dogs like watching television, if wolves could buy tvs they would all buy tvs and eat microwave dinners because it's easy to do that and it's possible... because they could do it, they have technology to do it. They, like your dog, would still be the same animals.
Reality is what we can consume because we can build those things using technology and other animals also use technology to build things but they can't do it to the same extent that we can, we however are still animals.
Yes, we're animals, but we're smarter than the rest of our animal brethren, so why should we not use that smarts to live in whatever way we like? Animals that can fly, fly. Animals that can sing, sing. So let animals that can send machines to other planets send machines to other planets.
A purpose is a story you tell your self in order to continue to do what all the other animals on the planet do, gather resources so you can go on to tomorrow. If you have many many resources, and most don't, that you no longer need any more resources then you think about other things. And then you might try to do something about those other things, though you still have to put up with other people and their need to gather resources. The economic problem is specifically a problem with other people's need to gather resources. To function in the economic system. You can't do anything about that. You can try to change the game a little bit, but the same game must be played and by more and more people.
This is why leadership can't do much about environmental problems. At the end of the day they must protect and create jobs. The environment is a very small peripheral issue and you can pay little attention to and still get away with it.
> i like other bees don't care about the eco-system. i care about the nectar from the flowers so i can go on.
No ecosystem -> no flowers -> no nectar -> no honey bee.
You don't have to give a fig about the ecosystem in itself, as an object, to care about the effects of damaging or destroying it on yourself and the rest of us and our descendants.
I agree with you that we are animals, but even other animals care about the welfare of each other and their descendants. Even squirrels will risk their lives to protect their offspring, and bees will sacrifice their lives in defence of the colony. Fortunately for us, we are able to anticipate and take action to prevent longer term threats to our welfare and that of those we care about. We should do so.
> You don't have to give a fig about the ecosystem in itself, as an object, to care about the effects of damaging or destroying it on yourself and the rest of us and our descendants.
But if the destruction is slow, you do have to care about the other bees.
Humanity is not the first life form to transform the Earth's climate, causing tremendous damage to the biosphere[1], and we may or may not be the last. Just like any other species we will last as long as we can last, and go extinct when we can no longer maintain a hold on the universe.
Fortunately extinction isn't the only possible outcome for a species. There's also evolution. Otherwise there would be no living things left on the planet.
Unfortunately, as humans we care primarily about individuals who are alive, not about species in the abstract. Which means any outcome involving humans suffering and dying is an outcome we don't want.
Looks like we need to the millennium group:
"As the 3rd millennium approached, the Group's internal differences began to manifest into two factions—the "Roosters", who believed in a religiously eschatological view of the end of the world, and the "Owls", who believed the world would end with a secular natural disaster. Attempting to instigate the end of the world artificially, the Rooster faction began to develop a lethal virus; in 1998 they released this virus in the Pacific Northwest, killing upwards of seventy people before the outbreak was contained. A year later, a vastly depleted Millennium Group staged one last attempt to trigger the apocalypse, resurrecting deceased members in order to create the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; when this plot was foiled by the FBI, it was believed to have caused the dissolution of the Group."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Group
You could note that the richer a society is, the less environmental problems. The real problems are countries industrializing now, like China. The richer we get the less environmental problems. But let's ignore that.
Shouldn't they instead insist on male VHEMT members being mandatory sperm donors for all of humanity, in order to raise average benevolence of the human race...?
Then in a few generations they could ask for (even) more drastic measures like mandatory sterilization.
(Assuming of course that humanitarian attitudes are largely genetic and not mainly a cultural/psychological phenomena, except for outliers like psychopaths.)
But I should probably shouldn't joke like this and not give them ideas.
Without humans there would be no one (as far as we currently know) to appreciate and contemplate the beauty of the universe and planet earth. So it would all be pointless.
It's us who define the concept of 'accomplishing something'. The universe without humans is pointless, because it's us (that we know so far) who say what has a point at what hasn't.
Interestingly, some Western societies and Japan are already below the balanced reproduction rate. Not set to die out as fast as possible, but certainly on a long-time trajectory to radically less people (migration not factored in).
Maybe, given enough gadgets and holiday opportunities, and the hedonistic treadmill required to finance all this, H. Sapiens chooses to not reproduce but live well instead.
"humans are responsible for every environmental catastrophe"
My God; what incredible conceit.
Compared with the billions of years of eruptions, earthquakes, extinctions, meteorite impacts, ice ages, droughts, floods, and just the relentless and deadly drive of all organisms on the planet to survive at the expense of their competitors, the effect of human beings on this planet is insignificant.
Humans have had an effect on the environment. On some scales, a big effect. But it's certainly wildly incorrect (and absurd) to say that all environmental damage is caused by humans. And I think it's also pretty unarguable that the vast majority of the damage (a concept that is I suppose anyway subjective) over the lifetime of the planet is not human-caused.
False dichotomy. It's not "either it's all our fault or nothing is our fault". There's also the obvious middle-ground: we have an impact but other things have an impact too.
We turn vast stretches of land upside down in search of coal. We drill deep holes into the ground and pollute the water in search of oil. We excavate mountains. We then burn that oil and coal producing vast amounts of noxious fumes. We selectively breed cattle, introduce foreign species to new ecosystems. We change the course of rivers, create new islands and water the deserts.
It's absurd to think that we are the only thing affecting Earth's ecosystem and biosphere, but it's not any less naive to think we don't leave our mark.
It is kind of stupid in my opinion. like x5n1 said we are too small but we think we are making the difference who know the grass and dog might think the same... We still dont know most of the things like. What is inside earth , how water came, where are we now in universe, etc..etc... With out knowing all atleast most of the parameters it is foolish to think we are causing the damage. Who knows if there are invisible aliens doing or some unknown virus in deep sea doing it... we dont know. we have long way to go and i happy for humans to continue even if it is destroy entire earth livings things then who knows we might mutate and learn to live the way we should like (no corporation no jobs and abundent food and health care and entertainment)
If you care about animal suffering, human extinction is exactly the wrong way to solve the problem. Without humans, there will still be pain. Wasps will lay eggs in caterpillars until the Sun goes out. Intelligence is our only hope for abolishing suffering, not just for us but for all living creatures.
Imagine a nature reserve where predators were air-dropped cultured meat, and drones tracked predators and administered a non-lethal deterrent like a targeted acoustic weapon at a lion chasing a baby elephant.
The herbivore population would be kept in equilibrium with future-contraceptives.
It's a tricky thing, an abortion-level tricky thing actually. At the top of life's process you have humans, and human death is obviously Bad. At the bottom of life you have simple chemical reactions, which are obviously Quite Cool. The line will have to be drawn somewhere in between, but we need to figure out where.
Personally, I expect it to be somewhere above plants and bugs and below kittens. But then, I'm a bit biased about bugs - I tend to think about them as either "those ugly annoying things" or "cool high-tech drones we'll hopefully program one day". And I'm definitely biased about kittens.
So what are you going to do, commit genocide against all the wasps? Not that I am necessarily against genocide in all cases. If every single HIV virus or anthrax bacterium was wiped off the face of the planet I would shed no tears, but you need to think through a position like yours. Are you in favour of whale eradication due to their predation of Krill?
I don't advocate killing anyone just yet. My preferred approach is more like "transhumanism, merging utility functions, worldwide cooperation, singleton entity, reshaping the world with infinite care". The eventual solution could be as mild as ecosystem redesign, or as extreme as moving all life into simulations. Whatever maximizes humanity's utility function, which I don't claim to understand yet.
Interesting to see an article about this on HN. I consider myself an antinatalist. Antinatalism is a philosophical position that assigns a negative value to birth, and by extension, that it's immoral to have children. However, I think it's silly to try to promote it as a world view others should adopt. It's contrary to our most basic biological instincts. There is absolutely no chance for it to succeed as a movement. I also don't find the environment argument compelling. Our world has no inherent value other than the utility it provides for the creatures who live here. For me, antinatalism is just an issue of individual morality and not something to push as a political or social cause.
Essentially that you're rolling the dice in a lot of ways when you have a child. They could be born with serious medical problems. Something terrible could happen to them through no fault of their own, like being in an accident or being the victim of a crime. Every human being will experience pain, sadness, and suffering in some way at some point in their lives. At the very least, they will have to face the foreknowledge of their own death, and the loss of family and friends that die before them. Creating a child forces a being to experience all these things that would otherwise never have had to. In an antinatalist world view, the possibility or even guarantee of good things happening to the child does not "balance out" or justify forcing them to experience negative things.
I also don't want to have any part in contributing to humanity's self destruction and inflicting of suffering on other living things. We are not rational creatures. We largely do whatever we want, including hurting and killing each other, and make up all sorts of justifications for why it's okay. I'm no different in this regard, I just don't want to perpetuate that further.
I'm a vegan, and there is no possible way to live a normal life as a person without having at least some negative effect on animal suffering by proxy. More than likely, the child would be much worse than the best possible case, and would eat meat, eggs, cheese, and use other non-food products made from animals.
And beyond all of these reasons, there is just the fact that a person cannot consent to being born. If I had a child, they would be quite likely not to have such a pessimistic view of their own life, but there's no way to know that in advance. I would be making the choice for them because of what I wanted. I see having children as an extremely selfish and destructive act.
The entire point about being careful of our environmental impact is because we are destroying our own habitat. Sure, the advent of human civilization might be a mass extinction event, but the Earth had these before, and nature will go on. Nature is going to be fine. It's humanity who's potentially in trouble, not the planet.
For us to die out voluntarily in order to preserve nature is completely backwards. The correct way of thinking about this is we're changing nature until it becomes hard or impossible for us to live here. So in a sense, our default path is already one of self-extinction. If we turn that around (and I'm cautiously optimistic we will), nobody needs to die out.
It's not us XOR the planet. It's us AND the planet.
Humans have a very strong cultural and genetic drive to ensure that their family survives and thrives. This drive is strong enough that sacrificing oneself for ones family is not surprising behaviour.
This drive has been exploited for good and evil by tribes, nations, religions, social movements, football teams, et cetera.
Extending this sense of "us" to include all humans seems to be the logical conclusion.
However, many people extend this sense of "us" to include all cuddly animals, all animals, all multi-cellular organisms, any life, ... I think that's silly, but perhaps 100 years from now people will think my attitude is just as morally repugnant as my view of those who think black people are sub-human.
The response to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement was written before the movement appeared. By no other than the great George Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovbF0D2wySI
Like all other animals, we don't generally pause to critically examine the merits of the instincts that drive our behavior. Unlike all other animals, we're actually capable of doing so! I applaud VHEMT for openly and critically considering one of our basic built-in drives.
That said, I disagree with their conclusion. VHEMT is right that we are too intelligent and successful for a mere animal. I don't think this means we must die. I think it means we must become something more.
Seems like a really silly joke. Like one of those things that will get a reaction from normal people so it makes it fun to participate in and not fooled.
59 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadSo yes everything dies eventually, these guys are just looking to speed up the process. As if that will "save" the planet.
We are animals, we should live like them and not worry about anything. You think a squirrel cares about all the stupid shit other squirrels are doing to the planet?
I don't control my own life. Hold on the universe... hah. I am simply here, soon I won't be here. That's all that there is to this. We are infinitesimally small and our lives are infinitesimally short. And the amount of power we have in the human systems that we inhabit are much smaller than that. We are little more than bees that are obsessed with things that should not concern us.
edit: in response to user temporal below, because it's rate limiting me.
> conscious, self-aware, sentient beings on this planet
no we are none of those things. we believe we are, but we are actually not. our systems behave much like systems of any other animal we just consume different things from other animals but we're little more than bees.
> . That is, perserving ecosystem is better than destroying it because we like it that way.
i like other bees don't care about the eco-system. i care about the nectar from the flowers so i can go on. the nectar exists for me. and without me what would be the point of the nectar?
Those guys are missing one crucial insight - values are features of mind, not of matter. And since as far as we know, we're the only conscious, self-aware, sentient beings on this planet, it means values are in our minds. That is, perserving ecosystem is better than destroying it because we like it that way. Yes, in a way, it's all about us. If humans were to go extinct, the Earth would be like a Disneyland with no children to enjoy it. Without purpose.
I don't see how you can know this. More justification is required. Saying something doesn't make it true. This sounds a lot like nihilism, so if so, why bother?
My thesis: people in terms of the amount of agency they have are little more than animals. They gather resources so they can continue to live. They have little agency to do anything about anything. They are conditioned to worry about things that they have no control over. They see this as a sign of intelligence, I don't. For me as a human being worrying about shit the system is doing is above my pay grade... much like other animals on this planet.
Why does living like animals specifically mean not worrying about anything? Why not "we are animals, we should live like them and not cook food, wear clothes, write novels, perform life-saving surgery..."
All these things are things and realities people consume because they can consume them -- they have the ability to buy these things by performing work.
Dogs like watching television, if wolves could buy tvs they would all buy tvs and eat microwave dinners because it's easy to do that and it's possible... because they could do it, they have technology to do it. They, like your dog, would still be the same animals.
Reality is what we can consume because we can build those things using technology and other animals also use technology to build things but they can't do it to the same extent that we can, we however are still animals.
Yes, we're animals, but we're smarter than the rest of our animal brethren, so why should we not use that smarts to live in whatever way we like? Animals that can fly, fly. Animals that can sing, sing. So let animals that can send machines to other planets send machines to other planets.
This is why leadership can't do much about environmental problems. At the end of the day they must protect and create jobs. The environment is a very small peripheral issue and you can pay little attention to and still get away with it.
No ecosystem -> no flowers -> no nectar -> no honey bee.
You don't have to give a fig about the ecosystem in itself, as an object, to care about the effects of damaging or destroying it on yourself and the rest of us and our descendants.
I agree with you that we are animals, but even other animals care about the welfare of each other and their descendants. Even squirrels will risk their lives to protect their offspring, and bees will sacrifice their lives in defence of the colony. Fortunately for us, we are able to anticipate and take action to prevent longer term threats to our welfare and that of those we care about. We should do so.
But if the destruction is slow, you do have to care about the other bees.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
Shouldn't they instead insist on male VHEMT members being mandatory sperm donors for all of humanity, in order to raise average benevolence of the human race...?
Then in a few generations they could ask for (even) more drastic measures like mandatory sterilization.
(Assuming of course that humanitarian attitudes are largely genetic and not mainly a cultural/psychological phenomena, except for outliers like psychopaths.)
But I should probably shouldn't joke like this and not give them ideas.
Maybe, given enough gadgets and holiday opportunities, and the hedonistic treadmill required to finance all this, H. Sapiens chooses to not reproduce but live well instead.
And then you'll have government mandated population quotas.
My God; what incredible conceit.
Compared with the billions of years of eruptions, earthquakes, extinctions, meteorite impacts, ice ages, droughts, floods, and just the relentless and deadly drive of all organisms on the planet to survive at the expense of their competitors, the effect of human beings on this planet is insignificant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environmen...
We turn vast stretches of land upside down in search of coal. We drill deep holes into the ground and pollute the water in search of oil. We excavate mountains. We then burn that oil and coal producing vast amounts of noxious fumes. We selectively breed cattle, introduce foreign species to new ecosystems. We change the course of rivers, create new islands and water the deserts.
It's absurd to think that we are the only thing affecting Earth's ecosystem and biosphere, but it's not any less naive to think we don't leave our mark.
I don't believe I ever said any such thing.
The herbivore population would be kept in equilibrium with future-contraceptives.
Personally, I expect it to be somewhere above plants and bugs and below kittens. But then, I'm a bit biased about bugs - I tend to think about them as either "those ugly annoying things" or "cool high-tech drones we'll hopefully program one day". And I'm definitely biased about kittens.
For the people wondering how, here is an essay by David Pierce on some possibilities for how humanity could reduce suffering in the animal kingdom.
http://www.hedweb.com/transhumanism/humanity-plus.html
[0] - http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/
I also don't want to have any part in contributing to humanity's self destruction and inflicting of suffering on other living things. We are not rational creatures. We largely do whatever we want, including hurting and killing each other, and make up all sorts of justifications for why it's okay. I'm no different in this regard, I just don't want to perpetuate that further.
I'm a vegan, and there is no possible way to live a normal life as a person without having at least some negative effect on animal suffering by proxy. More than likely, the child would be much worse than the best possible case, and would eat meat, eggs, cheese, and use other non-food products made from animals.
And beyond all of these reasons, there is just the fact that a person cannot consent to being born. If I had a child, they would be quite likely not to have such a pessimistic view of their own life, but there's no way to know that in advance. I would be making the choice for them because of what I wanted. I see having children as an extremely selfish and destructive act.
For us to die out voluntarily in order to preserve nature is completely backwards. The correct way of thinking about this is we're changing nature until it becomes hard or impossible for us to live here. So in a sense, our default path is already one of self-extinction. If we turn that around (and I'm cautiously optimistic we will), nobody needs to die out.
It's not us XOR the planet. It's us AND the planet.
This drive has been exploited for good and evil by tribes, nations, religions, social movements, football teams, et cetera.
Extending this sense of "us" to include all humans seems to be the logical conclusion.
However, many people extend this sense of "us" to include all cuddly animals, all animals, all multi-cellular organisms, any life, ... I think that's silly, but perhaps 100 years from now people will think my attitude is just as morally repugnant as my view of those who think black people are sub-human.
tldr; The Earth is fine; We are in trouble
That said, I disagree with their conclusion. VHEMT is right that we are too intelligent and successful for a mere animal. I don't think this means we must die. I think it means we must become something more.
I guess this is a no-lose movement, how convenient :-)