Whether or not you believe in free will, humans are the first species that decided whether or not to reproduce. The idea of not reproducing is antithetical to the way life has looked since the first autocatalytic reactions began in the Archean. People in this thread are treating it like a personal decision and it’s much more than that.
For a species to survive they need to reproduce. The human race has gotten to the point where creating more people is not going to increase the chances of our species surviving. We have enough people. We need to put more effort into not destroying ourselves and making things better for the life that already exists here.
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this. People who want kids should have a reasonable number of kids. If someone doesn’t want kids then let them make that choice. People who don’t want kids should not have them.
The thing is a lot of countries actually face a population crisis because there aren’t enough children to replace their ageing populations. Ideally the solution would be migration from places that are overpopulated, but this is politically frought. And most people (I think) who decide not to have kids are doing so because they can’t afford to in their increasingly unequal societies. So I’m fine to agree to disagree but my point was always that this is a societal issue more than a freedom of choice thing.
They kinda have though for the past 3 billion years
It sounds like you believe that humans don’t have free will
Whether or not you believe in free will, humans are the first species that decided whether or not to reproduce. The idea of not reproducing is antithetical to the way life has looked since the first autocatalytic reactions began in the Archean. People in this thread are treating it like a personal decision and it’s much more than that.
For a species to survive they need to reproduce. The human race has gotten to the point where creating more people is not going to increase the chances of our species surviving. We have enough people. We need to put more effort into not destroying ourselves and making things better for the life that already exists here.
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this. People who want kids should have a reasonable number of kids. If someone doesn’t want kids then let them make that choice. People who don’t want kids should not have them.
The thing is a lot of countries actually face a population crisis because there aren’t enough children to replace their ageing populations. Ideally the solution would be migration from places that are overpopulated, but this is politically frought. And most people (I think) who decide not to have kids are doing so because they can’t afford to in their increasingly unequal societies. So I’m fine to agree to disagree but my point was always that this is a societal issue more than a freedom of choice thing.