Bone-hurting juice? In your lemmy? It may be more likely than you think!

Not just to enslave workers, but to perpetuate the status quo in general, imo. Same thing for reproduction benefits (not talking about birth control or planned parenthood but rather things like subsidies that are specifically for parents). You need people alive if you want to control society and make profit, after all. Not that non-capitalist states aren’t guilty of this as well, though. Society relies on people being alive in general and individual choice isn’t given as much priority as “the common good” (whatever it might mean to a particular society varies).

Chances are if you do get banned you can just ask customer support to unban you

AFAIK they went a step above that and whitelisted the particular heuristics that WINE was tripping up in their anti-cheat so that Linux users would stop getting banned after a while. Not sure how effective that was, I personally never got banned though. Short of actually supporting Linux, that’s probably the nicest thing Blizzard has done recently lol.

Yeah, I’ve read that comment. I don’t agree with what he said in general but it’s undeniable that there are plenty of scams to lure rich people, typically americans, to poor countries under the guise of adopting children from underfunded orphanages when in fact there are far grimmer ulterior motives behind them.

Brave doesn’t seem like an ethical option to me considering the company’s past record and the current owner’s personal views. Techincally speaking, it is probably quite good though.

If this is your opinion, then it is only reasonable for those of us who do find value in society and humanity to ignore your opinions on how those things should work. Your statement is, in essence, a resignation from those groups.

I agree.

I spend about 10 hours a week at the gym pursuing activities that (best that I can tell what you mean by “suffering”) cause me suffering. I am better for it.

Well, that is your choice. If you genuinely enjoy those activities and believe they improve your quality of life, then I can’t say that they consist suffering for you. Suffering can only be broadly specified in general terms, but to be specified in more granular terms, it varies between people and one person’s definition of suffering may be wildly different from the next. Some people actually enjoy being professional soldiers and getting involved in violent conflicts. Others practice violent and radical sports and enjoy it. For those people, those activities do not classify as suffering. For others, they would.

And since the consequences of having children is good, at least net good, there’s not much of a choice to make.

In your opinion. Since for me they aren’t, my choice is different from yours.

At most, I simply have to avoid the sorts of abuse that would cause them to turn out like yourself and believe absurdities such as “human extinction is a goal one should pursue”.

Except, as a parent, you can’t really prevent that 100%. Perhaps not even 50%. The world takes twisted turns and your child might end up suffering such abuse at the hands of events or people you have no control over.

Because these sorts of genetic issues are exceedingly rare, and the people who have them and know they have them would have a very different attitude which you do not present.

The attitudes people have differ between people, because people’s mindsets, experiences and personalities are all different. I don’t think I’m making a radical statement here.

Moreso, I’ve spoken to such people as yourself in person before, and the “conditions” they specify would be jokeworthy except that they’re typically friends or at least acquaintances I wouldn’t want to be blunt with. “My grandparents have diabetes!” and such. WTF.

What one person sees as a joke, another might see as something quite serious. It all depends on their own viewpoints and past experiences.

For example, although I should not be giving personal examples and opening myself to comments on my own character, due to some trauma I have with having been medically abused by hospital staff as a child, I have paralyzing, crippling phobia of needles. Getting the COVID vaccine, for instance, was a major psychological ordeal for me and I only ended up getting it because of the duty to society and public health (if it was something that affected just myself, I wouldn’t have). Having diabetes would mean getting regular, if not daily, insulin shots or blood sugar tests (depending on the type of diabetes), so that would quickly devolve into a miserable, fear-driven life. Fortunately it isn’t something I have to deal with at the moment and I take as good care as I can to ensure it won’t become an issue in the future, but there are worse things, which are unavoidable, that can happen.

I live in an absurd world populated by absurd people hellbent on making certain it won’t be populated at all anymore.

I fail to see why that is absurd at all. It’s as valid a viewpoint as ever in my opinion.

Are you talking about pain (the sensation)?

That is merely a component of suffering. That should be avoided imo, but it isn’t the only thing that should.

It can’t even be said that pain should be avoided, since discomfort is often associated with worthwhile, and ultimately pleasant, activities.

I struggle to find such activities. I’m not stating there are none, just that I can’t remember any off the top of my head.

Define suffering so we can be on the same page.

A negative experience which causes physical or psychological distress to a person or group of people, often for extended periods of time or with lasting effects after the experience itself has stopped (ie. trauma).

Pretty meaningless, and in the context where people actually want to exist (and for others to exist), somewhat misleading.

Saying this statement is meaningless is the same as saying philosophy itself is meaningless, but it can be a valuable tool to help us define our values and offer a base from which every other aspect of life can be evaluated more precisely. I don’t see how it’s misleading at all.

Please, read my palm. Tell everyone what my beliefs are.

That statement was more hostile than I intended it to, in hindsight, and I see how it might be hypocritical to complain that you are lumping all “young liberals” (as it seems) in the same strawman when I ended up doing the same to you. I was quite offended by the transphobic comment so I reacted in an emotional way. Sorry.

I believe you follow some conservative beliefs (from an american standpoint) pretty strictly and that might be the bias shown in your arguments towards traditional values and against modern, sort of more “extreme” or what you perceive as catering to emotions rather than rationality (which I think they really aren’t, but even if they were, emotions are a part of life, if you value life, surely you’d value emotions too?). My critique to that is that conservatives often fail to see that their own positions and points of view are similarly coming from an emotional, and not rational, place, as they react to change by clinging to traditional views “because that’s what has been done until now”, without any actual rational reasoning for them. Like you yourself said, just because a lot of people follow a given ideology doesn’t make it right, the majority might be wrong, it’s just the majority. The same could be applied in this situation.

For instance, you might see having children as the rational choice because that’s what humanity has done since it began existing and due to it being a necessity for the continuation of the species, but is that not your natural, biological impulses speaking for you? Is it truly rational, logical thought? Why does humanity have to keep existing? You might have arguments and answers to those questions and that would make them rationally valid, but “just because” is not a rational answer.

We’re on a public forum. Though my comment may be the literal reply to yours, it isn’t necessarily true that I am speaking to you and only you. I’m speaking to others in response to what you’ve said.

Ah, ok, thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood your argument.

But I’ll drop another rule on you and see what you make of this. Adoptions are about the children who need someone to care for them, and not for the people adopting who want to gratify their need for a human pet. If you’re doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Therefor, the only people who should adopt are those who do not want to, but out of a sense of duty.

And if people accepted that rule, then we’d have no discussion at all about adoption in this thread. Because adoption can no longer be a substitute for having one’s own children.

I somewhat agree, in the sense that, from a moral perspective, if you’re adopting just to satisfy a desire, without any good intention to help the child being adopted, you’re just as evil as if you’ve had a biological child for that same reason. That might be where you disagree with me though.

I don’t think people in this thread are advocating for adoption from a strictly selfish point of view, they are merely acknowledging that, in the face of wanting a child to take care of, adopting a child who was neglected seems like a more morally sound choice than having a biological child, in those circumstances.

It can’t adapt to this. Society ceases to exist if there are no people, so saying “it can adapt to no one performing the process by which people create their replacements in the world” is dumb.

And why does society have to exist? Society and humanity have no inherent value. The value they have is the value we, as rational beings, give them. If we collectively determined that they should exist no more, they would cease to exist.

Your society is dying. It doesn’t realize it yet, and by the time it does nothing will be possible to do about it.

I don’t mind it. That alarmism doesn’t scare me. Remember I follow VHEMT, hence that is my end goal (at least, I’m doing my part towards that).

But I’ve measured, and accurately.

That is precisely what my question was targeting. You’ve measured (and you have every right to your measurement as the expression of an opinion), but who’s to say you’ve measured accurately? What qualifications do you have to make such a statement of fact?

If you wanted or needed to do something in your life, and you were in a car wreck and broke both your legs… would you think it sane for someone to say “now you should never do that thing again, you’ve experienced trauma!” ?

I would. That is how I try to act in my daily life: avoiding things that have caused me suffering in the past, as much as possible. That is how I try to achieve a comfortable and happy life, by avoiding what has broken that comfort and happiness in the past.

This is a nonsense statement. Until the person exists, by definition they can have no say in anything because they do not exist. Therefor it is not necessary, and even irrational, to speak or think about whether someone has a say in “being born”.

It may be from a pragmatic point of view, but abstractly/philosophically speaking, it isn’t. When we make a moral choice, we have to think of the future consequences of that choice. From that point of view, we have to consider that the person being born will have no concept of the meaning behind their future suffering and will try to attribute such meaning to the ones who decided for them. People desire, naturally, to be in control and being born is the one action you have zero control over. That is also a reason why people seek religion: to justify and give meaning to their existence.

None of the people in this thread, and few of those (1 in 10,000 or even fewer) who are childfree are childless because of that reason. You don’t have the Tay Sachs gene, and your receding hairline’s not comparable.

How can you make such a blanket statement when you don’t know any of us personally?

Perhaps, but whereas flat earth has no rational basis for existing, this one does, in my opinion. You might not agree with me but, you know, that’s why people have different opinions.

Those who would adopt morally would be compelled to adopt children from their own family first… who better to not let an orphan forget their parents than someone who also loved and knew those parents?

And if there were no family, then friends of those parents for the same reason.

I… agree with you? You’re making a strawman out of me in this argument. I never said I advocated for adopting from Africa before adopting from your own family or circle of friends. Heck, if I do decide to adopt in the future, that’s the route I’d try to take first. Not that it’s a big desire of mine, but that’s what I’d choose to do.

I get what he’s trying to say here; he’s being ironic about it, as some people gullibly adopt from immoral sources such as african warlords. It is child trafficking but, since it is being “whitewashed” and not labeled as such, it becomes somehow acceptable in the public eye.

When did people start taking flat earth theory as more than a SNLesque comedy skit?

I’m not aware of any connection between VHEMT and flat earth theory or other types of pseudoscience. Please elaborate if you’d like. It is also not satire as far as I know, but it is quite a polarizing and extreme point of view, I’m aware (the downvotes on my comment show that too), even though I have to be clear, it isn’t advocating for any type of mass murder or violence of any kind and is merely raising awareness to an issue and combatting it strictly through personal choice.

Reality doesn’t change just because you feel insulted, it never apologizes, and it definitely doesn’t make amends.

In the words of Thanos, “reality can be whatever we want”. I am joking a bit of course, but really, although the laws of physics and the physical world don’t change, society can adapt around them in any way it sees fit. If society chooses, it can embark on a more positive path, with less suffering. In many ways, it has been doing that the past century. The conservative idea that “reality never changes” and that individual people should change because society as a whole won’t is a fallacy and can be proven empirically.

They can only irrationally make that decision.

Who can make that judgement, you? Do you have the qualifications required to produce a judgement on mental health like that?

Trauma, gluttony, there’s always something right there at the surface pressuring that choice.

Trauma seems like a damn good argument for not having kids. It’s not irrational. If I suffered, it’d be immoral on my part to want to subject another human being, who had no say in being born, to potentially suffer the same (especially when some of that suffering may be caused by genetics, which will be passed down to said human being).

So, you want humanity to be extinct, that’s a more ethically sound position than “sometimes bad things happen to some people”?

Yes. Suffering should be eradicated at all costs. Humanity doesn’t have an inherent right to exist, it simply does as long as it is perpetuated by both humans themselves and while external conditions allow it.

degenerate lifestyles

I see your beliefs now. Well, no wonder you also disagree with this viewpoint then.

Insulting people for having a different opinion to yours is not a good look. No matter how much humanity has evolved when compared to previous generations, there are still big enough problems in the world that someone can rationally make that decision.

I adhere to the https://www.vhemt.org/, so yes, that includes being childfree. In fact, that’s the main requirement.

hahahahah that kid is awesome

FOSS also involves licensing software so that modifications remain libre in the foreseeable future. Same reason why Android or Chromium might be open-source but aren’t exactly considered FOSS.

Maybe they are using nationalism with actual moral integrity and not how fascists use nationalism

To me, nationalism is a strictly rightist (perhaps even borderline fascist concept). There’s no real proper way to use nationalism for the good of the people.

In short, democracy can be adopted and used both in socialist and liberal/centrist governance systems, since it is a feedback loop process involving citizens.

Which citizens, exactly, are involved in the process of the Russian government?

Yeah, that is how not a democracy or collective wellbeing works.

I just said what I personally believe in, not what would be strictly best for a nation. I then try and choose a regime that suits my personal beliefs best, which I can do in the west but I wouldn’t have been able to do had I been born in Russia or China or some other dictatorship (yes, also fascist ones such as the ones in Central America which were installed through US interference in the Cold War).

It disregards the centuries of Western imperialist dictatorship and makes one think the world has been a neutral, happy place for centuries, which cannot be any further from the truth.

I agree, but the west of today is not the west of a century ago. Not even a century ago, since we had the exact same overton window shift to the right in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, with the rise of fascism/nazism. And then again with the Cold War, to a lesser extent in Europe but certainly present in other continents.

But you are right that history is ultimately cyclic and we seem to be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. I just don’t think the right answer is to install a slightly different kind of dictatorship, just to oppose the status quo, per se.