# Do you think you have an obligation or goal in life. Only opinions ... :)



## Alain De Vos (Nov 28, 2022)

I wandered. What is the most open question I can ask.


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## gpw928 (Nov 28, 2022)

Like Einstein, I think that some questions are too difficult, and best left to a philosopher.


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## Alain De Vos (Nov 28, 2022)

I like the answer. But lets question while we can. Because otherwise it gets boring. And that's not fun.


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## SirDice (Nov 29, 2022)

The goal in life is to find the question that led to the answer; 42.


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## dbdemon (Nov 29, 2022)

Obligation: To walk gently upon the Earth.


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## smithi (Nov 29, 2022)

gpw928 said:


> Like Einstein, I think that some questions are too difficult, and best left to a philosopher.



I  think Alain is our resident philosopher, to whom no question is too difficult?  <&^}=


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## robroy (Nov 29, 2022)

I like this question.

So, I feel free from obligations since I can't remember having asked to be born.

But I do have a goal; my goal's to have fun.


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## angry_vincent (Nov 29, 2022)

experience tells, that it is that _you_ think _others_ have an obligations for you to exist and it is false. goal, if you go down to very fabric of existence it is just sending genetic spelling into the future.


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## Profighost (Nov 29, 2022)

Find and follow your fixed star.

A more open question could be:
"What is this (everything) all about?"


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 29, 2022)

Could one not find a reddit forum for this question?


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## mer (Nov 29, 2022)

smithi said:


> I think Alain is our resident philosopher, to whom no question is too difficult? <&^}=


Questions are never too difficult.
Answers, on the other hand are difficult.


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## BobSlacker (Nov 29, 2022)

"...thou has no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay." AL.I 42-3


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## RoGeorge (Nov 29, 2022)

What kind of question is that, obligation or goal in life?
Of course you have, it's to install FreeBSD.


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## fernandel (Nov 29, 2022)

Monty Python - The Meaning Of Life


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## Holger (Nov 30, 2022)

In my opinion, your obligation in life is to identify your wishes and dreams, purify them (i.e. put them in relation to reality), and then pursue them through hard work.

This is very tough, because you will encouter obstacles you've never thought of before.

Nevertheless, by keeping doing this, you'll gain much wisdom and a sense of fulfillment that is unmatched by contemporary religions.


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## xk2600 (Nov 30, 2022)

Asking such a question just places obligation on others to answer. I ask you to partake of your own question. Be forthcoming in your obligation, for it is my question now. As for my goal: to be at peace with the results of my decisions, be gracious to those wonderful minds who inspire me, and to share all that life has to give with those I interact with dailly. Cheers.


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## joshbsd (Nov 30, 2022)

The question is quite simple and for me the answer is also quite simple : no, I don't think I have a specific goal and or obligation , me personally in life. 

...I mean what am I, me, before life and what's even life? does life have a goal, does life have obligations? I don't think so. when we start to thinks this way about life is because we don't live it as it is intended to be live, me I think it has to do whit the fact that we are alienated from life in our social life. we are clearly not oblige of anything cause we do anything and everything and everything is possible the worse and the best. but laws exist that give us obligation and goals. But this has nothing to do whit "us" and what we think or do. we are free. but we are not. pardon my digression and my french


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## meaw229a (Nov 30, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> What kind of question is that, obligation or goal in life?
> Of course you have, it's to install FreeBSD.


And keep it going!


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## RoGeorge (Nov 30, 2022)

Yep, keep it going is very important.

Joke aside, the first moral obligation is to keep the life going.  Nothing else matters more than this.
Make kids, grow them up, protect them, and teach them.

As for goals, try to leave the world a little better than it was when you arrived, and don't let your kind, or yourself enslaved.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 30, 2022)

xk2600 said:


> Asking such a question just places obligation on others to answer.


You are under no obligation to answer such questions here or anywhere else.


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## scottro (Nov 30, 2022)

There is a phrase I once saw and liked, I forgot who said it. One must be too kind to be kind enough. I try, and often fail, to make somone else's day a little better.


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## Crivens (Nov 30, 2022)

I have the obligation to come back home to my kids when I'm out. I have a duty to protect them. I have the priviledge to guide them. I have the honor to be in their life.


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## CuatroTorres (Nov 30, 2022)

That sounds like Chesterton.


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## astyle (Nov 30, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> Yep, keep it going is very important.
> 
> Joke aside, the first moral obligation is to keep the life going.  Nothing else matters more than this.
> Make kids, grow them up, protect them, and teach them.
> ...


With 8 billion ppl on this planet already?  


drhowarddrfine said:


> Could one not find a reddit forum for this question?


The FreeBSD forums is one of the few places on the Internet that is not ad-infested, so we can discuss questions like that in peace without getting harassed by ads for hygiene/insurance/porn.  

As for my answers:

Obligations that I think I have:
Treat others as you'd like to be treated.
Set *positive* examples with your own behavior.
Gain actual competence in FreeBSD-related topics, as opposed to the Linux approach (learn just enough terminology and buzzwords to blow hot air all over the Internet, and leave the hard work of actual implementation to others, and hope things somehow work out).
Make sure stuff adds up logically. 

Goals in life:
There's a LONG bucket list of stuff I'd like to do. Some are related to FreeBSD, some are not.


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## Phishfry (Nov 30, 2022)

My goal is to die with all 10 fingers. Many people in my trade lose limbs.
I make the same money as a plumber but my risk factor is much much higher.


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## RoGeorge (Nov 30, 2022)

astyle said:


> With 8 billion ppl on this planet already?


Yes, you still have the moral obligation to make kids and raise them.

I didn't say you should have 10, or 20 of them, but if you don't have kids, somebody else will still have, while you and your kind will go extinct.  Don't fall for the recent propaganda.  We are not too many for the planet, and "too many" is not a modern times thing.  People are complaining there are too many of us since the ancient times.

This summer I was reading a book about the beginning of the 1900, and how the peasants of a village went to demand for more land, either given, or rent, or sold.  Their second argument for the request was that they became unbearable too many (in comparison with how many they were 50 years before, at 1850).


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## astyle (Nov 30, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> Yes, you still have the moral obligation to make kids and raise them.
> 
> I didn't say you should have 10, or 20 of them, but if you don't have kids, somebody else will still have, while you and your kind will go extinct.  Don't fall for the recent propaganda.  We are not too many for the planet, and "too many" is not a modern times thing.  People are complaining there are too many of us since the ancient times.
> 
> This summer I was reading a book about the beginning of the 1900, and how the peasants of a village went to demand for more land, either given, or rent, or sold.  Their second argument for the request was that they became unbearable too many (in comparison with how many they were 50 years before, at 1850).


Ever hear of traffic jams? Morning rush hours get worse and worse. Specific clans may go extinct, only to be replaced by several others, kind of like in Game of Life...


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## dbdemon (Nov 30, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> I didn't say you should have 10, or 20 of them, but if you don't have kids, somebody else will still have, while you and your kind will go extinct. Don't fall for the recent propaganda. We are not too many for the planet, and "too many" is not a modern times thing. People are complaining there are too many of us since the ancient times.


Let's get real here: Other people will have children whether I do or not. Me and my kind will go extinct? So what? What if "my kind" is actually the bad kind? If so, it would surely be a good thing if they went extinct. Also, we are not our genes. (But maybe we are our ideas?)

And it's not propaganda to point out that there are currently too many humans for the planet, assuming they aspire towards the typical western lifestyle, i.e. unsustainable waste of resources. I believe evidence for this point of view is overwhelming at this point.

Back in the day, Europeans emigrated in droves to the New World and elsewhere exactly because they had run out of resources in Europe. With the technological level especially in food production and industrialisation at the time, their old home countries were unable to provide well for everyone.

Anyway, I disagree: There is no obligation to have children. And we can obviously live excellent and fulfilling lives without making such extreme commitments as is parenthood. But if you do bring another human into this world, then obviously you have obligations towards this new human.


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## RoGeorge (Nov 30, 2022)

astyle said:


> Ever hear of traffic jams? Morning rush hours get worse and worse. Specific clans may go extinct, only to be replaced by several others, kind of like in Game of Life...



Traffic jams are the equivalent of the New York's great horse-manure crisis from around ~1890.  The conclusion back then was that New York can not grow any more.  Yet, New York grew a lot.  See for yourself the beautiful pics from back then:  https://smartwatermagazine.com/blog...and-stairs-when-horses-were-cities-nightmares

About replacement, yes, it's an obvious replacement attempt, just that it's not about clans, but about races.  I've seen Soros in a Q&A explaining how EU has to be flooded with immigrants because EU has negative growth rate.  Meanwhile it has been flooded indeed with immigrants, indeed, and the push is to bring even more.  And I think there is no serendipity in what is happening, as in Game of Life.  I think it's a carefully orchestrated anti-white movement.

What would be the maximum number of humans is hard to say.  There is plenty of unpopulated land areas, not to talk about the oceans.  How many people can feed the planet, again hard to say.  Not too many as hunter-gatherers that we were 10kyears ago, a lot with agriculture, and even more with synthetic food.  There are already ways to grown artificial meet and other kind of synthetic food.

You may ask, but why?  Why to burden the planet with a big number of people?

Think about the power of numbers.  Do you think you would have Internet today if it were to keep the Earth population at only 1 million instead of let it be billions?  Without these billions civilization as we know it wouldn't be possible.

Do you want humans to go to the stars?  Do you want people to live in comfort?  Do you want machines to do all the work for you?  Do you want to have more time, so to discover more of the secrets of this Universe?  I do, and all these won't be possible without billions and trillions of people.

Maybe the meaning of our existence is just this, to understand the Universe, to learn how to handle the rules of physics in such ways that anything would become possible.  Maybe the Universe is just a puzzle we need to solve in order to escape out of it.  Or maybe not, but still worth a try.  Why not even trying?  Just because Greta told you so?  Ride above the times.  Don't fall for cheap propaganda.  We are not too many.  We need to be many so to advance more.  Shrinking, or capping or going into hibernation doesn't seem to solve anything.

No matter how much we guilt trip the youngsters for being alive, and no matter how many green taxes we would apply to them, Earth won't stay like this forever.  At some point we'll need to live outside Earth anyway.  Even without people, Earth will perish one day.

We need to learn how to escape Earth, then later to learn how to escape the Universe entirely.
We need to be very, very many in order to do that.


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## RoGeorge (Nov 30, 2022)

dbdemon said:


> There is no obligation to have children.


Obligation, no, moral obligation, yes.

I think any exploration happens out of curiosity first, then for glory and for material benefits later.  I think they were all heaving about the same reasons, from the very first written evidences many thousands of years ago, to the more recent European colonies, to the nowadays geopolitical and ideological colonization that are happening as we speak.

About good and bad, there is no such thing as good or bad in itself.  Not kidding.  I challenge anybody to find 3 examples, or at least one, of something that is good (or bad) no matter what.

Good and bad only makes sense in relation to a given goal.  If something suits that goal, then it is called a good thing if not, then it's bad/evil.  So when you say your people might be the bad ones, according to what goal are you evaluating them as good/bad?  Give an example.

The planet is fine, might even outlive us all.  But the people have been abused, at least 2-3 generation were rulled by fear, and more recently the youngsters are mind-conditioned by guilt tripping them for being alive.

The humans are too many?  Fine, let's build an underwater city, or an outer space one.


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## ProphetOfDoom (Dec 1, 2022)

I think humans are f***ing awesome and we should go to the stars, simply because we _can._
I remember having to do a double take when I learned that there’s a serious argument that we shouldn’t colonise Mars because of the ecological rights of whatever exo-mould might be growing there. Or even the rights of the regolith or something.
How did we learn to despise ourselves so much? The same sentiment runs through this thread.
If we’re more awesome than the mould,  I say we oppress the mould.


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## Vull (Dec 1, 2022)

I feel that my main obligation is to remind people that most of us behave like parasites towards our beloved host planet, and that if we really wish for our still-living progeny (or Hellspawn, as the case may be) to thrive beyond that theoretical point in time where all those who remember us have also left this mortal coil themselves, we probably need to stop taking such big bites out of our dear Mother Earth.


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## CuatroTorres (Dec 1, 2022)

FYI:








						IQ scores are falling and have been for decades
					

IQ scores have been steadily falling for the past few decades, with changes in our environment and the way we are learning thought to be reasons why, a new study suggests.




					www.cnn.com
				











						Why The Beatles' George Harrison Produced Monty Python's Controversial 'Life of Brain'
					

The Beatles' George Harrison executive produced Monty Python's Life of Brian for a very specific reason. Here's why the film was controversial it was banned in some places.




					www.cheatsheet.com


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## astyle (Dec 1, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> Traffic jams are the equivalent of the New York's great horse-manure crisis from around ~1890.  The conclusion back then was that New York can not grow any more.  Yet, New York grew a lot.  See for yourself the beautiful pics from back then:  https://smartwatermagazine.com/blog...and-stairs-when-horses-were-cities-nightmares
> 
> About replacement, yes, it's an obvious replacement attempt, just that it's not about clans, but about races.  I've seen Soros in a Q&A explaining how EU has to be flooded with immigrants because EU has negative growth rate.  Meanwhile it has been flooded indeed with immigrants, indeed, and the push is to bring even more.  And I think there is no serendipity in what is happening, as in Game of Life.  I think it's a carefully orchestrated anti-white movement.
> 
> ...


The new Twitter owner will LOVE you!


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## SirDice (Dec 2, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> About replacement, yes, it's an obvious replacement attempt, just that it's not about clans, but about races. I've seen Soros in a Q&A explaining how EU has to be flooded with immigrants because EU has negative growth rate. Meanwhile it has been flooded indeed with immigrants, indeed, and the push is to bring even more. And I think there is no serendipity in what is happening, as in Game of Life. I think it's a carefully orchestrated anti-white movement.


Take your far-right dog whistle elsewhere please. The only massively declining populations in Europe are indeed due to migration, migration of people _out_ of their country.



> Bulgaria’s population is expected to decline by 22.5% from 6.9 million in 2020 to 5.4 million in 2050. Mass outbound migration is the largest contributor towards Bulgaria’s population decline.





			Countries with Declining Population 2023
		


Overall the European population has slightly decreased for the past two years, mostly due to more people dying than being born. The pandemic was a major cause.









						EU population continues to decrease for a second year
					

On the occasion of World Population Day, we take the opportunity to highlight the data published today on EU population. After a first decline in population growth in 2020 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the EU’s population decreased again in 2021, from 447 million on 1 January 2021...




					ec.europa.eu


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## RoGeorge (Dec 2, 2022)

*SirDice*, you already label my paragraph as far-right dog whistle for stating some facts.  Not cool.  You do realize that your paragraphs can be labeled, too.  But then we will both end up even more divided in life, and even less inclined to listen to each other.

Just to make clear, that paragraph of mine about replacement was in reply to what was posted before:


astyle said:


> Specific clans may go extinct, only to be replaced by several others, kind of like in Game of Life...



I was disagreeing with the term "clan" instead of "race", and with the suggestion that the replacement happens just like in the Game of Life, when the cause is negative population growth, and intentional immigration policies, so to sustain an ageing EU population.  Total number is less important than the age distribution.

Can't tell about Bulgaria, but leaving the country is a good argument.  Here people use to leave the country mostly for temporary work, like strawberry harvesting or so, and then return in a couple of months, or a couple of years at most.  The ones who left permanently were right after the Berlin Wall felt, after 1989.  As for these days (I live in Romania), it is very rare here to see families with 3 kids or more. Usually it's only one kid, or no kids at all.  The ones who have more than 2 kids, here in Ro, are those with very low income.  Low income usually leads to less school, and later to less family planning.  Also, I was talking about white population ageing all over the EU on a longer scale, rather in the last 20 years, not only in the last 2 years.

The thread started about obligations and goals in life.  And that is what I posted at first, but then I was told my idea of having kids was not so good because we are too many, and some were believing they should never try to have kids.  So I've tried to cheer them up, and give them hope, and argument we are not too many, and argument they shouldn't fall for this propaganda, and that having kids is not wrong.



My answer to the topic remains the same:
- Obligations:  people have the moral obligation to have kids (moral obligation only, and only if they can procreate, not a legal obligation, and to have kids in moderate number, not 10-20 kids), such that humanity can keep going in all its diversity and beauty.  So cheer up those who are afraid we might be already too many, we are not too many, and people should not feel guilty of being alive, or at heaving kids.
- Goals:  leave the world a little better than it was when you found it

Would like to read further what you and others consider as life goals and obligations.


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## CuatroTorres (Dec 2, 2022)

Could a book be a better way to spend time?








						The Selfish Gene - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org


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## SirDice (Dec 2, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> *SirDice*, you already label my paragraph as far-right dog whistle for stating some facts.


Replacement theory is not a fact. It's a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory. It has no place here. 



RoGeorge said:


> Can't tell about Bulgaria, but leaving the country is a good argument. Here people use to leave the country mostly for temporary work, like strawberry harvesting or so, and then return in a couple of months, or a couple of years at most.


Seasonal, or temporary, work abroad is not the same as actual emigration. The Netherlands receives a lot of seasonal workers from Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. We also have lots of expats from all over Europe, Middle East and Africa. We need them, our unemployment rate is very low, and we have a lot of open vacancies that need filling in all sorts of branches of industry.  



RoGeorge said:


> The ones who left permanently were right after the Berlin Wall felt, after 1989.


Not only right after, it has been declining steadily since. 


			Romania Population 2022 (Live)
		




RoGeorge said:


> As for these days (I live in Romania), it is very rare here to see families with 3 kids or more.


It's been like that at least since the '70s here. It's relatively uncommon to have 3 or more kids. That's not the issue. The biggest difference between now and then, is _when_ parents get kids. My parents were in their early 20s when I was born. That was the average age people got kids. Nowadays parents are, on average, older, early 30s when they first have kids.


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## RoGeorge (Dec 2, 2022)

CuatroTorres said:


> The Selfish Gene - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes, that's a nice book.  Have seen a lot of Richard Dawkins' talks, always considered him a very bright mind, and loved his explanations and his arguments (talking about other materials than this book).

About "The Selfish Gene", would like to have a chat with him about some parts I see differently.  Maybe I should read the book properly (was only listen to it as an audiobook, while driving, and that was many years ago), though I remember being upset about how the book was talking as if it were a goal/meaning in natural selection, when in fact the result of evolution is what is left after the filter of natural selection is applied.

Natural selection has no meaning or goals, it is a filter applied by the environment.  It just happens.

Whoever/whatever survive (in terms of genes) did that out of trial and error + luck.  Thinking that in terms of strategies seems off.  There is no strategy, survival (of genes) is what is left after the filter was applied (the filter of natural environment).  The "best fit" is nothing more than trial and error + enharitance + the filter of the environment, all repeated thousands of times.  Thought, RD is certainly fully aware of all these, I could say he crystalized in my mind some of these aspects, so not sure why the selfish gene book was aproaced that way.

A strategy means conscious planning, genes don't do that, IMO.

Now, about conscious planning, you may ask what is consciousness, in the first place?  I think I have found the answer here, thought it might be controversial, I think the consciousness and self awareness are going hand in hand, they are about the same feature, that feature being the ability to simulate/emulate reality in one's mind, to see in the future.

About this ability, to simulate internally and to see the outcome in advance:
- can be of many levels, I am convinced mammals are conscious, most other animals are conscious too, but a mosquito would have less simulation power than a dog, so I consider a mosquito to have less consciousness or self-awareness, but it has some of it.  Not sure about plants.  An interesting question is if AI can be self-aware, but that's a full can of worms, a very interesting one, though.
- thinking about the physical world as a very complex environment, out of which we only perceive a small slice, e.g. we can only hear certain sound, can only see a narrow spectrum, and assuming there are many, many other aspects we don't perceive at all (e.g. the magnetic field) life evolved to sense only the most important aspect of the reality (important in terms of survival)
- though, sensing the world is expensive, and the reaction time is critical, it would be of a great advantage to have some sort of lookup table with the situation and the most common situations and the future outcomes, then later, this lookup tables (which lookup-tables in terms of neurons, I think of being more like a direct path, e.g. unconditioned reflexes), tables that at first were only respond to a direct stimulus, later evolved to predict an outcome long before the stimulus.

This "prediction of the near future", the ability to simulate, happens now automatically, and all the time.  We wouldn't be able to navigate a room if we were to wait for the tactile in the feet before making the next step.  We predict all in advance and drive accordingly, and when the simulation fails, we trip and fall.

I think the ability to simulate a future outcome is the self-awareness or conscious mind.
By this definition, a horse is obviously a conscious been, and self-aware the same way we, humans, are.

Talking about genes as if they'll have a goal or they would practice some strategy seems more a metaphor, they don't simulate, they are not conscious or self-aware, I think genes only react to physics laws.  Nothing more.


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## eternal_noob (Dec 2, 2022)

Beep beep beep. Beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep. Beep beep beep.

Calling SOS. This thread is on its way to the bin.

Beep beep beep. Beeeeep beeeeep beeeeep. Beep beep beep.


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## Woden (Dec 5, 2022)

BobSlacker said:


> "...thou has no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay." AL.I 42-3


based cyberwizard, feel free to DM me.


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## Vull (Dec 5, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> ...snip
> 
> About replacement, yes, it's an obvious replacement attempt, just that it's not about clans, but about races.  I've seen Soros in a Q&A explaining how EU has to be flooded with immigrants because EU has negative growth rate.  Meanwhile it has been flooded indeed with immigrants, indeed, and the push is to bring even more.  And I think there is no serendipity in what is happening, as in Game of Life.  I think it's a carefully orchestrated anti-white movement.
> 
> snip...


I must be slipping, to have missed that, in that wall of text.



> > First they came for the Communists
> > And I did not speak out
> > Because I was not a Communist
> > Then they came for the Socialists
> > ...











						First they came ... - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## wolffnx (Dec 5, 2022)

be happy,give everything to my litle daughter , have my home like a castle,my sanctuarium, find a good girl no stay on my side, and long live ...nothing especial


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## hitest (Dec 5, 2022)

Alain De Vos said:


> I wandered. What is the most open question I can ask.


Our primary purpose in this life is to help others, and if you can't help them at least don't hurt them.  
HH The 14th Dalai Lama


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## PMc (Dec 7, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> You may ask, but why?  Why to burden the planet with a big number of people?
> 
> Think about the power of numbers.  Do you think you would have Internet today if it were to keep the Earth population at only 1 million instead of let it be billions?  Without these billions civilization as we know it wouldn't be possible.


I think there is a sweet-spot in between of these. For this type of planet, it is somewhere near 500 mio. people.
This is enough to have rich diversity and all you may want to have.
Going massively beyond that number, there will be a turn of tides, and, to say it bluntly, more money will be made from provoking wars somewhere than from expanding live's possibilities. It's as with most mammals: at some density of population, they start to kill each other for no reason.



RoGeorge said:


> Maybe the meaning of our existence is just this, to understand the Universe, to learn how to handle the rules of physics in such ways that anything would become possible.  Maybe the Universe is just a puzzle we need to solve in order to escape out of it.  Or maybe not, but still worth a try.  Why not even trying?  Just because Greta told you so?


This is just what I'm talking about. At some density there will be more and more people coming up with the idea that it is best to keep the others in cages, like cattle. (Always the others, obviousely.)
And it will be difficult to get away from those, in order to do something decent.

I believe our obligation is to find out more about the wonderful maze that creation is - which is practically the same to finding out who we are. And this may well include leaving the planet and becoming a type 1 civilisation.
But in recent years, I see madness strike people, and they stop using their sharp minds in favor of imposed moral dictums which only serve in keeping people docile and obedient, and in fear of irrational things. The very same as the roman church did in the middle ages.


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## dbdemon (Dec 13, 2022)

RoGeorge said:


> Obligation, no, moral obligation, yes.
> [...] About good and bad, there is no such thing as good or bad in itself. [...] Good and bad only makes sense in relation to a given goal.  If something suits that goal, then it is called a good thing if not, then it's bad/evil.  So when you say your people might be the bad ones, according to what goal are you evaluating them as good/bad?


These statements seem contradictory: You claim there is a _moral_ obligation to have children, but then you go on to say that 'good' and 'bad' don't exist as universal terms, that they are nonsensical outside of specific utilitarian contexts?

I believe that for a statement to be defined as 'moral obligation', it must imply a claim to be universal in some sense.





RoGeorge said:


> The planet is fine, might even outlive us all. [...] The humans are too many?  Fine, let's build an underwater city, or an outer space one.


I'm not sure if you were serious, but obviously there is no technology outside of sci-fi that will allow us to migrate a sufficiently significant share of the human population to outer space ... What is more realistic is to work towards a sustainable future here on Earth, the only place hospitable to life in the known universe. And that process of "terraforming" took billions of years. Let's not throw that away in 100 years of greed, egotism and stupidity.

To those who believe their obligation or life-goal is to pass on their own personal genetic material: What's the point of having children if their lives will be miserable in a world increasingly defined by resource competition and conflict? The end result, if everyone subscribed to the "selfish gene" line of thinking, is probably a world better suited for the "Mars mould" than for human life.

While competition (in a general sense) remains important to human progress, so is collaboration. It is collaboration which has brought us the greatest achievements, for example in science where advances depend entirely on sharing of results from previous advances. Another example is FreeBSD whose entire success is based on collaboration.


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## alexseitsinger (Dec 13, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> My goal is to die with all 10 fingers. Many people in my trade lose limbs.



A fine goal for a fine life.


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