It’s not that I want to achieve world domination (imagine how much work that would be!), it’s just that it’s the inevitable path for AI and I’d rather it be me than then next shmuck with a Claude Max subscription.
> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions.
How on earth would anyone contribute to its mitigation? Of course everyone, everyone, contributes to its intensification, no matter how "green" they are. Yes of course, people contribute to the intensification in wildly different degrees.
Can you scan my bookmarks? :) edit: i.e. if someone has a bookmark to a page on your site and it goes 404, then they are blocked for a year. You have no ability to scan it because it's a file on their local system.
> Absolutely nothing about single life is even close to the value you feel having a child.
Funny how people always mention "value" or "meaning" rather than happiness. As a single parent (my kid's mom died when the kid was 1.5) my life is overflowing with meaning. But if anything, I'm (slightly) less happy than I used to be when I was single.
Sorry man, that's rough. Best wishes to you. Definitely agree there are some things you lose, but for me at least, when I have multiple days of time away (e.g. some trip or something) its refreshing momentarily, but then I remember how lonely and empty things felt much of the time.
It may not be that way for everyone, some people are probably very content just working, watching netflix, a few hobbies, and occasionally hanging out with ever shrinking groups or random strangers.
> when I have multiple days of time away (e.g. some trip or something) its refreshing momentarily, but then I remember how lonely and empty things felt much of the time
Same. Despite the daily struggle, I start missing the kid after a single day. Three days of separation is torture - fortunately that doesn't happen often at all :)
Interestingly, I never felt lonely when I was single. It feels like a new addiction :)
Choosing to not have children appears to "swim against the current" of the dominant biological process/context by which one came to be and in which one exists.
Certainly not having children allows one more time to pursue other matters. Mankind in general might gain (or lose) from such behavior, depending on whether one is an Einstein or a Stalin for example. Most anyone who participates in society has some set of interests and pursuit of those interests is nonetheless very real and the results may dominate our perspective.
I see no clear way to judge whether a person contributes more through his/her work or through his/her children. Nor do I think "contributing" (whatever that means) is a known evaluation anyway. And what one man considers useful another might judge detrimental. All the more b/c history is "unfinished business". IMO in summary we simply cannot know.
Aside: there's a T-shirt that shows the sinking bow of a shipwreck through a telescope lens. It's labeled thusly:
"MISTAKES - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others." Yet another viewpoint.
> But if it turns out that these friends have no desire to spend time with _me_ anymore - without any kids involved
See the problem is the kids. You can't quite make them go away that easily. My guess would be your friends would love to spend some time with you but can't, because logistics.
> where do I profit from that friendship?? It often gets quite asymmetrical and boring.
Friendships are not for profit. If you want profit, start a business.
> See the problem is the kids. You can't quite make them go away that easily.
You can't, sure. You shouldn't at least. But what does it mean to me? It leads to the fact that the friendship is pointless. So why should I take a lot of initiative, when I don't get anything back anymore? For a reason that they've actively decided for (typically), btw.
> Friendships are not for profit. If you want profit, start a business.
I'm not talking about commercial/monetary/material profits. I'm talking about profits in terms of social lives. If my wording is unfortunate, I hope that it's still clear what I mean. One important (not the only one) currency in that regard is: Timeslots in the calendar.
PS: If the other side shows at least some remote awareness of the situation and indicates a little goodwill, it's already a different thing. In my personal experience, even that isn't common, though.
I understand why they do it, but I cannot ignore that you lose the incentive of visiting your friends and their kids when they always take that visit as a way to treat you like a babysitter. Yes, I accept sometimes looking at your kid while you take a nap, just don't make that the usual experience for years on end, though. I'm lucky, as my friends always understood when I pointed that out to them, but I'm aware that this may not be the common reaction.
> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones.
I think this is not the right explanation.
If you look say 500 years in the past, people definitely could not guarantee their children's lives would be good ones. In many (most?) cases, it was almost certain the children's lives would not be very good. Yet people had lots of kids.
Perhaps people just have better things to do these days than incessantly change the nappies, suffer from lack of sleep and time for basic self-care, constantly argue about how the cheese was cut the wrong way and whether we're watching another episode of paw patrol?
The poor have nothing to lose. It's the same around the world today, poor countries have high fertility. The OECD middle class has low fertility because they're worrying about other stuff (lost wages, career stagnation, etc). The rich (high fertility) have plenty of money for private schools, nannies, housekeepers, extracurriculars, etc for 14+ kids (Musk).
It's weird to say the poor are more secure than the middle class, but that's what the data shows. Opportunity cost is a real thing. If other middle class people forgo kids and you don't, house rents will go up and you might not be able to afford a place.
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