No, it’s not. Your responsibility to not inflict negative externalities on your neighbours overrules your right to do as you wish. Their right to not be sterilised by your technology is more important than your right to use that technology.
I purposely don’t want to explore the details, because that will break the hypothetical and dissolve the choice.
The pain of actual humans living now is a fair price to pay for the pleasure of possible future individuals?
Do you think your answer might be different if you lived in Iraq or west Africa?
The people who might be born in the future don’t exist yet. It’s almost as though you’re equating a decision to not bring them into existence with murder.
Yes, yes it is.
Nope.
I’m saying that cutting off human potential for a temporary paradise is cowardice of the worst kind. And there are plenty of potential people who will live potentially pleasurable lives, despite what the doom-mongerers say for most of the world we really have never had it as good, and things are getting better, not worse, for most of the worlds population.
It all reminds me of a poem by Robert Frost:
“A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.”
My answer, no, they weren’t, and I believe that holds true for humanity as a whole as well.
I can kind of grudgingly respect people who are blatantly misanthropic even if I fundementally disagree with them, at least they have a good reason in their own mind for halting human existence. But to pretend that its for some benign altruistic reasons such as stopping current suffering? Well I guess you really can rationalise anything.
Well, I guess thanks for your honesty. I don’t agree that you are fairly characterising your opponents in this argument though.
Nope, I’m still not buying it.
First of all, it’s not me personally going around willy-nilly inflicting negative externalities on my neighbors as I wish. I am casting my vote and will abide by the accepted terms of majority rule.
Secondly, the hypothetical does not imply, as the tone of your post seems to suggest, going around ripping women’s uteruses out, it suggests to me more of a non-invasive lowering of fertility, maybe low sperm counts.
Gruman, indulge me, which one of these would you be more sympathetic to:
- My dear nana with end-stage pancreatic cancer: (recall the voice of Father Damien Karras’s demon mother in the Exorcist): Why you do this to me, Grumie? Why you vote for me to suffer like this? Why, Grumie, why?
or
- Honey Boo Boo’s Mother (American trailer trash reality star): Gruman, honey, why’d ya vote against me having more kids? I gotta lot more Boo Boos to pop out: Sugar Boo Boo, Molasses Boo Boo, Saccharine Boo Boo…
Alright, on a more serious note:
As a society, we accept plenty of technology into our lives that is not wanted by all of society and often causes significant morbidity and even mortality. Next time you slam into a bicycle with your SUV, ask the airborne cyclist, before his head impacts with the road, if he would have banned internal combustion engines if given the opportunity to vote on it. We accept risks as a society, sometimes big risks in exchange for big rewards, and not everyone gets there way.
Things in life are rarely cut and dry and this hypothetical is no exception. Presented with a new technology with profound risks and benefits for all of mankind, I believe majority rule is an acceptable method for determining the fate of that technology—and a vote in either direction should be respected. I believe the majority should and would base their decision on the collective sound assessment of the risk/benefit ratio. As an individual, I base my vote on my assessment of the technology risk/benefit as it pertains to mankind, but will accept that my assessment may be wrong, if the majority votes the other way. Despite the lopsided vote in this thread pointing the other way (I blame that on too many wacky British people voting), I believe most people would vote for the alien technology once they really understood the terms and things went from hypothetical to real.
What are the benefits to this technology?: It will profoundly improve the lives of billions of people, virtually every human being on Earth and just as important, it will physically harm no one. It will save the lives and reduce suffering for tens of millions of people.
What are the risks to this technology?: It may cause psychological stress for people who want to have children, but won’t be able to if they fall outside the 5%. It may also cause psychological stress to people who wish for perpetual continuity of the human species.
My assessment is that the benefits outweigh the risks in this hypothetical. I don’t consider the desires of unborn people to be significant enough to sway my vote. I feel bad for people who will be stressed by low fertility, BUT, they will also be the recipients of the profound benefits of the technology, and I’m confident many of them would vote in the affirmative, too.
To be sure (despite some tongue-in-cheek above), I don’t really relish the thought of human extinction, so it would be a very close vote for me. But still, I think I’d vote “yes” to the technology and improve the lives of all living persons. Helping my decision is my belief that humanity has had a net negative impact on the Earth and the vast majority of other species. I have little doubt that our extinction would be a net positive for our biosphere and it would give our planet a chance to lick its wounds and host a new intelligence down the road.
For those of you who voted “no” to the technology, what is your prime reason for doing so? Is it more the “tampering with our fertility” part, or the “extinction of our species” part? Would you change your vote to “yes” if the technology merely reduced our fertility to perhaps 1% above the extinction level? In that event, I would not hesitate at all to vote in the affirmative.
And, as far as humanity’s destiny in the Universe—humbug! I’ll bet any one of you $100 that we never make it outside of our measly galaxy (I’ll hold all wagers until verification is established).
I’d be happy to be shown where I’m mischaracterising them (and thats entirely non-snarky).
I actually thought of something I meant to ask after posting the above, if you were offered one week of utter blissful pleasure (whatever that means for you) but that you would be painlessly euthanised at the end of that week then would you take it? If not, why not, and who is that different to whats being offered above except on an individual scale.
Because I think we as a species have potential, look at how far we’ve advanced in only past couple of hundred years (and yes I fully recognise the downsides to that advancement), it would be a pity, to put it mildy, to prematurely bring a halt to the human story and at an outsiders hands. Human destiny should remain our own, for better or worse, not from some bizarre closed-deal by allegedly benign aliens.
This is pretty much, Cake or Death? Isn’t it? (or more accurately Cake and Death I suppose).
Oh, and I doubt we make it much outside our own Solar System, never mind galaxy, but we might, why close the book at the first chapter?
It’s pretty close to the plot of a Stargate SG-1 episode, except that the aliens weren’t benign.
So you are equating non-procreation with killing. Interesting.
Not the same deal at all. Euthanising an individual is not the same as choosing not to have children. It’s a false analogy.
If you want to play the analogy game, why not try situations where the cure for a life-threatening disease with a horribly painful prognosis causes sterility. People choose that. Cowards?
Right here:
Is it not also blatantly misanthropic to dismiss the suffering of actual living people as a just an unfortunate necessary step in the process of achieving some possible future goal?
And do you really think the people who disagree with you in this thread are pretending? That’s just insulting.
I disagree, you’re signing a death warrant for the entire species, and for what exactly? So that two or perhaps three generations can have a happy life?
The human experience isn’t a life-threatening disease with a horrible prognosis, in fact as I said above I believe humanity’s future is actually pretty good. If we can overcome our current problems, instead of throwing in the towel and saying its all too hard, which is, yep, cowardice.
Or perhaps why not accept that the human condition has its good and bad aspects, everyone experiences joy and suffering in their own lives, you obviously believe the suffering outweighs the joy, I don’t.
Kidding themselves perhaps, because its not altruistic or benign at all in the grand scheme of things.
Here’s another scenario, humanity politely rejects the offer of the aliens but knowing that such technology is possible puts its collective mind to achieving it. Flash-forward a couple of hundred years and not only is Earth a genuine paradise but humanity has spread out among the stars, so instead of 7 billion people experiencing a temporary paradise you now have countless trillions of humans living in a permenant paradise, as the hard-limit of population decline has been overcome (as humanity designed the technology themselves)
Perhaps when they get out there they get invited into proper galactic society, the offer is one given to all emergent space-faring species as a test to see if they are able to see beyond their immediate problems and temporary pleasures to the potential future that can be there’s. If a species is willing and in fact eager to except the Faustian Bargain initially offered to them then they don’t deserve to succeed.
And no, I’m not dismissing the suffering of actual current people, I’m saying that suffering is part of life, we should certainly try to minimise it, but what you are suggesting is bringing a stop to everything, permenantly, for good. Perhaps our ancestors should never have left the caves, and just quietly, meekly, gone into the dark night, and the future with it.
Frankly, screw that.
It’s not a. ‘death warrant’. That would involve killing things.
Actually, I merely don’t think evaluating the whole thing in that way is as simple as you’re finding it. As it happens, the balance of joy vs pain in my own life is quite acceptably comfortable. It is exactly this fact that makes me doubt whether it would be fair to vote in my own favour.
Its the sterilisation and extinction of an entire species, I’m comfortable with calling that both a death sentence and a form of killing and it is certainly killing any future humanity might have.
You seem to be suggesting that your scenario is somehow benign because no violence is involved, it isn’t.
If I’m interpretating that correctly its a bit presumptious to make the decision for other people whether they find it worth continuing to live or not, no? What you may find intolerable another person might find acceptable.
I bet if you pulled a random stranger off the street in Iraq or west Africa and asked them if they would be OK with being sterilised, because their life is awful, right, you’d find they would be very much not OK with it.
And the voting so far is pretty comfortably against your preferred option, accepting the aliens ‘help’.
If you ask them such a patently different question to the one we’re discussing here, sure.
But if the question was, say, “We’ve got a cure for your Ebola outbreak, but you need to understand, it causes almost certain sterility”, I’m guessing not everyone would be all 'No, we got this - we’ll just tough it out of the potential joy of the potential offspring of those who don’t die".
I’m not very surprised.
Hey, I’ve got a plan that would end all war, all crime, all disease, all suffering, all pain. It’s called my “Giant Space Kaboom”, and it will instantly and painlessly disintegrate the Earth.
Choose now, and you’ll never have to face grandma and explain to her why she’s dying in agony of pancreatic cancer! Choose now, and you’ll never have to explain to a little girl in Africa why her parents were killed by militants! Choose now, and you’ll never have to explain to a UVA freshman why she was gang raped! Choose now, and you’ll never have to explain to a UVA frat boy why he was falsely accused of rape!
Yeah, well, put the vote to the uninspired and the results will be uninspiring. To be fair, the vote should be put to all Earth’s critters:
*Hey, Mr. Bluefin Tuna, I know there’s not many of you guys around anymore…how’d you like to see a lot less long lines and nets in your neck of the seas?
Hey Mrs. Frog, how would you like to see pollution go away so your whole taxonomical order can bounce back from the brink?
Hey Mr. Russian circus bear, you know those jackasses who dress you in tutus and make you ride around and around on those tiny bicycles? How’d you like to take that tutu off and scamper back into the forest?
Hey, Miss Ewe, you know those randy farm boys who like to hold you by your back legs and stick their…oh…never mind, you probably ask for it…
Hey, Mr. Passenger Pigeon…. Mrs. Tasmanian Tiger…Miss Sea Mink… Master Pyrenean Ibex…yoo hoo…where are you guys?..Oh, that’s right, you all checked out a while back. *
Anyway, a 5% birth rate doesn’t necessarily spell the end of our species. By my calculations, even with 5% fertility, we may very well have time to develop some alternate means of keeping our fat asses on this planet for eons to come:
There are currently 7 billion people on Earth
The next generation will have 350 million people
The next Generation will have 17.5 million people
The next generation will have 875,000 people
The next generation will have 43,750 people
The next generation will have 2187 people
The next generation will have 109 people
The next generation will have 5 people
That’s 8 robust generations! Count ‘em, 8!
If we humans are really as clever as we make out to be, and worth saving long into the future, I believe 8 (motivated) generations is plenty of time for us to put the pedal to the metal and devise an alternate means for us to carry on. One of the 5 generation 8’ers (or maybe someone before) should come up with either:
- A detailed map of the entire human genome and a method for recreating synthe-people in-situ.
- A viable method for transferring human consciousness into inorganic brains (or zombies).
- A fun way to cross breed with our alien overlords.
Sure, this is the thread for it, apparently. If you don’t like the question, answer a different one.
What’s the difference between my plan and your plan? My plan accomplishes the task now, your plan just puts it off for a few years.
Causing the extinction of the human species, in exchange for comfort during the remaining few years of existence left to us, is probably going to be an unpopular choice.
Lots of people are suffering on Earth. Except very few of them seriously wish they had never been born. And if you really do wish you’d never been born, there are always plenty of high buildings to jump off of.
In related news, you might have heard about this plan to end unethical treatment of elephants.
The difference is that I haven’t a fucking clue how you think it’s similar.