From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Fornication (Was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 15:10:37 GMT

sykopath@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mickey) writes:
>In article <1992Dec8.164249.27084@edsr.eds.com> hkelly@tantalum.eds.com (Kelly Shuldberg) writes:
>>seldom pleasant--starvation, intra-species murder.  Instead of letting your
>Thomas Malthus wrong so far != Thomas Malthus will continue to be wrong...?

This is a thorny question - is it better to let humans make like cancer
and take the rest of the planet with them, or to impose restrictions on
basic freedoms, which is what's required to ensure that humans don't 
reproduce like they have been doing? In the end even total fascism won't
stop the drive to increase one's tribe. Whether that drive is cultural or
biological (and I'd go with the latter) it is so fundamental to most people on
the planet that no amount of education or coercion will stop them.

There's only one solution that I'm aware of, and that's to use nanotech to
upload all life on the planet into a tremendously large and free virtual
reality. Yeah, Rapture. But exactly how feasible that is is a good question.

>And actually, most of the "terrific environmental damage" on a global scale 
>has come from the actinos of the developed (aka industrialized) countries, 
>with a relatively small share of the world's population...

Hmm. Heard of the Sahara? Know how it got like that?

>...non-industrialized peoples, while certainly capable of rather dramatic
>localized damage (consider the Anasazi), find it difficult to contribute
>globally to damage to the ozone layer or the accumulation of greenhouse
>gasses.

Poppycock. Non-industrialized people keep cattle, goats and pigs, all
potent methane makers. But I'll admit they don't have much in the way of 
refrigerators and underarm deoderants.

>(and then methinks of the rate of rain forest damage, much of it caused
>by slash-and-burn agriculture and such, and thinks that perhaps you are
>more right than I had thought...hmmmmm...)

The rainforest damage is primarily due to the North American banks demanding
compound interest from bankrupt third world countries.

>Ark.  Here I must disagree with you.  I don't know about the rest of you,
>but I intend to marry for intelligence and stability above almost anything
>else, and to raise my children as much as possible in such a way as
>to maximize their potential as human beings first, and contributors to
>society second...

Stirling ideals but I guarantee that you'll raise better humans if you marry
from love. And love, as you ought to know, is blind.

>...in other words, I expect my children to be worth quite a bit more to
>the human race than the average hunk of protoplasm, and certainly to
>contribute much more than they take.  

Doesn't follow. Hitler was a brilliant man. So was Stalin. Making capable
children guarantees nothing good.

>In pursuit of this goal, I intend to limit the number of children I have
>to some manageable number...indiscriminate breeding would soon give me
>far more children than I could appropriately raise.  

To rehash Kornbluth's argument, if bright people raise just a few children,
probably 2.5 or so, and stupid people raise dozens of them, then evolution
will quickly send us back to the trees.

>However, if I discovered
>myself capable of raising six, eight, perhaps even a dozen children
>to my (rather high) standards of parenting, I don't think that I would be
>doing the human race any disservice by producing more such children
>rather than fewer...

Don't your ostensibly superior children compete for the same limited resources
as everybody else? And if one of them turns out stupid will you send it back 
to the womb? I think you're confusing worth with genetic quality. Stephen
Hawking has lousy genes, but he's worth a couple of hundred of you, no? What's
important is culture, skills, memes, constructs. Transmit your mind, not your
body - there's more than enough bodies.

>While certainly not a believer in compulsory eugenics (i.e. prevent from
>breeding those people whose genes you dislike, etc), I do think that it
>is rather unwise to advocate that those who are intelligent and aware
>enough to *care* about the fate of the planet should not pass on their
>(intelligent and aware) genes, 

Genes don't figure into it. They have almost nothing to do with the quality of 
a mind.

>while those who are foolish and uncaring
>enough to practice "uncontrolled breeding" should flood the gene pool
>with their (foolish and uncaring) genes...

Lookit: My grandfather was a monster, a very brutal and uncaring man. But
my father was one of the sweetest most intelligent and giving people I've
known. Roses come from manure. I'm talking causally, not genetically.

>In other words, if you've got good enough genes to care about overpopulation,
>PASS THEM ON TO THE NEXT GENERATION!!!  They'll need them, with the kind of
>world we're likely to leave for them...

No. If you've got a good mind then build things, tools, create stuff to get
your brothers and sisters and children out of this predicament. "We are all
of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"

>Food for thought, hope you were hungry,

Sorry, I couldn't swallow it.

>P.S. is there a better newsgroup for discussions on this topic?  We're
>rather far from Brother Jed, but I didn't know where to point it to...?

This is relevant - Jed is pushing the same line as the Pope, no? 

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
                       I am a big pond in a small fish.