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[MrRoboto75]

I mean, you'd think "preventing the death of the planet" would rank pretty highly on people's priorities.... heck, if all of humanity had a homogeneous utilitarian philosophy, we'd have already maximally terraformed Earth, and probably the Moon, for optimal human capacity while retaining a semblance of nature.

One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

[sluissa]

Regarding robot overlords:  I'm still not convinced any robot-overlord situation ends well for most of society.  I think parts will benefit greatly, but others will either be extinguished or suffer.  Or maybe we'll end up with a world with only 10 million people all living in luxury instead of 10 billion that struggle.

I tend to agree. The Asimov robot storyline works only because of a gimmick which would be nearly impossible to do in real life, namely the three(or so) laws built into everything that could be considered a robot.

The more likely scenario these days, I believe, aside from the Skynet, AI run amok, type scenario, would simply be AI limited so heavily by the instructions of their makers that it would be no better than humans currently making decisions. We love our "Let's make a rule to make everyone happy... and then carve out a bunch of exceptions so that we don't actually have to make anyone happy, and probably end up making quite a few people upset." laws too much.

[smjjames]

Asimovs Three Laws is kind of over simplistic for real life anyway, which he does use as a plot point in many of his stories. There’s also one comic that I know of that makes a comment on how it probably wouldn’t work all that well, or maybe just lead to unproductive OCD behavior.

[Dunamisdeos]

Insanity is no excuse for inefficiency.

This is my favorite quote of the thread. Top 10, at least.

But apparently, according to everyone, the only thing you really need in order to become a good parent is to pop out a kid. Then the magic happens, and everything that seemed insurmountable before just gets done instead. For some reason, I never quite managed to take that explanation to heart...

Yeah man, look, the truth is noone has any goddam idea what we're doing outside of tips and tricks to keep them from starving or falling off a cliff or the like. BUT, having a kid about is a fantastic motivator. You do tend to find ways to get shit done that you frankly would not have before. What does that say about the average parent's character? Well you s[REDACTED].

I have an old friend in North Carolina who got pregnant when she was 17. She was on the pill. And with North Carolina's opinions on abortion, not to mention her family's opinions on abortion and sex in general, by the time she managed to arrange a pregnancy test from an out-of-town gas station where no one would know her and blab to her mother about her purchase, and then arranged for an appointment to discuss terminating the pregnancy, the doctor just told her that she was too far along and there was nothing for it but to keep the child.

We found out after my wife went on a roller coaster that she was 2 months along. Also, we were also on the pill and it just apparently took a coffee break for about 3 minutes like 45 minutes at least. We had to consider an abortion on account of my wife being a sickly person, we were expecting to have more time to prepare medically, financials aside. We were lucky, conditions turned out to be acceptable, and it all worked out.

[smjjames]

Not sure what you're referring to as taking 45 minutes, but you guys probably didn't need to worry about being discreet, which is what Kagus's friend had to deal with and so, couldn't use the normal channels, as it were.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah that's way worse, agreed. It's important to have access to proper care. What if we had found out it wasn't safe for her to have the baby, and it was too late to safely abort? Not trying to make comparisons there, just share related stories.

Also I was making a sex joke at my own expense, cmon' now.

[smjjames]

I wasn't sure if you were making a joke about quick sex or if it was referring to the pregnacy test or the abortion, go me overanalyzing or whatever.

[TD1]

Totes over analysing.

Also, I'm guessing (hoping?) it worked out okay for her anyway. Presumably by this point she'd not want to get rid of her child.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah, I mean, I'm not judging for choices made or making assumptions about your friend's situation here, but my grandmother also had her first kid at 17. This was in 1953, mind you.

Her life was very goddam difficult but now she has 5 kids (my aunts and uncles) who are all relatively stable and successful and my grandmother just sold the last of her three houses to retire in an assisted living place. We have a large, connected, relatively stable family.

Point is that yes, unplanned births are very difficult and very life-altering, but they aren't the unilaterally catastrophic life-ending event that society seems to think it is. You can thrive regardless. I hope your friend can find a way to make a good life out of her situation.

[PTTG??]

To be fair, an unplanned birth at 17 in 1965 was way different than one at even 22 in 2019.

[Kagus]

-snip-

Asimov's laws of robotics were also specifically designed to cause conflicts and paradoxes, rather than avoid them... Because, y'know, a story where everything works as it should and everything goes well generally won't be a very interesting story to read.

As for my friend, yeah, she's a cute kid and things have (outwardly) managed to work out. The complete flake of a boyfriend even managed to show up to his own wedding, not to mention the rest of the child's life.

Would it have been nice to finish high school? Probably. But that's not something to think about anymore; the course of life has been determined and there's not much to do about it.

And since she's done her job of producing a child, she's actually gotten a lot of help and support from her family, which was of course instrumental to not-dying.


For me personally? ... I have a mental illness, one that can potentially be inherited. I have genetic history of mental illness, with a psychopathic aunt and a great-grandmother who decided to bring her youngest child along for a murder-suicide.

And even if I didn't, I know how much pain I've lived through, in the hands of two well-to-do parents who loved me very much and thought the world of me. I even had the luxury of having a stay-at-home mom.

If I could go so wrong with that kind of a start... How fucking badly could I destroy the life of my own child?

[Egan_BW]

The real problem with the three laws is that humans love murder too much to let Law 1 be above Law 2:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Dunamisdeos]

-snip-

Asimov's laws of robotics were also specifically designed to cause conflicts and paradoxes, rather than avoid them... Because, y'know, a story where everything works as it should and everything goes well generally won't be a very interesting story to read.

As for my friend, yeah, she's a cute kid and things have (outwardly) managed to work out. The complete flake of a boyfriend even managed to show up to his own wedding, not to mention the rest of the child's life.

Would it have been nice to finish high school? Probably. But that's not something to think about anymore; the course of life has been determined and there's not much to do about it.

And since she's done her job of producing a child, she's actually gotten a lot of help and support from her family, which was of course instrumental to not-dying.


For me personally? ... I have a mental illness, one that can potentially be inherited. I have genetic history of mental illness, with a psychopathic aunt and a great-grandmother who decided to bring her youngest child along for a murder-suicide.

And even if I didn't, I know how much pain I've lived through, in the hands of two well-to-do parents who loved me very much and thought the world of me. I even had the luxury of having a stay-at-home mom.

If I could go so wrong with that kind of a start... How fucking badly could I destroy the life of my own child?

My old man got beat with a tire iron for most of his childhood. His little brother and sisters also got beat, and so did his mother.

Never laid a finger on me (OK, occasional spankings). He made a decision to break that cycle and he was successful. Genetic concerns are certainly something to think about, but you aren't simply the sum of your family history, and your child would not be either.

[Folly]

My old man got beat with a tire iron for most of his childhood. His little brother and sisters also got beat, and so did his mother.
Never laid a finger on me (OK, occasional spankings). He made a decision to break that cycle and he was successful. Genetic concerns are certainly something to think about, but you aren't simply the sum of your family history, and your child would not be either.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
―Alexander Pope

[Frumple]

Genetic concerns are definitely a different beast from an abusive father, generally. It turns the prospect of having a child into even more of a crapshoot than normal, and (doubly so considering it's one of the major reasons I'm personally not going to have kids) I wouldn't blame someone for not wanting to inflict the shit they suffer through on another human being. You can talk about sums all you want but when you have a notable genetic issue you're aware of, you're very much making the decision to be okay with fucking up someone's life should you decide to reproduce. Never felt like a good look to me, particularly when said someone is supposed to be a loved one.