Marie Stopes would like a word with you from beyond the grave.

Seriously, we've had modern birth control for a century. Not only has society not collapsed but a whole number of hidden evils have been abolished (Tuam passim), and needless poverty avoided. It's our perfect anti-Malthusian weapon.

This is Hacker News in the 21st century. Tradition alone is a terrible reason to do things. I'm astonished that your comment seems to have been upvoted here.

Edit: I'm trying to keep it civil but I'm really disappointed not just that this appears on HN but it's sitting at the top of its thread tree not greyed out at the bottom.

Oh, and it's "alluding" not "eluding".

There are valid points to be made about HN being a bit of a bubble but I'm pretty comfortable pointing out that this is a forum for intellectual honesty and you're really showing none of that. These are tired arguments (ramblings really), to the point where I'm almost convinced you're trolling.

I don't agree with nvahalik in the slightest, but I can't see any signs of intellectual dishonesty, or trolling, either.

Unless you can make a case that your values are objectively more correct than his, you two are just holding two different sets of values. Of course society has to deal with lot's of different sets of values of lots of people, but we have democracy to accommodate for that. Simply calling people trolls for having different opinions helps nobody.

Lack of intellectual honesty? I'm sorry, was there anything I said that was false? Instead of responding to my list of illustrations all you can do is say that I'm trolling?

It's ironic because I've been thinking of writing a piece on how there are different types of reasoning, from strictly rational to the more empathetic (human?). So I cringed a bit myself writing that, because I feel a lot of HN commenters share a very specific type of "thinking" that only works for a small percent of the population and assume it applies to everyone. I see a lot of failure to empathize here, is what I'm saying.

And yet I still feel comfortable dismissing everything you said. It's not even empathetic or emotional reasoning, it's just delusional and the underling assumptions are completely unfounded. There's a problem for religious thinkers (I've checked your previous comments), which is that they aren't searching for answers, they have answers and need to twist everything else to somehow reach them. So long as you're doing that, almost everyone here is going to see through you right away.

Even if we find ourselves at a fairly fundamental level of disagreement with other community members, it's important not to let that cross into personal incivility, which this comment at least verges on.

Sure society hasn't collapsed, but we've lost a lot all in the name of "progress".

What all have we lost due to birth control?

Teenage pregnancies dropped down ... people can have regular sex without having 7 children ... horrible ...

Before birth control, it was an accomplishment one could be proud of to have children at the right time. It required stable relationships and self-control. Your family and church would give you a lot of respect if you succeeded, and contempt if you failed. It was a test that separated the virtuous from the lazy, weak, and sinful.

When such hardships are made optional by technological or social progress, most find new challenges to conquer but many regret their loss.

Birth control is old news in the Western world. But the cycle will repeat with new technologies. Suppose you're serious about fitness, you spend hours every week spinning and cross-fitting, and your abs are rippling. And tomorrow, a pill is developed that lets everyone be perfectly fit with zero effort. What do you get for all your hours at the gym? Can you imagine being bummed that everyone else is getting for free what you worked so hard for? That might give some idea what pre-birth-control nostalgia is like.

> It was a test that separated the virtuous from the lazy, weak, and sinful. When such hardships are made optional by technological or social progress, most find new challenges to conquer but many regret their loss.

And it used to be that, in order to eat food, you had to work 12 hours a day under the hot sun, which was great because only the righteous could be fed.

Now anyone, even those born to a weakling family, can get a job as a software developer and spend time chatting on Hacker News, and still feed a family. It's shameful.

Trust me, the only people with pre-birth control nostalgia are misguided men who are still alive because a) they didn't die in childbirth and b) don't have to have a period every month. I suppose you think that life before the polio vaccine was better too because not winding up in an iron lung is an accomplishment and how DARE someone just get a small needle in the arm without having to put in years to avoid dying a slow, paralytic death?

The problem with this lovely wheat-from-chaff heuristic is that "failure" results in the introduction of a new human life into a world that may not be prepared for it and will be strained ecologically for its existence. I would much rather have a world where the lazy, weak, and sinful pop pills towards an ecologically sustainable population than one where the virtuous are lauded for bringing five or six new people into existence, but, you know, at the "right time".

Me too. The failure mode of pre-contraceptive society (unwanted children) was terrible. But human nature is what it is, and many people are willing to accept terrible externalities in order to have a means to display their comparative virtue. The recent attack on universal health care in the US is an example. Many voters seem to desire a world where people who have their financial shit together will live, and others will die.

For a clear-eyed view of these less inspiring aspects of human nature, read Sapiens and Homo Deus by Harari.

Reminds me of a Steinbeck quote:

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

I don't think you understand just how painful some women's periods can be. I take birth control NOT to have unbridled sex, but to live my life normally without excruciating, debilitating pain every 23 days.

Okay, I'm going to interact with your opinion: it's based on a mountain of lies and fallacies and that's why you're being downvoted.

> There used to be a time when we as a society valued things like self-control, discipline, and tradition. No more.

Is that also the time when people died from rubella and mumps, or when women weren't allowed to vote? Usually an appeal to a bygone era is a secret yearning to go back to a time when the holder of that view had more power over others who now have equality.

> What you are alluding to here is a world where we are ruled by our emotions and our basest desires without the fear or potential for having to deal with our actions.

Yeah, because humans /never/ let themselves get ruled by emotions for the first ~100,000 years of history. /s

> To divorce set from children is to misunderstand intimacy, the family, and the entire underpinning of our society.

And yet, I (a man) had some lovely martinis with my poly boyfriend last night before falling asleep with him. Today, I'm being productive and contributing money to our gorgeous house, and contributing to both my local economy and my various levels of government by paying a decent portion in taxes. Tonight I think I'll spend time with friends and our lives will all be that much better for spending time together.

But please, tell me more about how my lack of child-bearing sex is ruining society.

> Usually an appeal to a bygone era is a secret yearning to go back to a time when the holder of that view had more power over others who now have equality.

I don't agree with the GP at all, but I think you're reading something that just isn't there.

Nah, sex is for pleasure or for children (and pleasure), depending on how you practice it. Self-control is still very much valued (at least in my society). The self-control bit is using the available contraceptives when you're only having sex for pleasure.

"There used to be a time when we as a society valued things like self-control, discipline, and tradition. No more."

What evidence do you have for this fantasy? The extremely high number of children per family/couple before contraception came along?

> To divorce sex from children is to misunderstand intimacy, the family, and the entire underpinning of our society.

Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like, your opinion, man.

Are you trolling?

Many people do not want a family. We have a sizeable population problem and many unwanted children are already born into poor conditions.

Safe sex is important, but "self-control", implying denying oneself sex, is a choice you can make, but certainly most would not. The "tradition" in the past was (still is in many places) patriarchal oppression and to expect or TAKE sex, forcefully if necessary. Colour me unimpressed by tradition.

This is the same argument that was made when the pill came about.

As well as Gardasil. A vaccine that friggin prevents cancer is somehow controversial! What the actual fuck?!

A million times no to everything you just said.

Check out the CDC stats. Teenagers today are actually abstaining from sex at higher rates then ever before and the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by HALF over the course of the last 25 years. So tell me about the other magical time where there was more "self-control, discipline, and tradition" among teenagers than now?

By the way, we've been controlling our fertility since the sexual revolution which started around half a century ago. Since our society hasn't collapsed in 50 years I can assume additional and safer options to control our fertility won't bring a collapse.

We've been controlling our fertility since the beginning of recorded history. There's a plant, silphium, that went extinct in the ancient Near East because it was overharvested as an effective abortifacient.

> There used to be a time when we as a society valued things like self-control, discipline, and tradition

No, no there has never been a time. People in the past were just big liars. People have always done whatever they want. The only difference today is that many people have the option of being honest about it

No, there is no absolute moral imperative of sex, not without throwing in a healthy dose of religious belief.

> There used to be a time when we as a society valued things like self-control, discipline, and tradition. No more.

Despite those values it never worked for preventing children.

A lot of us here just accept that reality and are open to removing the human element from it.

Are you really claiming to have a superior understanding of intimacy, family, and the underpinnings of society?