I made a conscious choice to not have children for personal reasons (deeply fucked up family and while I know I'm not callous and cruel like my father I simply couldn't rule it out enough to be willing to risk it).

I'm completely at peace with the thought that a century from now no-one will think about me one way or the other.

I mean statistically the chain of events that led to me ever existing as me was so small that after winning that hand, it's time to leave the table and enjoy it.

A different perspective is - why do I need to leave something behind (children or otherwise)? What matters is how I spent the little time I have on this planet, while I am alive, isn't it? Why do I care what happens after I am gone? There are enough things to think about, to work on, while I am alive. As long as I am happy and helpful while I am alive, that seems more important to me than anything else.

The human species relies to some degree on people leaving things behind, new discoveries being one of the more important ones.

You don't need to leave something behind of course, but the species benefits from it.

You don’t need to. But entire worlds are destroyed every day, and if you should fall in love with one, you might find yourself interested in it’s preservation.

Yet, our very existence is a consequence of reproduction, even if we may have forgotten our ancestors.

The only true delusion of grandeur is thinking that dwindling others' experiences against the vastness of the universe is enlightenment: If we don't experience our existence in geological/cosmic time scales, why waste time believing we are mere blips?

I'm not dwindling others experiences against the vastness of the universe. I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of the parent comment that somehow elevates the meaningfulness of having kids over building a stone wall. My position is neither is any less or more meaningful beyond individual experience.

Of the people that lived 100K years ago, we have almost nothing. Possibly some cave paintings, though the vast majority of art from then must be gone. However, every single person alive today is descended from people who lived then. You may or may not find that meaningful, but it would be hard to disagree that having children was the most impactful course of action available to anyone alive then. The same is true for nearly all of human existence.

With the current pace of change, having children may no longer be the obvious winner it has been for all of history, but it might still be...

Fossilised remains in the sediments on earth are all that remain of the species that have come and gone before us. Many species are lost to time, because they weren't fossilised or their effects preserved. And our fossilised remains will be lost to the cosmos as well. You experiencing humanity in the midst of it might make it seem substantial. But we are a genus a mere 2 million years old and a species as young as 200000 years. For comparison, the dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 million years. All of human history is 200000 years, again seems of consequence to us because we are participants in it but on the grand scale really isn't.

Does that mean we shouldn't just bother, absolutely not, we are given this gift of experiencing life. Something rather than nothingness...etc. But we can do with a little more perspective on how utterly inconsequential we are in the grand scheme of things. Having kids seems consequential in the context of human existence, but when human existence is inconsequential (there is no lasting impact or transmission of information beyond our temporary side-effects on the environment) it puts our existence into perspective.

The vast overwhelming majority of matter in the universe is inert.

The fact that we've hit upon a certain arrangement of matter which yields consciousness and the ability to manipulate the matter around us is something which seems worth preservation.

I contain the information for how to give life to inert matter. I've done it three times now, and I think it's worthwhile.

You thinking it is worthwhile is all that should matter, just as a farmer thinking it's worthwhile to build a wall that lasts. Both instances are us giving meaning to self actualisation of individual drives be it preservation or propagation of genetic information or building something that will outlast you.

Hmm... Since when did we reach this height of "enlightenment" that children (humans) are now being compared to a stonewall in relevance, no matter how sophisticated the wall might be?

Yes, it is more meaningful to have kids than to build a stonewall.

Aren't walls inventions of man, as such, an effect caused by man. How can an effect (invention) of man be equated to the inventor?

Do you compare the effect of human freedom to the effect of unconscious matter in history?

A stone wall has no chance to beat its fate. Humanity, however unlikely that might be, does stand a chance.

We're very far from where we started. We're here because of both people that had kids and because of people that built stone walls. In many cases they were the same people.

Agreed, and no matter if we manage to beat our fate or not, doesn't make this thing called life any less precious.

> Yet, our very existence is a consequence of reproduction

It's a consequence of evolution. Right now we are limited yes. But nobody knows future.

> If we don't experience our existence in geological/cosmic time scales

Feel free to experience your existence without deriding others existence.

As a descendant of the Saami, I agree. We leave our heritage in everything we touch. Child or stone, no difference. Our ancestors are everywhere.

Strikes me as a fallacy that in order for something to be meaningful it must persist. Meaning can exist and perish in a moment.

Some assert that life has meaning.

So assert that life has no meaning, as alluded to here.

These are axiom-like statements that cannot be proven. Everyone has a faith as to which of these assertions is true.

Existentialism to the rescue!

Life can have meaning because we choose to give it such.

That relies on a supernatural belief as well (free will).

Nah. I just choose, regardless whether the choice is apparent or real.

Apparent choices happen :)

(Passive voice is more apt.)

I can't tell if you're trolling, but in case you're not and unless you think there's a mathematical certainty to your argument, you might do well to spread your bets.

Does it matter if they are not forgotten?

Legacy implies transmission of information. So forgotten not in terms of memory, but a total loss of information (genetic, memory or otherwise).

What if you're wrong?

I don't know what specifically you are referring to but, the sun is going to be a red giant in 4.5 billion years, earth cannot sustain life. Deep into the future, all the stars will eventually burn out and there will be no more new ones born. The night sky will be dark. The only radiation emitted will be black holes slowly evaporating on a time scale so huge we can't even meaningfully comprehend it. There is no energy to sustain life. Then there is the heat death of the universe to look forward to.

Humans might survive past earth, but oblivion will come for us all the same. We just get to play around in our little imagined worlds of purpose and meaning a little longer all to no avail beyond living one's life.

And that's all any of us can really do, chose how to face existence knowing there is no grand scheme in which each of us is some how important or matters. Choosing to live is equally as valid as choosing not to. We are evolutionarily engineered thinking emotional machines where certain states make us feel good(love, friendship, self actualisation food...., accomplishment) and certain states make us feel bad (sickness, loss, pain...)

All we can do is live a life we are happy(good state) with, be it building stone walls that last or having kids and raising them.

A short story that explores this premise:

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956

https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

> We are evolutionarily engineered thinking emotional machines where certain states make us feel good(love, friendship, self actualisation food...., accomplishment) and certain states make us feel bad (sickness, loss, pain...)

Certainly this could lead one to be a little more circumspect about grand pronouncements.

It seems like you’re saying some people are being tricked by our brains, but others (like yourself) are able to pull aside the veil and truly understand our place in the universe. Perhaps we’re all being tricked.

Regardless, in a universe where nothing matters, truth and knowledge have no more value than children or stone walls.

> It seems like you’re saying some people are being tricked by our brains, but others (like yourself) are able to pull aside the veil and truly understand our place in the universe. Perhaps we’re all being tricked.

I make no such claim. We interpret and navigate the world with the mental models and toolsets we have. If you can do math, you can calculate, estimate, plan, budget....etc. Similarly, some toolsets give you access to insights and paradigms eg: religious toolset might make you interpret the world differently. I merely have a certain toolset which lets me look at the world in a certain way, does not mean this toolset is exclusive, leads to authoritative interpretations or it's acquisition is special in any way.

I could just say "In my humble opinion"

>Regardless, in a universe where nothing matters, truth and knowledge have no more value than children or stone walls.

As always value is in the eye of the beholder, there is no objective value beyond what a subject is able to get out of it. So if you feel truth and knowledge are important, they are. If you feel faith is more important than truth, it is, to you at-least.

> I could just say "In my humble opinion"

One problem I've noticed with the way human beings communicate is that for any given situation, there's no way of knowing whether the person speaking is doing so with an implicit "imho", or whether they mean the things they say literally. In this case, I thought that you were speaking literally.

I wonder how much this phenomenon (and others like it) contributes to the amount of polarization and disharmony we are experiencing in the world right now, or in the past for that matter, all without our knowledge or interest.

we will have left earth (and inevitably our sun) long before 4 billion years away, most probably as a hybrid species by then

on the theorised heat death timescale humans have only been around for less than infinitesimal fractions of quadrillionths of a percent of their potential. what's to say we don't in that time escape it by transiting to a new, younger universe?

Or, you know an asteroid hits us causing the 6th Extinction Level Event killing humanity. As long as we are doing wild speculative Sci-Fi the Great filter in our future is a real possibility to consider.

For now, we are an incredibly young species who has time and again demonstrated our penchant for chasing after short term incentives at the cost of longterm harm. We are making the earth unliveable faster than we are progressing towards being a multi-planetary species (which seems like an insurmountable leap given the candidates and the cost structure we have to work with). But humans are inventive and resourceful so here's hoping we grow beyond living on earth.

> But humans are inventive and resourceful

What's the benchmark?

How much do you rally know and remember from your ancestors which is more than a handful and always the same stories?

How did that really influence you?

We can look back, we are not a magic generation unique to all the other generations before us. We know what's going to happen with us and our legacies.

One difference between the current and previous generations is just how much information is recorded by and about us. There will be a lot more evidence of the existence and experiences of people alive today than people of a century ago. Whether people will care to look is a different matter.

True and that makes it even more visible how little the future cares for you.

My mum is the only one who likes to look through our holiday pictures.

They will be there and no one will care.

Only some ml tool to potentially tell my future Familie members that I might have been depressed based on pictures and the ml notes it down for potential medical relevant information.

No one will know what I liked and disliked. No one will see that my life had ups and downs.

I really thought Facebook would be a great thing. Sharing and seeing what my Familie is up to but no one is using it for sharing family pictures. And I myself I'm sometimes annoyed by too many WhatsApp pictures.

I do get why it is like this but realizing and accepting it took a bit

One large-scale EMP incident, and that is no longer the case.

We have alot more data now, but I am not sure how durable it all is.

I have quite a few DVDs and hard drives that no longer work.

CDs/DVDs typically oxidize after 15 years.

Print the book version on vellum, and you'll preserve it for a few thousand years (or ANSI paper with the infinity sign, which supposedly lasts for at least 750 years).

We do have a lot more data however we don’t have enough time to absorb it. Until something like Neuralink improves that, I don’t think it would be much different. So many of us take pictures all the time but how many of us really go back and look at the old pictures? And do we really have the time to view all pictures from our own time let alone previous generations?