The family model is changing.

[Valnar]

How is removal of alimony a step backwards? There is no good reason for it exist. It's like if you quit your job your employer has to keep paying you wages.

It exists because often a spouse has to sacrifice their self sufficiency for the sake of the marriage. That spouse is dependent on the marriage in a way the working spouse isn't.

A stay at home parent is going to have an awful hard time getting work compared to their spouse after 10-18 years of being out of work, even though being a stay at home parent is a full time job. I mean just look at the costs of a live in house keeper, it's about 30-60k. That is a similarly comparable job to a stay at home parent.

Even if they get a job, it will generally be less income than if they were working for those years.

[MagicManICT]

Why do you think that people with very serious genetical diseases should be let born?
They cause lot of suffering to the people themselves and all around them.

I agree they do, and a strain to the families and community financially, as well, but all this testing is known to fail. There's been a huge spike in preemptive mastectomies among mid to upper class women so they don't get breast cancer. Results? It doesn't necessarily prevent the development of cancer, and many of them are uneeded as the genetics only show a moderate to strong increase to develop that form of cancer (I'd have to dig up statistics for breast cancers, but mathematically, a 10x increase in chances of something when it's only 0.1% are then only 1%, soo...) Anyway, I don't think you'd see guys cutting off their nuts if they had the same "genetic predisposition" towards testicular cancer.

Same can be said about aborting fetuses that show signs of genetic disorder. You want to avoid sending bad genes off to your offspring? Get fixed like a dog--tubal ligations or vasectomies. If you've gotten to the point of needing to abort a baby, you've gone too far already, so why not just have a "normal" kid? Maybe one day we'll be good enough to identify the genomes in the sperm and egg and select health candidates so that IVF can be used. More likely, though, I see genetic engineering stepping in and just removing problem genes for "healthy genomes.)

Then there's the whole fact that the world's wealth still can't support its population, let alone top end medical procedures to control genetic disorders in 10% of the population. More likely to happen is just what happened with royalty in the middle ages, but to the elite... inbred and rife with genetic disorders due to lack of biodiversity, but to eugenics instead of class based selection. (Just what Granger pointed out.) Of course, medicine will be much more advanced at this point, and may be able to cope with this without serious issues.

Won't change much for the average family, I don't think. VR and the Man-Machine Interface will do more to change the family dynamic than eugenics and genetic engineering.

[arcolithe]

Then there's the whole fact that the world's wealth still can't support its population,...

Won't change much for the average family, I don't think. VR and the Man-Machine Interface will do more to change the family dynamic than eugenics and genetic engineering.

I was going to say, poor standard of living with a healthy body is not always better than a rich standard of living with genetic disorders.
Part of the UNDP Human Development Report is to figure out the issue of increasing world's wealth VS increasing growth population.

Machine/Deep Learning could one day write up laws and policies, and that is going to be an interesting thing. I'm currently trying to learn jupiter and julia for my own models, seen some small programs from python that makes me itchy for knowledge.

tbh, talking about eugenics and abortion rights is such a qualitative argument, I never understand what the point of maintaining beliefs towards that is.

P.S.
don't believe every statistics you see. the point of a statistics and research paper is to be unbiased. If you sense a bias, don't take it to heart. It's very easy to omit variables and manipulate (correlation, %changes, etc.)

[Potjeh]

How is removal of alimony a step backwards? There is no good reason for it exist. It's like if you quit your job your employer has to keep paying you wages.

It exists because often a spouse has to sacrifice their self sufficiency for the sake of the marriage. That spouse is dependent on the marriage in a way the working spouse isn't.

A stay at home parent is going to have an awful hard time getting work compared to their spouse after 10-18 years of being out of work, even though being a stay at home parent is a full time job. I mean just look at the costs of a live in house keeper, it's about 30-60k. That is a similarly comparable job to a stay at home parent.

Even if they get a job, it will generally be less income than if they were working for those years.

How's that any different than any other bad career choice, aside from not having student debt?

[shubla]

why not just have a "normal" kid?

This argument is bad and could be used for example to resis vaccines. "Why cant you just live a normal life without vaccines?" Or some shit.

Some genetical diseases can be very easily detected, such as down syndrome, as it is caused by major malfunction of genetics. Even economically it might be good idea to test every single preganancy and abort those with major genetical defects. Because a person with down costs a lot lot lot of money. With money that one person with down syndrome consumes during his or hers lifetime, many genetical testings can be made. Also medicine does not help for stuff like down syndrome, only way to prevent is basically to kill the person. Although you can not really call anyone a person before they are born. But what is person is a whole different topic.
There are of course many genetically caused things, but I guess down syndrome is quite widely known so its good for examples. I dont mean that ALL fetuses with even slightly bad genes should be aborted. Only the most serious ones (such as down syndrome). Having higher risk of some disease that can be treated quite easily and does not prevent the person from having (relatively) normal life would not require aborting (such as some allergies).

I have not familiarized myself with how they are going to perform this gene manipulati on humans that everyone hypes about. But I guess that it must be done before the egg is fertilized, because of reasons. Therefore you would not be going to make yours kids "the normal way" in that case either...

hen there's the whole fact that the world's wealth still can't support its population, let alone top end medical procedures to control genetic disorders in 10% of the population.

World maybe, but why should I care about world population in things like these, most of those people are in countries like China and India, not evenly divided, less finns being born does not help the situation.

Finland for example, would greatly benefit if no one here had kids with serious genetically caused syndromes/disabilities.

Machine/Deep Learning could one day write up laws and policies, and that is going to be an interesting thing.

No, it does not.


Genetical modification of course could replace the need to kill messed up things, but so would flying cars, and we have neither yet. But why would it be okay to change like, a lot of genes, but not okay to destroy the whole cell? We can safely say that it does not have enough cognition yet in the womb.

[Granger]

I have not familiarized myself with how they are going to perform this gene manipulati on humans that everyone hypes about. But I guess that it must be done before the egg is fertilized, because of reasons.

To test for gene defects you have to test the embryo, if you want to catch stuff like trisomie-13 (Pätau), trisomie-18 (Edwards) or trisomie-21 (Down) - all others trisomies are fatal to the fetus anyway.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with a topic before coming up with grand plans about it, to be enacted upon everyone (willingly or not).

[Valnar]

How is removal of alimony a step backwards? There is no good reason for it exist. It's like if you quit your job your employer has to keep paying you wages.

It exists because often a spouse has to sacrifice their self sufficiency for the sake of the marriage. That spouse is dependent on the marriage in a way the working spouse isn't.

A stay at home parent is going to have an awful hard time getting work compared to their spouse after 10-18 years of being out of work, even though being a stay at home parent is a full time job. I mean just look at the costs of a live in house keeper, it's about 30-60k. That is a similarly comparable job to a stay at home parent.

Even if they get a job, it will generally be less income than if they were working for those years.

How's that any different than any other bad career choice, aside from not having student debt?

Well, even if you had a bad career, you'd still have proof you've been in the working sphere which helps a lot with landing further jobs.

[dageir]

Soon we will not need humans to do most work. Most of you will be surplus bio mass.
The the purge will come.

[Jalpha]

I've not challenged the derail potential of the eugenics line of debate for a few reasons, most of which I hope to address in this post by highlighting its relevance to a changing family model.

As potjeh said, the family model won't change. Evolution works and cultures that have more affinity to it, regardless whether they're right or wrong, will end up replacing unsustainable family models by basic math.

I disagree. I think that the future of our society will go one of two ways. It will inevitably reach a state where changes have become so rapid that society cannot adapt quickly enough and it will collapse, in which case you would be correct. Otherwise we will adapt to the rapid pace of change and the changes themselves and our society will very quickly begin to not resemble past societies at all. The latter is how I believe the future will unfold.

The artificial womb will be a huge step forward in our genetic development. People will be able to select the best genetics to mix with their own, improving the quality of even the worst genetic variations among us. This is without even moving into the realm of genetic engineering. I also believe that many women will also elect to have their children grown in an external womb as well, caesarian popularity seems to validate this opinion. From this point it is highly likely that corporations will enter the reproductive fray, placing orders for thousands of children who they will raise as the perfect product for their organization. What will then happen to the rest of us nobody knows.

How would children produced by corporations and governments be raised? What kind of social impact will result?

Narcissism and selfishness are the hallmarks of our societies future. Many people will begin to elect not to have children at all, as they have already begun to do...

Back to topic: the family model isn't changing, it's imho more like it's eroding rapidly. One factor might be the general increased education in developed countries, which seems to have a direct proportional inverse effect on birth rate (some say: stupidity leads to excessive breeding), so parents having less children leads quite quickly (within 2-3 generations) to a massive reduction of the amount of alive relatives one has. Which reduces the size of groups that have something in common (family ties), which then makes the whole population easier to control/manipulate as the individuals are less supported.

I think the reduction in birthrates within developed nations stems from the growing narcissistic selfishness I mentioned combined with the expense of raising children. If you have nothing, having more children means one of them may lift you out of poverty, whereas if you already have everything you want, and having another child means you would have to sacrifice some of what you have, most people will simply elect to not have another child.

Religion is a kettle of fish I'd rather not dive into too deeply in this thread, but I will say that I believe Jesus was real, that he was a very wise and enlightened young man, and that everything he stood for was corrupted by men seeking power and control over others. The one man one woman family model best served the interests of individuals over time and kept our society stable by ensuring the needs of each individual unit were met. You can claim it didn't work but it did. It kept our society from collapsing for a very long time, and it's questionable if we are yet ready for such a fundamental change as the removal of that family model. Time will tell.

[ricky]

I disagree. I think that the future of our society will go one of two ways. It will inevitably reach a state where changes have become so rapid that society cannot adapt quickly enough and it will collapse, in which case you would be correct. Otherwise we will adapt to the rapid pace of change and the changes themselves and our society will very quickly begin to not resemble past societies at all. The latter is how I believe the future will unfold.

I believe we have already reached this point in our biological/societal evolution. we've been here for the last ~4 generations i'd say. technology simply outpaces how fast we have children. in turn, the old timers have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on. this previous two generations might fare better when we've become geriatric, only if because we're used to obsolescence of technology within 5 years of its creation.

The artificial womb will be a huge step forward in our genetic development. People will be able to select the best genetics to mix with their own, improving the quality of even the worst genetic variations among us. This is without even moving into the realm of genetic engineering. I also believe that many women will also elect to have their children grown in an external womb as well, caesarian popularity seems to validate this opinion. From this point it is highly likely that corporations will enter the reproductive fray, placing orders for thousands of children who they will raise as the perfect product for their organization. What will then happen to the rest of us nobody knows.

How would children produced by corporations and governments be raised? What kind of social impact will result?

Narcissism and selfishness are the hallmarks of our societies future. Many people will begin to elect not to have children at all, as they have already begun to do...

I think your "traditional family model" of one man one woman will be the biggest hinderance to your artificial womb ideas. Or, I should say, those conservative figures and their conservative constituents who still cling to the "traditional fmaily model" will not allow such devilry to seep into our societal foundation.

I think the reduction in birthrates within developed nations stems from the growing narcissistic selfishness I mentioned combined with the expense of raising children. If you have nothing, having more children means one of them may lift you out of poverty, whereas if you already have everything you want, and having another child means you would have to sacrifice some of what you have, most people will simply elect to not have another child.

So i'm a narcissist for not wanting to bring another person into this world? we're like one sneeze away from nuclear fallout. you mention that wealth is good way to evaluate how many kids a family will have. I believe this is simply coincidental, and the real determining factor is education. Of course, wealth and education go hand in hand, but I believe you'll find uneducated rich people have a lot more kids than educated poor people.


Of course, all of these factors on the 'family model' have absolutely no use in the modern era. You said the 'family model' held together society for thousands of years. sure it worked for a long time in certain cultures, particularly europe, but it's no long valid. Previously you needed as many kids as you could to help work the farm, plus mortality rates in infants was retarded high, as well as childbirth mortality rates, which in turn invalidated divorce (your wife was probably going to die of childbirth, there's no need to divorce her), women traditionally didnt have paying jobs so their only option was to get married and cling to a husband for support.

I could go on. there were dozens of reasons that the family model worked. they don't any longer, however.