that you feel that way is not in dispute. there's nothing biological about that drive, however. it is a fully learned desire. if a bonobo wants to create a bonobo, then it too has learned that desire.

your desire to have children is as biological as my desire to have a ferrari. both are based in biological urges, but both are completely learned.

Wehavebeen socialized to believe thatmaking itis having a wife and kid(s).

The desire for sex is definitely biological, because it needs to be. The desire to reproduce comes from the desire to be validated socially.

Well, IDK how I can prove that it isn't. lol

But there does seem to be a natural desire to have children. There is such a thing as maternal and paternal instinct.

exactly. i've had people who, no matter what i said, could never wrap their minds around the fact that we don't have an inherent desire to create babby.

wincel is falling into a strange trap thinking that anything matters after you die. if you are genghis khan and rape a bazillion women or you die a virgin, you still die and find nothingness. all of genghis khan's genes will eventually disappear in some future extinction event and the planet itself will eventually no longer even exist without even a memory in an alien's fap folder.

everything we do or don't do is utterly meaningless. the only true meaning you can carve out of your existence is by happinessmaxxing, even if you acknowledge that it's all a neurochemical illusion anyway.

our maternal and paternal instincts evolved to stop us from abandoning/killing our children. there is selection pressure for such a mechanism to evolve for obvious reasons. there is not, nor would it be remotely necessary (or even possible) for there to be any selection pressure to implant in the minds of a species a concept of a genetically-similar creation that can be made by smashing a sloot. all evolution had to do was drive us to putting our dinks into pussies and then stop us from killing the kids.

you have imagined not only your drive to reproduce, but also the concept of not doing it being a biological failure.

interesting points

it's programmed into your DNA

yes, the desire to fukk is programmed into your dna. the desire to make a baby is programmed into your mind by other people.

It's not meaningless. There may be a future for life, as I explained earlier.

This reeks of nihilistic cope.

I honestly don't think that there's a clear and concise way to have this debate without delving into anecdotal experience (at least from where we stand).

But in that sense, I find that a lot of times when people have a child there's this big sort of recognition that comes with it. You have the events like baby showers, gender reveals, all of this sort of attention is now thrust upon you. It's a validation, in some ways.

When I write that out like that, it sounds really weird.

But what I mean, is really, that a lot of it is a learned desire due to pressure. I swear, the first thing I hear when I go to family gatherings now is "when are you going to get married?" And I'm certain that after I do that (if I ever do), the second thing will be "when will you have kids?"

I hear it at work, often, when somebody brings in a child--the next thing most of my coworkers that are female do is ask each other when it'll be their turn.

Maybe it's a little bit of both. Maybe it's more one than the other. Who knows? I always lean toward nurture having a bigger impact than nature, though both do play a part in some situations. Like biologically, we want to have sex. But our body does not associate sex with children (it is our MIND that makes that connection), it associates sex with "feels good", which is a biological evolution we NEEDED to ensure that we did reproduce.
Happiness maxing is really all you can do.

Life is one endless string of things that mean only what you decide they mean. You're right, eventually it is all for nothing. Only you get to decide what it means.

how am i coping? i can easily reproduce if i want to. i choose not to. i don't have a drive to do it. you learned that drive, you accomplished it and you're happy with the result. great. that would not make me happy, so i opt out. what's the problem?

When a non-autist hears that a father of 6 has died at 41, they automatically think of the impact it will have on his wife/kids/brothers/sisters/parents. That is where most of the sympathy comes from.

Do you enjoy music, food, sex (you would), art, nature, spending time with friends and family? There are many great things to enjoy in life, and this guy will never be able to experience any of it again, because he died, prematurely, and that's sad. It doesn't matter if it's a 10/10 chad with 12 kids or a childless bum on the corner, premature death is always a sad thing.

I don't really care that he died in all honesty, but I can recognise that it's a sad situation. If that makes sense.

The truth is that there isn't much research either way on this. There are some studies that showed baby fever is a real phenomenon, but it may be culturally rooted as ratfish mentioned. Whether or not there is an urge to procreate that is distinct from the sexual urge is actually a contentious issue, and to my knowledge, there isn't a great consensus among biologists.

Anecdotally, I know I feel a desire to have a baby whenever I see a baby. I feel an urge to be a father, and it is distinct from my urge to get laid, which is there 24/7. I also know that females tend to go crazy around babies, and they probably feel it more strongly than men do. But, there isn't much research on this so who knows? Maybe it is all cultural. I am fairly resistant to cultural influence, and I tend to do things my own way and follow my own path. Nobody ever pressured me to have kids. The only thing people pressured me to do was be financially successful. For me, it was like a switch flicked on at around 28 years of age. I just started thinking a lot about what it would be like to have a son or daughter and to teach him or her. I also started thinking more and more about my genetic legacy.

Happiness simply cannot be the end goal of life. After all, we can already medicate our way into a happy state.

i should say that i'm not arguing that those who reproduce are not happy or anything along those lines. my older brother has 3 kids and my younger brother has two. at thanksgiving there was a gaggle of them running around and i just couldn't imagine having that be my life every single day. call me a monstrous sad fukk, but it's just not for me, and that has been a consistent sentiment that i have had literally since i was a kid myself.

it was funny af though to have a 4 year-old repeatedly bring blocks over me and say they were food and then when i pretended to eat them, he would say "i lied, that wasn't a sandwich, that was a poop!"

He experienced it for 41 years. He reproduced. It was fine, and it was fair. He had a better deal than 99% of the population will ever get.

Being alone sucks and more than a little

there's no consensus because it would be basically impossible to conduct a study that would answer it. no ethics panel would allow it and you wouldn't secure funding. "we're gonna raise a kid in a lab to age 20 and see if they ever mention that they want a baby if we don't introduce the concept."

i bet there could be case studies out there of isolated people where the parents and the kid live together and there simply are no other people for the kid to interact with.

logically though, it's absurd to say it's inherent and it's only in 1, maybe 2 species. why? a deer doesn't know what a fawn is before it sees one, why do you think a human knows what a baby is before it sees one? there was never selective pressure to hard-wire such a thing, nor would it be necessary to do so. make them fukk, and they will reproduce. make them take care of the offspring, and they will persist.

I think a big part of the reason that the switch flips on is because around 25-30 or so, is when your friends are all getting married, having kids or dying.

It's sort of that age where you're really exposed to seeing that much more often. When you're 18, it's not happening as often, and when it is--it's sort of frowned upon.

But like we said, there isn't much that we can really say beyond these statements... It's sort of a catch 22 in a way.^I feel that.

I think a big part of the reason I don't want kids is that I don't think I've done enough living to be focusing on making sure that somebody else is living their best life. I haven't even reached my peak, and I haven't spent enough time doing the things that I would like to do in life without feeling the responsibility of having to ensure that somebody else is successful.

But beyond that, I just don't have the desire to reproduce, too. I want to be able to always just do the things I'd like to do. And maybe that's selfish. But it's 2018, and I don't need to repopulate the world.

I mean...in every other species, there is no birth control, so the urge to reproduce and the urge to have sex don't need any distinction.

However, I'll remind you that infertility is a common cause of depression and suicide in humans. Why do you suppose that is? You could say it is cultural, but then you should wonder why every culture seems to have this idea of having your own kids and raising them.

I have a lot of opinions on why that could be the case.

I think that statement goes much deeper than what was said on the surface. Part of it HAS to tie back to what we consider success to be, as a society. And what infertility can do to a relationship, AND what kind of fukked up thingslovemakes humans do.

I agree that there may be powerful cultural influences at play here.

However, all of this aside, choosing not to have children is fundamentally maladaptive. You are voluntarily reducing your own biological fitness. It is an irrational life strategy.

if i decide that i am a complete failure if i don't drive a 458 Italia and then i don't do it, i will become despondent as a result. if elon musk decides that if he doesn't set food on mars, he has totally failed and then fails to do so, he will be depressed. you can create any metric that is possible or impossible and then have your happiness hinge upon that.

the reason that every culture has that strong desire is because those that arise and dismantle it (of which there have been some) die out lol

edit: nvm

Well, that would depend on the causes of infertility. For instance it could related to inflammation which is now thought to be a cause of depression (see the thread on this today for the studies)

Other causes include hormone imbalances - a cause of depression, tumors, Varicocele - causes depression chemically, auto immune conditions where the sperm is attacked - chronic conditions often causing pain which is another cause of depression, celiac disease (already covered with auto immune stuff)

The list goes on and on

So if these causes of infertility cause depression alone how can you separate the two?

Variables.

Correlation does not equal causation

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Ratfish again.

I didn't know you could drop thoughtful gems like that Ratfish. I've only known you as a playful troll.

At some point, don't you think there is something fundamentally objective about what remains in nature vs how we felt, etc? When all is said and done, it is the genetic information that you leave behind that matters. Like I said, if we look at what is common to all life, it is survival and reproduction. That really seems to be the common theme here. You can voluntarily choose not to have kids, but then you have adopted an irrational life strategy.

...yes...and? My point was that infertility itself makes people very unhappy, and there is a good reason for that. Do you really think it is the common causes of infertility themselves and not the fact that one might never have kids that is leading to the depression? Really?

Do you know what's the Is-Ought problem?

"...many writers make claims about what ought to be, based on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between positive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

matters? to whom? if i'm dead, nothing matters.

on the contrary, i would argue that making your life substantially more expensive/difficult by having kids is an irrational life strategy. my life is pure ease and freedom. my younger brother texted me yesterday "i'm very jealous that you can spend 45 hours over the next few days playing diablo 3 and eating crab." lol

i know that, for me, doing anything that decreases freedom or free time is going to decrease my happiness. something tells me that i am not alone in that sentiment. what i then spend that time doing is largely irrelevant, so long as i'm enjoying myself.

here's an example for you: i dated a gal who was a doctor in the last year of residency. she was beautiful, she had only fukked one dude before me and she was in love with me. she wanted to get married as soon as possible and have kids. she was making 57k/yr in residency, which is likely 300k right now. i could have literally impregnated her and never worked again without any real negative repercussions. could have been a stay at home dad and she would have probably been completely content. it was the easiest path of reproduction aside from going on vacation, rawdogging the countryside in a catholic region while giving out fake information, and then going home.

i was actually on board with the idea of marriage/kids with her for a while, but the more i thought about it, the more i started feeling claustrophobic and i developed strong feelings of anxiety. the thought of losing that much freedom was making me gasp for air and i had to eventually escape. i knew that i would be totally miserable, and there was nothing i could do to change that.

i know with deep conviction what made me happy in the past, what makes me happy now and what will make me happy in the future. it would be utterly illogical for me to make decisions counter to that.

I'm not passing any moral judgment. I am saying that not having kids directly reduces your biological fitness. This is, by definition, an irrational life strategy. Lifeforms that employ this strategy will not reproduce, and their genes won't be passed to the next generation. That's all I am saying.It matters if biological fitness matters to you. If it doesn't, then, whatever. But I am not sure it makes sense to attribute anything else as more important than biological fitness for a lifeform.

Again, if happiness is a goal, one can simply do drugs and medicate oneself to that state. I am not sure it is a sensible goal as a lifeform. The "purpose" of life really does seem to be survival and replication. So, it would make sense to take actions to promote that. Granted, we could argue there is no "purpose" and that it doesn't matter, etc. Fair enough. There is no instruction manual that tells you how to live your life. The survivors are the only ones keeping the genetic score merely by existing, and if you don't care about the scoreboard, then it doesn't really matter much what you do.