At least from a purely utilitarian point of view, cost of educating and raising a child is exorbitant (teachers, food, clothing, shelter, etc) compared to euthanizing them (1 to 5 bullets, executioner pay, and burial costs). Benefits are going to be somewhat iffy; yes they could turn out okay but it's just as likely they could turn into criminal offenders that will chew up resources of the criminal justice system which is quite a lot more expensive.
I will emphasize that this is strictly from a utilitarian point of view. I make no comments on the moral, ethical, and legal issues.
I think you missed the "imprison them for 2 decades" part of euthanizing them in your consideration. It's fun to just make up how you think things should ideally work, but we're bounded by how things actually work.
Imagine if your life was just going utterly wrong. You're working hard as you can but you can barely make food or rent, and you're so tired every day that all you can do is just lie there like a dull sack remembering constantly and inescapably mulling at just how wrong everything is in your life. There's no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel, your existence is just this until you are broken and thrown out.
Now imagine there's a magic potion that make it feel like it all goes away even if for just a little while.
Then that life is already insufferable in my view. As a non-drinker, I would focus on fixing some of the root causes versus trying to dull my misery.
The fact one chooses to imbibe instead is not the thing bringing you joy, it’s escapism. So the fact you would conflate that to others that are content and have no need to escape is ass backwards logic.
If the criticism was phased as, “a drink really helps me unwind after a stressful day/week” I’d get it. But it’s usually projected outwards as “you must be boring/miserable for not drinking”. That’s the rub.
But many times you can’t fix the root cause. Maybe one of your parents is dying. Maybe your relationship with your spouse is falling apart. Maybe you bought a house in the last year and now you’re $50,000 underwater.
I think that's part of the difference though in what you're interested in though.
Where I live, If you were shooting long range rifle on a 900+ meter range, public transit isn't going to have service that area because it's 90 minutes outside of the city on dirt roads. The more modern pistol / carbine shooting facility nowadays are outside of city limits as well. You get similar issues with if you play paintball, airsoft, if you're into mountain biking, hunting, fishing, etc. Most of the ways to access those are out in far flung rural areas that you can't get to by bus.
If things in the city are what interest you then I can see where you're coming from. Me personally it isn't overly interesting though. I detest bars, I don't eat out, I haven't watched a movie in the last decade, I find live music and theater dull, boring, and uninteresting, and most of my shopping is done at Costco, the grocery store, or online. So... more or less that cuts out 99.99999% of the venues inside of a city for me personally.
Yes. Though I’ve been paintballing once or twice, years ago; looks like the place I did it is an hour away (two buses, 10 minute walk) or 30 mins by car. Got to admit shooting never even crossed my mind, but there seem to be a few rifle ranges about an hour away. There seems to generally be a lot of this stuff in the outer suburbs.
My visits to the US have been fairly limited, and mostly to San Francisco, so I’m not sure how typical this is, but one thing that surprised me about San Francisco was that, while there’s a reasonably extensive public transport system in the actual city, it more or less stops dead once you leave. Here, it certainly fades out, but areas where suburban becomes rural are often fairly accessible.
Perhaps. Forgive me for doing so, I did google some rifle ranges in Ireland and the only comparable rifle range to the one I'm speaking of is the Midlands National Shooting Center of Ireland near Tullamore, and it has similar problem to what I was talking about for our long range facilities. We have smaller ranges I think similar to the the ones I believe you're talking about much closer to the city limits and a handful of indoor ranges within city limits.
>but one thing that surprised me about San Francisco was that, while there’s a reasonably extensive public transport system in the actual city, it more or less stops dead once you leave.
I suppose it's a jurisdiction issue. The city here is quick to expand bus service whenever the borders expand or to new communities, but they do not service anything outside of the limits whatsoever. There's little in the way of public transit outside of the municipal level.
Yeah, that might be the difference. We used to have a national system and a Dublin system, but the Dublin system had a very expansive definition of ‘Dublin’ and operated well outside the Dublin local authorities. We now have a national system, though in practice Dublin and area is still a bit of a special case.
But there in lies the condition. You need to have a tribe/community/circle to take you in. There's going to be people for whom no community will accept them.
That doesn't seem to check. For his colleagues to be able to make a casual linkage between lowered cognition, tiredness, and irritability to him exercising, they must have observed said symptoms enough times and confirmed it with him more then twice in his life.
If you are mostly sedentary, consume any form of what are toxins to a human (there's lot of kinds, don't get caught up on the buzzword), and then one day start working them all back out into your bloodstream at once, it makes sense to temporarily feel like garbage.
I'm not sure I can agree with that. I'm incapable of relationships, but even if it were, my background makes puts me at a elevated probability of becoming abusive towards towards an intimate partner.
Would you not say that most if not all people would not want an abusive partner? If so, then even if it were possible, would not choosing to remain unattached out of concern for others be the more... Correct? Ethical? Moral? In any case, the better choice then to unnecessarily subject them to that elevated risk?
> Why are there so many articles about this lately?
If nothing else, it is garnering attention. Looking at it from a purely cynical perspective, it resonates enough to generate views from the readers; certainly from this crowd at least. And engagement is the life blood of social media.
More literally speaking; I don't know. Perhaps it's because that dream of a 'single' life style is becoming more and more inaccessible. How many have the financial freedom to be able to comfortably support a 'single life style' nowadays that isn't to just stay at home and play on the computer?
> How many have the financial freedom to be able to comfortably support a 'single life style' nowadays that isn't to just stay at home and play on the computer?
That's what fascinates me the most. Why is it engaging anyone on HN?
Most people here are tech workers so if they stay single then they definitely make enough to have nice things, vacation almost anywhere, enjoy night life a few times week, etc.
In all those interactions there are people to meet and you don't have to meet very many people to find someone who likes you. Many prefer to keep things casual at first. This is not a "bad thing" unless you are more in love with the idea of a relationship than the person. Unpack where that expectation is coming from and then no more tears. As the saying goes: "if you have to force it, it's probably shit". It really is that simple and of course it doesn't take very many casual relationships to find someone who wants to try being serious after getting to know you. The "pain" I see most people experiencing is just indecision and impatience, not true loneliness.
>I am not comfortable using either of those terms. Firstly, the choice of the word “celibacy” emphasizes sexuality over other aspects of a romantic relationship. I don’t think of it that way. Secondly, the incel culture turns me off. I have never blamed anyone for my situation, and I don’t think women’s rights should be up for discussion just because some men don’t get laid. Thirdly, and most importantly, at this point, I can’t even say whether I’m voluntarily or involuntarily single.
It's... an interesting view point. I've used the incel label for myself for lack of a better term, but it's more inability to form any sort of emotional attachment to people in general. But must that label absolutely carry with it with a mindset of misplaced anger at the world? And if so, if I have no such fury against imagined or real slights, then what does that make me?
Incel exists both as a descriptive term and the name of a kind of subculture. So, I’d recommend not using it to simply describe someone who just hasn’t consummated a relationship.
Incel ‘culture’ usually encapsulates the online subculture that talks about evolutionary attractiveness, how they are beyond fixing and, at its worst, why women should be morally/legally obligated to couple with them as a service. It has its own body of jargon, archetypes and memes, and they generally self-identify with the term.
And I've only ever gotten jobs through resumes. I have no family, friends, or acquaintances. Most people wouldn't willingly be in my presence were it not for the fact that I can occasionally be useful to them. And I rarely leave my home for anything other then absolute necessities to eat and maintain personal hygiene.
I assume you at least have some level of charisma that would make others think of you positively at combined with skill. As well as some willingness to go to events as you say.
You and I think though are somewhat exceptional in that regard; I assume most people would have gotten their jobs with a bit of a mix of the two in varying ratios.
Please forgive my ignorance as I don't have any real experience with any form of positive relationships with people. But what is the appeal of being in a romantic relationship in today's day and age? Except for the potential of shared income, most aspects that I can see save for dual income can be mostly fulfilled by technology (digital, pharmaceutical, entertainment, etc), and these options do seem to carry far less risk.
Dual income is probably one of the last things I would list as reasons I enjoy being married.
Even without children, companionship, intimacy, and yeah, love, have tangible emotional rewards.
If you have never felt these feelings because you're young and haven't met anyone interesting yet, that's one thing. If you're older and just don't feel these feelings towards others, then you might want to talk to a professional about that.
> If you have never felt these feelings because you're young and haven't met anyone interesting yet
If you have never felt feeling of being disillusioned then it is because you are not old and haven't really found out true nature of your relationship.
Highly recommended experience: Go to your local family court on a nice afternoon and sit back and relax for few hours. One of those people there is your neighbor who was just until yesterday happily married and now losing his home and worried about how he would pay alimony and see his children more than twice a month.
No one gets married thinking they would ever divorce. 50% of them divorce nonetheless.
Even if someone wanted all those things, it would still be rational to weigh them against the negatives. That would include both realized downsides, like incompatibilities and conflicting life goals, and potential ones, like all of the negatives involved in divorce.
Doing such an analysis and coming up with a different conclusion than the (current) norm shouldn't be grounds for him needing mental health services.
Kick here is that there is no such thing. More than 50% marriages end in divorces. And when it does, person who earned the most, loses the most. In states like CA, if you are married to someone for 10 years, you may be held liable o provide lifetime of alimony which can be as much as 50% of your income. It may not happen but there are no guarantees because there are no real laws and judges do whatever the hell they want. One of the lucrative business is divorce lawyer claiming abuses to extract lifetime alimony in states like CA. To that person "shared income" would be a joke.
At least from a purely utilitarian point of view, cost of educating and raising a child is exorbitant (teachers, food, clothing, shelter, etc) compared to euthanizing them (1 to 5 bullets, executioner pay, and burial costs). Benefits are going to be somewhat iffy; yes they could turn out okay but it's just as likely they could turn into criminal offenders that will chew up resources of the criminal justice system which is quite a lot more expensive.
I will emphasize that this is strictly from a utilitarian point of view. I make no comments on the moral, ethical, and legal issues.