Death of a Child vs Deatn of an Adult

[Guardian]

I'm not even going to comment on this one except to say that I have a little daughter myself and that referring to a 1 year old as a "drooling machine that's not even self aware" is just plain wrong.

At 1 year old, my daughter was learning to walk and she knew not only her own name, but also those of her mother, father and grandmother - and the cats.

I rest my case.

[Eli]

And my cellphone knows dozens of names, big deal.

As far as consciousness is concerned, babies are just expensive Tamagotchis.

*ducks and runs*

[Guardian]

Originally posted by Eli
*ducks and runs*

Better keep running, you've got an angry Norwegian on your ass!

Nah, just kidding.
Not angry and not coming after you. Disagree with you I do, but hey, you know what? In democracies, people are supposed to disagree with each other.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Having a chance. Same argument that applies to abortion. You may have just killed the cure for cancer.

or the next hitler/manson/bad person

people likely to get abortions might raise such people.

but perhaps we should abort more zygotes to get their stem cells to cure cancer! killing babies might be the cure!

[Richelieu]

Adults feel a sense of failure when kids die. Because kids can't fend for themselves, the responsibility for their survival is placed on the adults. The younger they are the truer this is.
Kids trust their parents (overwhelmingly) and the adult community at large (on a smaller scale) to protect them. If anything happens to the kid, it's a failure of the protection system, the social construct.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov


Pfft.
Not true.

Plenty of 12-18 year olds have the abilities required to learn the skills to continue civilization. Obviously this will create a new elite, of educated children with high self control. A major shift in world structure - agreed. But possibly for the better.

if they arent too busy trying to learn how grow crops! i actually predict if you killed off everyone over the age of 18 the population of anyone under the age of 12 would die off almost completely. Its not petulant teenagers that raise and care for children siro.

If you kill all children, then many of the current adults simply won't have the abilities and energy to reproduce again and raise their children to matureness.

when children leave the household parents tend to increase their sexual activity much to the embarrasment of a child returning on winter break. also think about how many people are between the ages of 18 and 25 that HAVENT had children that WANT children. many, including myself are in that category.

Only 18-30 year olds would stand a chance of seriously reproducing.

which is better than 12-18 year olds trying to reproduce and also try to learn the skills needed to make society function.

siro, use your head for a minute. how many pediatricians, obgyns, nurses, anyone that ensures a great chance of a child living after birth are under the age of 18? infant mortality would probably be higher and reduce the number of people that make it to teenage years, more than the problem of there not being enough births by people 18-30. youd essentially have to birth a proportional amount of children to the amount that die off, not to mention mother mortality rates at birth.

also think about how teenagers are. are you really under the impression that the brightest and most mentally able are going to lead a teenage society? nerds will be the first to be cannibalized both symbolicly and literally. i dont see how you assume that some will rise to lead and also be intelligent enough not to abuse their power, or simply self indulge themselves like a french king.

also why would you assume that the intelligent teenagers would produce offspring at all except through rape? do you see what values are really admired among young women? usually its status. and what do teenagers derive their status from? athletic ability, pure charisma, material possesions. intelligence is not something that teenage girls are attracted to less they be shunned.

im going to stop now just to save myself from lecturing you into oblivion, but suffice to say, teenagers are about as useful by themselves as they are in todays society. they need guidence, skills and experience before they can be more than just a drain on their parents.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Eli
And my cellphone knows dozens of names, big deal.

As far as consciousness is concerned, babies are just expensive Tamagotchis.

I'm no expert on this, but from what I get reading stuff here and there I thought even babies are intellectual giants compared to something like a cellphone (which doesn't really "know" things in the same way we do). They can do a lot of things quite early which computers still have difficulties with (id-ing sounds, voices, words, images, later relating them to each other etc.).

[Guardian]

Exactly! A baby doesn't just know a name (as in being able to recognize the letter combination of the written name and associating one or more phone numbers with it). She also knows what person the name belongs to and she (or he) will be able to recognize that person by sight, smell, sounds, by seeing an object or a piece of clothing belonging to that person in the hallway, etc.

No cell phone, no computer, no machine can accurately do this, teach themselves, program themselves, fix their own bugs, auto detect and correct any data errors, run consistency checks and rebuild their indexes, all while constantly keeping their database updated with the latest info and actively going around seeking out more data to put in there. Well, a baby does all that. Every waking moment.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by MRT144


im going to stop now just to save myself from lecturing you into oblivion, but suffice to say, teenagers are about as useful by themselves as they are in todays society. they need guidence, skills and experience before they can be more than just a drain on their parents.

That may go for our nicely working "first" world, but in lots of other parts of the world not only teens, but also younger kids have to learn quite early to be "useful" in your sense, and often there it's just the other way around - kids work to keep the family alife.

Of course we can discuss a lot about the reasons etc., but that it happens means that kids or teens are not inherently unable to do productive stuff.

[bondetamp]

Originally posted by Guardian
No cell phone, no computer, no machine can accurately do this, teach themselves, program themselves, fix their own bugs, auto detect and correct any data errors, run consistency checks and rebuild their indexes, all while constantly keeping their database updated with the latest info and actively going around seeking out more data to put in there. Well, a baby does all that. Every waking moment.

A new computer -> more civ

A new baby -> less civ

I rest my case.

[Guardian]

Originally posted by bondetamp


A new computer -> more civ

A new baby -> less civ

I rest my case.

Well, you got that right. I've only played in like 5 or 6 Civ4 games and I've only finished 2 of them.

In my last one (single player / noble / huge world/ 16 civs) I won a space race victory in 1970 though, so I'm not quite lost in there although I don't have too many games on my back.

[Guardian]

Ah, correction: 3 Civ4 games finished.
Won my last multiplayer game last night (Multiplayer, simultaneous turns, medium turn timer, noble, standard world size, 8 civs - 4 human and 4 AI players to start with).
I won a diplomatic victory in 1930.
I was the top dog both scientificly, culturally and militarily and I had just started going for space race victory again. The others decided not to wait and organized a campaign to put themselves out of their misery, so to speak.