Mostly because he the object which creates the ideas and interacting with us is not his genes/body/brain but on the most abstract level it's his neural system, and the imperative you're talking about is imposed by his genes on his neural system (via brain wiring + hormones).
Since Joscha says that being adult means taking control of your emotions (I guess, to a point), so they serve your goals, and you're not at their whim, I wonder why he succumbs so easily to this specific emotion. Since having offspring has nothing to do with goals of his neural system (say... discovering the nature, advancing knowledge, exchanging ideas).
Goals of your genes != goals of your neural system (brain), and for the purpose of this conversation you are for me the latter.
I'm pretty sure that's not what Joscha meant by taking control of your emotions. His point was certainly more in the direction of not unnecessarily suffering or creating harm by following your emotions.
Following your emotions regarding kids, helping them to raise and become good people, feeling fulfilled doing it, I can't see anything wrong with that. You could even see kids as advancing the knowledge through them. And if you feel that way about your kids, I can also see why someone would be sad not having grand children.
I wouldn't even call this sadness to be mainstream, because I think quite a few people don't allow themselves to feel that way or even condemn themselves. So it's quite honest to be open about such a sadness and shows a good understanding of yourself.
Yup, I agree with 'advancing the knowledge' through your offspring esp. if you consider your neural net capable and well conditioned (but again, who doesn't?:) and genetically+behaviorally inheritable, but he was talking more about grandchildren there (i.e. lack of them), and the effects will be much more limited in the third generation
But children aren't obligated to pass on their genes in order to appease their parents. Parents only get to pass on genes for one generation, and get no further control over the process. To worry about having children because they might not have grandchildren is to be unfairly controlling over the future of children.
Feeling sad about it doesn't mean you're going to force your children having children.
You can have feelings without acting on them, but just perceive them. When Joscha talks about controlling your emotions this certainly would go into this direction.
In one of his appearances (maybe on the Fridman's show) he gave an example of being overly attached to outcomes of elections wrt to success of your favorite political party (being frustrated and sad when the party/president is not in power). His idea was that such feeling are not conductive to your wellbeing, and you should maybe do something about them, (just guessing: rationalizing it, meditating it out or somesuch).
I don't think being sad about reproduction choices of your children is beneficial, therefore I'd also suggest dealing with it. In the end it's just influence of your genes saying 'go, do something, talk to them, we need to be replicated'
> I don't think being sad about reproduction choices of your children is beneficial, therefore I'd also suggest dealing with it.
Feeling sad about something, doesn't mean you're sad about it all the
time, that's suffering. You just can't control every emotion in you and
there's also no need for it, it's just part of being human. Trying to
control every emotion is certainly more harmful than accepting them.
> In the end it's just influence of your genes saying 'go, do something, talk to them, we need to be replicated'
Do you really think that why Joscha works in AI and his desire to expand
the knowledge has nothing to do with his genes?
I have a favor to ask for participants of this thread. I'm genuinely curious, and I don't care my about my karma points.
What would be the primary reason for the proponents of the POV 'being sad about your grandchildren being gay b/c cessation of own genetic lineage isn't the best of approaches' being downvoted (like my every entry, and most others)?
I believe it's an interesting conversation, and both side of it exchanged some interesting ideas debating in good faith, being reasonably calm and avoiding common fallacies, so I suspect some factors that are not obvious to me, like maybe the interlocutors are worrying that even discussing such topic might be a danger to their future rights of having offspring it all, or somesuch similar (just a guess, probably not even close to the real reason)?
I'm trying to figure out what I'm being told, since downvotes don't come with comments/reasoning.
It's a recognized flag for a specific and rather imperial memeplex that is spreading rapidly. It also seems like a motte argument for the bailey of antinatalism, which is another strong and particularly distasteful -- for those who are not antinationalist I mean -- flag for this set of ideas that seems to come together or at least have an extremely tight correlation.
Since Joscha says that being adult means taking control of your emotions (I guess, to a point), so they serve your goals, and you're not at their whim, I wonder why he succumbs so easily to this specific emotion. Since having offspring has nothing to do with goals of his neural system (say... discovering the nature, advancing knowledge, exchanging ideas).
Goals of your genes != goals of your neural system (brain), and for the purpose of this conversation you are for me the latter.