I am slightly astonished someone makes these sorts of comments in 2025. AI has been remarkably useful for many many things across many industries; I’m curious what you think
Gary Marcus is unquestionably one of the most negative , and consistently wrong voices in the AI community. I do not understand why he is continued to be given credence or ears to anything he claims.
Do you often discount studies and science when it comes to ideas that don’t align with your natural instinct?
Is addiction a disease or a moral failure? Is depression a chemical imbalance or is it your own fault, maybe just “exercise and smile more”?
Questions of that nature are fair but simply being against a researcher or author because they have a viewpoint different your own is entirely what’s wrong with so much of discourse today.
OK, it sounds like your experience was selfish simply because later ON you had children, and the time you spent alone was time you could've had with your eventual children.
But what of someone who will not have children at all? How is it, literally (in the definition of the word), "selfish" to not have children? From whom are you robbing experience? What is being "taken away" and from whom?
What of the people that have children but those children do not contribute in any meaningful way to society? Is the implication here that every child born must somehow be a net-positive to society?
I see what you're saying about the replacement rate, but I don't see how, on a smaller scale, someone choosing to not have children is a selfish act within the context of a society that is not yet below "replacement" level.
"I'm not giving anyone else a chance" -- there is no "anyone else". There is nothing being robbed, as there is no other party that literally exists in the universe.
There are studies that show quote plainly that people with kids are unholier than those without. The difference is much later on life when the happiness “winner” switches to the group with children.
One theory aside from the obvious is that the brain makes sense of whatever might happen to it, over time. Like how you miss out on some big opportunity, but years later you say, “ah, that’s ok because it led me to where I am today.”
No idea if that was coherent as I’m a bit tired, but wanted to share
I am slightly astonished someone makes these sorts of comments in 2025. AI has been remarkably useful for many many things across many industries; I’m curious what you think