Ask Lemmy

I think people misunderstand how genetics work. What you say about a fantasy war is something that has been bothering me for a while, as this idea of "which genes get passed and which not" seems to stem from real phenomena, but are very poorly understood in its workings. Very few genes have high heritability, many are pleiotropic, many we have yet to understand what they do, and between humans we are absurdly similar to each other, yet as a population we have immense genetic diversity. The last two statements might seem opposing, but it is about the scope we look through. But once you understand this, any child is just like yours, and adopting becomes a better option ethically. This rhetoric of passing genes for selfishness and such are based on the ideas about genetics people tend to have but have little base in how it really works. The reality is much more complex, and nurture plays an absurdly large role in shaping us.

I think it also bothers you as much as it does to me because the argument is used in a way to get people anxious about societal implications for their immediate choices based on things that nobody knows how they would play out. It is guilt tripping, and so it feels like a bad faith argument to convince people of making big decisions.

That being said, I'm not against people having kids. People do what they want, but don't do it for any population genetics duty notion that you think you should fulfill. There are plenty better reasons to do so imo.