Please_Do_Not

I'm sure it was better than Darwin

What about my understanding of evolution is incorrect, and how do you see natural selection working in present humans? Very possible that Dunning-Kruger is at play, but we may have to agree to disagree as to where...

My point is not that previous people haven't done significant things, it's that they did those things independently of who one of their many ancestors happened to be. Much like an actual ripple, the larger the pond, the less likely any disturbance is to reach the shore, and the more likely it is to be quickly lost to the natural turbulence of any body of water.

If your evidence against that is the existence of significant inventions, there are very few, if any, that wouldn't have been invented by someone else within years. No major invention or discovery, from the light bulb to relativity, has been made while others weren't working on the same problem and making similar, if slightly slower, progress.

That's why they say necessity is the mother of invention, not a person or an institution or anything that could be credited to a single creator.

And if you think humans are still evolving according to selection pressure the way that other species have/do, you just don't understand how evolution actually works. The moment we gained self awareness and created social structures, we drifted so far from biological evolution that it's an entirely moot point in terms of future generations. The least adaptive of us now, on average, still lives through the entirety of our birthing/fertile years, while significant portions of a population dying during or prior to fertility is the only way that natural selection works. That or the existence of bachelor herds that lead to a very slim minority being the only ones to breed. Neither of those are the case with humans.

Ultimately, having kids to ensure your own legacy is possibly the most selfish reason you could create someone and thrust them into 80 years of what should be their own life.

I think that's pure conjecture about how having kids affects the world. And the nature, worthiness, or value of those 12 people has nothing to do with whether or not you happen to personally be their ancestor. There's nothing different or more special about one person's progeny than another, so who cares if it's your kids or 8 billion other people. The idea that that is important in the future is all about making yourself important in the present.

Why does it matter if they're your descendants or others'? My 16 great great grandparents are as much strangers to me as any other 16 people walking around 100 years ago. And everyone here now is in the same place, whoever they came from. Not like I'll be alive to (or would do so in any case) take pride in saying 'ooh those 12 people have something to do with me if you go back far enough"

Why is it essential for our genes to live on?

Xavier a dog

Yeah I'd absolutely consider replacing or augmenting my display with something like these glasses, but asking people to pay more, downgrade specs, replace their whole system, all while picking up an unfamiliar OS... I'll wait for the gen 2. Or 4.

Evidence that thoughts and prayers really work

Trampolines and a big chandelier

Moore's point is that we shouldn't let the inability to eliminate that "what if," which was specifically designed to be non-disprovable, actually affect ontology. That problems and questions created by philosophers basically just to stump philosophical methods should be all but ignored since, by design, there clearly can't be an answer except that one thing is by far most likely, and the other thing cannot matter because we can't prove or act upon it or treat it as anything other than a manufactured source of doubt/skepticism.