>Maybe I’m misunderstanding the premise… but I decide what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to the store and buy x,y,z… so that later I can make dinner.

No, your subconscious polls your body to see what nutrients (or addictive foodstuffs) it's lacking, gets back the report, decides lasagna would fit the bill, and says, "I want lasagna". Then you become conscious of that message and fill in some other explanation for why it's worth it to go to the store and get ingredients for lasagna. Your conscious choice is an illusion. It's actually just the process of you creating an ex post facto rationilazation for doing the thing your subconscious told you to do.

If life doesn't reproduce then there's no more life. If the purpose of life was to live, and then wink out and leave the universe sterile, then we wouldn't exist to be having this conversation.

I'm not "reducing" life to reproduction. I'm not saying life is reproduction. I'm saying that reproduction is part of the definition of life. So if you don't reproduce, you have missed out on part of the fundamental meaning of being alive.

>My entire point is, I don't think humans have one set way of doing things and I don't think our purpose is simply to multiply. Sure from a biological standpoint that's how it was in the past. But going back to the hypothetical aliens made us argument, who's to say biological propagation (the desire to fuck and to be a parent) wasn't just a stepping stone to get us to a point where we're supposed to do something greater with the gift of life?

>Now I'm not saying that IS the case either, just pointing out that as it stands, we're too insignificant and ignorant to say definitively as OP put, "what you're really here for."

>Nobody knows what we're here for, and that's what makes studying our history, our genetics, our own minds, and the universe we inhabit so much fun.

Until everyone decides that and no one reproduces...

We can't live transcended beyond procreation, because once we stop procreating we go extinct.

If you meditate long enough, once you start starving in earnest you'll probably start seeing some really transcendent hallucinations before you drop dead. Maybe that's the only true pathway to heaven/eternal bliss... But I'm not going to try it. And I'll bet you're not going to try it. So maybe we should slow down on suggesting that all of humanity should do the rough equivalent as a species.

If I wanted to live by bad metaphysical musings, I'd pick a major religion. At least those generally aren't explicitly aimed at annihilation of humanity.

>I think the universe is more than just a mechanical device. If the purpose of life was simply to reproduce then we should have just stayed single celled organisms. But then we wouldn't be growing or evolving.

Or... Multicelled organisms had some sort of advantage over single-celled organisms, and it is all just the result of ongoing mechanical processes and a bit of chance over a long enough period of time.

You're dipping into philosophy. Which, again, is part of the extra stuff, not the basic. Your opinions don't change the objective facts of what life's basic functions are. Ability to reproduce is part of what defines what life is at the most basic level... Even single-celled organisms reproduce.

>Yeah collapse of civilization is not the end of it, Humanity wont end it. If we collapse we will rise again maybe it will take 1000s of years. I am talking at the time scale of millions of years of evolution. We have risen out of harsher climate than what's coming.

We've already mined all of the easy stuff to build this advanced civilization. It's not going to be so easy to do it a second time without the "low hanging fruit" available.

>Oh I agree, I just think that saying that reproduction is "what you're really here for" is kinda sad, you're more than a baby making machine

Yes, you are more than a baby making machine, but all of that other potential only exists because it made your ancestors better baby making machines. You can choose to fail at your purpose in pursuit of something else, but that doesn't change that your purpose was to be a baby making machine.

Acknowledging reality isn't sad, and that's the reality.

It isn't. That's the point they're making. We're just animals. Our basic purpose is to survive long enough to breed and help our offspring survive long enough to breed in turn. Everything else is stuff we make up, because we accidentally became too capable of abstract thought to just be satisfied doing the basic stuff, ironically in an attempt to make us better at doing the basic stuff.

>I love to bang, but I've never knocked anyone up and I'm about to go in for the snip so I don't have to. And it seems that more and more people with the mind set are starting pop up.

You're not supposed to be able to prevent pregnancy. Your "loving to bang" is supposed to lead to a pregnancy, whether you intend one or not.

>Humans have sex for pleasure, for emotional support and stability, for validation, etc.

All of those good feelings are, again, supposed to lead to pregnancy, which we could not reliably prevent when we were evolving into modern humans.

>I believe we've already evolved past the point of species propagation for survival, there's no need to carry on one's genes when billions of others are already doing it.

Until everyone decides that and no one reproduces... Tragedy of the commons... That's exactly why we evolved to enjoy sex so much, so that we'd accidentally keep having kids even if this idea came into our heads.

>That was my point, we may be weaker as individuals but as a species? we are the strongest and are only getting stronger. :{.

"Although our civilization wont progress at some point in future will soon collapse, if it isn't already in the early stages of collapsing, because it came at the expense of our nature" - FTFY

You aren't your grandparents. Looking at the situation from their point of view makes no sense. You, yourself, pointed out how disgusted we are at the idea of hive minds/social structures. You, from your POV, are not just a replaceable worker ant for your grandparents, and I'd assume that you would be upset if they told you that you were, even though on some level you are.

Although, nonetheless, even from their POV, the statistical math of you and your siblings having more total offspring is still better. If you pump all of your parenting into your nieces and nephews, and those families go on vacation together and all die, then obviously it would be better for your grandparents' genes if you had your own kids instead.

>Altruism does imply a choice is being made.

>People are unique in the sense that we like to think we have control over our own life paths. We have free will, and we use it, and we have this wonderful ability to analyze those choices with game theory and such. But we’re still animals

Your definition of altruism takes for granted that choice exists, which you acknowledge may be an illusion by the end of your comment. So, no, if choice could be an illusion, and altruism still exists, then altruism does not imply that a choice is being made. It's just another instinct, one that we mainly/only clearly see in social animals.

There are evolutionary models that show altruism evolved because it does offer an evolutionary advantage in the way you claim. But as evidenced in the real world, it is only advantageous in a limited amount. Too much altruism leads to the the individual being taken advantage of and losing out.

Yes, if you can't find a mate, then helping with your neices and nephews makes evolutionary sense. But statistically speaking, you (and your close genetic family) are better off with additional lottery tickets rather than "better" lottery tickets.

If you have 4 neices and nephews that you boost to a 50/50 chance of "success" then there's a 0.0625% chance none of them succeeds. If you have your own 2 kids, and that reduces everyone to a 40% chance of success, then there's only a 0.004096% chance that none of them succeeds. That's a whole order of magnitude difference. Obviously, these numbers are for example purposes. But it's reasonable to assume that a reasonable amount of additional support from an aunt or uncle is only going to offer a small boost in outcomes on average.

Mr. Burns channeling your siblings who actually have children

It's more like, "Hint, don't show".

It's basically the same idea as, "The monster stops being scary once you get a clear look at it". Sometimes the best thing you can do is just give enough to spark the audience's imagination, and let them entertain themselves.

This is such an, "I don't understand how the world works" comment. People aren't spread evenly across the country. There are huge swathes of the country with almost no people at all, and other parts with a million people in a few square miles. You don't just put things in the middle of nowhere where there aren't enough people to justify it. You put in where there are already lots of people to use/pay for/run/enjoy/whatever it.

Compared to how much of the economy they actually account for, cities are vastly under-invested in. Cities subsidize suburbs and rural areas (if you account for where people in the suburbs actually work), and could actually do so just as much, while being nicer themselves, if people like you weren't constantly demanding mal-investment that makes the whole pie smaller for everyone.