Why are balding men having children?

[hairplz]

Simply why? Why would you do this to someone? I don't want my boy to look in my eyes after 20 years and tell me "Why dad? Why?" and point to his receding temples.

My parents are regretting giving birth to me (I made them regret) and I would feel **** if someone did the same to me.

Leave having children to those of great genetics (models, actors, etc..). The world is overpopulated already. You don't want to add another suicidal, unhappy and genetically inferior being to this already full world.

 

[Quantum Cat]

I believe in eugenics too. Only pure white people with Norwood 1's should be allowed to breed

 

[Benjamin36]

I was telling my Dad the other day about a friend of mine who when we were kids would look at the wedding picture of his parents on the wall (his father was bald in the picture already) and say "Look at my Dad, he didn't even have hair when he got married". My friend ended up with the same fate on his wedding day.

 

[Thom]

I believe in eugenics too. Only pure white people with Norwood 1's should be allowed to breed

I hope I'm right in detecting the sarcasm, sometimes hard in typing. What is Ghandi's parents had been rendered infertile due to their hair loss genes? A man who changed so many lives would had never been born due to something so trivial as hair loss.

Now I couldn't disagree with Lenin's parents being rendered infertile but that's different entirely. :innocent:

 

[blondguy]

And yet for some reason people keep replying to this guy. Rule 1 of the internet I leaned back when I was 13. DONT FEED THE TROLLS! Its a lot like the rules you have when going to the zoo :crazy:

 

[yadayada029]

I hope I'm right in detecting the sarcasm, sometimes hard in typing. What is Ghandi's parents had been rendered infertile due to their hair loss genes? A man who changed so many lives would had never been born due to something so trivial as hair loss.

Now I couldn't disagree with Lenin's parents being rendered infertile but that's different entirely. :innocent:

"...trivial as hair loss": an oft parroted conceit. Things matter because people believe they do. If we are to measure the amount something matters in time, money, stress, and social interactions, then hair, or by extension appearance, matters quite a lot. To say otherwise is to ignore objective reality. More to the point, if it were trivial you wouldn't be here, and this site would not exist.

To the OP, I suppose for different people some measure of a thing is of greater importance than other things.

 

[abcdefg]

A kid born today has like 10-15 years before they ever had a chance to start balding. I would easily take my chances in 10 years baldness will not be near the same problem it is today and that is an average view not even optimistic. At the least you will be preventing male pattern baldness if you want to.
Now I could understand wishing you were born 5 or 10 years later then you might have kept your hair but no way to change that.

 

[blondguy]

Thats one of my biggest fears. Not just with baldness, but what if by the time we are all super old science finds a way to extend youth (or at least the healthy years of live) but 20, 30 years. It will really suck because I will exist in the small window of humanity who will see how far medical science can take us, yet too old too benefit from it. And just left to bitterly sit in my old body as the young stay young.

 

[ben760]

i myself is considering not having children even if i had a daughter she would still carry the gene. for one bald guy having kids makes generation of bald men its endless. i dont want my son to blame me if his time comes and i dont see science has an answer to any hereditary conditions(baldness).

 

[Thom]

It is trivial when compared to the importance of life, and that is not just in the eye of the beholder. Obviously I am concerned with hair loss, but I would never espouse such nonsense as eugenics for something like losing hair.

It amazes me how much of Hitler's rhetoric has resurfaced not 60 years after his death. I get shudders any time I hear someone talking in support of eugenics.

 

[Gregint]

I think a responsible, well-regulated eugenics program could be beneficial to society. I think you're making a mistake rejecting all aspects of eugenics simply because it is associated with some unsavory individuals who used its ideas to promote horrific policies of genocide and mass murder. I don't see what is so objectionable about increasing the general populace's intelligence and eradicating or reducing certain genetic diseases through eugenics. I think baldness is a kind of stupid thing to want to eliminate from the gene pool though. It's purely a cosmetic problem (although bald men do have higher rates of cardiovascular problems).

 

[Thom]

It is my personal opinion that the cardiovascular problems have no relation to baldness other than they both are linked to higher testosterone. The reason I make the comparison to the Nazi's eugenics program is that, even on a smaller scale it didn't work. They sought out the "cream of the crop" for selective mating: athletes, intellects, low rate of diseases throughout their lineage, yet their offspring did not all benefit from this. As it is with all life, their offspring were not perfect, not all intelligent, and not all physically fit. Therefore you will not increase the intelligence levels through eugenics, life will not be controlled like that and why would we want it to be? Diversity is the spice of life and someone with and IQ of 80 has just as much of a role to play as someone with an IQ of 120.

Do you think these super-intelligent offspring would want to work any of the blue-collar jobs that are necessary? I seriously doubt it.

 

[Gregint]

I would never advocate limiting reproduction in order to produce a super race or anything. Intelligence is largely inheritable, though, so maybe not allowing retarded people to reproduce wouldn't be such a bad idea. Or perhaps we should just proceed with a campaign of extermination of those with severe intellectual impairment so as to preclude their reproduction. I think a lot of the finasteride users on here claiming to suffer from severe, debilitating side effects are genetically defective retards who the world would be better off without.

Have you seen this? It's a comedy, but it kind of touches upon what we're talking about http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4da_1258457760&comments=1

 

[Thom]

I can't see it as I'm typing from my university computer lab. No offense, but views like yours scare me. While we're on that, Hitler advocated, and put into effect, the extermination of mentally handicapped children...just as the ancient Spartans would throw their deformed babies off of a cliff or out to the wolves. Have you ever talked to someone with downsyndrome? Some of the sweetest and happiest people you were ever to meet. Who's to say their life is invalid? Furthermore, retardation is not born of two handicapped people mating, it comes from healthy normal couples...or sometimes from things that happened to the mother such as her lifestyle choices or an injury.

If views such as yours were to be put into effect you should worry about more than mentally handicapped people. Often persecutions build up until those deemed unfit to live and mate expand to broader catgories. Perhaps you have an injury and are unable to work? The government may decide that, since you are unable to contribute to society, you must be eradicated. You may plea for your life saying that it is not your fault and that you have a right to live, but your plea would fall on deaf ears as you were thought to be less than human at that point. It's a slippery slope.

In addition to that, your baseless fears of mentally handicapped producing more handicapped people is unfounded as most people with genetic handicaps such a downsyndrome are infertile.

 

[Gregint]

Fair, valid points. I'm pretty convinced now that you're right and I was wrong and that you can't really have a humane eugenics program. Still, I do find it somewhat unsettling when parents know that their child is going to have some sort of disease, but still proceed with the pregnancy.

 

[Thom]

Glad to see you're an open-minded individual. I understand your point, I would still have to child but yeah there's a lot of concern with those grey situations.

 

[blondguy]

Both my grandfathers died with full heads of hair, my Dad now in his late 60's is starting to shed a little. I may be thinning out young age, but just because one person in a family is balding does not mean so will their offspring or vise vera. Genetics is a complex thing, and not having kids is a stupid decision just because you think you can predict the future.

 

[yadayada029]

It is trivial when compared to the importance of life, and that is not just in the eye of the beholder. Obviously I am concerned with hair loss, but I would never espouse such nonsense as eugenics for something like losing hair.

It amazes me how much of Hitler's rhetoric has resurfaced not 60 years after his death. I get shudders any time I hear someone talking in support of eugenics.

What is the objective value in life that makes it important, if life is not merely subjectively valuable "in the eye of the beholder"? If all of existence, all the universe where to disappear in to oblivion...something like if a tree falls in a forest, but on the most grandiose scale possible. Why is it important that not happen?

 

[Thom]

I do not not understand how the value of a human life is subjective. Other animals do not love the way we do, are not self-aware the way we are, and are unable to advance the way we can. If we lose our value of life than we are no more than animals. I used to somewhat feel the way you do but over time I gained empathy and compassion and it has greatly enriched my life. I'm not Mother Theresa, I just honestly care about others.

 

[yadayada029]

I do not not understand how the value of a human life is subjective. Other animals do not love the way we do, are not self-aware the way we are, and are unable to advance the way we can. If we lose our value of life than we are no more than animals. I used to somewhat feel the way you do but over time I gained empathy and compassion and it has greatly enriched my life. I'm not Mother Theresa, I just honestly care about others.

I didn't posit how I felt. I retorted with a question. Subjectivity vs objectivity is the difference between a thought relative to some number of people, versus an absolute value. An absolute would be something to the effect of "all things in their composition contain atoms." We presume this to be true, beyond a reasonable doubt, because that is our scientific understanding of matter.

Saying, "life has value", is subjective because we can't know with specificity what value it has in absolute terms. You presented the statement on faith that value of life is universal, but we know that not to be true. Most of the value statements are circular because they have no provable objective statement of value. Statements of "live has value" may also take on faith that it has value because it is said that it does. Saying, for instance, my life has value because other need me fails the test because others do not apparently posses an absolute value either (in other words their existence is just as transient, and no obvious purpose is apparent). Similarly, value relative to some understanding of a god-thing is not provable. Life may in fact be meaningless and have no value, it maybe the most valuable thing, or it may only be as valuable as a person believes it to be to themselves.

It is a ponderous topic, the meaning and, or, the value of life. It is not provable that life has absolute value. If it means something to you, it is proper to say that it has some value to you, but that it may have lesser, or no, value to someone else. I don't begrudge anyone their feelings, one way or another. The OP's feeling, and those a like, are valid simply on the fact they are feeling them. Whether they are trivializing something valuable, I don't know the answer too that. It's an interesting topic though.

So, what makes life important?