Artificial means 'made by human hands'; it is cognate to artifice. It has aquired a negative connotation over the years as artificial flavours and products have been created, but it still retains some of its old splendour.
You make a good point, though: is an AI an intelligence? If it is, then 'artificial intelligence' is the appropriate term. OTOH, if it is not, if it is merely a program which aids a human (even in the absence of said human), then it is more properly called an 'automated intelligence,' as you point out.
The one is the strong AI position, the other the weak AI position. Having just spent a semester working on AI, I must say that I consider the strong AI position bollocks, for all sorts of philosophical, mathematical and practical reasons.
Perhaps I will start calling it 'automated intelligence.'
My father was in the Navy; your list is pretty funny. For those who are not familiar with it, a typical Navy cruise is 3-6 months. Sub cruises in my (very limited) experience can be as long as a year.
...I miss the birth of my childern[sic].
My father was off the coast of Bahrain IIRC when the first of my brothers was born. C'est la vie.
...I don't make my son's little league game.
The sub captain who lived across the street was gone for a year. Any fellow in the Navy has missed these things. For that matter, just about anybody who has ever travelled for business has.
...I am late for my wedding.
Well, my parents' wedding was early due to my father shipping out early; it was either February or October.
...I forget my mother's birthday.
I do this anyway. Dashed embarassing, let me tell you. Especially 'cause I didn't remember until a week later. Man I was ashamed.
...I don't stop to smell the first flower of spring.
...I don't return the smile of a stranger's child.
...I allow money to set my heart's priorities.
Gag me with ten types of spoon.
Oh, and money is a priority; it's just not the first priority. Even, I daresay, for you.
Why wouldn't they both be able to eat? Observe the counter-argument:
Guns can kill living things
Animals are living things
By 1 & 2, guns can kill animals
If dead, some animals are edible
Food is edible stuff
By 4 & 5, if dead, some animals are food
By 3 & 6, a gun can convert an animal into food
Why did I format it this way? Because I'm bored.
Seriously, though, your argument falls apart, because it assumes a constant world in which either part of the population has edible resources ('food') and part has confiscatory resources ('guns'), or the population is all fed, or it is all armed. Your argument is that the second world is better than the first or third. True, but it is not possible. We live in the first world, and--by an argument whose validity you seem to accept--in that world those who can take eat and those who cannot starve.
The upshot is that if any man is to be secure, he must either ensure that all men are safe and secure, or that he is able to prevent them from living at his expense. Since the first is impossible, the second is the only viable alternative.
When I was in Europe our (English) guide gave us some excellent advice: in most countries, address people in English as almost everyone knows it. IN France, howaver, use French, no matter how borken or awful. It's better to say 'sill vooz plate' than to use the English. The French will then quite cheerfully reply in English. BUt woe betide you if you use English first.
Dealing with the French is the art of stroking the ego. 'Yes, yes, I know you've not won a decent war since the middle ages, but who's counting?'
Actually, I quite loved France, save that it seems the national sport is being closed. I thought I had a poor work ethic...
I guess you'd rather fix the potholes in your street yourself too, huh?
He left out road repairs in his comment; you deftly ignored the remark about health care and education, two things best left to the market. I tend to agree that road repairs are best paid for by the gov't, and I imagine most libertarians would.
In the case of some things, such as roads, military, police (to the extent that we even need police) &c, gov't is the best way of doing it. But for many other things, e.g. education, health care, charity, conservation(1) &c, it's better to do things otherwise.
1. Note the number of evnironmentalists who now purchase tracts of land to preserve them. In this way they may immediately achieve their goals. This also makes them put their money where there mouths are; too often activists like to pass laws which others finance.
Too late. The government of the USA has long since ceased to be any sort of government of, by or for the people. Our fundamental rights have been so long trampled that we cannot win them back. Just try to take on the armed might of the FBI with your.45; good luck. The days when a band of rebels could take on an empire are long gone.
Our only hope is to cut their funding. Hence, no new taxes on anything, and start cutting taxes on everything we can. Not that I think that it will work. But it can't hurt too much.
Modern man is too enamoured of his bread and circuses to overthrow his government. As long as he gets his fancy parades, welfar check and 'free' health care, he's happy. Never mind that he's a slave in his own land. Huxley was right...
The jury system arose exactly because judges are not impartial. After a lifetime of seeing the scum of the earth, one is bound to ebcome a bit blasé about the whole business. The jury system is one of the basic foundations of the entire Anglo-American legal system. That said, it's never been an absolute right in either country. In the U.S., any matter of less than $20 does not carry the right to trial by jury. I understand that minor offenses in Britain are the same. And of course the defendant can waive that right if he so desires.
Having recently served on a jury in a first-degree murder case (luckily not capital, although that'd not have affected my decision one bit), I can say conclusively that we did our utmost to be fair and impartial. At the end of the trial, when we were allowed to discuss the matter, we all agreed right away that, although we disliked the boy intensely, we had to do right by him and be unbiased. We went over each line of the charges, sometimes debating for four hours on one point. You might be surprised at the common man; I know I was.
I do not believe in democracy. I am not a great fan of the American system. But I have always approved of the jury system, and am now more convinced than ever. If we, who each on our own mighthave sent the boy to the block, could be fair and impartial, just about anyone can.
Ps.: For the curious, the boy had helped his best friend kill his (the best friend's) mother, clean up their flat and acquire supplies to dispose of the body. We found him guilty of conspiracy to commit first degree murder, first degree murder (as a complicitor, which means that he did not actually kill her, but is legally guilty for her death) and accessory after the fact to first degree murder. Due to his age at the time of the crime (17 years old), he was not executed but rather given life without possibility of parole. At times I feel sorry for him; his life is now an utter waste--why was he even born? But he did do it to himself.
I don't consider grocery shopping much of an experience, I imagine that most of us who'd rather not go to the store feel the same way. As a Starving College Student(tm), grocery shopping is one of my few entertainments. It's fun to go through and look at what produce is being offered this week, what's been discontinued, what interesting things have been imported from Europe, what the latest cheeses are &c.
I enjoy it a lot. But then I also like dropping in any sort of store and looking around. I don't buy much, but I like to look. I can think of few things more fun than to stroll around town, dropping in tobacconists, luggage-merchants, glaziers, furniture stores, antique shops &c. You cannot evaluate a tobacco online (I know; I just bought a sampler pack from Cornell and Diehl; you need to smell it. You cannot be sure of a tie unless you see it in person and feel the quality of the silk, see how the light reflects off of it and make sure it works with your style of shirt.
I love the web and the net (remember when people realised they are different?), but for information, not for shopping.
I strongly disagreed with the actions of the US in regards to Serbia. I happen to think that our war was an international crime and I hope that at some point in time those responsible are brought to justice for it (not bloody likely, though). I'm not very nationalistic; I'm not terribly fond of my country.
OTOH, I would probably enlist, and would definitely serve if drafted, should we become involved in a serious war, not because I particularly want to, but because it is my duty. If I were an Iraqi, I would probably do the same (Hussein is a bastard, but he is really no worse than 3 thousand years of caliphs, sheiks, emperors and kings have been). I don't know what I would have done as a German; to fight for Germany would have meant to support the evil Nazis, while to betray the Nazis would be to betray my country and my people. I would probably have attempted to leave the country long before war.
And I would never, ever, ever perform an action which would lead to the deaths of soldiers of the United States. Treason is rightfully a capital offense. A man who betrays his country is a serpent which should be destroyed. If one will betray his country, why not his friends or his family? He is untrustworthy; his very existence is an insult to honest men. I count a fruit fly's life of greater value than his.
But the point that I see in the article is the simple presentation of the Internet as a medium where "war crimes" can be committed. This, of course, is absurd...
Hardly. If that Nazi newspaper publisher (forget his name; Streicher perh; I believe the paper was The Storm or something similar) could be hung for war crimes, so can someone who commits a war crime over the Internet, which is just one more communications medium. It is not at all absurd to say that the Internet can be a medium for war crimes; no more than to say that it can be a medium for ordinary crime, or for storing the works of Shakespeare.
A medium is neutral and, like almost all neutral things, can be put to good or bad uses.
In war, brutality already reigns supreme. A set of rules for it is silly and pointless.
There are degrees of brutality. It is better to constrain the brutality, to minimise it, to eliminate what can be avoided and channel what cannot, than to wage all-out brutal and deadly warfare. Best not to have wars, of course, but that's hardly realistic. As long as we walk the earth there will be war.
The question is not one of black and white. Like nearly everything, it is a continuum of greys.
I hate to be the one to point this out to you, but this finding was funded by the Pentagon to discern whether or not they can utilise such methods. They'd love to, as their job is to utilise every legal means to win wars. Now that they have decided that it is illegal, they will refrain from doing it. Awfully decent of them, eh?
This has naught to do with censorship and everything to do with international law.
And if there's any justice in this world you would be shot as a traitor. Harming military interests means harming the boys who are on the ground fighting for their lives. It's not their but rather the government's.
It's one thing to work within the system to replace a government with which you disagree. It's another thing entirely to jeapordise the lives of your fellow countrymen. Leave that sort of thing to unprintables like Hanoi Jane.
The fact that one of the world's most powerful military forces is thinking COMPASSIONATELY rather than strategically should make you all sleep easier.
Hear hear! You would think that these people would be glad that our military care about decency in war.
I'm a United States Marine. I've been trained as to how disobeying the law of war makes the likelyhood of my dying on the field of battle greater, and likely more painful.
Good point: if we act brutally our enemies are more likely to do so. We would respond in kind and warfare would devolve into an ever more-dehumanising experience, worse than it already is. International law seeks to prevent this.
Winning is good. When fighting monsters, however, you must be careful not to become one yourself.
I could not have put it better myself.
By the way, it's good to see a Marine on Slashdot. I've a brother at the Academy who hopes to be a Marine pilot and an uncle who died on Iwo Jima. My father was a Naval officer and his father was a sailor in WWII. It's good to see someone else pointing out that the military are not evil.
The soldier is the chosen pawn of his government. In most modern countries, he is a soldier by choice. Even if he is unwilling, he is at the least the designated target for violence. A civilian is a non-combatant and thus not a suitable target for violence.
Killing is wrong regardless. But when it has become necessary to do wrong, it has also become necessary to set limits on that wrong. We as a society have decided that civilians should nto be shot or raped, nerve toxins or biological agents should not be released and that enemy leaders should not be impersonated in time of war. Pretty good decisions those.
`Diplomacy is war carried out by other means'
--Clausewitz
After all, what is the carrot of diplomacy without the stick of war? Sometimes one must resort to force. The pity is that those who fight the wars generally don't care all that much about what they are fighting for. It's the old men in power who send the young men to die.
We need to go back to the old system of the rulers leading the fight, or at least being on the battlefield somewhere. At least they might then exercise some judgement.
Propaganda is a strictly regulated affair in war. For example, I do not believe that a country's leadership may be made to appear as though they have surrendered; this is really just an application of existing law onto novel media.
It is also creative warfare to salt the enemy's land, sterilise the women and shoot the men. Hardly legal, though.
Hardly. Was WWII pointless? Can you think of a better way to have gotten old Adolf out of power? war is a nasty bloody mess, full of pain and suffering. It is one of the worst things to befall a people. OTOH, sometimes a peace can be worse than a war. Is it better to be slaves in peace or freemen in war?
War is...beyond reason or law.
That's the kind of thinking that creates atrocities. `War is beyond reason, therefore reason may be cast out the window.' `War is beyond law, therefore war is lawless.' The whole point of the Law of War is to constrain war; all's not fair in love and war. Back when that was true, prisoners were slaughtered and women raped. Nowadays we try our best to be a little bit more civilised. If we are driven by necessity to wage war, we try to salvage as much human dignity as we can from what is essentially animal slaughter.
Murder, which is generally considered the worst crime in society, is *legal* in a war.
That is the irony, isn't it? It is no little matter to take life. That is why there are rules and regulations surrounding the act. We must constrain war or it will overpower is. Killing is fun; how many of us love to play Quake? I know I do. But it is also about as wrong as you can get. If war were not regulated, it would very quickly get even more out of hand than it already is. Brutality would reign supreme and all would be sacrificed on the altar of Death.
War is very strictly regulated by international law (i.e. treaties). War is not in and of itself illegal; in fact, when you think about it the power of any government rests in its ability to wage war against its citizens (why do you pay your taxes? why don't you kill your annoying neighbor with the dog that barks incessantly?); that power is in most countries strictly regulated.
Watch Henry V sometime; it is really a courtroom drama; it's all about law.
Believe it or not, the Pentagon are very interested in this sort of thing, even to the point of considering things war crimes that are nto, technically, war crimes. We have made far too many enemies in the world to be able to give them any sort of ammunition to use against us.
Our military is a highly professional force which desires to keep the peace and, that failing, to prosecute a war within the bounds of acceptability. The Geneva Conventions (there are, I believe, several of them) specify exactly what forms of war are and are not allowed. We do not break these conventions, at least not when fighting an enemy who respects them.
This has at times placed us at a disadvantage. Witness the Japanese (I am not certain if they had even signed the Conventions) and the Vietnamese, both notorious for their war crimes. Both tortured and otherwise mistreated POWs, the Japanese because they had no respect for those who surrender (an understandable viewpoint, that) and the Vietnamese, who claimed that every POW was a civil criminal and therefore not a POW (completely indefensible IMHO). We tend not to do this sort of thing.
Yep, birth rates rise quite a bit 9 months after the lights go out, there is a large blizzard or any other thing which leaves people stuck with each otehr for any appreciable length of time. I often wonder how much it rises after three-day weekends, but those are too evenly spaced to be able to tell accurately, I would think.
A similar situation occurs in the Navy. All of my parent's friends kids were born with a few weeks of each other (I was 6 weeks premature, so predated the rest). This was nine months after the ship got in. It's really rather funny growing up in a Navy town; a lot of your friends have birthdays within two weeks of each other, then there are few.
I have even heard that rates are high in September from Christmas to New Year's. No idea if it's true, though.
There is already a penalty for having children: ahving to feed, clothe, shelter and educate them for 18 years.
If you want ZPG, feel free to not reproduce. While you're busily engaging in an empty life that, however fulfilling, will mean nothing the day after you die, others will be propagating themselves. Their memory and their genes will be preserved after their deaths.
I know of nothing sadder than only children who die childless. That entire line is dead once and forevermore, as if it had never existed. What's the point of that? You're born, you live and you die. Even an atheist (wh. I'm not) can live on through his progeny and theirs.
I plan on having as many children as my wife and my wallet allow me. I love my family; why would I let it die? I know a family of four boys, each with several children. It is truly a model for how a family should be. They all pool their money, so the lawyer and businessman supported the other two throughout the hard times. They have a kind of success and bond which few families in this day and age can dream of having.
But if you have no family, you have not even the chance. What a depressing thought.
Actually, IIRC we produce less garbage food and packaging than third world nations (e.g. Mexico), although they have much less packaging garbage. We have aseptic packaging, preservatives and other mechanisms to preserve our food so that we can actually eat it; they don't have them to the same extent and end up throwing up much more food than we do.
Now, as to other kinds of garbage, I imagine that we would have more, by simple virtue of having mroe things. But I cannot see how it hurts the world for us to convert a poisonous liquid (oil) into a non-toxic substance (plastic wrap) and throw it in a pit. It's actually the organic biodegradable things wh. are bad; they decompose into nasty toxic substances whereas plastic just sits there calmly hurting not a thing.
I recall a number once about a year's subscription to the NY Times taking up more landfill space than all the hamburger clamshells ever made, and being more of an environmental hazard to boot. And yet we still have the Times and no longer have the styrofoam shells but rather these nasty things which spill grease everywhere. Aah, progress...
Slashdot Mirror
Artificial means 'made by human hands'; it is cognate to artifice. It has aquired a negative connotation over the years as artificial flavours and products have been created, but it still retains some of its old splendour.
You make a good point, though: is an AI an intelligence? If it is, then 'artificial intelligence' is the appropriate term. OTOH, if it is not, if it is merely a program which aids a human (even in the absence of said human), then it is more properly called an 'automated intelligence,' as you point out.
The one is the strong AI position, the other the weak AI position. Having just spent a semester working on AI, I must say that I consider the strong AI position bollocks, for all sorts of philosophical, mathematical and practical reasons.
Perhaps I will start calling it 'automated intelligence.'
My father was in the Navy; your list is pretty funny. For those who are not familiar with it, a typical Navy cruise is 3-6 months. Sub cruises in my (very limited) experience can be as long as a year.
My father was off the coast of Bahrain IIRC when the first of my brothers was born. C'est la vie.
The sub captain who lived across the street was gone for a year. Any fellow in the Navy has missed these things. For that matter, just about anybody who has ever travelled for business has.
Well, my parents' wedding was early due to my father shipping out early; it was either February or October.
I do this anyway. Dashed embarassing, let me tell you. Especially 'cause I didn't remember until a week later. Man I was ashamed.
Gag me with ten types of spoon.
Oh, and money is a priority; it's just not the first priority. Even, I daresay, for you.
Actually, you can: wait until 31 December 2000. As everyone knows (and is sick of hearing) the third millennium begins 1 January 2001.
Interesting side note: Denver's millennium monument is not only marked with the wrong date but also spells millennium incorrectly.
Why did I format it this way? Because I'm bored.
Seriously, though, your argument falls apart, because it assumes a constant world in which either part of the population has edible resources ('food') and part has confiscatory resources ('guns'), or the population is all fed, or it is all armed. Your argument is that the second world is better than the first or third. True, but it is not possible. We live in the first world, and--by an argument whose validity you seem to accept--in that world those who can take eat and those who cannot starve.
The upshot is that if any man is to be secure, he must either ensure that all men are safe and secure, or that he is able to prevent them from living at his expense. Since the first is impossible, the second is the only viable alternative.
Pity, though; it'd be nice to feed everyone.
Dealing with the French is the art of stroking the ego. 'Yes, yes, I know you've not won a decent war since the middle ages, but who's counting?'
Actually, I quite loved France, save that it seems the national sport is being closed. I thought I had a poor work ethic...
He left out road repairs in his comment; you deftly ignored the remark about health care and education, two things best left to the market. I tend to agree that road repairs are best paid for by the gov't, and I imagine most libertarians would.
In the case of some things, such as roads, military, police (to the extent that we even need police) &c, gov't is the best way of doing it. But for many other things, e.g. education, health care, charity, conservation(1) &c, it's better to do things otherwise.
1. Note the number of evnironmentalists who now purchase tracts of land to preserve them. In this way they may immediately achieve their goals. This also makes them put their money where there mouths are; too often activists like to pass laws which others finance.
Our only hope is to cut their funding. Hence, no new taxes on anything, and start cutting taxes on everything we can. Not that I think that it will work. But it can't hurt too much.
Modern man is too enamoured of his bread and circuses to overthrow his government. As long as he gets his fancy parades, welfar check and 'free' health care, he's happy. Never mind that he's a slave in his own land. Huxley was right...
Having recently served on a jury in a first-degree murder case (luckily not capital, although that'd not have affected my decision one bit), I can say conclusively that we did our utmost to be fair and impartial. At the end of the trial, when we were allowed to discuss the matter, we all agreed right away that, although we disliked the boy intensely, we had to do right by him and be unbiased. We went over each line of the charges, sometimes debating for four hours on one point. You might be surprised at the common man; I know I was.
I do not believe in democracy. I am not a great fan of the American system. But I have always approved of the jury system, and am now more convinced than ever. If we, who each on our own mighthave sent the boy to the block, could be fair and impartial, just about anyone can.
Ps.: For the curious, the boy had helped his best friend kill his (the best friend's) mother, clean up their flat and acquire supplies to dispose of the body. We found him guilty of conspiracy to commit first degree murder, first degree murder (as a complicitor, which means that he did not actually kill her, but is legally guilty for her death) and accessory after the fact to first degree murder. Due to his age at the time of the crime (17 years old), he was not executed but rather given life without possibility of parole. At times I feel sorry for him; his life is now an utter waste--why was he even born? But he did do it to himself.
I enjoy it a lot. But then I also like dropping in any sort of store and looking around. I don't buy much, but I like to look. I can think of few things more fun than to stroll around town, dropping in tobacconists, luggage-merchants, glaziers, furniture stores, antique shops &c. You cannot evaluate a tobacco online (I know; I just bought a sampler pack from Cornell and Diehl; you need to smell it. You cannot be sure of a tie unless you see it in person and feel the quality of the silk, see how the light reflects off of it and make sure it works with your style of shirt.
I love the web and the net (remember when people realised they are different?), but for information, not for shopping.
OTOH, I would probably enlist, and would definitely serve if drafted, should we become involved in a serious war, not because I particularly want to, but because it is my duty. If I were an Iraqi, I would probably do the same (Hussein is a bastard, but he is really no worse than 3 thousand years of caliphs, sheiks, emperors and kings have been). I don't know what I would have done as a German; to fight for Germany would have meant to support the evil Nazis, while to betray the Nazis would be to betray my country and my people. I would probably have attempted to leave the country long before war.
And I would never, ever, ever perform an action which would lead to the deaths of soldiers of the United States. Treason is rightfully a capital offense. A man who betrays his country is a serpent which should be destroyed. If one will betray his country, why not his friends or his family? He is untrustworthy; his very existence is an insult to honest men. I count a fruit fly's life of greater value than his.
Hardly. If that Nazi newspaper publisher (forget his name; Streicher perh; I believe the paper was The Storm or something similar) could be hung for war crimes, so can someone who commits a war crime over the Internet, which is just one more communications medium. It is not at all absurd to say that the Internet can be a medium for war crimes; no more than to say that it can be a medium for ordinary crime, or for storing the works of Shakespeare.
A medium is neutral and, like almost all neutral things, can be put to good or bad uses.
There are degrees of brutality. It is better to constrain the brutality, to minimise it, to eliminate what can be avoided and channel what cannot, than to wage all-out brutal and deadly warfare. Best not to have wars, of course, but that's hardly realistic. As long as we walk the earth there will be war.
The question is not one of black and white. Like nearly everything, it is a continuum of greys.
This has naught to do with censorship and everything to do with international law.
It's one thing to work within the system to replace a government with which you disagree. It's another thing entirely to jeapordise the lives of your fellow countrymen. Leave that sort of thing to unprintables like Hanoi Jane.
Hear hear! You would think that these people would be glad that our military care about decency in war.
Good point: if we act brutally our enemies are more likely to do so. We would respond in kind and warfare would devolve into an ever more-dehumanising experience, worse than it already is. International law seeks to prevent this. I could not have put it better myself.By the way, it's good to see a Marine on Slashdot. I've a brother at the Academy who hopes to be a Marine pilot and an uncle who died on Iwo Jima. My father was a Naval officer and his father was a sailor in WWII. It's good to see someone else pointing out that the military are not evil.
Oorah!
Killing is wrong regardless. But when it has become necessary to do wrong, it has also become necessary to set limits on that wrong. We as a society have decided that civilians should nto be shot or raped, nerve toxins or biological agents should not be released and that enemy leaders should not be impersonated in time of war. Pretty good decisions those.
After all, what is the carrot of diplomacy without the stick of war? Sometimes one must resort to force. The pity is that those who fight the wars generally don't care all that much about what they are fighting for. It's the old men in power who send the young men to die.
We need to go back to the old system of the rulers leading the fight, or at least being on the battlefield somewhere. At least they might then exercise some judgement.
Which party to this whole turnip affair is named Baldrick?
It is also creative warfare to salt the enemy's land, sterilise the women and shoot the men. Hardly legal, though.
Not for me, thank you.
Watch Henry V sometime; it is really a courtroom drama; it's all about law.
Our military is a highly professional force which desires to keep the peace and, that failing, to prosecute a war within the bounds of acceptability. The Geneva Conventions (there are, I believe, several of them) specify exactly what forms of war are and are not allowed. We do not break these conventions, at least not when fighting an enemy who respects them.
This has at times placed us at a disadvantage. Witness the Japanese (I am not certain if they had even signed the Conventions) and the Vietnamese, both notorious for their war crimes. Both tortured and otherwise mistreated POWs, the Japanese because they had no respect for those who surrender (an understandable viewpoint, that) and the Vietnamese, who claimed that every POW was a civil criminal and therefore not a POW (completely indefensible IMHO). We tend not to do this sort of thing.
A similar situation occurs in the Navy. All of my parent's friends kids were born with a few weeks of each other (I was 6 weeks premature, so predated the rest). This was nine months after the ship got in. It's really rather funny growing up in a Navy town; a lot of your friends have birthdays within two weeks of each other, then there are few.
I have even heard that rates are high in September from Christmas to New Year's. No idea if it's true, though.
If you want ZPG, feel free to not reproduce. While you're busily engaging in an empty life that, however fulfilling, will mean nothing the day after you die, others will be propagating themselves. Their memory and their genes will be preserved after their deaths.
I know of nothing sadder than only children who die childless. That entire line is dead once and forevermore, as if it had never existed. What's the point of that? You're born, you live and you die. Even an atheist (wh. I'm not) can live on through his progeny and theirs.
I plan on having as many children as my wife and my wallet allow me. I love my family; why would I let it die? I know a family of four boys, each with several children. It is truly a model for how a family should be. They all pool their money, so the lawyer and businessman supported the other two throughout the hard times. They have a kind of success and bond which few families in this day and age can dream of having.
But if you have no family, you have not even the chance. What a depressing thought.
Now, as to other kinds of garbage, I imagine that we would have more, by simple virtue of having mroe things. But I cannot see how it hurts the world for us to convert a poisonous liquid (oil) into a non-toxic substance (plastic wrap) and throw it in a pit. It's actually the organic biodegradable things wh. are bad; they decompose into nasty toxic substances whereas plastic just sits there calmly hurting not a thing.
I recall a number once about a year's subscription to the NY Times taking up more landfill space than all the hamburger clamshells ever made, and being more of an environmental hazard to boot. And yet we still have the Times and no longer have the styrofoam shells but rather these nasty things which spill grease everywhere. Aah, progress...