Before we can have better reporting we must have a better-educated population, — Athena

We already have good reporting; it just doesn't get sufficient support.

Publically owned TV seems to be doing better than privately owned stations but often they are too opinionated and one-sided and flat-out rude talking over the person they are interviewing. — Athena

I haven't seen any of the PBS reporters be opinionated (unless it was an editorial comment), one-sided (unless it was coverage of one specific POV to balance coverage of a different one) or rude to an interviewee, but I've sure seen some ducking and weaving to avoid giving a straight answer.

The values that support charismatic leaders. — Athena

News media are not there to teach values. They're there to impart accurate information. Children's programs are supposed to illustrate values, virtues and social responsibility, and I think public children's programming does that.
Leaders don't need "charisma", whatever that is; they need integrity, dedication, stamina and the good sense to surround themselves with knowledgeable advisors and competent administrators.

Animals have no moral standing in a human moral philosophy. — Echarmion

They have no standing in some human moral philosophies. In other systems of human thought, they are valued, sometimes revered. Human philosophy is not monolithic or permanent.
Humans tend to value, protect, nourish and cherish infants, even though those little blobs of nascent humanity can't negotiate their way out of a wet nappie. They can, however, let their distress be known. So can elephants. How humans respond to each kind of distress depends on the human's reason/emotion/instinct formed attitude.

Therefore, your empathy is entirely reason-based and transactional. If there were no interdependence of life then you would see no basis for the sanctity of life. — chiknsld

Two sentences being in the same paragraph doesn't make one contingent on the other.
I would prefer humanity at large to understand its dependence on nature, to disarm all its soldiers, to redistribute the world's resources more equitably, to stop burning oil, and also to show more empathy. In this instance, the preference I expressed was reason over religion - not reason to preclude morality from whatever source.
I said, I don't like the word 'sanctity'. Life has no objective value, no inherent holiness: it's messy, often humiliating, often painful, and sometimes wonderful. It's precious to the one living it, no matter what body they're wearing. I would prefer that all my fellow humans appreciated it more.

If we take away all your reasoning then you no longer have any justification for empathy and compassion. — chiknsld

Incorrect. I have both - and so, very probably - have you. When I'm in the last phases of Alzheimers, when I can no longer remember her name, I shall still be fond of my cat.

You do not believe in a superimposed duty to protect animals but rather a self-reasoned duty. — chiknsld

By whom or what power would such a duty be superimposed? In the absence of a god to keep us from doing too much harm, we have only our reason and emotion to guide us.

I disagree that morality is completely dependent upon reason, — chiknsld

I didn't say it was. I said ethics are societal and cultural. Societies are made of people who all have reason, emotion, instincts and biological drives. Their laws are determined by their collective world-view, and that has grown out of their cultural development over time. It's dynamic, interactive, reactive, malleable.

They can't talk. So they cannot contribute to any negotiation about the accepted code of behaviour. — Echarmion

There is no negotiation. Human law applies to the behaviour of humans toward other humans of their own tribe, toward other humans from different tribes, toward animals, their gods, their environment, resources and property.

Yes, but that means that animals could only ever be the objects of that law, not the subjects. — Echarmion

Of human laws, yes. Of the laws of their own species, they're subjects.

But that is true for all animals. So long as they come under human law, they can only ever be treated as "slaves" - that is objects — Echarmion

It is true of domestic animals. The wild ones are not under human law; they have their own. We do have the power to invade their territory, attack, kill and enslave them. We have given ourselves that right. Of course it was wrong, short-sighted and ultimately self-destructive of humans to do that, but they still do.

You can have an obligation to treat animals well, but that obligation is fundamentally owed to other humans, not to the animal. — Echarmion

That is the situation. Lions make laws to govern lion behaviour. They owe nothing to zebras... except their own survival: if they hunt down all the zebras, they will starve, but lions can't know this. Humans make laws to govern human behaviour. We have no obligation to other species, except whatever obligation we impose on ourselves, and we are capable of knowing that our lives depend on them.

Are animal rights really animal rights if no actual (non-human) animals are involved on either side of the process? — Echarmion

How do you mean they're not involved? And what process has two sides? Within each group of social animals, there is an accepted code of behaviour, just as there is in human groups. Wolf law doesn't extend to crow society; meerkat rules don't include zebra herds; human law presides over human behaviour.
In order to "exercise his rights", all a crocodile has to do is live in his swamp, as his ancestors always did; the human law simply prohibits humans from dumping toxic waste into his swamp. Domestic animals are a diffeernt matter: they are no longer governed by the natural law of their species, because we have altered their evolution and living conditions. They must come under human law: so long as they are enslaved, their masters must answer for their actions - and their masters are responsible for their welfare.

Ethically speaking (your preferences)? — chiknsld

Not ethically speaking; just my personal preference. Ethics are societal and cultural; most human moral codes do not afford rights to other species, though the modern, more enlightened legal codes do place some official limits on how their citizen treat other animals. Those laws were no easy matter to legislate!

But things have changed through history, albeit slowly and in a piecemeal fashion, and laws to protect animals against abuses were brought into effect.

But then, laws made by man can be broken and revoked by man.

This is why linguists work with cognitive scientists, biologists, doctors, neuroscientists and why all scientists work with pure mathematicians, philosophers, and logicians from time to time (more often during paradigm shifts). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, that's fine for PhD work; it seems a little over the top for a simple conversation.

I don't think that analogy fits. We're talking about how to understand how language works philosophically, something like: "how does language convey meaning." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not. I'm talking about how language is altered, adapted, specialized and perverted over time.

"why can't x understand me when I say y and how do I make them understand?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

That was certainly one of the questions.

The philosophical view is more like the question: "how does my car work?" And yes, for that question, chemistry, the history of automobile development, mechanics, thermodynamics, etc. are all relevant parts of a complete explanation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

When I take my car to a garage, I never ask the mechanic any questions about chemistry or history. At $60/hour, I couldn't afford to, even I were confident that he knows those things. All i need him to know is how this particular engine operates, why it doesn't, and how to rectify the issue.

When dealing with emergent phenomena, it helps to know what they emerge from. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Language has already emerged. We have a pretty good idea where it came from and how it developed over time. We have a pretty good reconstruction of the growth and mutation of religious beliefs. We can observe how the latter distorts the former. We are already where we are, not at the dawn of time, or the differentiation of hominids or the introduction of supernatural ideation and heiratic usage.
Why go back to the making of the first wheel to figure out why your car malfunctions?

That is, if cause and effect are understandable in terms of logic, and the mind is the product of nature, the the development of "irrational," beliefs is, in its own way, rational. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, then. How does that rational irrationality relate to the meaning of words?

The ones who benefit from injustice don't always speak out against it. From antiquity through the American Civil War, how many slave owners spoke out against the unfairness of slavery and yet owned slaves? — Count Timothy von Icarus

A few - just the ones with a stronger affinity to justice than to self-interest - i.e. the ones who both recognized and admitted an injustice. Of course, the next logical step would be to free their own slaves and campaign against the institution, but even fewer people have that much resolve.

When person A says "I want justice," they really mean "I want justice in line with my values and my worldview." When person B says "I want justice" they also mean the same. — PhilosophyRunner

That's kind of what I did say. They define the word according to their values. In most people's minds, justice has roughly the same meaning in the abstract, but the value systems or world-views interpret the purpose and administration of justice differently. To a liberal progressive, it means judging an act in its social, economic and psychological context and allowing for mitigating circumstances. A religious conservative believes in punishment equal to or greater than the crime, regardless of other conditions; for a Native American, it means restoring harmony to the community; to some Christians, it means healing the rift an act has created and leaving judgment to God.

And they do seem to have an underlying logic, to be something necessary rather than contingent— a solution to the game of survival. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course that's true. But nature and logic are not central to most human belief-systems; some belief-systems are, in fact, hostile to nature and all that is natural to a human animal. In fact, some go so far as to deny evolution and many ignore all the obvious similarities between humans and other animals.

For instance, a well-known video shows monkeys throwing the offered cucumber at their trainer when a conspecific receives sweet grapes as a reward for the same task.

Up to that point, that's a sense of grievance. It only becomes a sense of justice when it's reciprocal. Did the unfairly rewarded monkeys throw the grapes at the trainer because the other group got cucumber? In my world-view, "fair" means equitable and "justice" means a fair judgment of persons and acts, according to all available evidence. In some world-views, it would be unfair to give to a servant what is due to a master, or accord to a lesser ethnicity or gender the rights and freedoms of the dominant ethnicity or gender.

But back to language:

“Social justice,” though, is a much older idea. In 1861, John Stuart Mill described it as the principle that “society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it.” A century later, Friedrich Hayek, the conservative economist, took a different view, calling social justice “the gravest threat” to the “values of a free civilization.”

Do you believe in the sanctity of life and in our responsibility to protect animals on earth? — chiknsld

I don't call it 'sanctity'. While I have no brief with spirituality, I don't think it's useful to couch ecological survival in religious terminology. Rather, I would prefer humans to reason their way to understanding the interdependence of life on Earth. Of course, I would also like them to have more empathy.
Also, I want to pick a nit with "our responsibility to protect animals": Which "we" is protecting which animals from what? The same "we" that's asked to protect is the only existential danger to other species. So, all we have to do, in theory, is stop killing them. If the majority of humans is unwilling to contemplate that option, there is no hope.

What is the responsibility of humanity at the point of destruction? — chiknsld

Moot point. We'll be running around, looking for something to hide under, screaming, as helpless as any duck or rabbit. The responsibility should have kicked in a long time ago - or rather, it should never have been abandoned.

what's stopping people who are not the leaders and would-be leaders from seeing that ideas or meanings are distorted or misrepresented? — Moliere

The desire to believe their faction's version of reality. The minions are less interested in accurate information than in reassurance and the promise of being made great again - whether they ever had been anything but puny or not.

but how does this deliberate distortion become a part of the common lexicon such that people cannot talk? — Moliere

On the contrary! Jingo gives them a much louder, more persuasive collective voice than their individual intellect ever could have. Yelling slogans makes people feel strong.

I am interested in figuring out a framework for people with different politics, values, etc to communicate effectively with each other, and I see this as one of the biggest stumbling blocks. — PhilosophyRunner

Try peace and prosperity. The easiest way to keep the polity at one another's throats, so they don't notice you're picking their pockets, is to keep shouting "Boo!" The terrists are coming! The migrants want you wimmin and your jabs! The commies will take all your stuff! Bad weather is a Chinese plot! Vaccines will make you sterile! Democrats want to sell your kiddies! Anxious people lash out in whatever direction somebody points to a cause of all their troubles. (Especially in countries where education and news media are controlled by the same interest group as the economy and law enforcement.)

When people feel secure and have the leisure to inform themselves, they tend to become far more tolerant, more interested in maintaining equilibrium.

I think it would work better if the electorate all applied to be electors, registering to vote essentially, and then we randomly pick a subset, and have them go through the process. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why divide into subgroups and go through a process? Why not simply choose officials as we do jurors? From a pool of all eligible voters, pick so many representatives per region to serve a term - say two years - staggered, so that half the governing body has a year's experience when the other half comes in.
(Exempt the infirm, nursing mothers and anyone currently involved in a vital project that would flounder without them; those with careers would have their position saved for their return.) Pay them the same salary they would normally earn, plus standard accommodation and transportation.

Of course, this presupposes a robust and competent civil service and expert advisors over whom the officials have no power; all the administrators would have to do is set policy that best represents the interests of their fellow citizens.

why does disagreement seem to distort meaning to a point that we no longer mean the same things, and are talking past one another? — Moliere

There is an element of that when disagreement is over some fundamental concept, like the equality of citizens or what the cardinal sins and virtues are. In that kind of situation, words like "right" and "justice" and "value" have the same linguistic root yet represent different ideas.
In most cases, though, I don't think it's the disagreement itself that alters the meaning of language, but rather the leaders and would-be leaders of a faction, who deliberately distort and misrepresent ideas in order to manipulate their followers. So the two factions still agree on what a "table" is, they have very different motives for pounding on it.

Okay. Not sure how much discussion and consideration 7-9 could get done in 2 hours. Surely, they would have to study the applicants' resume and record before they came to the meeting and reflect on what was said by all the other delegates afterward.
And that's just for president. What about all the other elected offices?
And those professional reviewers?

Anyway, it might be better than the present US electoral process, but I can't quite picture it working. I think more efficient systems can be devised.

Heh, then I'd say we're in a conundrum: at what point is there not enough overlap? — Moliere

The American Republican and Democratic core have already arrived there.

Is it just more like a feeling of frustration which we give into, and so the beginnings of a social divide starts, and eventually -- over time and practice -- the groups evolve differently? — Moliere

They diverge, yes. Whether they evolve, I don't know. The Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Britons did meld to become British; the Normans overcame the communication gap and went on to become English. The Welsh learned English, but remained a separate identity. It all depends on how history devolves from the point of contact, or the point of divergence.

What enables us to learn another language, or to understand a miscommunication? — Moliere

The capacity and willingness to learn. An interest in the other group and its culture... or a benefit in interactions with that other group.

I don't think meaning is mental. — Moliere

Well, it's not physical or spiritual... Language is one of the processes the brain carries out, because the kidneys and thyroid can't think.

Or at least, if meaning is public, you get into some weird thoughts about the mental then -- like that the mental is also public, — Moliere

Yes, we're capable of weird thoughts, even bizarre ones. Why would you need to share a brain, or compromise your individual identity, in order to partake in a common pool of words and their conventional usage? What part of your identity do you sacrifice by drawing water from a communal well?

Part of my background thoughts is that meaning is a part of the world, and overflows our attempt to grasp it -- and language is that very attempt to solidify, in thought, what can't be solidified in thought. — Moliere

That's way-out metaphysical for a pedestrian mind like mine.

It seems cumbersome and quite onerous for the prospective electors: the ones who are not finally chosen will have had to spend an inordinate amount of time on the process and have nothing to show for it. I can't imagine why someone would volunteer for that.

Why not do away with electors altogether? It was never a good idea.

At a certain point we don't speak the same language. It becomes Middle English or German or some such. — Moliere

No, it doesn't: neither of those peoples would understand a word of it. It becomes jargon, code, doubletalk, jingo, financial hocus-pocus, hieratic, moneyspeak, propaganda, newscaster parrot, hype, slang, dialect and nonsense.

But are you and I speaking the same language in this series of posts? — Moliere

There is a large enough overlap to call it the same language, yes. It's not usual for all speakers of a language to be familiar with its entire vocabulary, and it is quite common for each party in a conversation to apply a word as it is used in a different discipline.

Maybe the better question is -- how is it, given that meaning is public, that we understand novel uses? — Moliere

The agility of the human mind. We apply associations and imagination to accommodate variation. We can usually correct quite accurately for errors on spelling and regional difference in pronunciation, as well as discern the merits of creative linguistic construction - hence the appreciation of poetry and humour.

There's a stability there which is the reason we are tempted by the metaphor of the Public Shelf of Meaning, or in more sophisticated prose, metaphysical Propositions. — Moliere

In truth, I have never heard 'the public shelf' reference before, and I have no idea what the 'metaphysical proposition' is. So, here we have a failure to communicate. For me, language use is not a philosophical issue; it's as simple and pragmatic as the several uses of a hammer.

Given that meaning is public -- for what reasons do we disagree over meaning? — Moliere

Meaning may be public - that is, a language used by many people consists of a vocabulary. But its distribution is not egalitarian. Different classes have access to more or less education, more or less sophisticated concepts and therefore different ways of using language, different applications for the same word. Specialized occupations also have specialized words and applications even for common words, while the general public has little access to those specialized forms of communication. Language is distorted by financial and covert interest groups who deliberately exclude members of the public from their communications. Some economic and political groups also deform the common language in order to manipulate and mislead the public. And some slight innovations, such as a play on words or metaphor, are introduced in popular entertainment and art.

In an era of fast-evolving technologies and mass communication, these intentional distortions, as well as unintended misunderstandings, from several sources at once, can spread far more rapidly than they could have even a century ago - over a far larger population that incorrectly believes it owns and speaks a single language.

Is the right question "why do we say the same things?" or "why do we say new things?" ?

What's up with this question of meaning, linguistically? — Moliere

I will try to answer that first, uninfluenced by other responses, then read the rest of the thread.

The purpose of language is communication. In the early development of human language, this communication was minimal as to vocabulary and grammatical structure, but vital, as to its function. "Run" may have been the first word ever spoken. The listener who not understand its meaning was eaten by a saber-toothed tiger and left fewer progeny than the ones who did understand it. In order to optimize clan survival, language was standardized within the group, so that all members would respond appropriately to warnings, reprimands, hunting deployment instructions and food allocation.

Thereafter, language grew, expanded to functions beyond the immediate and pragmatic survival communications: to express feelings, tell stories, deliver messages between separated individuals, conduct transactions, convey more complex information regarding weather, geography, etc. Eventually, it branched out in specialized sophisticated human endeavours, such as commerce, warfare, science, religion, social interactions and art.

Only in the last two applications is there leeway for imprecision and creative usage. Those two applications adapt over time through innovative uses of language which become popular, and also through influence from other cultures. The scientific, military and economic applications expand and change as new knowledge is gained, as technology is invented, as transactions multiply: new things, processes and relations must be named.

All of these evolutionary changes are possible without disrupting communication, only as long as they take place logically (there is a need for a new word, a comprehensible reason for an adjustment, and consensus among the primary users of the jargon) and gradually (so that the users of the language have time to learn the new application.) Otherwise, Babel ensues.

his is where I quote Socrates on knowing — schopenhauer1

Or, rather, Plato, quoting Socrates, according to Plato.

Okay.

But that is selecting for cultural practice rather than biological cognitive module. — schopenhauer1

If you're sure, you're sure.

As per the EP thread, the process for reproduction is largely learned, not innate. — schopenhauer1

How would that work? Chimpanzees do it instinctively, but then humans come along, have forgotten all about the instinct that drives so much animal behaviour, yet desire to perform an act for pleasure that they have to learn? From where would a culture materialize, if people didn't already reproduce? Why would religions surround this one activity with so much taboo if people were devoid of the animal drive?

Because birds and mammals display various elaborate behaviors, that must mean our elaborate behaviors come from the same origin. — schopenhauer1

No. Because humans have the same origin as birds and mammals. Because the drive to replicate our genetic material is innate, we behave like all the other terrestrial creatures that have the same drive.

How can we really compare? — schopenhauer1

I'm not comparing behaviours; I'm pointing out the evolutionary antecedents. Having a greater degree of cognitive flexibility doesn't exempt an entire species from biology.

There is nothing inherent in the desire for (children). — schopenhauer1

Then why do stags and rams bash one another's brains out for the privilege? Why do peacocks and lyre birds encumber themselves with those ridiculous tails? The genetic imperative is far, far older than humans. True, we have produced some individuals who resist the impulse and even a few who never experience it at all, but I think we are a minority. And you're right, I can't prove it.

Also, the loss of it, is not going to implode our psychological makeup and make us bomb-throwing nihilists or even suicidals. — schopenhauer1

Not the bomb-throwing part, probably - unless someone convinces the disappointed would-be parents that a specific agency is responsible.
But suicide, yes, that happens.

And anyways, that fear isn't really a thing if the very achievement is no longer an option for anyone — schopenhauer1

That just makes it a shared grief, which can quite possibly lead to mass hysteria - which can end anywhere.

I happen not to have procreated, by choice, so I'm not projecting my own feelings onto other people. I've seen the effects of the desire, the fulfillment of that desire and the frustration of failure on other people. It's real.

The dream to do X is conceptual and there is anything inherently different about this desire other than cultural cues which is my point. — schopenhauer1

No, it's not like Dream X and it's not culture-dependent. That's why population control initiatives never work from the top down. Look how crazy the Chinese got when they were restricted to one child per couple. Their preference for boys was cultural, but they didn't stop having unauthorized babies, any more than Indian men signed up for vasectomies. The fear of infertility is far more visceral and less intellectual than the desire to fly or be famous. It's often a consuming obsession like religion and patriotism. Those widely-held obsessions drive a good deal of human behaviour, both individual and collective. So I don't get your point or how it negates the premise of the book.
(I should probably have read the book before I commented.)

People wouldn't save or make plans for a future child, — schopenhauer1

They do so! I've witnessed it close up, young couples laying elaborate plans for the babies they intended to produce.

but would that put someone in existential despair — schopenhauer1

Some people, yes. They can become quite obsessed with procreation.

It's simply a desire thwarted. — schopenhauer1

Desires thwarted account for a very great deal of human despair, mental illness, homicide and suicide.

Do people generally live their daily lives because of future generations? — schopenhauer1

Not for some hypothetical future generations. But they are strongly motivated by the welfare of their existing and hoped-for offspring. Fathers and mothers stick with jobs they hate in order to feed and shelter their children, save for their children's education, go into debt to give their child a wedding or vehicle or trip abroad or business opportunity. Obviously, the very existence of dependent young, especially infants, entails a great deal of extra work for parents, less leisure time and surplus energy.
Their behaviour is influenced, too: they drive more carefully, take fewer risks, drink less, try not to swear or set a bad example; hide their less laudable actions and fear their children's censure.
Not all parents, of course, but I think the majority do, to whatever extent their social position permits.

Collectively... That's a very difficult term for me, like the oft-heard "we". I don't see humanity as any kind of coherent collective. Individual communities, yes, even nations, ethnic blocs, professions can be coherent units moving in the same direction - for some brief period of time.
Many people do seem to ponder and wax passionate about the future of the human race as sort of nebulous concept embodied in strands of DNA. So concerned that they are seriously considering packing 'our' genetic material into space or to seed other planets. Or burying it in vaults to wait out the post-collapse era. Less fancifully, making strongholds in mountains or deep underground to survive the crisis, [url=https://www.archdaily.com/786293/6-structures-designed-to-save-humanity-from-itself[/url] or as the elite say, 'the event' - not just the super-rich [url=https://spyscape.com/article/billionaire-bunkers-the-worlds-most-exclusive-safe-houses[/url] but of the species. Some of the people working on these projects are making pots of money in the present, but many more are truly investing their effort in some distant future they won't live to see.
I may be cynical; they're obviously not. I have to think that's the 'selfish gene' at work.

And as the individual must keep in mind what others will say, so each generation must keep in mind what future generations will say. — Srap Tasmaner

The great and famous may be concerned about their legacy, as the rich are concerned about preserving or enshrining their fortune down through time - statues and art galleries with their name on. Most of us will not be remembered at all. Many of us have no descendants who will look at old curled photos and wonder who that old geezer or crone was - besides, today's digital images will have been erased much sooner. We don't expect any generations to sing about us. That won't change when there are no more generation to not sing.

What do you mean by this? Do we not have that now? — schopenhauer1

Of course we don't. The vast majority of us now are drones: wage- and debt-slaves, with no time for either hedonism (the prerogative of the rich and the adolescent children of their catspaws) or mysticism (the luxury of a few ascetics unencumbered by family).

Why would future people being born or not born dictate what the rich would do any more than currently — schopenhauer1

Not about future people in general; it's about more copies of themselves. They still have dynasties: their DNA goes on into the future, controlling their financial empires. The certainty that their (super-special aristocratic) blood-line comes to an end with them is very likely to refocus them on the now, on the eternal survival of their own or their immediate offspring's continuation.

(all practical things being equal.. as I said, the practical issues are worked out in this scenario as far as the economics). — schopenhauer1

Only that doesn't work. Nothing is equal and nothing is worked out.

Why does the idea of no children really change anything? — schopenhauer1

It doesn't. It's not some theoretical 'idea' of children that's being proposed; it's the certainty of no more children. In a matter of one decade, the effect would be altogether too tangible to ignore.

In any society we know, the idea cannot possibly exist in isolation.
If it could be isolated as philosophical proposition, I suppose it would more likely divide the world into hedonists and mystics.

I have not sold, beaten, exploited or browbeaten any of my children, nor have I forced my religion onto them or sent them to die in a pointless war — Srap Tasmaner

And I'm sure you've done everything in your power to clean up the world they grow up in, prevent their less affluent playmates being sent off to war and insure a stable planet for them to grow old on. Unfortunately, this not the universal practice of humankind, and hasn't been for some 6000 years. Child sacrifice has been with us just about as long. Today, they're more useful for sex, spare organs and cheap labour in carpet factories, but they also make dandy targets for drug dealers and politicians determined to stop illegal immigration. But, of course, there's also a brisk trade in healthy infants who will be offered all the advantages of affluence.

But those interests are not the whole story, and it is not impossible -- or at least not shown here -- that those interests will not always be decisive. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know how long that 'always' will be. From my current perspective, it looks like a short future.

a decadent civilization growing morbidly obese from cannibalizing its young (its future) – in the late 20th / early 21st century. In other words, like an old song says — 180 Proof

It goes back much further. Since the beginning of urban, stratified civilizations, the young have played a sacrificial role. The first four biblical commandments are about the god; the next one is reverence for parents, with the patriarch just one step below the god (look what happened to poor old Ham for accidentally finding the old man drunk! He and all his descendants were reduced to servitude.) Nowhere does that ancient legal system - nor any other that I'm aware of - say "Cherish your children and grandchildren". Kids have been bought and sold, beaten and exploited and browbeaten since long before the industrial age. Jesus had a good word to say for them - just the one, mind you - but that got turned into starched collars, much kneeling and interminable silent Sundays even for the offspring of privileged burghers.

Even today, the well-off western middle class drives its kids to emotionally crippling competition and lavishes vast quantities of money on their dressing, housing, feeding and preening, all the while poisoning those same precious babies with urban industrial lifestyle... and sending the children of the less well-off into unwinnable, pointless wars that seamlessly dovetail one into the next.
There is no kind of reason or logic to this.

So in this case, it is just the "idea" that no future people would exist after this generation, with no practical extenuating circumstances to complicate how we would react. What about this "idea" would change things really? — schopenhauer1

Some things, yes, I think so. The last couple of generations of super-rich would redouble their efforts to secure an immortality of some kind for themselves - whether as corpsicles or cyborgs or in the matrix or in a vat - they would probably explore all of those technologies to whatever degree their money and influence enable them. This would automatically mean withdrawing funds from political campaigns, long-term investments, sheltered bank accounts, trust funds and charities. I imagine the younger ones would splash out some spectacular end-of-the-world parties, and so would many people of lesser means. No more saving for the children's education, family health insurance premiums, term deposits: you can't take it with you and there's nobody to leave it to. Once the last generation of dependent young was out of the nest, the shape of coupling would change - no planning and providing for a family, so why bother with marriage and career? No eager young college graduates nipping at your job, so why not just coast?
Also, the enormous market in baby and child products would implode along with its retail outlets and advertisers; a number of large corporations would be wiped out. Overall, a massive redeployment of capital and an unrecognizably altered economy.
To some extent, the approaching climate doomesday is prompting similar behaviour: a world-wide closing panic, wherein the haves are gobbling up whatever is left of the world as fast as they possibly can and the more ruthless politicians are enabling them.

You still need to have money to buy goods and services. — schopenhauer1

With that redeployment of liquid assets, and a concomitant collapse of banks, I imagine a massive surge in unemployment - with an ever-changing profile of the unemployed population when it's joined by military and law-enforcement personnel the governments can't to pay anymore - neglect of infrastructure, fragmentation of power delivery and transportation, cessation of social services... and a huge rise in crime. As long as the rich can afford private armies, the rest of us would have to take what we need from one another, as we increasingly do now, but in a few years, there would be little or nothing left to own.
The small-footprint, self-reliant homesteaders and survivalists might do all right well into old age, if they joined forces. But they wouldn't; the survivalists would raid the homesteads and take their stuff, but no their knowledge.

What exactly changes in your individual life? — schopenhauer1

Besides likely curtailment of both your earning and the availability of goods: whatever the people you depend on stop doing; whatever the people who want your possessions take; if they're hungry enough, the loss of your pets and your pantry.

At the end of the day, it is about cultivating and reproducing our workers to ensure our pensions and lifestyles don't go to shit. How lovely we all are to keep this scheme going all these years. — schopenhauer1

Nothing new there! Why do you think major religions forbid non-reproductive sex? They've always wanted fresh meat for the congregations, for the army, for the tax-collector, for the factories and fields. Elites need the lowest two or three tiers of society to be the most numerous and least valued, so that they can be kept perpetually at one another's throat, anxious, suspicious, jealous. Fear, loathing and the worship of their betters is what keeps the peons compliant. Even though, in pragmatic terms, they should have backed off that policy a few decades ago, they can't seem to let go of it as a divide-to-conquer political issue.

If no one were able to reproduce, no new generations of humans, would society fall into a chaotic mad-max scenario, or would things continue as normal, albeit with some depressed folks who aren't able to have children? — schopenhauer1

I'm inclined to think on the large scale, the latter, with an added incentive to develop robots. But individuals deeply invested in replicating themselves do take it hard, even to the point of serious depression and self-destructive behaviour. (Having chosen not to do it myself, I can't really empathize, but I can sympathize from a safe distance.)

Rather oddly, while some nations worry about a 1% drop* in average sperm-count, others are still unable to grapple with their overpopulation; while we worry about the ageing population and decrease of future caretakers and taxpayers, we also worry about the unemployment automation is going to cause in the near future. All the while taking no definitive steps to alleviate any of these problems. .... and the forests are burning and the permafrost is melting and the ocean is heating up and the Gulf stream is collapsing and our lungs are filling up with microplastic....

Rather, the premise that reproduction represents an all-encompassing motivating force is flawed. — schopenhauer1

It would seem so. We have been failing spectacularly to secure any kind of future for the children we already made and the ones we're still making. And this is very much in keeping with the pattern laid down by our ancestors.

*My information was outdated. It's actually 2.6% per year now.

I think you're on your own there. — Isaac

And here. OK

Instead of buying sex you buy a very expensive carrot. And the buyer of a very expensive carrot is given the option of sex for free. — Agree to Disagree

Sounds a bit unwieldy for street prostitution. I mean, where would she keep all those carrots?

That must make you feel so much more confident... — Banno

Does speculation about my possible feelings make you feel more confident?

You mean one time in every ten thousand you act as if you're omniscient? — Isaac

Very possibly - doesn't everyone? I wouldn't have been aware of it if I behaved that way, or recall how many times it happened. I can only tell you the degree of confidence I have in my present state of knowledge.

Go you! — Isaac

Indeed. And now what?

Are you certain of this? — Banno

99.99% certain