The question of “should one have children” is very different from “should YOU have children”, as “should a randomly chosen LW’er on average have children” is different from “should an American”, or “should a human being (including Somalians) have children”. Asking the question broadest in scope, even if answered “correctly”, yields mostly personally inapplicable results.
Many of the arguments you gave pertain to the generic “should one have children” more so than they do to the readership of your article, thus losing a good amount of relevancy.
Case in point: all of the different heritability coefficients are dependent on the choice of population. As you become a more reflective person with more options open for you to take, heritability coefficients change. It’s like asking about the heritability of IQ going off of dog populations, then concluding that different parenting styles have only x or y impact because the dogs’ “parenting” barely impacted their litter’s IQ. Higher environmental variance leads to smaller heritability coefficients.
Generically determined factors are still useful data points for public policy debates; they are not for personal choices. There is no logical contradiction there. Someone who wholeheartedly embraces polyamory for his/her personal lifestyle may well conclude that society may be better off living majority-monogamic. Atheists may prefer for the masses to retain religiously instilled doctrines to maintain societal stability (as a tangent, do you really want your janitor to question deeply why he should clean up your trash?).
Another point you make is too US-centric. Yes, raising children is an expensive enterprise in most circumstances, but points of contention such as paying for a college education are a non-issue in some societies, such as many European countries (“student” and “debt” don’t share the same word cloud).
More fundamentally, there are a number of implicit assumptions skewing the topic: the equation of morality with charity; most any utilitarian would agree that for altruism to be valued it itself must be encoded in the valuer’s own utility function, tautologically so. Someone who values personal procreation over “charities” is as moral as the perfect altruist, each fulfilling their respective utility functions.
Much of the “children as economic caretakers when you reach old age” misses the point. In modern societies, the imperative is less on providing material comfort (though that motif is still present, just less so than in comparison to previous ages) and more on “having people around who give a damn about you”.
People who (if you do it right) don’t need to be bought, or to be entertained using one’s public persona, but who have access to your inner thoughts and care about you because you constructed them that way, providing both nature and nurture. Someone to be there, not to pay the bills but to enjoy and celebrate life, and let you share in that experience (and vice versa).
When you do see someone taking care of someone else for extended periods of time, is it typically a friend, or a relative? That may be too generic, but even in our subpopulation I’ve yet to hear of the High-IQ-Solstice-friends who then move in with each other once one of them loses his edge due to onsetting dementia. Cameraderie and warm fuzzies between friends are nice and all, but concerning their perceived scope are ultimately a fleeting illusion.
To the obvious response of “yea, look how well those parent-child relationships typically work out, check out all the lonely parents in nursing homes”, I’d say “correct for the generic case, but these people ain’t doing it right”:
Just as guns don’t grow on trees, neither does parenting. As with optimizing most other human activity, brains help. If you exchanged the Silicon Valley population with randomly chosen humans with innovative products as the yardstick, you’d be quick to conclude that human advancement is doomed and that in any case it’s time to climb back up dem trees, once we lost enough weight for the branches not to break. Wrong study sample, especially as a base for your own personal decisions.
most any utilitarian would agree that for altruism to be valued it itself must be encoded in the valuer’s own utility function, tautologically so. Someone who values personal procreation over “charities” is as moral as the perfect altruist, each fulfilling their respective utility functions
I actually think that many effective altruists/ utilitarians would disagree with that and assert that there is precisely one correct moral action or use of money at any one point in time—it varies based on circumstance of course but for any one circumstance there is one correct action. Rachels would certainly disagree with that, and jeff kaufman seemed to be convinced by Rachel’s argument.
When you do see someone taking care of someone else for extended periods of time, is it typically a friend, or a relative?
If you include spouses under “friends”, that might be quite common? I would say typically the spouse will contribute more working-hours in total, although children will be helpful in the last few years.
But then what is the relevance to the question of whether to have children or not? The rest of your comment seems to implicitly assume that the only way to get more relatives is to have children.
My comment focused on children because that’s the topic at hand; building a strong long-time bond with a significant other (or others, if you’re so inclined) can be another avenue (often less reliable) of attaining a dependable support group. The comment wasn’t meant to be exhaustive.
Personally I’d never put a spouse in the same category as “friends” in this context, but of course you may categorize whichever way you like. (For example, I’d agree that if you count children as friends, then friends would always be preferable, since (friends including children) is strictly more support than (just children). Such trivial labelling tennis wouldn’t change the underlying dynamics, of course.)
Many of the arguments you gave pertain to the generic “should one have children” more so than they do to the readership of your article, thus losing a good amount of relevancy.
This is true, when I wrote this I wrote mostly reacting to the many reasons that I have heard people give for not having children. With the “but its so much work!” and “but I could be spending that money on famine relief!” arguments being the most painful to my ears. So by writing about the negative case, I didn’t have space (nor frankly the expertise) to write about the positive case for having children, which you have done a great job of presenting.
Even though reasonably well-off people in the US don’t seem to do a lot of hands-on care of elderly relatives, they end up doing a lot of bureaucracy-wrangling—or at least this is the impression I get from my social circle.
This is very nice and all, but most people don’t do any kind of analysis before having children. They just have them. So what you are doing right now is rationalizing.
Why would you think I didn’t do such analyses before having children? Children didn’t “just happen” to me, for me to justify their existence ex post facto. (This is a good example of the “most people in general” being a bad rule of thumb when dealing with a highly selected subgroup of dubious but cool disposition.)
Me too. We put a lot of consideration into out family planning and given our priors (my: 3-6 children or none; hers: 2-5) we arrived at four actually with the age distance of about 2,5 years each which we (before the act) considered a compromise between stress for us and posibilty to play with each other for the children.
I admit though that I wanted to have children from the beginning. I knew that 1-2 children are inefficient and would rather have had none (though I’m not sure whether I could have gone through with that option).
I said most people, not you. I apologize if I made it sound personally.
Hooooowever, your argument boils down to basically “having someone to bring me a glass of water when I’m on my deathbed”, which is an argument used A LOT for, yep, rationalizing children. And of course, all those people whose children are not there just did it wrong. No True Parent?
In your analysis, have you considered the alternative of spending resources on fun instead of child-rearing, and then committing suicide before dementia kicks in?
I said most people, not you. I apologize if I made it sound personally.
That’s alright, thanks for clearing that up.
Hooooowever, your analysis boils down to basically “having someone to bring me a glass of water when I’m on my deathbed”, which is an argument used A LOT for, yep, rationalizing children.
Rationalizing wouldn’t invalidate the argument. Also, I object to your summary. Would you exchange your parents (considering a loving relationship) for someone who just “brings you a glass of water on your deathbed”? Exactly.
In your analysis, have you considered the alternative of spending resources on fun instead of child-rearing, and then committing suicide before dementia kicks in?
Yes actually, and it’s certainly true there are a number of years in which I’ll have less fun with multiplayer games. That is, until I can have more fun with multiplayer games playing with the children (just an example). If “fun” only equated to “endorphin-release”, we’d have to go for heroin-drips anyways. Happiness has more components. You don’t climb a mountain because every step of doing so is fun, in fact many of those steps can be quite painful. Yet doing so can make you happy. (This is a bit generic of an answer, but then your “you should go for fun instead” wasn’t very child-specific.)
Of course, utility calculations change when there are less resources available. I don’t lack any material comforts because of the kids. Another one of those your-mileage-may-vary points.
And of course, all those people whose children are not there just did it wrong.
Yes, or did it right but got hit with the wrong end of the probability stick.
First I’d contend that very few people are able to efficiently optimize for reaching their goals even in a cursory manner. I wouldn’t bet on a typical person being able to solve a Rubik’s cube in a day. Children are harder, and the time constraints are comparably steeper. Watch typical parents in a Pizza Hut sometime. Are these the sort of people you’d trust to solve actually hard problems? Didn’t think so.
Second, there are many contexts in which “failure” mostly equates with “doing it wrong” (If you do a 100 yard dash but fail to reach the finish line, chances are that you didn’t get randomly hit by a whale—though that’s possible—but that you did something wrong.) For a less wacky example, freshman college students not eventually graduating.
BTW, how do you construct a child?
You supply the nature, and you supply the nurture. You can influence both, and significantly so. I’m not sure what level of detail you’re asking for, and much depends on the specific circumstances. It’s just like problem solving (well, because that’s what it is).
(Since your kid isn’t yet an all-powerful AI, little quirks resulting from the invariable errors you make may be acceptable. So what if your kid randomly yells “I’M A VAMPIRE”, charging strangers? At least their little missteps won’t accidentally destroy mankind. Instead, they’ll lead to karma on /r/childfree! Could be worse. Could be a fire dragon!)
Disclaimer: parent of a bunch o’ kids.
The question of “should one have children” is very different from “should YOU have children”, as “should a randomly chosen LW’er on average have children” is different from “should an American”, or “should a human being (including Somalians) have children”. Asking the question broadest in scope, even if answered “correctly”, yields mostly personally inapplicable results.
Many of the arguments you gave pertain to the generic “should one have children” more so than they do to the readership of your article, thus losing a good amount of relevancy.
Case in point: all of the different heritability coefficients are dependent on the choice of population. As you become a more reflective person with more options open for you to take, heritability coefficients change. It’s like asking about the heritability of IQ going off of dog populations, then concluding that different parenting styles have only x or y impact because the dogs’ “parenting” barely impacted their litter’s IQ. Higher environmental variance leads to smaller heritability coefficients.
Generically determined factors are still useful data points for public policy debates; they are not for personal choices. There is no logical contradiction there. Someone who wholeheartedly embraces polyamory for his/her personal lifestyle may well conclude that society may be better off living majority-monogamic. Atheists may prefer for the masses to retain religiously instilled doctrines to maintain societal stability (as a tangent, do you really want your janitor to question deeply why he should clean up your trash?).
Another point you make is too US-centric. Yes, raising children is an expensive enterprise in most circumstances, but points of contention such as paying for a college education are a non-issue in some societies, such as many European countries (“student” and “debt” don’t share the same word cloud).
More fundamentally, there are a number of implicit assumptions skewing the topic: the equation of morality with charity; most any utilitarian would agree that for altruism to be valued it itself must be encoded in the valuer’s own utility function, tautologically so. Someone who values personal procreation over “charities” is as moral as the perfect altruist, each fulfilling their respective utility functions.
Much of the “children as economic caretakers when you reach old age” misses the point. In modern societies, the imperative is less on providing material comfort (though that motif is still present, just less so than in comparison to previous ages) and more on “having people around who give a damn about you”.
People who (if you do it right) don’t need to be bought, or to be entertained using one’s public persona, but who have access to your inner thoughts and care about you because you constructed them that way, providing both nature and nurture. Someone to be there, not to pay the bills but to enjoy and celebrate life, and let you share in that experience (and vice versa).
When you do see someone taking care of someone else for extended periods of time, is it typically a friend, or a relative? That may be too generic, but even in our subpopulation I’ve yet to hear of the High-IQ-Solstice-friends who then move in with each other once one of them loses his edge due to onsetting dementia. Cameraderie and warm fuzzies between friends are nice and all, but concerning their perceived scope are ultimately a fleeting illusion.
To the obvious response of “yea, look how well those parent-child relationships typically work out, check out all the lonely parents in nursing homes”, I’d say “correct for the generic case, but these people ain’t doing it right”:
Just as guns don’t grow on trees, neither does parenting. As with optimizing most other human activity, brains help. If you exchanged the Silicon Valley population with randomly chosen humans with innovative products as the yardstick, you’d be quick to conclude that human advancement is doomed and that in any case it’s time to climb back up dem trees, once we lost enough weight for the branches not to break. Wrong study sample, especially as a base for your own personal decisions.
Wow, that was excellent, thanks for writing that.
I actually think that many effective altruists/ utilitarians would disagree with that and assert that there is precisely one correct moral action or use of money at any one point in time—it varies based on circumstance of course but for any one circumstance there is one correct action. Rachels would certainly disagree with that, and jeff kaufman seemed to be convinced by Rachel’s argument.
If you include spouses under “friends”, that might be quite common? I would say typically the spouse will contribute more working-hours in total, although children will be helpful in the last few years.
I most certainly don’t. Relative usually refers to “someone connected by blood, marriage, or adoption”.
But then what is the relevance to the question of whether to have children or not? The rest of your comment seems to implicitly assume that the only way to get more relatives is to have children.
My comment focused on children because that’s the topic at hand; building a strong long-time bond with a significant other (or others, if you’re so inclined) can be another avenue (often less reliable) of attaining a dependable support group. The comment wasn’t meant to be exhaustive.
Personally I’d never put a spouse in the same category as “friends” in this context, but of course you may categorize whichever way you like. (For example, I’d agree that if you count children as friends, then friends would always be preferable, since (friends including children) is strictly more support than (just children). Such trivial labelling tennis wouldn’t change the underlying dynamics, of course.)
Yes, exactly. I’d add:
...because the best cryopreservation arrangements won’t do you much good if nobody notices you died until the neighbors complain about the smell.
This is true, when I wrote this I wrote mostly reacting to the many reasons that I have heard people give for not having children. With the “but its so much work!” and “but I could be spending that money on famine relief!” arguments being the most painful to my ears. So by writing about the negative case, I didn’t have space (nor frankly the expertise) to write about the positive case for having children, which you have done a great job of presenting.
Even though reasonably well-off people in the US don’t seem to do a lot of hands-on care of elderly relatives, they end up doing a lot of bureaucracy-wrangling—or at least this is the impression I get from my social circle.
This is very nice and all, but most people don’t do any kind of analysis before having children. They just have them. So what you are doing right now is rationalizing.
Why would you think I didn’t do such analyses before having children? Children didn’t “just happen” to me, for me to justify their existence ex post facto. (This is a good example of the “most people in general” being a bad rule of thumb when dealing with a highly selected subgroup of dubious but cool disposition.)
Me too. We put a lot of consideration into out family planning and given our priors (my: 3-6 children or none; hers: 2-5) we arrived at four actually with the age distance of about 2,5 years each which we (before the act) considered a compromise between stress for us and posibilty to play with each other for the children.
I admit though that I wanted to have children from the beginning. I knew that 1-2 children are inefficient and would rather have had none (though I’m not sure whether I could have gone through with that option).
Well, because most people don’t, therefore you certainly didn’t. It’s, uh, Bayesian or something.
I said most people, not you. I apologize if I made it sound personally.
Hooooowever, your argument boils down to basically “having someone to bring me a glass of water when I’m on my deathbed”, which is an argument used A LOT for, yep, rationalizing children. And of course, all those people whose children are not there just did it wrong. No True Parent?
In your analysis, have you considered the alternative of spending resources on fun instead of child-rearing, and then committing suicide before dementia kicks in?
BTW, how do you construct a child?
That’s alright, thanks for clearing that up.
Rationalizing wouldn’t invalidate the argument. Also, I object to your summary. Would you exchange your parents (considering a loving relationship) for someone who just “brings you a glass of water on your deathbed”? Exactly.
Yes actually, and it’s certainly true there are a number of years in which I’ll have less fun with multiplayer games. That is, until I can have more fun with multiplayer games playing with the children (just an example). If “fun” only equated to “endorphin-release”, we’d have to go for heroin-drips anyways. Happiness has more components. You don’t climb a mountain because every step of doing so is fun, in fact many of those steps can be quite painful. Yet doing so can make you happy. (This is a bit generic of an answer, but then your “you should go for fun instead” wasn’t very child-specific.)
Of course, utility calculations change when there are less resources available. I don’t lack any material comforts because of the kids. Another one of those your-mileage-may-vary points.
Yes, or did it right but got hit with the wrong end of the probability stick.
First I’d contend that very few people are able to efficiently optimize for reaching their goals even in a cursory manner. I wouldn’t bet on a typical person being able to solve a Rubik’s cube in a day. Children are harder, and the time constraints are comparably steeper. Watch typical parents in a Pizza Hut sometime. Are these the sort of people you’d trust to solve actually hard problems? Didn’t think so.
Second, there are many contexts in which “failure” mostly equates with “doing it wrong” (If you do a 100 yard dash but fail to reach the finish line, chances are that you didn’t get randomly hit by a whale—though that’s possible—but that you did something wrong.) For a less wacky example, freshman college students not eventually graduating.
You supply the nature, and you supply the nurture. You can influence both, and significantly so. I’m not sure what level of detail you’re asking for, and much depends on the specific circumstances. It’s just like problem solving (well, because that’s what it is).
(Since your kid isn’t yet an all-powerful AI, little quirks resulting from the invariable errors you make may be acceptable. So what if your kid randomly yells “I’M A VAMPIRE”, charging strangers? At least their little missteps won’t accidentally destroy mankind. Instead, they’ll lead to karma on /r/childfree! Could be worse. Could be a fire dragon!)