I thought this was going to take the tack that it’s still okay to birth people who are definitely going to die soon. I think on the margin I’d like to lose a war with one more person on my team, one more child I love. I reckon it’s a valid choice to have a child you expect to die at like 10 or 20. In some sense, every person born dies young (compared to a better society where people live to 1,000).
I’m not having a family because I’m busy and too poor to hire lots of childcare, but I’d strongly consider doing it if I had a million dollars.
(indeed, historically around half of children ever born died before the age of 15, so if a 50% chance of them not surviving to adulthood were a good reason not to have children then no-one “should” have had children until industrial times)
Having a child probably brings online lots of protectiveness drives. I don’t think I would enjoy feeling helpless to defend my recently born child from misaligned superintelligence, especially knowing that what little I can do to avert their death and that of everyone else I know is much harder now that I have to take care of a child.
I disagree. Perhaps I’m biased because I’m an Antinatalist, but I don’t personally think it’s ethical to create a thinking, feeling life that you know will end in less time than average.
Yes, it is true that people do die young. You can’t guarantee that your child won’t die of cancer at 10 or in a car crash at 20. But the difference is that no one sets out to create a child that they Know will die of cancer at 10, no matter how badly they want a child.
Imagine being that child and being told that your parent did not expect you to have some of the same age-based experiences as them ( learning to drive, first kiss, trying alcohol). I’m very sure you would feel like a cruel joke had been played on you.
There’s a cut of Blade runner where Rutger Hauer’s character tells his creator
″ I want more life, Father”
Yes, people have had kids in the past where the life expectancy was lower. But it’s important to note that they were under the impression that it was impossible to live much longer than they had seen people live. As far as they were concerned when you turned 70 you were as good as dead.
But they did not expect their children’s lives to be cut short. Certainly, an illness or accident could take them ( not to mention infant mortality), but the assumption was that their children would eventually have children of their own. For most of human history we have lived in “normal conditions” where the above assumption would be correct in the vast majority of cases.
We of the 21st century do not live in normal conditions. In short, I believe creating any human life is unethical, but creating one you fully expect to end quickly is even more unethical.
In “less time than average”, which average? In the “create a child that they know will die of cancer at 10″ thought experiment, the child is destined to die sooner than other children born that day. Whereas in the “human extinction in 10 years” thought experiment, the child is destined to die at about the same time as other children born that day, so they are not going to have “less time than average” in that sense. Those thought experiments have different answers by my intuitions.
My intuitions about what children think are also different to yours. There are many children who are angry at adults for the state of the world into which they were born. Mostly they are not angry at their parents for creating them in a fallen world. Children have many different takes on the Adam and Eve story, but I’ve not heard a child argue that Adam and Eve should not have had children because their children’s lives would necessarily be shorter and less pleasant than their own had been.
I thought this was going to take the tack that it’s still okay to birth people who are definitely going to die soon. I think on the margin I’d like to lose a war with one more person on my team, one more child I love. I reckon it’s a valid choice to have a child you expect to die at like 10 or 20. In some sense, every person born dies young (compared to a better society where people live to 1,000).
I’m not having a family because I’m busy and too poor to hire lots of childcare, but I’d strongly consider doing it if I had a million dollars.
I mean, I also think it’s OK to birth people who will die soon. But indeed that wasn’t my main point.
(indeed, historically around half of children ever born died before the age of 15, so if a 50% chance of them not surviving to adulthood were a good reason not to have children then no-one “should” have had children until industrial times)
Having a child probably brings online lots of protectiveness drives. I don’t think I would enjoy feeling helpless to defend my recently born child from misaligned superintelligence, especially knowing that what little I can do to avert their death and that of everyone else I know is much harder now that I have to take care of a child.
Excited to be a parent post singularity when I can give them a safe and healthy environment, and have a print-out of https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-09-08 to remind myself of this.
I disagree. Perhaps I’m biased because I’m an Antinatalist, but I don’t personally think it’s ethical to create a thinking, feeling life that you know will end in less time than average.
Yes, it is true that people do die young. You can’t guarantee that your child won’t die of cancer at 10 or in a car crash at 20. But the difference is that no one sets out to create a child that they Know will die of cancer at 10, no matter how badly they want a child.
Imagine being that child and being told that your parent did not expect you to have some of the same age-based experiences as them ( learning to drive, first kiss, trying alcohol). I’m very sure you would feel like a cruel joke had been played on you.
There’s a cut of Blade runner where Rutger Hauer’s character tells his creator
″ I want more life, Father”
Yes, people have had kids in the past where the life expectancy was lower. But it’s important to note that they were under the impression that it was impossible to live much longer than they had seen people live. As far as they were concerned when you turned 70 you were as good as dead.
But they did not expect their children’s lives to be cut short. Certainly, an illness or accident could take them ( not to mention infant mortality), but the assumption was that their children would eventually have children of their own. For most of human history we have lived in “normal conditions” where the above assumption would be correct in the vast majority of cases.
We of the 21st century do not live in normal conditions. In short, I believe creating any human life is unethical, but creating one you fully expect to end quickly is even more unethical.
If my parents had known in advance that I would die at ten years old, I would still prefer them to have created me.
In “less time than average”, which average? In the “create a child that they know will die of cancer at 10″ thought experiment, the child is destined to die sooner than other children born that day. Whereas in the “human extinction in 10 years” thought experiment, the child is destined to die at about the same time as other children born that day, so they are not going to have “less time than average” in that sense. Those thought experiments have different answers by my intuitions.
My intuitions about what children think are also different to yours. There are many children who are angry at adults for the state of the world into which they were born. Mostly they are not angry at their parents for creating them in a fallen world. Children have many different takes on the Adam and Eve story, but I’ve not heard a child argue that Adam and Eve should not have had children because their children’s lives would necessarily be shorter and less pleasant than their own had been.