I don’t think that knowing someone is an altruist tells you much about his moral framework.
The phrase “in our current situation” is also weird given that there are plenty of readers who are in substantial different situations from each other.
Let’s be more narrow and talk about middle-class professional Americans. And lets take a pass on the “pure altruist” angle, and just talk about how much altruistic good you do by having a child (compared to the next best option).
For having a child, it’s roughly 70 QALYs that they get to directly experience. Plus, you get whatever fraction of their productive output that’s directed towards altruistic good. There’s also the personal enjoyment you get out of raising children, which absorbs part of the cost out of a separate budget.
As far as costs go, a quick google search brings up the number $241,000. And that’s just the monetary costs—there are more opportunity costs for time spent with your children. Let’s simplify things by taking the time commitment entirely out of the time you spend recreationally on yourself, and the money cost entirely out of your altruism budget.
So, divide the 70 QALYs by the $241k, and you wind up with a rough cost of $3,400 per QALY. That completely ignores the roughly $1M in current-value of your child’s earnings (number is also pulled completely out of my ass based on 40 years at $60k inflation-adjusted dollars).
So, the bottom line is whether or not you enjoy raising children, and whether or not you can buy QALYs at below $3,400 each. There’s also risks involved—not enjoying raising children and having to reduce your charity time and money budget to get the same quality of life, children turning out with below-expectation quality of life and/or economic output, and probably others as well.
There’s also the question of whether you’re better off adopting or having your own, but that’s a separate analysis.
Doubtful. The pure altruist would concentrate all their efforts on the single activity with the highest marginal social return. Several times per day that activity would be eating, because eating prevents a socially beneficial organism from dying. Eating has poor substitutes, but there are excellent substitutes for personally having a child (e.g. convincing a less altruistic couple to have another child).
there are excellent substitutes for personally having a child (e.g. convincing a less altruistic couple to have another child).
Not all children are of equivalent social benefit. If a pure altruist could make a copy of themselves at age 20, twenty years from now, for the low price of 20% of their time-discounted total social benefit—well, depending on the time-discount of investing in the future, it seems like a no-brainer.
Well, unless the descendants also use similar reasoning to spend their time-discounted total social benefit in the same way. You have to cash out at some point, or else the entire thing is pointless.
Sure, your children can be altruists, but would raising your children have highest marginal return? You only “win” by the amount of altruism your child has above the substitute child. So if you’re really good at indoctrinating children with altruism, you would better exploit your comparative advantage by spending your time indoctrinating other people’s children while their parents do the non-altruistic tasks of changing diapers, etc. Children are an efficient mechanism for spreading your genes, but not the most efficient mechanism for spreading your memes.
I agree with christian that the question is poorly formed. For one thing, it depends on if the altruist believes in eugenics and has good genes, or does but has bad genes, or doesn’t etc. An altruist who was healthy and smart and believed in eugenics might try to spread their genes as far and wide as possible, which could result in lots of unprotected sex and kids that don’t have a parent! Another question is, what if they’re an anti-natalist? Anti-natalism can be a fundamentally altruistic position.
it depends on if the altruist believes in eugenics
I don’t think the answer of a question about the morality of actions depends of the beliefs of the people involved (you can probably construct edge cases where it does); the answer to “Is it okay for bob to rape babies?” doesn’t depend on bob’s beliefs about baby-rape.
Note that the original question wasn’t “Is it right for a pure altruist to have children?”, it was “Would a pure altruist have children?”. And the answer to that question most definitely depends on the beliefs of the altruist being modeled. It’s also a more useful question, because it leads us to explore which beliefs matter and how they effect the decision (the alternative being that we all start arguing about our personal beliefs on all the relevant topics).
No. The mythical creature consults the Magic 8 ball of “Think a minute” which says “Consequences fundamentally not amenable to calculation, costs quite high” and goes and takes soil samples/inspects old paint to map out lead pollution in the neighborhood instead. Removing lead pollution being far more certain to improve the world.
Having kids is not an instrumental decision. One does not have kids for “the sake of the future” or any such nonsense—trying that on would likely lead to monumental failure at parenting. One has kids because one is in a situation in which one believes one can do a good job of parenting, and one wishes to do so.
Would a (hypothetically) pure altruist have children (in our current situation)?
I don’t think that knowing someone is an altruist tells you much about his moral framework.
The phrase “in our current situation” is also weird given that there are plenty of readers who are in substantial different situations from each other.
Let’s be more narrow and talk about middle-class professional Americans. And lets take a pass on the “pure altruist” angle, and just talk about how much altruistic good you do by having a child (compared to the next best option).
For having a child, it’s roughly 70 QALYs that they get to directly experience. Plus, you get whatever fraction of their productive output that’s directed towards altruistic good. There’s also the personal enjoyment you get out of raising children, which absorbs part of the cost out of a separate budget.
As far as costs go, a quick google search brings up the number $241,000. And that’s just the monetary costs—there are more opportunity costs for time spent with your children. Let’s simplify things by taking the time commitment entirely out of the time you spend recreationally on yourself, and the money cost entirely out of your altruism budget.
So, divide the 70 QALYs by the $241k, and you wind up with a rough cost of $3,400 per QALY. That completely ignores the roughly $1M in current-value of your child’s earnings (number is also pulled completely out of my ass based on 40 years at $60k inflation-adjusted dollars).
So, the bottom line is whether or not you enjoy raising children, and whether or not you can buy QALYs at below $3,400 each. There’s also risks involved—not enjoying raising children and having to reduce your charity time and money budget to get the same quality of life, children turning out with below-expectation quality of life and/or economic output, and probably others as well.
There’s also the question of whether you’re better off adopting or having your own, but that’s a separate analysis.
Previous discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ive/is_it_immoral_to_have_children/
Doubtful. The pure altruist would concentrate all their efforts on the single activity with the highest marginal social return. Several times per day that activity would be eating, because eating prevents a socially beneficial organism from dying. Eating has poor substitutes, but there are excellent substitutes for personally having a child (e.g. convincing a less altruistic couple to have another child).
Not all children are of equivalent social benefit. If a pure altruist could make a copy of themselves at age 20, twenty years from now, for the low price of 20% of their time-discounted total social benefit—well, depending on the time-discount of investing in the future, it seems like a no-brainer.
Well, unless the descendants also use similar reasoning to spend their time-discounted total social benefit in the same way. You have to cash out at some point, or else the entire thing is pointless.
Sure, your children can be altruists, but would raising your children have highest marginal return? You only “win” by the amount of altruism your child has above the substitute child. So if you’re really good at indoctrinating children with altruism, you would better exploit your comparative advantage by spending your time indoctrinating other people’s children while their parents do the non-altruistic tasks of changing diapers, etc. Children are an efficient mechanism for spreading your genes, but not the most efficient mechanism for spreading your memes.
Depends on the utility function the altruist uses.
I agree with christian that the question is poorly formed. For one thing, it depends on if the altruist believes in eugenics and has good genes, or does but has bad genes, or doesn’t etc. An altruist who was healthy and smart and believed in eugenics might try to spread their genes as far and wide as possible, which could result in lots of unprotected sex and kids that don’t have a parent! Another question is, what if they’re an anti-natalist? Anti-natalism can be a fundamentally altruistic position.
I don’t think the answer of a question about the morality of actions depends of the beliefs of the people involved (you can probably construct edge cases where it does); the answer to “Is it okay for bob to rape babies?” doesn’t depend on bob’s beliefs about baby-rape.
Note that the original question wasn’t “Is it right for a pure altruist to have children?”, it was “Would a pure altruist have children?”. And the answer to that question most definitely depends on the beliefs of the altruist being modeled. It’s also a more useful question, because it leads us to explore which beliefs matter and how they effect the decision (the alternative being that we all start arguing about our personal beliefs on all the relevant topics).
No. The mythical creature consults the Magic 8 ball of “Think a minute” which says “Consequences fundamentally not amenable to calculation, costs quite high” and goes and takes soil samples/inspects old paint to map out lead pollution in the neighborhood instead. Removing lead pollution being far more certain to improve the world.
Having kids is not an instrumental decision. One does not have kids for “the sake of the future” or any such nonsense—trying that on would likely lead to monumental failure at parenting. One has kids because one is in a situation in which one believes one can do a good job of parenting, and one wishes to do so.