We seem to have different observational data. I do know some people who make all their major life decisions based on quality and quantity of offspring. Most of them are female but this might be a bias in my sample. Specifically, quality trades off against quantity: waiting to find a fitter partner and thus losing part of your reproductive window is a common trade off. Similarly, making sure your children have much better lives than you by making sure your own material circumstances (or health!) are better is another. To be fair, they seem to be a small minority currently but I think that is due to point 3 and would be rectified in more a constant environment.
In the long term, we would expect humans to end up directly optimizing IGF (assuming no revolutions like AI doom or similar) due to evolution. The way this proceeds in practice is that people vary on the extent to which they optimize IGF vs other things, and those who optimize IGF pass on their genes, leading to higher optimization of IGF. So yes eventually these sorts of people will win, but as you admit yourself they are a small minority, so humans as they currently exist are mostly not IGF maximizers.
Also, regarding quality vs quantity, it’s my impression that society massively overinvests in quality relative to what would be implied by IGF. Society is incredibly safe compared to the past, so you don’t need much effort to make them survive. Insofar as there is an IGF value in quality, it’s probably in somehow convincing your children to also optimize for IGF, rather than do other things.
They are a small minority currently cause the environment changes so quickly right now. Things have been changing insanely fast in the last century or so but before the industrial revolution and especially before the agriculture revolution, humans were much better optimized for IGF, I think. Evolution is still ‘training’ us and these last 100 years have been a huge change compared to the generation length of humans. Nate is stating that humans genetically are not IGF maximizers, and that is false. We are, we are just currently heavily being ‘retrained’.
Re: quantity/quality. I think people nominally say they are optimizing for quality when really they just don’t have enough drive to have more kids at the current cost. There is much less cultural punishment on saying you are going for quality over quantity instead of saying you just don’t want more kids cause it’s a huge investment. Additionally, children who grow up in bad home environments seem less likely have kids of their own, and parents having mental breakdowns is one of the common ‘bad’ environments. So quality can definitely optimize for quantity in the long run.
Ps: i wish I had more time for more nuanced answers. Considering writing this up in more detail. My answers are rather rushed. My apologies
In the long term, we would expect humans to end up directly optimizing IGF (assuming no revolutions like AI doom or similar) due to evolution. The way this proceeds in practice is that people vary on the extent to which they optimize IGF vs other things, and those who optimize IGF pass on their genes, leading to higher optimization of IGF. So yes eventually these sorts of people will win, but as you admit yourself they are a small minority, so humans as they currently exist are mostly not IGF maximizers.
Also, regarding quality vs quantity, it’s my impression that society massively overinvests in quality relative to what would be implied by IGF. Society is incredibly safe compared to the past, so you don’t need much effort to make them survive. Insofar as there is an IGF value in quality, it’s probably in somehow convincing your children to also optimize for IGF, rather than do other things.
They are a small minority currently cause the environment changes so quickly right now. Things have been changing insanely fast in the last century or so but before the industrial revolution and especially before the agriculture revolution, humans were much better optimized for IGF, I think. Evolution is still ‘training’ us and these last 100 years have been a huge change compared to the generation length of humans. Nate is stating that humans genetically are not IGF maximizers, and that is false. We are, we are just currently heavily being ‘retrained’.
Re: quantity/quality. I think people nominally say they are optimizing for quality when really they just don’t have enough drive to have more kids at the current cost. There is much less cultural punishment on saying you are going for quality over quantity instead of saying you just don’t want more kids cause it’s a huge investment. Additionally, children who grow up in bad home environments seem less likely have kids of their own, and parents having mental breakdowns is one of the common ‘bad’ environments. So quality can definitely optimize for quantity in the long run.
Ps: i wish I had more time for more nuanced answers. Considering writing this up in more detail. My answers are rather rushed. My apologies