If we’re going this route, I’ll make another pitch of my own!
Please work on whatever you think will improve society, and don’t bother with new humans. By way of simple statistics, sheer numbers, base rates, and so on, the sheer amount of people out there making new humans means that, even if only 10% of them are as good as children that you would make, they’ll still outdo whatever output you can give in Quality-Adjusted-New-Humans, and meanwhile all those people busy children-making would have diminishing returns and low value on other advances, while your very intelligent contributions are much more valuable.
By all means work on cool projects to improve society. You can do that even if you have children. It’s a lot of work to raise a kid but it’s not a life-destroying amount of work.
My time is limited by way of requiring to spend >50 hours / wk on a “self-sustainment” job, a restriction which would only be emboldened by the additional monetary requirements of human-making. The rest of my time can only be alotted to cool projects or human-making; I can not achieve both in sufficient quality to go past the treshold of a failed effort if my available time and resources are divided between the two. One or the other will fail, and probably both if I attempt a standard distribution of resources.
I suspect that many are in similar situations.
(Your point might still stand in a more general case; I’ve simply attempted to turn it from a discussion of arguments and options to a discussion about ratios of numbers of people matching categories of life situations.)
Hmm. Right. I have a job I feel is fulfilling and purposeful and this may certainly contribute to why we see this issue differently. If having children would make your life fall apart then I don’t think you should.
We certainly agree that some people should have children and some people shouldn’t and that this depends on a lot of factors. So in some sense, we just disagree about details. What I’m arguing for in particular is that highly effective people who have the ability and resources to provide children with a good home should have children. What seems to particularly rub people the wrong way is my suggestion that this is morally obligatory. While my views have not shifted greatly I’ve learned enough from this trainwreck of a post to argue this position less stridently next time around.
Agree with the rest, so not much further to add, except for:
What seems to particularly rub people the wrong way is my suggestion that this is morally obligatory. While my views have not shifted greatly I’ve learned enough from this trainwreck of a post to argue this position less stridently next time around.
Yes. The mostly-utilitarian environment around LW already doesn’t support moral obligations, but on top of that due to the various issues surrounding moral systems it’s frowned upon, partially due to the large risk of inducing conflict and confusion, to directly assert a claim like this that results from an assumed moral system.
Even though it seems like the majority of LW would “support” it, a post made entirely about encouraging people and justifying a case for the point that it should be morally obligatory for everyone to make expected utility calculations in a trolley problem and push down the fat man would not be that well received, I think.
An approach that, I think, would be much easier on this same subject with intellectual communities, particularly LessWrong, would be to claim that your point of argument (People X “should” have children!) contributes more towards some goal (Higher ratio of quality humans?) than alternatives, and is thus closer to optimal in that regards (if you claim something as truly optimal without any caveats and an extremely high probability, you damn well have the durasteel-solid math to prove it, or you deserve every criticism and tomato thrown your way! not that I’m guiltless of this myself).
EDIT: And to complete the last thougth above, which I thought I had written: And in most intellectual communities, the gap between “closer to optimal” and “moral obligation” is then easier to cross if one really wants to insist on this point. Arguments could be made that any sub-optimal is harm by opportunity costs, or about the relations of individuals’ utility functions to social factors and thus to their behavior towards these “moral obligations”, or various other ethics thinghies. Basically, it’s just a more stable platform and a better meeting point for launching into a pitch on this subject.
If we’re going this route, I’ll make another pitch of my own!
Please work on whatever you think will improve society, and don’t bother with new humans. By way of simple statistics, sheer numbers, base rates, and so on, the sheer amount of people out there making new humans means that, even if only 10% of them are as good as children that you would make, they’ll still outdo whatever output you can give in Quality-Adjusted-New-Humans, and meanwhile all those people busy children-making would have diminishing returns and low value on other advances, while your very intelligent contributions are much more valuable.
Please, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are our only hope!
By all means work on cool projects to improve society. You can do that even if you have children. It’s a lot of work to raise a kid but it’s not a life-destroying amount of work.
I cannot.
My time is limited by way of requiring to spend >50 hours / wk on a “self-sustainment” job, a restriction which would only be emboldened by the additional monetary requirements of human-making. The rest of my time can only be alotted to cool projects or human-making; I can not achieve both in sufficient quality to go past the treshold of a failed effort if my available time and resources are divided between the two. One or the other will fail, and probably both if I attempt a standard distribution of resources.
I suspect that many are in similar situations.
(Your point might still stand in a more general case; I’ve simply attempted to turn it from a discussion of arguments and options to a discussion about ratios of numbers of people matching categories of life situations.)
Hmm. Right. I have a job I feel is fulfilling and purposeful and this may certainly contribute to why we see this issue differently. If having children would make your life fall apart then I don’t think you should.
We certainly agree that some people should have children and some people shouldn’t and that this depends on a lot of factors. So in some sense, we just disagree about details. What I’m arguing for in particular is that highly effective people who have the ability and resources to provide children with a good home should have children. What seems to particularly rub people the wrong way is my suggestion that this is morally obligatory. While my views have not shifted greatly I’ve learned enough from this trainwreck of a post to argue this position less stridently next time around.
Agree with the rest, so not much further to add, except for:
Yes. The mostly-utilitarian environment around LW already doesn’t support moral obligations, but on top of that due to the various issues surrounding moral systems it’s frowned upon, partially due to the large risk of inducing conflict and confusion, to directly assert a claim like this that results from an assumed moral system.
Even though it seems like the majority of LW would “support” it, a post made entirely about encouraging people and justifying a case for the point that it should be morally obligatory for everyone to make expected utility calculations in a trolley problem and push down the fat man would not be that well received, I think.
An approach that, I think, would be much easier on this same subject with intellectual communities, particularly LessWrong, would be to claim that your point of argument (People X “should” have children!) contributes more towards some goal (Higher ratio of quality humans?) than alternatives, and is thus closer to optimal in that regards (if you claim something as truly optimal without any caveats and an extremely high probability, you damn well have the durasteel-solid math to prove it, or you deserve every criticism and tomato thrown your way! not that I’m guiltless of this myself).
EDIT: And to complete the last thougth above, which I thought I had written: And in most intellectual communities, the gap between “closer to optimal” and “moral obligation” is then easier to cross if one really wants to insist on this point. Arguments could be made that any sub-optimal is harm by opportunity costs, or about the relations of individuals’ utility functions to social factors and thus to their behavior towards these “moral obligations”, or various other ethics thinghies. Basically, it’s just a more stable platform and a better meeting point for launching into a pitch on this subject.