I think this makes a lot of sense. While I think you can make the case for “fertility crisis purely as a means of preventing economic slowdown and increasing innovation” I think your arguments are good that people don’t actually often make this argument, and a lot of it does stem from “more people = good”.
But I think if you start from “more people = good”, you don’t actually have motivated reasoning as much as you suspect re: innovation argument. I think it’s more that the innovation argument actually does just work if you accept that more people = good. Because if more people = good, that means more people were good before penicillin and then are even more good afterwards, and these two don’t actually cancel each other out.
In summary, I don’t think that “more people = good” motivates the “Life is generally good to have, actually” argument—I think if anything it’s the other way around. People who think life is good tend to be more likely to think it’s a moral good to give it to others. The argument doesn’t say it’s “axiomatically good” to add more people, it’s “axiomatically good conditional on life being net positive”.
As for understanding why people might feel that way—my best argument is this.
Let’s say you could choose to give birth to a child who would be born with a terribly painful and crippling disease. Would it be a bad thing to do that? Many people would say yes.
Now, let’s say you could choose to give birth to a child who would live a happy and healthy positive life? Would that be a good thing? It seems that, logically, if giving birth to a child who suffers is bad, giving birth to a child who enjoys life is good.
That, imo, is the best argument for being in favor of more people if you think life is positive.
Note that I don’t think this means people should be forced to have kids or that you’re a monster for choosing not to, even if those arguments were true. You can save a life for 5k USD after all, and raising a kid yourself takes far more resources than that. Realistically, if my vasectomy makes me a bad person then I’m also a bad person for not donating every spare dollar to the AMF instead of merely 10%, and if that’s a “bad person” then the word has no meaning.
I think this makes a lot of sense. While I think you can make the case for “fertility crisis purely as a means of preventing economic slowdown and increasing innovation” I think your arguments are good that people don’t actually often make this argument, and a lot of it does stem from “more people = good”.
But I think if you start from “more people = good”, you don’t actually have motivated reasoning as much as you suspect re: innovation argument. I think it’s more that the innovation argument actually does just work if you accept that more people = good. Because if more people = good, that means more people were good before penicillin and then are even more good afterwards, and these two don’t actually cancel each other out.
In summary, I don’t think that “more people = good” motivates the “Life is generally good to have, actually” argument—I think if anything it’s the other way around. People who think life is good tend to be more likely to think it’s a moral good to give it to others. The argument doesn’t say it’s “axiomatically good” to add more people, it’s “axiomatically good conditional on life being net positive”.
As for understanding why people might feel that way—my best argument is this.
Let’s say you could choose to give birth to a child who would be born with a terribly painful and crippling disease. Would it be a bad thing to do that? Many people would say yes.
Now, let’s say you could choose to give birth to a child who would live a happy and healthy positive life? Would that be a good thing? It seems that, logically, if giving birth to a child who suffers is bad, giving birth to a child who enjoys life is good.
That, imo, is the best argument for being in favor of more people if you think life is positive.
Note that I don’t think this means people should be forced to have kids or that you’re a monster for choosing not to, even if those arguments were true. You can save a life for 5k USD after all, and raising a kid yourself takes far more resources than that. Realistically, if my vasectomy makes me a bad person then I’m also a bad person for not donating every spare dollar to the AMF instead of merely 10%, and if that’s a “bad person” then the word has no meaning.