One can tell a story about how evolution made us not simply to enjoy the act that causes children but to want to have children. But that’s not a reason, that’s a description of the desire.
One could tell a story about having children as a source of future support or cost-controlled labor (i.e. farmhands). But I think the evidence is pretty strong that children are not wealth-maximizing in the modern era.
And if there is no case for having children, shouldn’t that bother us on “Our morality should add up to normal, ceteris parabis” grounds?
Rationality helps you map out the relations between actions and goals, and between goals and subgoals; and it can help us better understand the structure of the goals we already have. We can say that doing something is good because it helps achieve goals, or bad because it hinders them; and we can say that certain things are also goals (subgoals), if achieving them helps with our original goals. However, this has to bottom out somewhere; and we call the places where it bottoms out—goals that’re valued in and of themselves, not just because they help with some other goal—terminal values.
Rationality has nothing whatsoever to say about what terminal values you should have. (In fact, those terminal values are implicit when you use the word “should”.) For people who want children, that is usually a terminal value. You cannot argue that it’s good because it achieves something else, because that is not why people think it’s good.
You are right. And that’s at least the second time I’ve made that mistake, so hopefully I’ll learn from it.
Let me ask the sociological question I should have asked: It appears that many of the folks invested enough in “rationality” to be active participants in LW not only don’t have children, but think that having children is not a good goal. That constellation of beliefs suggests that there is some selection pressure that links those two beliefs. Should the existence of that selection pressure worry us on “Add up to normal” grounds?
However, this has to bottom out somewhere; and we call the places where it bottoms out—goals that’re valued in and of themselves, not just because they help with some other goal—terminal values.
This seems to be a near-consensus here at LessWrong. But I’m not convinced that “it bottoms out in goals that’re valued in and of themselves” follows from “this has to bottom out somewhere”. I grant the premise but doubt the conclusion. I doubt that where-it-bottoms-out needs to be, specifically, goals—it could be some combination of beliefs, habits, experiences, and/or emotions, instead.
But you say, we call the places where it bottoms out goals … (emphasis added). Of course, you can do that, and it’s even true that people will pretty well understand what you mean. You can call these things goals, and do so without doing terrible violence to the language, but I’m not convinced that this is the most felicitous way of speaking about motivation and ethical learning. Whether these bottom-level items are best described as goals, or habits, or beliefs, or something quite different, depends on psychological facts which may not yet be in (sufficient) evidence.
What is the rational case for having children?
One can tell a story about how evolution made us not simply to enjoy the act that causes children but to want to have children. But that’s not a reason, that’s a description of the desire.
One could tell a story about having children as a source of future support or cost-controlled labor (i.e. farmhands). But I think the evidence is pretty strong that children are not wealth-maximizing in the modern era.
And if there is no case for having children, shouldn’t that bother us on “Our morality should add up to normal, ceteris parabis” grounds?
Rationality helps you map out the relations between actions and goals, and between goals and subgoals; and it can help us better understand the structure of the goals we already have. We can say that doing something is good because it helps achieve goals, or bad because it hinders them; and we can say that certain things are also goals (subgoals), if achieving them helps with our original goals. However, this has to bottom out somewhere; and we call the places where it bottoms out—goals that’re valued in and of themselves, not just because they help with some other goal—terminal values.
Rationality has nothing whatsoever to say about what terminal values you should have. (In fact, those terminal values are implicit when you use the word “should”.) For people who want children, that is usually a terminal value. You cannot argue that it’s good because it achieves something else, because that is not why people think it’s good.
You are right. And that’s at least the second time I’ve made that mistake, so hopefully I’ll learn from it.
Let me ask the sociological question I should have asked: It appears that many of the folks invested enough in “rationality” to be active participants in LW not only don’t have children, but think that having children is not a good goal. That constellation of beliefs suggests that there is some selection pressure that links those two beliefs. Should the existence of that selection pressure worry us on “Add up to normal” grounds?
This seems to be a near-consensus here at LessWrong. But I’m not convinced that “it bottoms out in goals that’re valued in and of themselves” follows from “this has to bottom out somewhere”. I grant the premise but doubt the conclusion. I doubt that where-it-bottoms-out needs to be, specifically, goals—it could be some combination of beliefs, habits, experiences, and/or emotions, instead.
But you say, we call the places where it bottoms out goals … (emphasis added). Of course, you can do that, and it’s even true that people will pretty well understand what you mean. You can call these things goals, and do so without doing terrible violence to the language, but I’m not convinced that this is the most felicitous way of speaking about motivation and ethical learning. Whether these bottom-level items are best described as goals, or habits, or beliefs, or something quite different, depends on psychological facts which may not yet be in (sufficient) evidence.