Here’s my take on “something to protect” from personal experience:
Finding something to protect is likely quite difficult for many people. I was certainly headed in that direction, and making progress, but after having a child my “power” leveled up by orders of magnitude (if not my ability to wield it). I didn’t have a child for this purpose, and the magnitude of this effect was not knowable in advance, even if the sign seemed likely.
The fact of having a child does not make me more rational. It does, however, provide a very large incentive to become more rational and to apply those gains to areas where they will earn the highest returns, and away from rationality as consumption. It’s not simply that my priorities are different, but that I prioritize better, and strive for continuous improvement in this triage (or, I prioritize prioritizing) , because consequences are real and I have more to protect.
I also do not attempt to be rational about everything. That seems wrong headed, but another way to put it is that I prioritize my rationality expenditure. This is partly a willpower budget thing, partly a time budget thing. It’s not they I am deliberately irrational about any one thing, but that unless I find a reason to evaluate something using the tools of reason, I don’t—I assume the evolutionary reason for my carrying on as usual is good enough, so that I can get on with the business of doing stuff I have prioritized rationally.
When my toddler runs up to me, seemingly for no reason, wanting a hug, I don’t think things like “What does he really want”? “What does this signal”? “The sensations I now feel, and the thoughts I am having, are not actually love—that is a social construct mapping to the the physiology evolved in order to protect the genes I have passed on… etc etc”. Rather, I think something more like “Wow, it’s so nice that he wants a hug from Dad. He’s such a lovely boy”—because I do think those things, and the cause need not be investigated too deeply for my purposes. Then I can get back to the work of trying to make his future a good one, and that in his future more futures are good ones. It’s a kind of meta-rational approach. This is an extreme case, of course, just to demonstrate the idea.
This approach demonstrates two important important issues for me. The first is that incentives matter, and aligning incentives matters. I want to minimise any principal-agent problems over my set of incentives. The second is that I’ve recognised that I have more power, gained from having something to protect. People often say things like “now that you have children you have to be more responsible”. They often mean that you should work more, or play less, or now you have to conform to our values more (and signal it), or similar. I see it differently. The responsibility is not in doing a bunch of things, it is about working out what to do, and it was not just given to me, but is an internally generated desire for achieving good. It means that I think more carefully about goals and outcomes, and more easily disregard non-productive actions and plans. I certainly do this more than I did before having children, and likely more than I would otherwise have.
A couple of tangentially related things I find useful:
Here’s my take on “something to protect” from personal experience:
Finding something to protect is likely quite difficult for many people. I was certainly headed in that direction, and making progress, but after having a child my “power” leveled up by orders of magnitude (if not my ability to wield it). I didn’t have a child for this purpose, and the magnitude of this effect was not knowable in advance, even if the sign seemed likely.
The fact of having a child does not make me more rational. It does, however, provide a very large incentive to become more rational and to apply those gains to areas where they will earn the highest returns, and away from rationality as consumption. It’s not simply that my priorities are different, but that I prioritize better, and strive for continuous improvement in this triage (or, I prioritize prioritizing) , because consequences are real and I have more to protect.
I also do not attempt to be rational about everything. That seems wrong headed, but another way to put it is that I prioritize my rationality expenditure. This is partly a willpower budget thing, partly a time budget thing. It’s not they I am deliberately irrational about any one thing, but that unless I find a reason to evaluate something using the tools of reason, I don’t—I assume the evolutionary reason for my carrying on as usual is good enough, so that I can get on with the business of doing stuff I have prioritized rationally.
When my toddler runs up to me, seemingly for no reason, wanting a hug, I don’t think things like “What does he really want”? “What does this signal”? “The sensations I now feel, and the thoughts I am having, are not actually love—that is a social construct mapping to the the physiology evolved in order to protect the genes I have passed on… etc etc”. Rather, I think something more like “Wow, it’s so nice that he wants a hug from Dad. He’s such a lovely boy”—because I do think those things, and the cause need not be investigated too deeply for my purposes. Then I can get back to the work of trying to make his future a good one, and that in his future more futures are good ones. It’s a kind of meta-rational approach. This is an extreme case, of course, just to demonstrate the idea.
This approach demonstrates two important important issues for me. The first is that incentives matter, and aligning incentives matters. I want to minimise any principal-agent problems over my set of incentives. The second is that I’ve recognised that I have more power, gained from having something to protect. People often say things like “now that you have children you have to be more responsible”. They often mean that you should work more, or play less, or now you have to conform to our values more (and signal it), or similar. I see it differently. The responsibility is not in doing a bunch of things, it is about working out what to do, and it was not just given to me, but is an internally generated desire for achieving good. It means that I think more carefully about goals and outcomes, and more easily disregard non-productive actions and plans. I certainly do this more than I did before having children, and likely more than I would otherwise have.
A couple of tangentially related things I find useful:
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/06/you-cant-handle-the-truth.html Don’t Be “Rationalist”]
[http://www.davidhume.org/search.html?T1=on&T2=on&T3=on&A=on&L=on&ad=on&es=on&E=on&M=on&P=on&N=on&D=on&q=%22be+still+a+man%22 “Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”] -David Hume
But why did you retract this? It is honest and coherent!