Have no children, uncertain if want them: 472, 29.2%
I’m horrified by this. Actually it’s baseline irony at it’s best—here you’ve got a group of people infinitely more concerned with the future then most, yet many of them are against the lowest-hanging-fruit contribution one could make towards a better future. (I hope some of the shockingly high numbers are a by-product of the low average age and high amount of males, but, anyways, the inverse relationship between IQ and birthrate has been observed for a long time.)
Another angle from which to view this should appeal to the many people here who identified as Liberal, Progressive, Socialist, and Social-Justice-loving: class equality. If the current birthrates and demographic trends continue, we’re looking at even greater social inequality than exists today: a tiny cognitive/financial elite that runs society, and a massive underclass that… does whatever else. A nation’s economic inequality is apparently associated with all sorts of social ills.
Everyone who doesn’t want to have kids (as many as they can, within reason) is both missing a major point of life and complicit in creating a dysgenic society—which, btw, should be included on the list of existential risks.
Not everybody see their lives as a big genetic experiment where their goal is to out-breed the opponents.
Everyone who doesn’t want to have kids (as many as they can, within reason) is both missing a major point of life and complicit in creating a dysgenic society—which, btw, should be included on the list of existential risks.
^
See this? This is one of the reasons this forum is 90% male.
Not everybody see their lives as a big genetic experiment where their goal is to out-breed the opponents.
This isn’t about out-breeding opponents. This is about the consequences of dysgenic selection against intelligence.
^ See this? This is one of the reasons this forum is 90% male.
As Yvain pointed out in his post on a similar topic, far more women than men go to church across all denominations, including ones that don’t even let women in leadership positions. I recommend you update your model about what kinds of things drive off women.
As Yvain pointed out in his post on a similar topic, far more women than men go to church across all denominations, including ones that don’t even let women in leadership positions.
People who go to church are unlikely to visit this forum to begin with.
Then again, medicine doesn’t disproportionately drive off women either, and I’m not under the impression that doctors are less likely to be atheistic/rationalistic/high-Openness/etc. than the general population (indeed, they include 1.9% of LW survey respondents, which is about one order of magnitude higher than my out-of-my-ass^WFermi estimate for the general population).
I’m not under the impression that doctors are less likely to be atheistic/rationalistic/high-Openness/etc. than the general population
Not much more likely either it seems. Doctors are a very diverse population, probably not many generalizations you can make about rationalism on that front.
Everyone who doesn’t want to have kids (as many as they can, within reason) is both missing a major point of life and complicit in creating a dysgenic society—which, btw, should be included on the list of existential risks.
^ See this? This is one of the reasons this forum is 90% male.
Hmm. Why does a comment like that lead to a preference to males?
Hmm. Why does a comment like that lead to a preference to males?
A comment like that comes from a person who isn’t even trying to imagine himself in a place of someone who is actually going to conceive and carry to term all those as many as they can children. A woman who reads this will correctly conclude that this isn’t a place where she is considered a person.
It goes beyond that. The idea that children should be made as means for a cause is equally disgusting.
While I think you’re making a good point, and LW should definitely listen to it, this:
A woman who reads this will correctly conclude that this isn’t a place where she is considered a person.
Is phrased a bit strongly, and
disgusting
Is a word I almost never see outside of a mindkilled context, though at least it’s in a sentence, here. (People who use “Disgusting” as the entirety of a sentence are basically wearing a giant “I AM MINDKILLED” flag as a coat, in my experience.)
Is a word I almost never see outside of a mindkilled context, though at least it’s in a sentence, here. (People who use “Disgusting” as the entirety of a sentence are basically wearing a giant “I AM MINDKILLED” flag as a coat, in my experience.)
baiter used the word “horrified” in his original post.
My thoughts on “horrifying” are pretty much the same, but that word hasn’t stuck out to me as much before. And your comments struck me as more likely to be downvoted for tone, even though the content is generally good. (Disclaimer: commenting based on my impressions of such things has failed me in the past.)
My thoughts on “horrifying” are pretty much the same, but that word hasn’t stuck out to me as much before.
So you argue against mentioning emotions in general?
And your comments struck me as more likely to be downvoted for tone
It is kinda funny how a forum which prides itself on not discussing politics is based on a political system (the anonymous democracy of karma). Every time a poster stops to consider whether his post will be upvoted or downvoted, he is engaging in politics.
So you argue against mentioning emotions in general?
I think that people should feel free to mention their emotions, but they should also express them in a manner that recognizes said emotions are two place words. X is horrified/disgusted by Y.
Something may be ‘disgusting’ you, and that’s a useful datapoint, but to say that something is ‘disgusting’ as if it’s an inherent characteristic of the thing pretty much puts a stopper to the conversation. What could be the response “No, it’s not”?
How would you feel about someone who said things like “Homosexuality is disgusting.” as opposed to someone saying something like “Homosexuality icks me out.”? I think you would probably see the latter sentence as less of a conversation-killer than the former.
Something may be ‘disgusting’ you, and that’s a useful datapoint, but to say that something is ‘disgusting’ as if it’s an inherent characteristic of the thing pretty much puts a stopper to the conversation. What could be the response “No, it’s not”?
OK, I see your point. Agree, phrasing my original post as “using children as means for an end disgusts me equally” would have been better.
It is kinda funny how a forum which prides itself on not discussing politics is based on a political system (the anonymous democracy of karma). Every time a poster stops to consider whether his post will be upvoted or downvoted, he is engaging in politics.
Politics as in “politics is the mind-killer” doesn’t mean “involvement with the polis”; it means “entanglement with factional identity”. We routinely touch on the former; insofar as “raising the sanity waterline” can be taken as a goal, for example, it’s inextricably political in that sense. But most of the stuff we’ve historically talked about here isn’t strongly factionalized in the mainstream.
If you’re posting on something that is and you stop to consider its reception, of course, you’re engaging in politics in both senses. But that’s the exception here, not the rule.
I agree with your point that the karma system very much encourages blue/green type of thinking. After all, “what will other people think of me?” is a primal instinct that makes it hard enough already to post your honest beliefs, without the karma system compounding it by showing a number above every post that basically says “X people think you have shut up and not said anything” after you say something controversial.
On the other hand, you have to consider that calling someone’s point of view “horrifying” accomplishes the exact same thing. So I have to agree with others that it’s better to use a more neutral tone when disagreeing.
Though to my experience, even women seem to think the the part that comes after is in fact more laborous that the carrying part—and that part can be equally shared between genders. Of course, it usually/traditionally isn’t, so I guess that’s a point towards male bias too.
A comment like that comes from a person who isn’t even trying to imagine himself in a place of someone who is actually going to conceive and carry to term all those as many as they can children.
While I understand the sentiment here (and I know a number of women who share it), I’m not sure this is correct. I was under the impression that eugenic impulses and pro-natalism were close to evenly split among the genders, and if there was an imbalance, it was that women were more likely to be interested in having babies and in having good babies. It may be easier to convince the marginal man than the marginal woman that they should have children, because the marginal man might have lower cost to do so, but that doesn’t imply that the arguing is mostly being done by men. (And if this particular argument looks focused on men, well, baiter did just look at the survey results!)
A woman who reads this will correctly conclude that this isn’t a place where she is considered a person.
“Considered a person” is a phrase that can mean a lot of things. I think the meaning you’re going for here is something like “bodily autonomy is respected,” but one of the other ways to interpret it is something like “desires are validated.” And I think that being harsh to natalism is one way to invalidate the desires of a lot of people, and I suspect that burden falls disproportionally on women.
Consider this baby announcement, where a significant portion of the response was ‘your baby is off-topic,’ which reminded me of rms. I don’t think that LW should have sections for people to talk about anything people want to be on-topic; I think specialization is a good idea. But I think that viewing these sorts of impulses and arguments as explicitly or implicitly anti-women is a mistake: imagine being one of James_Miller’s students who thought it was really sweet and humanizing for him to include a relaxing, personally relevant picture on the final exam, and then coming to LW and discovering that a highly upvoted response to that is ‘well, don’t satisfy those values, that would be condescending.’ Well, thanks.
A comment like that comes from a person who isn’t even trying to imagine himself in a place of someone who is actually going to conceive and carry to term all those as many as they can children.
While I understand the sentiment here (and I know a number of women who share it), I’m not sure this is correct. I was under the impression that eugenic impulses and pro-natalism were close to evenly split among the genders, and if there was an imbalance, it was that women were more likely to be interested in having babies and in having good babies.
FWIW, the percentage of people who have no children and don’t want any is pretty much the same among cis women (39/124 = 31.5%) as among all survey respondents, and so is that of people who don’t have children and are uncertain (38/124 = 30.6%).
Yes, but I woudn’t expect that sentiment to really be all that gender-biased, though.
Historically at least, I would expect that sentiment to be gender-biased. It’s easier to think of children as objects when you aren’t the one who spends your whole day with them.
Historically at least, I would expect that sentiment to be gender-biased.
Oh, historically sure! But I think these days in western culture, especially(1) among the group being discussed (people interested in this site), I wouldn’t expect to see a large gender bias to that sentiment.
(1) [possible projection fallacy going on here, hard to know]
Explicitly, if you ask people in this site how the burden of raising children should be divided between partners, most people of both genders will say it should be divided equally. But when musing about grand strategies, I think the males are still more likely to propose bullshit like “we the smart people totally should out-breed the stupid people” without giving it a second thought.
Explicitly, if you ask people in this site how the burden of raising children should be divided between partners, most people of both genders will say it should be divided equally.
That depends on what you mean by “divided equally”. I think it should be divided based on comparative advantage.
You’re both right[1], and you were both at −1 when I got here. I assume it’s because you both use emotionally-charged statements and it sounds kinda political.
[1] I’m not sure if this means “right to the best of my understanding”, or “right as in ‘I agree’”. I’m worried that I have to think about this for more than five seconds.
[1] I’m not sure if this means “right to the best of my understanding”, or “right as in ‘I agree’”. I’m worried that I have to think about this for more than five seconds.
If you don’t agree with the best of your understanding, that’s itself worrying. ;-)
here you’ve got a group of people infinitely more concerned with the future then most,
The issue is that impact of actions on the future is progressively harder to predict over longer timespans, and the ignorance of even the sign of the true utility difference due to an action makes the expected utility differences small. Thus unusual concerns with the grande future leave people free to pick what ever actions make them feel good about themselves, with no real direction towards any future good; such actions are then easily rationalized.
I’m horrified by this. Actually it’s baseline irony at it’s best—here you’ve got a group of people infinitely more concerned with the future then most, yet many of them are against the lowest-hanging-fruit contribution one could make towards a better future.
Everyone who doesn’t want to have kids (as many as they can, within reason) is both missing a major point of life and complicit in creating a dysgenic society—which, btw, should be included on the list of existential risks.
Could you explain how a dysgenic society could result in 90% of the human population dying by 2100? To me that seems widely overblown.
Sure, dysgenics is unlikely to result in a bang (in this terminology), but it can sure result in a crunch. (Some people have argued that’s already happened in places such as inner-city Detroit.)
Bostrom’s definition of a crunch (“The potential of humankind to develop into posthumanity[7] is permanently thwarted although human life continues in some form”) isn’t coextensive with ChristianKI’s “90% of the human population dying by 2100″, and dysgenics seems far less likely to cause the latter than the former. (I find it still more unlikely that dysgenics was the key cause of Detroit’s decline, given that that happened in ~3 generations.)
I can think of scenarios where dysgenics might kill 90% of humanity by 2100, but only (1) in combination with some other precipitating factor, like if dysgenics meant a vital unfriendly-AI-averting genius were never born, or (2) if dysgenics were deliberately amplified by direct processes like embryo selection.
Bostrom’s definition of a crunch (“The potential of humankind to develop into posthumanity[7] is permanently thwarted although human life continues in some form”) isn’t coextensive with ChristianKI’s “90% of the human population dying by 2100″, and dysgenics seems far less likely to cause the latter than the former.
I agree. I guess that ChristianKl guessed that by “the list of existential risks” baiter meant the one in the survey, but I was charitable to baiter and assumed he meant it in a more abstract sense.
I’m horrified by this. Actually it’s baseline irony at it’s best—here you’ve got a group of people infinitely more concerned with the future then most, yet many of them are against the lowest-hanging-fruit contribution one could make towards a better future. (I hope some of the shockingly high numbers are a by-product of the low average age and high amount of males, but, anyways, the inverse relationship between IQ and birthrate has been observed for a long time.)
Another angle from which to view this should appeal to the many people here who identified as Liberal, Progressive, Socialist, and Social-Justice-loving: class equality. If the current birthrates and demographic trends continue, we’re looking at even greater social inequality than exists today: a tiny cognitive/financial elite that runs society, and a massive underclass that… does whatever else. A nation’s economic inequality is apparently associated with all sorts of social ills.
Everyone who doesn’t want to have kids (as many as they can, within reason) is both missing a major point of life and complicit in creating a dysgenic society—which, btw, should be included on the list of existential risks.
Obligatory Idiocracy clip
Lowest-hanging? I consider having children to be quite a huge investment of my personal resources. How is that a low-hanging fruit?
Not everybody see their lives as a big genetic experiment where their goal is to out-breed the opponents.
^ See this? This is one of the reasons this forum is 90% male.
In fact, most people don’t—judging by those numbers.
This isn’t about out-breeding opponents. This is about the consequences of dysgenic selection against intelligence.
As Yvain pointed out in his post on a similar topic, far more women than men go to church across all denominations, including ones that don’t even let women in leadership positions. I recommend you update your model about what kinds of things drive off women.
People who go to church are unlikely to visit this forum to begin with.
Perhaps, but there is always the odd statistical outlier. I go to church every week, and I visit this forum, for example.
I also go to church regularly. Albeit it is a Unitarian Universalist church, and I am an atheist.
Then again, medicine doesn’t disproportionately drive off women either, and I’m not under the impression that doctors are less likely to be atheistic/rationalistic/high-Openness/etc. than the general population (indeed, they include 1.9% of LW survey respondents, which is about one order of magnitude higher than my out-of-my-ass^WFermi estimate for the general population).
Not much more likely either it seems. Doctors are a very diverse population, probably not many generalizations you can make about rationalism on that front.
Hmm. Why does a comment like that lead to a preference to males?
A comment like that comes from a person who isn’t even trying to imagine himself in a place of someone who is actually going to conceive and carry to term all those as many as they can children. A woman who reads this will correctly conclude that this isn’t a place where she is considered a person.
It goes beyond that. The idea that children should be made as means for a cause is equally disgusting.
While I think you’re making a good point, and LW should definitely listen to it, this:
Is phrased a bit strongly, and
Is a word I almost never see outside of a mindkilled context, though at least it’s in a sentence, here. (People who use “Disgusting” as the entirety of a sentence are basically wearing a giant “I AM MINDKILLED” flag as a coat, in my experience.)
baiter used the word “horrified” in his original post.
What do you think about horror?
My thoughts on “horrifying” are pretty much the same, but that word hasn’t stuck out to me as much before. And your comments struck me as more likely to be downvoted for tone, even though the content is generally good. (Disclaimer: commenting based on my impressions of such things has failed me in the past.)
So you argue against mentioning emotions in general?
It is kinda funny how a forum which prides itself on not discussing politics is based on a political system (the anonymous democracy of karma). Every time a poster stops to consider whether his post will be upvoted or downvoted, he is engaging in politics.
I think that people should feel free to mention their emotions, but they should also express them in a manner that recognizes said emotions are two place words. X is horrified/disgusted by Y.
Something may be ‘disgusting’ you, and that’s a useful datapoint, but to say that something is ‘disgusting’ as if it’s an inherent characteristic of the thing pretty much puts a stopper to the conversation. What could be the response “No, it’s not”?
How would you feel about someone who said things like “Homosexuality is disgusting.” as opposed to someone saying something like “Homosexuality icks me out.”? I think you would probably see the latter sentence as less of a conversation-killer than the former.
OK, I see your point. Agree, phrasing my original post as “using children as means for an end disgusts me equally” would have been better.
Politics as in “politics is the mind-killer” doesn’t mean “involvement with the polis”; it means “entanglement with factional identity”. We routinely touch on the former; insofar as “raising the sanity waterline” can be taken as a goal, for example, it’s inextricably political in that sense. But most of the stuff we’ve historically talked about here isn’t strongly factionalized in the mainstream.
If you’re posting on something that is and you stop to consider its reception, of course, you’re engaging in politics in both senses. But that’s the exception here, not the rule.
I agree with your point that the karma system very much encourages blue/green type of thinking. After all, “what will other people think of me?” is a primal instinct that makes it hard enough already to post your honest beliefs, without the karma system compounding it by showing a number above every post that basically says “X people think you have shut up and not said anything” after you say something controversial.
On the other hand, you have to consider that calling someone’s point of view “horrifying” accomplishes the exact same thing. So I have to agree with others that it’s better to use a more neutral tone when disagreeing.
Valid point. Thanks for the clarification.
Though to my experience, even women seem to think the the part that comes after is in fact more laborous that the carrying part—and that part can be equally shared between genders. Of course, it usually/traditionally isn’t, so I guess that’s a point towards male bias too.
And pregnancy itself is a personal existential risk.
With modern medicine not in any meaningful sense.
Depends on where you are.
While I understand the sentiment here (and I know a number of women who share it), I’m not sure this is correct. I was under the impression that eugenic impulses and pro-natalism were close to evenly split among the genders, and if there was an imbalance, it was that women were more likely to be interested in having babies and in having good babies. It may be easier to convince the marginal man than the marginal woman that they should have children, because the marginal man might have lower cost to do so, but that doesn’t imply that the arguing is mostly being done by men. (And if this particular argument looks focused on men, well, baiter did just look at the survey results!)
“Considered a person” is a phrase that can mean a lot of things. I think the meaning you’re going for here is something like “bodily autonomy is respected,” but one of the other ways to interpret it is something like “desires are validated.” And I think that being harsh to natalism is one way to invalidate the desires of a lot of people, and I suspect that burden falls disproportionally on women.
Consider this baby announcement, where a significant portion of the response was ‘your baby is off-topic,’ which reminded me of rms. I don’t think that LW should have sections for people to talk about anything people want to be on-topic; I think specialization is a good idea. But I think that viewing these sorts of impulses and arguments as explicitly or implicitly anti-women is a mistake: imagine being one of James_Miller’s students who thought it was really sweet and humanizing for him to include a relaxing, personally relevant picture on the final exam, and then coming to LW and discovering that a highly upvoted response to that is ‘well, don’t satisfy those values, that would be condescending.’ Well, thanks.
FWIW, the percentage of people who have no children and don’t want any is pretty much the same among cis women (39/124 = 31.5%) as among all survey respondents, and so is that of people who don’t have children and are uncertain (38/124 = 30.6%).
Yes, but I woudn’t expect that sentiment to really be all that gender-biased, though.
Historically at least, I would expect that sentiment to be gender-biased. It’s easier to think of children as objects when you aren’t the one who spends your whole day with them.
Oh, historically sure! But I think these days in western culture, especially(1) among the group being discussed (people interested in this site), I wouldn’t expect to see a large gender bias to that sentiment.
(1) [possible projection fallacy going on here, hard to know]
Explicitly, if you ask people in this site how the burden of raising children should be divided between partners, most people of both genders will say it should be divided equally. But when musing about grand strategies, I think the males are still more likely to propose bullshit like “we the smart people totally should out-breed the stupid people” without giving it a second thought.
That depends on what you mean by “divided equally”. I think it should be divided based on comparative advantage.
What definition of “considered a person” are you using that makes the above even a remotely valid deduction.
If you have problems with doing things as a means to an end, might I recommend a forum where consequentialism isn’t the default moral theory.
Oh dear me! Was I supposed to sign any papers before posting on this forum, proclaming my adherence to consequentialism? Will I get arrested now???
No, but simply declaring an instance of it disgusting is not an argument.
Neither is telling me to leave.
Just because they don’t see their lives like that doesn’t mean their opponents won’t outbreed them.
But it does mean that if they don’t care about outbreeding their opponents, they shouldn’t try.
You’re both right[1], and you were both at −1 when I got here. I assume it’s because you both use emotionally-charged statements and it sounds kinda political.
[1] I’m not sure if this means “right to the best of my understanding”, or “right as in ‘I agree’”. I’m worried that I have to think about this for more than five seconds.
If you don’t agree with the best of your understanding, that’s itself worrying. ;-)
Only if you think of yourself as a singleton.
The issue is that impact of actions on the future is progressively harder to predict over longer timespans, and the ignorance of even the sign of the true utility difference due to an action makes the expected utility differences small. Thus unusual concerns with the grande future leave people free to pick what ever actions make them feel good about themselves, with no real direction towards any future good; such actions are then easily rationalized.
Gamete donation is lower-hanging fruit.
Could you explain how a dysgenic society could result in 90% of the human population dying by 2100? To me that seems widely overblown.
And just plain ridiculous—if it results in 90% of the human population dying, that’s some serious evolutionary pressure right there.
Sure, dysgenics is unlikely to result in a bang (in this terminology), but it can sure result in a crunch. (Some people have argued that’s already happened in places such as inner-city Detroit.)
Bostrom’s definition of a crunch (“The potential of humankind to develop into posthumanity[7] is permanently thwarted although human life continues in some form”) isn’t coextensive with ChristianKI’s “90% of the human population dying by 2100″, and dysgenics seems far less likely to cause the latter than the former. (I find it still more unlikely that dysgenics was the key cause of Detroit’s decline, given that that happened in ~3 generations.)
I can think of scenarios where dysgenics might kill 90% of humanity by 2100, but only (1) in combination with some other precipitating factor, like if dysgenics meant a vital unfriendly-AI-averting genius were never born, or (2) if dysgenics were deliberately amplified by direct processes like embryo selection.
I agree. I guess that ChristianKl guessed that by “the list of existential risks” baiter meant the one in the survey, but I was charitable to baiter and assumed he meant it in a more abstract sense.