In general I think it’s better to assign x percent of your money to charity and then spend that money optimally rather than compare literally every thing you do to optimal charity. First, because t seems something you can get way more people to do and second because selfishness is a giant driving force behind optimization. Rich people spending money on cell phones in the 80s has led to better tech access now in Africa. If they instead spent that money on feeding people, nothing would be qualitatively different and the world would be worse off on net.
So if you’re counting your kids as charity that’s one thing, but if you’re having kids because you WANT kids that’s a different story.
On the kids as charity front: the world could use motivated high intelligence kids a lot more than it can use more people living on the edge of starvation. Even if you don’t think smart kids are +EV for the world to begin with, bringing one up to care about Africa will get you a lot more value than you put in, I think. Assuming you’re not averse to deliberately raising your kid to agree with your views on helping the world.
In general I think it’s better to assign x percent of your money to charity and then spend that money optimally rather than compare literally every thing you do to optimal charity.
In general I think it’s better to assign x percent of your money to charity and then spend that money optimally rather than compare literally every thing you do to optimal charity.
I was recently worrying about this argument (the one in the OP) independently, and this (the argument I’ve quoted from you) seems like the best response. In fact you may have just tipped me towards “have kids.”
In general I think it’s better to assign x percent of your money to charity and then spend that money optimally rather than compare literally every thing you do to optimal charity. First, because t seems something you can get way more people to do and second because selfishness is a giant driving force behind optimization. Rich people spending money on cell phones in the 80s has led to better tech access now in Africa. If they instead spent that money on feeding people, nothing would be qualitatively different and the world would be worse off on net.
So if you’re counting your kids as charity that’s one thing, but if you’re having kids because you WANT kids that’s a different story.
On the kids as charity front: the world could use motivated high intelligence kids a lot more than it can use more people living on the edge of starvation. Even if you don’t think smart kids are +EV for the world to begin with, bringing one up to care about Africa will get you a lot more value than you put in, I think. Assuming you’re not averse to deliberately raising your kid to agree with your views on helping the world.
Agreed.
I was recently worrying about this argument (the one in the OP) independently, and this (the argument I’ve quoted from you) seems like the best response. In fact you may have just tipped me towards “have kids.”