Following lesswrong or EA community discussions about decisions about having children, I get the impression that the factors that influence the decision seem to be:
potentially reduced productivity (less time and energy for saving the world?),
immediate happiness / stress effect on the parents.
...
I think that there are many more reasons than this including the ecological footprint of a child, personal reasons, general ethical reasons, and others. But I agree that there is no coherent picture. The community hasn’t come to terms with this and this is more a market place of EA/LW flavioured ideas. What else do you expect of a young and preparadigmatic field. People try to think hard about it, but it is, well, hard.
I am confused about this attitude, and I try to determine whether
I just do not understand whether people on lesswrong expect the future to be bad or good,
More bad than good, I guess. But it is a distribution as you can look up on Metaculus.
people think even in case of a disaster with relevant likelihood, the future will definitely not include suffering that could outweigh some years of happiness,
Some will think it and be worried. That’s what the s-risk sub-community is about, but I get the impression that is a small part. And then there is the question what suffering is and whether it is “bad” or a problem to begin with (though most agree on that).
people (who have children) have not thought about this in detail,
Unsurprising as, having babies has always been and always will be (until/when/if uploading/bio-engineering) a normal thing of life. Normal is normal. People do think about how many children they would want to have, but rarely if.
people do not think that any of this matters for some reason I overlook,
people tend to be taken in by motivated reasoning,
or something else.
Sure, some, but I don’t think it is as bad as you seem to think.
So I tried to design a clear scenario to understand some parameters driving the decisions.
And here I think things went wrong. I think the scenario wasn’t good. It was unrealistic—curring out too small a part of what you seem to be interested in.
Why did I ask you about it? You have four children, you take part in discussions about the topic, you also write about alignment / AI risk.
I think that there are many more reasons than this including the ecological footprint of a child, personal reasons, general ethical reasons, and others. But I agree that there is no coherent picture. The community hasn’t come to terms with this and this is more a market place of EA/LW flavioured ideas. What else do you expect of a young and preparadigmatic field. People try to think hard about it, but it is, well, hard.
More bad than good, I guess. But it is a distribution as you can look up on Metaculus.
Some will think it and be worried. That’s what the s-risk sub-community is about, but I get the impression that is a small part. And then there is the question what suffering is and whether it is “bad” or a problem to begin with (though most agree on that).
Unsurprising as, having babies has always been and always will be (until/when/if uploading/bio-engineering) a normal thing of life. Normal is normal. People do think about how many children they would want to have, but rarely if.
Sure, some, but I don’t think it is as bad as you seem to think.
And here I think things went wrong. I think the scenario wasn’t good. It was unrealistic—curring out too small a part of what you seem to be interested in.
Thank you.