My current thoughts on this issue run as follows: it seems like smart people can come up with various reasons not to have children (e.g. because it frees up their finances and free time to do interesting things, or because life is suffering). This seems dangerous. If smart people stop having children, then the population gets dumber, and I don’t want that. On the other hand, insanely smart people really should have money and free time to do interesting things such as save the world.
So my current ideal child-bearing policy is something like the following: dumb people should be discouraged from having children, smart but not insanely smart people should be encouraged to have children, and insanely smart people should do whatever they want. (Maybe periodically donate their genetic material.)
We could encourage smart people to have more children by paying some of their expenses, if specified conditions are met. This would be completely legal, and within power of a few people with sufficient money.
If done by LW fans, the conditions should be written to increase the probability that the children will become smart rationalists and contribute to the society positively.
I’d say something bad, because the money could be better spent. But if they weren’t going to do effective altruism stuff with it, it’s probably just neutral so far as I can tell.
If a middle-class couple in a first world country decide to create and raise a child, they have done
[pollid:379]
My current thoughts on this issue run as follows: it seems like smart people can come up with various reasons not to have children (e.g. because it frees up their finances and free time to do interesting things, or because life is suffering). This seems dangerous. If smart people stop having children, then the population gets dumber, and I don’t want that. On the other hand, insanely smart people really should have money and free time to do interesting things such as save the world.
So my current ideal child-bearing policy is something like the following: dumb people should be discouraged from having children, smart but not insanely smart people should be encouraged to have children, and insanely smart people should do whatever they want. (Maybe periodically donate their genetic material.)
We could encourage smart people to have more children by paying some of their expenses, if specified conditions are met. This would be completely legal, and within power of a few people with sufficient money.
If done by LW fans, the conditions should be written to increase the probability that the children will become smart rationalists and contribute to the society positively.
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I’d say something bad, because the money could be better spent. But if they weren’t going to do effective altruism stuff with it, it’s probably just neutral so far as I can tell.