Rational people are less likely to have children because having children is often quite irrational. It has been suggested that people are succumbing to a focusing illusion when they think that having children will make them happy, in that they focus on the good things without giving much thought to the bad. Rationalists are less likely to succumb to these illusions. (Note: this is obviously not true of everyone as some people clearly derive significant happiness from having children).
Not at all tongue in cheek answer:
EAs want to do the most good in the world and it seems that having children is unlikely to help with this, and in fact may make this more difficult. Children are a big responsibility and cost money, reducing time and energy for other pursuits, of which doing the most good will be one.
EAs may also not feel the need to have children as they are already deriving significant meaning from doing the most good. People who aren’t (as) motivated by making the world better are more likely to need to do things for themselves to derive meaning.
Worth noting that you might get increased meaningfulness in exchange for the lost happiness, which isn’t necessarily an irrational trade to make. E.g. Robin Hanson:
Stats suggest that while parenting doesn’t make people happier, it does give them more meaning. And most thoughtful traditions say to focus more on meaning that happiness. Meaning is how you evaluate your whole life, while happiness is how you feel about now. And I agree: happiness is overrated.
Parenting does take time. (Though, as Bryan Caplan emphasized in a book, less than most think.) And many people I know plan to have an enormous positive influences on the universe, far more than plausible via a few children. But I think they are mostly kidding themselves. They fear their future selves being less ambitious and altruistic, but its just as plausible that they will instead become more realistic.
Also, many people with grand plans struggle to motivate themselves to follow their plans. They neglect the motivational power of meaning. Dads are paid more, other things equal, and I doubt that’s a bias; dads are better motivated, and that matters. Your life is long, most big world problems will still be there in a decade or two, and following the usual human trajectory you should expect to have the most wisdom and influence around age 40 or 50. Having kids helps you gain both.
Worth noting that you might get increased meaningfulness in exchange for the lost happiness
FWIW, I think this accidentally sent this subthread off on a tangent because of the phrasing of ‘in exchange for the lost happiness’.
My read of the stats, similar to this Vox article and to what Robin actually said, is that people with children (by choice) are neither more nor less happy on average than childless people (by choice), so any substantial boost to meaning should be seen as a freebie, rather than something you had to give up happiness for.
I think there’s a related error where people look at the costs of having children (time, money, etc.) and conclude that it’s not worth it if the children aren’t even making you happy at the end of all that. But this doesn’t make sense, at least from a selfish perspective: the parents in these studies were also paying all those costs, their childless counterparts were not, and yet the bottom line was essentially no overall effect, suggesting that children are either providing something which makes up for these costs or that the costs are not as big as people sometimes make out (my suspicion as a father of two is that it’s a bit of both). And so as Vox put it:
Bottom line: The evidence we have suggests having children doesn’t affect a person’s happiness much one way or another. But that evidence is limited by people selecting into the path they think is best for them. So: If you want to have kids, have kids. If you don’t want to have kids, don’t have kids. The happiness literature isn’t going to make the decision for you.
Yeah I agree that trading off happiness for meaning can make sense. I would just point out the following from the article I linked to:
But the warnings for prospective parents are even more stark than ‘it’s not going to make you happier’. Using data sets from Europe and America, numerous scholars have found some evidence that, on aggregate, parents often report statistically significantly lower levels of happiness (Alesina et al., 2004), life satisfaction (Di Tella et al., 2003), marital satisfaction (Twenge et al., 2003), and mental well-being (Clark & Oswald, 2002) compared with non-parents.
I’m not sure how selective the author may (or may not) be being here, and there could certainly be confounding variables that aren’t controlled for in the studies (I haven’t looked at them so can’t really say). The reason I draw out that quote is that ‘life satisfaction’ may be the best overall measure of wellbeing we have, and it should incorporate ‘meaning’ to some extent, so that Di Tella study should be concerning.
It would be cool for someone to do an in-depth review of the evidence on how children impact on wellbeing. Maybe I will, if I find the time...
So, how did the World Happiness Report measure happiness? The study asked people in 156 countries to “value their lives today on a 0 to 10 scale, with the worst possible life as a 0 and the best possible life as a 10.” This is a widely used measure of general life satisfaction. And we know that societal factors such as gross domestic product per capita, extensiveness of social services, freedom from oppression, and trust in government and fellow citizens can explain a significant proportion of people’s average life satisfaction in a country.
In these measures the Nordic countries—Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland—tend to score highest in the world. Accordingly, it is no surprise that every time we measure life satisfaction, these countries are consistently in the top 10. [...]
… some people might argue that neither life satisfaction, positive emotions nor absence of depression are enough for happiness. Instead, something more is required: One has to experience one’s life as meaningful. But when Shigehiro Oishi, of the University of Virginia, and Ed Diener, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, compared 132 different countries based on whether people felt that their life has an important purpose or meaning, African countries including Togo and Senegal were at the top of the ranking, while the U.S. and Finland were far behind. Here, religiosity might play a role: The wealthier countries tend to be less religious on average, and this might be the reason why people in these countries report less meaningfulness.
Interesting, especially that Togo and Senegal are top of the ranking! I’d imagine the Togolese and Senegalese are having quite a lot of children as well.
compared 132 different countries based on whether people felt that their life has an important purpose or meaning, African countries including Togo and Senegal were at the top of the ranking, while the U.S. and Finland were far behind.
I haven’t explored this in depth, but it’s worth stressing that this indicates that measures of meaning appear to lead to a much more counter intuitive ranking of countries than LS or happiness.
If meaning matters more to well-being than happiness or life satisfaction, then we are probably very, very wrong about what makes a life go well.
To be fair to Kaj they only said that one may rationally trade-off happiness for meaning, not that meaning intrinsically matters more.
For example you could theoretically have both meaning and happiness as components of wellbeing, with both having diminishing marginal contribution to wellbeing. In this case it would likely be best to have some meaning and some happiness. If one was very happy, but with no meaning, one could rationally trade off happiness for meaning to improve overall wellbeing—and this wouldn’t require thinking that meaning is intrinsically better than happiness.
I agree its uncontroversial that if there are multiple elements of well-being that don’t necessarily have equal weights—there will be a point at which getting more of the thing that matters less will be better overall than getting the thing that matters more.
Since Kaj included the Bryan Caplan quote it seemed to imbue the comment with a bit more opinion on what matters.
And most thoughtful traditions say to focus more on meaning that happiness. Meaning is how you evaluate your whole life, while happiness is how you feel about now. And I agree: happiness is overrated.
Getting back to the point. If a potential parent is told “you’ll be less happy but your life will have more of (whatever meaning means).” I’m trying to express, that if that potential parent asked me if they should take that tradeoff (from a self interested perspective), I’d say “make sure you’re getting a heck of a lot of meaning for every unit of happiness you lose”.
Full disclosure: I’ll probably make that tradeoff even though it doesn’t seem like a great bargain.
As a deeper aside, it’s odd that he defines meaning pretty much as life satisfaction / evaluation which is normally “how you evaluate your whole life”. They obviously aren’t the same to people if they give opposite rankings of countries.
As a deeper aside, it’s odd that he defines meaning pretty much as life satisfaction / evaluation which is normally “how you evaluate your whole life”. They obviously aren’t the same to people if they give opposite rankings of countries.
Yeah I think he may actually be referring to life satisfaction, but calling it meaning as a sort of informal short-hand. I’m not sure “meaning” is a very common wellbeing metric anyway.
Slightly (only slightly) tongue in cheek answer:
Rational people are less likely to have children because having children is often quite irrational. It has been suggested that people are succumbing to a focusing illusion when they think that having children will make them happy, in that they focus on the good things without giving much thought to the bad. Rationalists are less likely to succumb to these illusions. (Note: this is obviously not true of everyone as some people clearly derive significant happiness from having children).
Not at all tongue in cheek answer:
EAs want to do the most good in the world and it seems that having children is unlikely to help with this, and in fact may make this more difficult. Children are a big responsibility and cost money, reducing time and energy for other pursuits, of which doing the most good will be one.
EAs may also not feel the need to have children as they are already deriving significant meaning from doing the most good. People who aren’t (as) motivated by making the world better are more likely to need to do things for themselves to derive meaning.
Worth noting that you might get increased meaningfulness in exchange for the lost happiness, which isn’t necessarily an irrational trade to make. E.g. Robin Hanson:
FWIW, I think this accidentally sent this subthread off on a tangent because of the phrasing of ‘in exchange for the lost happiness’.
My read of the stats, similar to this Vox article and to what Robin actually said, is that people with children (by choice) are neither more nor less happy on average than childless people (by choice), so any substantial boost to meaning should be seen as a freebie, rather than something you had to give up happiness for.
I think there’s a related error where people look at the costs of having children (time, money, etc.) and conclude that it’s not worth it if the children aren’t even making you happy at the end of all that. But this doesn’t make sense, at least from a selfish perspective: the parents in these studies were also paying all those costs, their childless counterparts were not, and yet the bottom line was essentially no overall effect, suggesting that children are either providing something which makes up for these costs or that the costs are not as big as people sometimes make out (my suspicion as a father of two is that it’s a bit of both). And so as Vox put it:
Yeah I agree that trading off happiness for meaning can make sense. I would just point out the following from the article I linked to:
I’m not sure how selective the author may (or may not) be being here, and there could certainly be confounding variables that aren’t controlled for in the studies (I haven’t looked at them so can’t really say). The reason I draw out that quote is that ‘life satisfaction’ may be the best overall measure of wellbeing we have, and it should incorporate ‘meaning’ to some extent, so that Di Tella study should be concerning.
It would be cool for someone to do an in-depth review of the evidence on how children impact on wellbeing. Maybe I will, if I find the time...
Fair point. Though apparently measures of ‘life satisfaction’ and ‘meaning’ produce different outcomes:
Interesting, especially that Togo and Senegal are top of the ranking! I’d imagine the Togolese and Senegalese are having quite a lot of children as well.
I haven’t explored this in depth, but it’s worth stressing that this indicates that measures of meaning appear to lead to a much more counter intuitive ranking of countries than LS or happiness.
If meaning matters more to well-being than happiness or life satisfaction, then we are probably very, very wrong about what makes a life go well.
To be fair to Kaj they only said that one may rationally trade-off happiness for meaning, not that meaning intrinsically matters more.
For example you could theoretically have both meaning and happiness as components of wellbeing, with both having diminishing marginal contribution to wellbeing. In this case it would likely be best to have some meaning and some happiness. If one was very happy, but with no meaning, one could rationally trade off happiness for meaning to improve overall wellbeing—and this wouldn’t require thinking that meaning is intrinsically better than happiness.
Very fair Jack!
I agree its uncontroversial that if there are multiple elements of well-being that don’t necessarily have equal weights—there will be a point at which getting more of the thing that matters less will be better overall than getting the thing that matters more.
Since Kaj included the Bryan Caplan quote it seemed to imbue the comment with a bit more opinion on what matters.
Getting back to the point. If a potential parent is told “you’ll be less happy but your life will have more of (whatever meaning means).” I’m trying to express, that if that potential parent asked me if they should take that tradeoff (from a self interested perspective), I’d say “make sure you’re getting a heck of a lot of meaning for every unit of happiness you lose”.
Full disclosure: I’ll probably make that tradeoff even though it doesn’t seem like a great bargain.
As a deeper aside, it’s odd that he defines meaning pretty much as life satisfaction / evaluation which is normally “how you evaluate your whole life”. They obviously aren’t the same to people if they give opposite rankings of countries.
Yeah I think he may actually be referring to life satisfaction, but calling it meaning as a sort of informal short-hand. I’m not sure “meaning” is a very common wellbeing metric anyway.
Big +1