EAs should be aware that it is easy to traumatize (their own) kids with apocalyptic narratives.
EAs population is getting older: we are no longer in our early twenties but at a more respectable age. That alone will lead to more and more children being born to EAs. MacAskill recommends in WWOTF having children. Not sure how many babies will his endorsement ensure, but likely nonzero.
Raising a child is hard, but EAs have probably one additional opportunity to mess it up a bit more than the average parent. Since we believe the world might end if we don’t do enough, we might traumatize our children with that.
Damaging life-long consequences Chronic stress can permanently affect brain development as well as brain functioning. Exposure to climate-related stress during early development may have damaging life-long consequences, including maladaptive behaviors, memory problems, problems with attention, diminished inhibition, difficulty regulating emotions, impaired decision making, impaired problem solving, behavioral problems, and priming for future stressful events...
this is literally just random though I had which I haven’t seen discussed yet. I spent effectively 0 minutes of my life thinking about raising children, child psychology, whether EAs should have children, etc.
EAs should be aware that it is easy to traumatize (their own) kids with apocalyptic narratives.
EAs population is getting older: we are no longer in our early twenties but at a more respectable age. That alone will lead to more and more children being born to EAs. MacAskill recommends in WWOTF having children. Not sure how many babies will his endorsement ensure, but likely nonzero.
Raising a child is hard, but EAs have probably one additional opportunity to mess it up a bit more than the average parent. Since we believe the world might end if we don’t do enough, we might traumatize our children with that.
Many, many apocalyptic movements do that. On the religious side, you have cults like (Jehovah’s witnesses)[https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/religious-trauma-is-real-and-more-survivors-need-to-speak-up-about-it-39429c677756] and (mainstream religions)[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/religion-evangelical-christian-apocalypse-josiah-hesse] with their Armageddons (i am not saying EA is a cult, I am saying there is a similarity and potential risk in this specific thing, nothing more). Climate change movement has its (own share )[https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/19/our-children-face-pretraumatic-stress-from-worries-about-climate-change/]
This is not inevitable. Climate movement produced guides (e.g. (this one)[https://media.ourkidsclimate.org/2021/06/Talk-about-climate-guide-for-parents-2021-06-01.pdf] which is very similar to other lists when googling “how to talk to kids about climate change”) and probably more material about this topic. (which I know nothing about)
this is literally just random though I had which I haven’t seen discussed yet. I spent effectively 0 minutes of my life thinking about raising children, child psychology, whether EAs should have children, etc.