Jacques—these are really tough questions. Deciding whether to have kids is one thing in a relatively technologically & economically stable society (e.g. 12th century Europe). It seems incredibly uncertain in 2023, given expected accelerations in certain technologies (e.g. AI), and short time horizons for influencing their development.
I will say this though: probably in every generation since the Industrial Revolution, young potential parents have faced what seemed to be historically unprecedented rates of acceleration in technology and social disruption, that required their urgent attention. When I had my first kid in the mid-90s, it seemed like the Internet would change everything, China would overtake the West very soon, EU integration would change the whole economic fabric of Europe, etc—and that all sort of happened, but it didn’t really change family life all that much. I’m glad I didn’t wait to see how it would all play out, and that I didn’t devote every waking hour to trying to nudge Internet development in more human-aligned directions.
In other words, the near-term future might be radically different from now, but that’s been true for a couple hundred years, and parents and kids carry on doing their thing regardless.
Jacques—these are really tough questions. Deciding whether to have kids is one thing in a relatively technologically & economically stable society (e.g. 12th century Europe). It seems incredibly uncertain in 2023, given expected accelerations in certain technologies (e.g. AI), and short time horizons for influencing their development.
I will say this though: probably in every generation since the Industrial Revolution, young potential parents have faced what seemed to be historically unprecedented rates of acceleration in technology and social disruption, that required their urgent attention. When I had my first kid in the mid-90s, it seemed like the Internet would change everything, China would overtake the West very soon, EU integration would change the whole economic fabric of Europe, etc—and that all sort of happened, but it didn’t really change family life all that much. I’m glad I didn’t wait to see how it would all play out, and that I didn’t devote every waking hour to trying to nudge Internet development in more human-aligned directions.
In other words, the near-term future might be radically different from now, but that’s been true for a couple hundred years, and parents and kids carry on doing their thing regardless.