I’m a pronatalist family-values dad with multiple kids, and I’m an EA who believes in a fairly strong version of long-termism, but I’m still struggling to figure out how these value systems are connected (if at all).
Two possible points of connection are (1) PR reasons: having kids gives EAs more credibility with the general public, especially with family-values conservatives, religious people, and parents in general, (2) personal growth reasons: having kids gives EAs a direct, visceral appreciation of humanity as a multi-generational project, and it unlocks evolved parental-investment values, emotions, and motivations that can be difficult to access in other ways, and that can can reinforce long-term personal commitments to long-termism as a value system.
I have a lot of conservative parents who follow me on Twitter, and a common criticism of EA long-termism by them is that EAs are a bunch of young childless philosophers running around giving moral advice about the future, but they’re unwilling to put any ‘skin in the game’ with respect to actually creating the human future through personal reproduction. They see a disconnect between EA’s abstract valuation of our humanity’s magnificent potential, and EAs concretely deciding to delay or reject parenthood to devote all their time and energy to EA causes and movement-building.
Personally, I understand the serious trade-offs between parental effort (time, energy, money) and EA effort. Those trade-offs are real, and severe, and hard to escape. However, in the long run, I think that EA movement-building will require more prominent EAs actually having kids, partly for the PR reasons, and partly for the personal growth reasons. (I can write more on this at some point if anybody’s interested.)
The connection is probably that for many people, the most counter-intuitive aspect of EA-style longtermism is the obligation to bring additional people into existence, which x-risk mitigation and having children both contribute to.
I’m a pronatalist family-values dad with multiple kids, and I’m an EA who believes in a fairly strong version of long-termism, but I’m still struggling to figure out how these value systems are connected (if at all).
Two possible points of connection are (1) PR reasons: having kids gives EAs more credibility with the general public, especially with family-values conservatives, religious people, and parents in general, (2) personal growth reasons: having kids gives EAs a direct, visceral appreciation of humanity as a multi-generational project, and it unlocks evolved parental-investment values, emotions, and motivations that can be difficult to access in other ways, and that can can reinforce long-term personal commitments to long-termism as a value system.
I have a lot of conservative parents who follow me on Twitter, and a common criticism of EA long-termism by them is that EAs are a bunch of young childless philosophers running around giving moral advice about the future, but they’re unwilling to put any ‘skin in the game’ with respect to actually creating the human future through personal reproduction. They see a disconnect between EA’s abstract valuation of our humanity’s magnificent potential, and EAs concretely deciding to delay or reject parenthood to devote all their time and energy to EA causes and movement-building.
Personally, I understand the serious trade-offs between parental effort (time, energy, money) and EA effort. Those trade-offs are real, and severe, and hard to escape. However, in the long run, I think that EA movement-building will require more prominent EAs actually having kids, partly for the PR reasons, and partly for the personal growth reasons. (I can write more on this at some point if anybody’s interested.)
The connection is probably that for many people, the most counter-intuitive aspect of EA-style longtermism is the obligation to bring additional people into existence, which x-risk mitigation and having children both contribute to.
There is no theoretical or historic evidence of Homo sapiens natal investment being independent of environment/population.