Congratulations on the book launch! I am listening to the audiobook and enjoying it.
One thing that has struck me—it sounds like longtermism aligns neatly with a strongly pro-natalist outlook.
The book mentions that increasing secularisation isn’t necessarily a one-way trend. Certain religious groups have high fertility rates which helps the religion spread.
Is having 3+ children a good strategy for propagating longtermist goals? Should we all be trying to have big happy families with children who strongly share our values? It seems like a clear path for effective multi-generational community building! Maybe even more impactful than what we do with our careers...
This would be a significant shift in thinking for me—in my darkest hours I have wondered if having children is a moral crime (given the world we’re leaving them). It also is slightly off-putting as it sounds like it is out of the playbook for fundamentalist religions.
But if I buy the longtermist argument, and if I assume that I will be able to give my kids happy lives and that I will be able to influence their values, it seems like I should give more weight to the idea of having children than I currently do.
I see that UK total fertility rates has been below replacement level since 1973 and has been decreasing year on year since 2012. I imagine that EAs / longtermists are also following a similar trend.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about longtermism and its implication for fertility. dotsam has taken longtermism’s pro-natalist bent in a relatively happy direction, but it also has some very dark implications. Doesn’t longermism imply a forced birth be a great outcome (think of those millions of future generations created!)? Doesn’t it imply conservatives are right and abortion is an horrendous crime? There are real moral problems with valuing a potential life with the same amount of weight as as an actual life.
I’m really surprised by how common it is for people’s thoughts to turn in this direction! (cf. this recent twitter thread) A few points I’d stress in reply:
(1) Pro-natalism just means being pro-fertility in general; it doesn’t mean requiring reproduction every single moment, or no matter the costs.
(2) Assuming standard liberal views about the (zero) moral status of the non-conscious embryo, there’s nothing special about abortion from a pro-natalist perspective. It’s just like any other form of family planning—any other moment when you refrain from having a child but could have done otherwise.
(3) Violating people’s bodily autonomy is a big deal; even granting that it’s good to have more kids all else equal, it’s hard to imagine a realistic scenario in which “forced birth” would be for the best, all things considered. (For example, it’s obviously better for people to time their reproductive choices to better fit with when they’re in a position to provide well for their kids. Not to mention the Freakonomics stuff about how unwanted pregnancies, if forced to term, result in higher crime rates in subsequent decades.)
In general, we should just be really, really wary about sliding from “X is good, all else equal” to “Force everyone to do X, no matter what!” Remember your J.S. Mill, everyone! Utilitarians should be liberal.
Only if you’re strictly total utilitarian. But won’t all these things drop us into a situation like in the repugnant conclusion, where we would just get more people (especially women) living in worse conditions, with fewer choices?
Women in fact already are having fewer children than they want. Me and a lot of women around me would want to have children earlier than we are planning on, but we couldn’t do it without dropping three levels down the socioeconomic ladder and having to give up on goals we’ve been investing in since elementary school. We won’t only be quashing our potential but that of the children we would raise once we do have the resources to invest in them. Is that really a better future?
If EA really wants to increase fertility at a global level I think some hard thought needs to be given to how to change the social structures and incentives so that women can have children without having to also disproportionately carry such a large burden through pregnancy, birth, and childcare.
I actually have given artificial wombs a little thought. I do think they’d be great: they could eliminate a very common suffering, give more options to LGBTQ people, aid in civilizational resilience, and definitely increase the number of wanted children people have in practice. They make sense within many different ethical frameworks.
I also think we’re very, very far from them. I’m a systems biologist in a lab that also ventures into reproductive health, and we ostensibly know very little about the process of pregnancy. My lab is using the most cutting-edge methods to prove very specific and fundamental things. So at the same time, I am skeptical we will see it in our lifetimes, if ever.
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.
For the average EA, I’d guess having children yourself is far less cost-effective than doing EA outreach. Maybe if you see yourself as having highly valuable abilities far beyond the average EA or otherwise very neglected within EA, then having children might look closer to competitive?
This is what Will says in the book: “I think the risk of technological stagnation alone suffices to make the net longterm effect of having more children positive. On top of that, if you bring them up well, then they can be change makers who help create a better future. Ultimately, having children is a deeply personal decision that I won’t be able to do full justice to here—but among the many considerations that may play a role, I think that an impartial concern for our future counts in favour, not against.”
Still, this doesn’t make the case for it being competitive with alternatives. EA outreach probably brings in far more people for the same time and resources. Children are a huge investment.
If you’re specifically targeting technological stagnation, then outreach and policy work are probably far more cost-effective than having children, because they’re much higher leverage. That being said, temporary technological stagnation might buy us more time to prepare for x-risks like AGI.
Of course, Will is doing outreach with this book, and maybe it makes sense to promote people having children, since it’s an easier sell than career change into outreach or policy, because people already want to have kids. It’s like only asking people to donate 10% of their income in the GWWC pledge, although the GWWC pledge probably serves as a better hook into further EA involvement, and having children could instead be a barrier.
Maybe at some point the marginal returns to further EA outreach will be low enough for having children to look cost-effective, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Spoiler alert—I’ve now got to the end of the book, and “consider having children” is indeed a recommended high impact action. This feels like a big deal and is a big update for me, even though it is consistent with the longtermist arguments I was already familiar with.
Congratulations on the book launch! I am listening to the audiobook and enjoying it.
One thing that has struck me—it sounds like longtermism aligns neatly with a strongly pro-natalist outlook.
The book mentions that increasing secularisation isn’t necessarily a one-way trend. Certain religious groups have high fertility rates which helps the religion spread.
Is having 3+ children a good strategy for propagating longtermist goals? Should we all be trying to have big happy families with children who strongly share our values? It seems like a clear path for effective multi-generational community building! Maybe even more impactful than what we do with our careers...
This would be a significant shift in thinking for me—in my darkest hours I have wondered if having children is a moral crime (given the world we’re leaving them). It also is slightly off-putting as it sounds like it is out of the playbook for fundamentalist religions.
But if I buy the longtermist argument, and if I assume that I will be able to give my kids happy lives and that I will be able to influence their values, it seems like I should give more weight to the idea of having children than I currently do.
I see that UK total fertility rates has been below replacement level since 1973 and has been decreasing year on year since 2012. I imagine that EAs / longtermists are also following a similar trend.
Should we shut up and multiply?!
I’ve also been thinking a lot about longtermism and its implication for fertility. dotsam has taken longtermism’s pro-natalist bent in a relatively happy direction, but it also has some very dark implications. Doesn’t longermism imply a forced birth be a great outcome (think of those millions of future generations created!)? Doesn’t it imply conservatives are right and abortion is an horrendous crime? There are real moral problems with valuing a potential life with the same amount of weight as as an actual life.
I’m really surprised by how common it is for people’s thoughts to turn in this direction! (cf. this recent twitter thread) A few points I’d stress in reply:
(1) Pro-natalism just means being pro-fertility in general; it doesn’t mean requiring reproduction every single moment, or no matter the costs.
(2) Assuming standard liberal views about the (zero) moral status of the non-conscious embryo, there’s nothing special about abortion from a pro-natalist perspective. It’s just like any other form of family planning—any other moment when you refrain from having a child but could have done otherwise.
(3) Violating people’s bodily autonomy is a big deal; even granting that it’s good to have more kids all else equal, it’s hard to imagine a realistic scenario in which “forced birth” would be for the best, all things considered. (For example, it’s obviously better for people to time their reproductive choices to better fit with when they’re in a position to provide well for their kids. Not to mention the Freakonomics stuff about how unwanted pregnancies, if forced to term, result in higher crime rates in subsequent decades.)
In general, we should just be really, really wary about sliding from “X is good, all else equal” to “Force everyone to do X, no matter what!” Remember your J.S. Mill, everyone! Utilitarians should be liberal.
Only if you’re strictly total utilitarian. But won’t all these things drop us into a situation like in the repugnant conclusion, where we would just get more people (especially women) living in worse conditions, with fewer choices?
Women in fact already are having fewer children than they want. Me and a lot of women around me would want to have children earlier than we are planning on, but we couldn’t do it without dropping three levels down the socioeconomic ladder and having to give up on goals we’ve been investing in since elementary school. We won’t only be quashing our potential but that of the children we would raise once we do have the resources to invest in them. Is that really a better future?
If EA really wants to increase fertility at a global level I think some hard thought needs to be given to how to change the social structures and incentives so that women can have children without having to also disproportionately carry such a large burden through pregnancy, birth, and childcare.
This probably isn’t the sort of thing you’re thinking of, but I’m really hoping we can figure out artificial wombs for this reason
I actually have given artificial wombs a little thought. I do think they’d be great: they could eliminate a very common suffering, give more options to LGBTQ people, aid in civilizational resilience, and definitely increase the number of wanted children people have in practice. They make sense within many different ethical frameworks.
I also think we’re very, very far from them. I’m a systems biologist in a lab that also ventures into reproductive health, and we ostensibly know very little about the process of pregnancy. My lab is using the most cutting-edge methods to prove very specific and fundamental things. So at the same time, I am skeptical we will see it in our lifetimes, if ever.
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.
For the average EA, I’d guess having children yourself is far less cost-effective than doing EA outreach. Maybe if you see yourself as having highly valuable abilities far beyond the average EA or otherwise very neglected within EA, then having children might look closer to competitive?
This is what Will says in the book: “I think the risk of technological stagnation alone suffices to make the net longterm effect of having more children positive. On top of that, if you bring them up well, then they can be change makers who help create a better future. Ultimately, having children is a deeply personal decision that I won’t be able to do full justice to here—but among the many considerations that may play a role, I think that an impartial concern for our future counts in favour, not against.”
Still, this doesn’t make the case for it being competitive with alternatives. EA outreach probably brings in far more people for the same time and resources. Children are a huge investment.
If you’re specifically targeting technological stagnation, then outreach and policy work are probably far more cost-effective than having children, because they’re much higher leverage. That being said, temporary technological stagnation might buy us more time to prepare for x-risks like AGI.
Of course, Will is doing outreach with this book, and maybe it makes sense to promote people having children, since it’s an easier sell than career change into outreach or policy, because people already want to have kids. It’s like only asking people to donate 10% of their income in the GWWC pledge, although the GWWC pledge probably serves as a better hook into further EA involvement, and having children could instead be a barrier.
Maybe at some point the marginal returns to further EA outreach will be low enough for having children to look cost-effective, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Spoiler alert—I’ve now got to the end of the book, and “consider having children” is indeed a recommended high impact action. This feels like a big deal and is a big update for me, even though it is consistent with the longtermist arguments I was already familiar with.