I generally agree and think that babysitting shouldn’t be your only source of evidence, for reasons like what you describe. Ideally, you should use a bunch of different threads of evidence, including babysitting, getting a pet, talking to parents, research, etc.
Unfortunately, the only way to really tell is to actually do it, but that is too costly because then there’s no turning back.
Two things to keep in mind though:
1 . Taking a pill to enjoy drudgery
On the “you’ll feel differently when it’s your own child” argument. This argument feels strange to me. Imagine some sort of drudgery you hate (e.g. filing taxes or cleaning the toilet). Imagine there’s a pill that makes it feel like that’s the most meaningful and enjoyable thing ever, and it will make you prioritize it over your existing values and spend millions of dollars on it and tens of thousands of hours on it for the rest of your life. People who take the pill say they love it and would never go back.
Would you take the pill?
Some people might because hey, what matters is things feeling meaningful. I wouldn’t, because I don’t want to add a competing goal thread in mind to compete with my current existing values, no matter how much I’d enjoy it later. (This of course doesn’t address things like the learning curve you mentioned)
2. Parents give biased answers
Asking parents gives you a biased view because it’s hard for parents to psychologically admit that they made a mistake, let alone tell somebody about it. It would just cause too much suffering on their part and would also make them a worse parent.
And it’s more common than you think. I can’t find it now, but I remember a survey I read saying that ~10% of parents regretted having children, and that’s definitely an understimate, because there’s such social desirability bias and most people can’t even admit it to themselves.
To help counter that, I recommend checking out https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/ and watching The Letdown (a funny and as far as I can tell, decently accurate view of the downsides of being a parent).
Of course, look at both sides. You can also read Selfish Reasons to Have Kids and talk to parents.
Kat—these are both fair points. But they do cut both ways....
Taking a pill to avoid being miserable while doing drudgery sounds quite self-manipulative and self-deceptive. But the epigenetic, hormonal, and neural maturation that happens with having kids is somewhat analogous to the changes that happen with puberty.
Imagine going through puberty was not the default, but was voluntary and based on taking a pill. If a 12-year-old is offered a pill that makes them gradually become sexually mature, so they’ll spend huge amount of time, energy, and money for the next 60 years chasing sexual relationships, and thinking that was super meaningful and rewarding, rather than doing cool stuff that kids enjoy, how many would take the puberty-pill? They might think that sexual maturation, which makes all this tedious mating effort, dating, and relationship-investment seem rewarding, is really just self-deceptive nonsense. They might just decide that staying asexual is so much more efficient....
Giving biased answers based on self-deception is a valid concern. However, it cuts both ways. It’s also an issue with people who say they’re perfectly happy not having kids, that they regret nothing, that they were right in prioritizing their careers and having fun, etc. It’s very hard to run the counterfactual across completely different, irreversible life-trajectories.
I agree with your point that it’s important for EAs to gather converging evidence from multiple kinds of sources, from talking with one’s own parents to reading books to diving into the stats about life-satisfaction.
With your puberty example, I expect I would have passed up the pill at the time and remained asexual. Whether that would have been the right choice is a lot harder to figure out...
Jeff—these examples, of whether to pass through puberty, and whether to become a parent, raise some profound issues (a la Derek Parfit) about the continuity of personal identity. They’re basically about decisions about whether to become a new person, and they’re basically irreversible. So, yes, it’s very hard to know whether such a profound change is ‘the right choice’… because it’s a choice that basically extinguishes the person making the choice, and creates a new person who’s stuck with the choice.
Which can sound very scary, or very liberating and transformative, depending on one’s risk tolerance.
I generally agree and think that babysitting shouldn’t be your only source of evidence, for reasons like what you describe. Ideally, you should use a bunch of different threads of evidence, including babysitting, getting a pet, talking to parents, research, etc.
Unfortunately, the only way to really tell is to actually do it, but that is too costly because then there’s no turning back.
Two things to keep in mind though:
1 . Taking a pill to enjoy drudgery
On the “you’ll feel differently when it’s your own child” argument. This argument feels strange to me. Imagine some sort of drudgery you hate (e.g. filing taxes or cleaning the toilet). Imagine there’s a pill that makes it feel like that’s the most meaningful and enjoyable thing ever, and it will make you prioritize it over your existing values and spend millions of dollars on it and tens of thousands of hours on it for the rest of your life. People who take the pill say they love it and would never go back.
Would you take the pill?
Some people might because hey, what matters is things feeling meaningful. I wouldn’t, because I don’t want to add a competing goal thread in mind to compete with my current existing values, no matter how much I’d enjoy it later. (This of course doesn’t address things like the learning curve you mentioned)
2. Parents give biased answers
Asking parents gives you a biased view because it’s hard for parents to psychologically admit that they made a mistake, let alone tell somebody about it. It would just cause too much suffering on their part and would also make them a worse parent.
And it’s more common than you think. I can’t find it now, but I remember a survey I read saying that ~10% of parents regretted having children, and that’s definitely an understimate, because there’s such social desirability bias and most people can’t even admit it to themselves.
To help counter that, I recommend checking out https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/ and watching The Letdown (a funny and as far as I can tell, decently accurate view of the downsides of being a parent).
Of course, look at both sides. You can also read Selfish Reasons to Have Kids and talk to parents.
Kat—these are both fair points. But they do cut both ways....
Taking a pill to avoid being miserable while doing drudgery sounds quite self-manipulative and self-deceptive. But the epigenetic, hormonal, and neural maturation that happens with having kids is somewhat analogous to the changes that happen with puberty.
Imagine going through puberty was not the default, but was voluntary and based on taking a pill. If a 12-year-old is offered a pill that makes them gradually become sexually mature, so they’ll spend huge amount of time, energy, and money for the next 60 years chasing sexual relationships, and thinking that was super meaningful and rewarding, rather than doing cool stuff that kids enjoy, how many would take the puberty-pill? They might think that sexual maturation, which makes all this tedious mating effort, dating, and relationship-investment seem rewarding, is really just self-deceptive nonsense. They might just decide that staying asexual is so much more efficient....
Giving biased answers based on self-deception is a valid concern. However, it cuts both ways. It’s also an issue with people who say they’re perfectly happy not having kids, that they regret nothing, that they were right in prioritizing their careers and having fun, etc. It’s very hard to run the counterfactual across completely different, irreversible life-trajectories.
I agree with your point that it’s important for EAs to gather converging evidence from multiple kinds of sources, from talking with one’s own parents to reading books to diving into the stats about life-satisfaction.
With your puberty example, I expect I would have passed up the pill at the time and remained asexual. Whether that would have been the right choice is a lot harder to figure out...
Jeff—these examples, of whether to pass through puberty, and whether to become a parent, raise some profound issues (a la Derek Parfit) about the continuity of personal identity. They’re basically about decisions about whether to become a new person, and they’re basically irreversible. So, yes, it’s very hard to know whether such a profound change is ‘the right choice’… because it’s a choice that basically extinguishes the person making the choice, and creates a new person who’s stuck with the choice.
Which can sound very scary, or very liberating and transformative, depending on one’s risk tolerance.