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.
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.