Thanks for the question! While from an emotional perspective, I care a ton about our kids’ wellbeing, from a utilitarian standpoint this is a relatively minor consideration given I hope to positively impact many beings’ lives through my career. Thus, we looked at the child’s wellbeing on a very high level—guessing that our children have good chances at a net positive life because they will likely grow up with lots of resources and a good social environment. The one aspect we weren’t confident enough to just eyeball was whether lots of nanny would be bad for them, hence we did some research on that (under “Child health”).
“While from an emotional perspective, I care a ton about our kids’ wellbeing, from a utilitarian standpoint this is a relatively minor consideration given I hope to positively impact many beings’ lives through my career.”
I find this distinction a bit confusing. After all, every hour spent with your kid is probably “relatively minor” compared to the counterfactual impact of that hour on “many beings’ lives”. So it seems to me that your evaluating personal costs and expected experiences and so on at all only makes sense if the kid’s wellbeing is very important to you, or do I misunderstand that?
“Thus, we looked at the child’s wellbeing on a very high level—guessing that our children have good chances at a net positive life because they will likely grow up with lots of resources and a good social environment.”
Out of interest: Do you consider catastrophic risks to be small enough not to matter, and is there a point at which that would change?
Thanks for the article.
Did aspects of the child’s wellbeing, expected life satisfaction, life expectation etc enter your considerations?
Thanks for the question! While from an emotional perspective, I care a ton about our kids’ wellbeing, from a utilitarian standpoint this is a relatively minor consideration given I hope to positively impact many beings’ lives through my career. Thus, we looked at the child’s wellbeing on a very high level—guessing that our children have good chances at a net positive life because they will likely grow up with lots of resources and a good social environment. The one aspect we weren’t confident enough to just eyeball was whether lots of nanny would be bad for them, hence we did some research on that (under “Child health”).
“While from an emotional perspective, I care a ton about our kids’ wellbeing, from a utilitarian standpoint this is a relatively minor consideration given I hope to positively impact many beings’ lives through my career.”
I find this distinction a bit confusing. After all, every hour spent with your kid is probably “relatively minor” compared to the counterfactual impact of that hour on “many beings’ lives”. So it seems to me that your evaluating personal costs and expected experiences and so on at all only makes sense if the kid’s wellbeing is very important to you, or do I misunderstand that?
“Thus, we looked at the child’s wellbeing on a very high level—guessing that our children have good chances at a net positive life because they will likely grow up with lots of resources and a good social environment.”
Out of interest: Do you consider catastrophic risks to be small enough not to matter, and is there a point at which that would change?