I agree with the upfront tagline âHaving children is not the most effective way to improve the worldâ, but feel I disagree pretty strongly with a bunch of these takes:
âOwingâ it to your parents. This feels a little straw-manned. Wanting to have kids for your parentsâ sake might be about feeling grateful for 16+ years of love & care, or just making someone you care about happier in their old age. From an EA perspective, you perhaps shouldnât weight this too highly. But when choosing to have kids or not, especially if your parents really want grandchildren, you are making this trade-off. One of my explicit considerations when considering having kids was thinking about my in-laws and extended family.
Donating to AMF to increase population. Donât strongly disagree with the principle here, but donating to AMF is probably not optimal. I think it would be cheaper to incentivise births directly than donating to AMF, if thatâs your goal. (Edit: I wrote something else that finds that AMF might actually incentivise births cheaply, because of maternal/âplacental malaria) Iâve written about this: (Who should we pay to increase birth rates?), where I make a toy model about choosing where you might want to generate new lives. I suggest lower-middle income countries other than Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because of quality of life concerns.
Itâs a bad idea to make ethical arguments either way about having children. This one surprised me the most. Do you mean we shouldnât make these arguments at all, or simply that we should avoid certain impolite judgements of othersâ choices? My take: of course you shouldnât overdo it and rant to expectant mothers about the meat-eater problem, risk of population collapse, and negative utilitarianism, but itâs still one of the biggest ethical decisions in a humanâs life. Thereâs no reason why this should be less suitable for ethical debate than what job you choose or what charity you donate to.
I agree with the upfront tagline âHaving children is not the most effective way to improve the worldâ, but feel I disagree pretty strongly with a bunch of these takes:
âOwingâ it to your parents. This feels a little straw-manned. Wanting to have kids for your parentsâ sake might be about feeling grateful for 16+ years of love & care, or just making someone you care about happier in their old age. From an EA perspective, you perhaps shouldnât weight this too highly. But when choosing to have kids or not, especially if your parents really want grandchildren, you are making this trade-off. One of my explicit considerations when considering having kids was thinking about my in-laws and extended family.
Donating to AMF to increase population. Donât strongly disagree with the principle here, but donating to AMF is probably not optimal.
I think it would be cheaper to incentivise births directly than donating to AMF, if thatâs your goal.(Edit: I wrote something else that finds that AMF might actually incentivise births cheaply, because of maternal/âplacental malaria) Iâve written about this: (Who should we pay to increase birth rates?), where I make a toy model about choosing where you might want to generate new lives. I suggest lower-middle income countries other than Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because of quality of life concerns.Itâs a bad idea to make ethical arguments either way about having children. This one surprised me the most. Do you mean we shouldnât make these arguments at all, or simply that we should avoid certain impolite judgements of othersâ choices? My take: of course you shouldnât overdo it and rant to expectant mothers about the meat-eater problem, risk of population collapse, and negative utilitarianism, but itâs still one of the biggest ethical decisions in a humanâs life. Thereâs no reason why this should be less suitable for ethical debate than what job you choose or what charity you donate to.