Thank you for bringing up other important considerations and limitations of these studies. You are right that, with this post, I don’t intend to make any claims about the extent to which anyone should let productivity effects determine their decision whether or not to have children. I’m just hoping to help better inform those who factor it into their choice (although, again, you make a good point about these studies’ failure to account for the counterfactual of people who want children deciding against it).
Nicholas Kruus
Karma: 437
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Unfortunately, I’m learning the article may be a bit misleading. I’d see some of the other comments for more details.
I’m going to be honest: I didn’t read through the whole most important century blog series, but I nodded my head along with the broad strokes of it. Reading this has been a wake-up call about the level of precision I should expect from arguments to ensure the claim and its premises are clear and able to be argued against. Thank you—I hope I will avoid pitfalls in the future because of this. I think this post is an eye-opening and (at least) well-done critique (that is clearly argued for with specific premises!). Great job!
I think I share your experience. Unfortunately, the more I’ve learned about philosophy, the more I’ve realized how often my intuitions lead to conclusions that make no sense whatsoever. In general, if I want to avoid making ridiculous judgments, it seems I sometimes have to give up things that seem obvious in many circumstances. I don’t know if there’s a moral truth, but if there is, it might be quite odd in many ways.
The compliments and feedback are highly appreciated. I have implemented your recommendations.
This really piqued my interest when I listened to the Podcast episode, but after some investigation, I was unable to verify his estimated 1 billion screwworm infections per year. I couldn’t find any estimates at all—only a study of its infection rate in a sample of pigs. Still, I think it’s a cause that STRONGLY deserves further research (namely estimates of annual screwworm infections) given its potential benefit.