51–60 of 140 posts
What a shame, back in the day people used to have odd numbers of children.
They both did end up having 3 kids, and I can report that I think the problem they thought they were preventing didn't happen. Win!
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You're grossly overestimating how much an average person cares about anything outside of their family. The decision to have one or more children depends on many other factors (parents' character, their economic status, social safety, ...) before it even gets to any idealistic activism.
So much this. Altruistic, considerate people who hem and haw over how their decisions effect others grossly over estimate other human beings. Take a walk along the side of a high speed road and look at all the garbage thrown there. People don't give a shit.
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I’m not sure that is the best way we know. There are already many smart people who aren’t helping to solve those problems because they haven’t received the necessary education. I’d go so far as to say we’re probably missing out on the potential contributions of most smart people now. What we need to do is figure out a way to radically increase access to education worldwide.
Do you know of a better way to create more smart people because I don't. It is not simply education or else the rich would never have dumb children. Yes we are wasting the potential of many smart people in the world by not giving them the education they need, but we are pretty good at it across most of the world already and getting better all the time. A poor very smart kid no matter where she is born will likely be…
I’m definitely not against looking for ways to make knowledge work compatible with building a larger family.
I just don’t think increasing reproduction in the college educated is our best play for increasing the number of smart people working on hard problems.
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You're completely overlooking people who would want more children but don't feel they could afford them.
...yup. This is probably most of my generation in their early to mid 20s, which is biologically the best time. Even if they can have one or two, they’re often busy with a degree or trying to eatablish themselves professionally. To get healthcare coverage (which is the responsible thing to do with children), you kind of have to be poor (to qualify for support) or be very successful.
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Disagree. There’s so many people who cannot have biological children (for many reasons), so practically speaking a large percentage of those who can should have at least 3 or the population will decline.
Many of us, including the planet under our feet, don't see it as a problem. https://www.populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03... I don't think there was anyone in the 1960s screaming "oh crap... there's only 3 billions of us around here!". We're so used to think the now and here as normal conditions that we lose focus on the global trend which is absolutely disastrous.
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I think he meant more that natural selection is essentially summarized as how many children various groups have. And for some weird reason, natural selection is biasing away from "smart people".
I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. Natural selection disfavors a strategy that requires significant investment in non-reproductive activity (education, career ladder-climbing) during prime reproductive years.
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So much this. Altruistic, considerate people who hem and haw over how their decisions effect others grossly over estimate other human beings. Take a walk along the side of a high speed road and look at all the garbage thrown there. People don't give a shit.
Wait, so I should not worry about my personal ethics, but should only consider how shitty everyone else is? I don't think ethics works that way.
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Wait, so I should not worry about my personal ethics, but should only consider how shitty everyone else is? I don't think ethics works that way.
I never advised anyone to do anything. I just described some things I've noticed.
Altruistic people are generally altruistic because they want to be altruistic for their own personal pleasure, not because they expect anyone else to be like them. So how does "grossly over estimate other human beings" come into play? If anything, most altruistic people underestimate other human beings, due to exactly the thing you mention... which are things that everyone has already noticed.
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Yes nobody is activily discouraging smart people directly from having children (this is why it natural and not artificial selection), but it is still selection. Where did I say smart people having children is the only way to create smart people or that intelligence is only affected by genes? Please read what I actually wrote, not what you think I wrote. Smart people are the people that have the ability to solve the h…
You didn't say it was the only way. You said: > "The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children" ...which is also unsupported by current intelligence research and still relevant to my counterargument.
It doesn’t matter the means (environment or genetic) as both will contribute to smart parents raising smart children (provided they have children).
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Do you know of a better way to create more smart people because I don't. It is not simply education or else the rich would never have dumb children. Yes we are wasting the potential of many smart people in the world by not giving them the education they need, but we are pretty good at it across most of the world already and getting better all the time. A poor very smart kid no matter where she is born will likely be…
I think the fact that you know many educated, smart people from very poor countries doesn’t mean that most or all smart people in very poor countries get good educations. I was under the impression that there were many places still where large numbers of children, particularly girls, don’t complete a secondary education. (Open to being wrong about that though). I’m definitely not against looking for ways to make know…
I don’t think arguing for encouraging smart people to have more children argues against improving the education of poor smart people. This is not a zero sum game.