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In the long run, we're all Dad

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Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#111

Post by skybrian »

carrozo wrote: post #39
adamlgerber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott Alexander is not for everyone (as I've learned by unsuccessfully foisting him on friends for years) but for people who are even remotely interested he is probably the greatest internet writer alive. I'd love to hear alternative GOATs.

For me, Sam Kriss takes that title by a large margin: https://samkriss.substack.com/

I read a couple of articles and he seems to blur line between truth and fiction. I couldn't tell when he's making things up. Did he really write about Taylor Swift for four months? Is anything he wrote about Swift true? Did he actually go to a protest where they started chanting "from the river to the sea?" (Soon after, it’s obviously fiction.)

When I have to read something else to find out what actually happened, I think the writer is being too clever and too obscure for me.

Then again, there are people here who clearly don't get Scott Alexander and it's clear to me when he's joking, probably because I'm a long-time reader. So I guess it's all context-dependent.

Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#112

Post by [deleted] »

glitchc wrote: post #54
koliber wrote: post #6

Good writing advice says that each sentence has a single goal. The goal is to draw the reader in, and convince them to read the next sentence. This article does it masterfully. The title drew me in. The opening sentence finished the job. Well done.

I closed the tab at "cognitive engines." Overwrought balderdash masquerading as prose.

[deleted]

Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#113

Post by Aloha »

btilly wrote: post #84
ajkjk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes it's from literally biblical times. The social norms were rather different.

To be fair, historically it is our social norms that are more of an aberration. Allowing a couple to get divorced simply because both want to didn't become universal in the USA until about a decade ago. Laws treating the rape of a wife as a crime against her husband were common in the 1960s. Laws prohibiting doctors from helping married couples have access to birth control lasted into the 1960s. All of these were bas…

I see 'no fault' divorce as an extension of islamic divorce law - in practical terms its not an aberration though - we'd been employing various legal fictions in divorce cases to grant pseudo no-fault divorce as far back as the 1840's - where yes 'fault' was meaningless in the context of the granting of divorce - it just had to exist.

Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#114

Post by dustincoates »

pj_mukh wrote: post #5

"There is a secret known only to parents of twins, medical residents, and Alexey Guzey: the human body does not actually need sleep. After 31 hours awake, you get an integer overflow in God’s database and go back to being well-rested again. Also you gain the ability to see angels." LOL. Amaze. On that note, I've heard some amazing things about the Snoo. It was banned from our house because of Luddit-ian reasons, but…

Our second baby didn't really like the Snoo (however, he's nearly a year and a half old, and he still doesn't sleep well), but for our first kid, we got the Snoo after going crazy from a month and a half of colicky baby screams. And—I'm not making it up—she slept through the night from nearly the first night. It wasn't consistent from there until she was older, but I'll never cease to praise the machine.

Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#115

Post by csdvrx »

Kronopath wrote: post #89
csdvrx wrote: post #69

Is it rational for a rationalist to want to be a parent, knowing that having a kid rewrite your utility function? (so said parent would accept sacrificing their life for saving the life of their child) It looks like the futurama brain slug parasites that someone explained me about last time I asked: https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Slug It's even less rational for a woman, given the many damages it causes to th…

> Is it rational for a rationalist to want to be a parent, knowing that having a kid rewrite your utility function? You’re making an assumption that their desires (or, if you must, “utility function”) weren’t already in that direction to begin with. As a personal anecdote, I can say that I remember myself wanting kids/a family as far back as elementary school. Now that I’m married and kids are plausibly on the horizo…

> At the risk of speculating, I get the feeling you may not want kids, and are projecting those feelings onto other people.

Oh it's fine, I like to consider each possible alternative hypothesis! Speculation is the name of the game!

There's a risk I could rationalize.

There's also the possibility the desire to have kids is baked in the utility function.

If it's baked in, how much of that is mental/software based(cultural) and how much is biological/hardware based (ex: animals want to mate, without having the need a large brain to rationalize this, all they need is a pulse)

I think there's a large risk that having kids is a culturally defined "normal want", but one that serves the group yet goes against the interest of the individual, something that can be seen only if/when the individual has access to consciousness/culture/knowledge etc and also doesn't need "extra pairs of hands" to help on the farm (technological progress)

Animals can't see that, but humans can: then the declining birthrates globally would just be a "correction" by people realizing that having kids is not something they really want.

Yet societies want that (otherwise they'd stop existing) so they would push for whatever narrative or rationalization is serving society's purpose. Most individuals would internalize and accept that (like how most people accept and don't question the religion they're raised in)

It wouldn't take much people opting out for the population growth rate to become negative: anything less than 2 kids per couple on average, and the X (in X^N) goes below 1, meaning X^N decreases.

Now that more people see the rigged game, they opt out, causing a difference families having more than 2 kids (say very religious families or whatever) can compensate for.

It's funny how it's men bothering with that (the title is written to conviently exclude half the population): I guess it's easier to see something as a problem when you don't have to personally bear as much of the costs (in wear and tear of the body + risk of death a few centuries before)

Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#116

Post by csdvrx »

kqr wrote: post #41
zozbot234 wrote: post #36

Why the heck is this guy using AI robot technobabble like "surprisal-minimization engines" and "hyperpriors" to reference the birth of their kids. That's so fucked up, not everything in the world is about "tech" and VC-fueled bubbles for goodness' sake! I realize that we're on the orange site and VC is everything here, but still it's the first time I've seen anything remotely like this. And regardless it can't possib…

Cynical view: to signal to other capital-R Rationalists that the author is still one of them, despite parenthood (which has a way of affecting people's rationality.) Pragmatic view: that's the kind of analysis people like from Scott Alexander so where else should it go if not on his blog? If you don't like it, stay away from submissions with that domain name.

> Cynical view: to signal to other capital-R Rationalists that the author is still one of them, despite parenthood (which has a way of affecting people's rationality.)

It may be the most reasonable interpretation.

However, is it rational to want to have a futurama brain slug?

https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_Slug

Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#118

Post by theSuda »

koliber wrote: post #6

Good writing advice says that each sentence has a single goal. The goal is to draw the reader in, and convince them to read the next sentence. This article does it masterfully. The title drew me in. The opening sentence finished the job. Well done.

I saw the scrollbar and hit CTRL+W. Sleep deprived by an autistic 3 year old who can't speak but only cry all night. I have no energy to do anything. I am surprised I typed this long a response.

I also just wrote a subquery as a column instead of inner join or something. Dunno it might be right. It worked though.

Re: In the long run, we're all Dad

#120

Post by btilly »

Spivak wrote: post #94
btilly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, historically it is our social norms that are more of an aberration. Allowing a couple to get divorced simply because both want to didn't become universal in the USA until about a decade ago. Laws treating the rape of a wife as a crime against her husband were common in the 1960s. Laws prohibiting doctors from helping married couples have access to birth control lasted into the 1960s. All of these were bas…

I don't know why you're being downvoted, our current norms are without question far far better but they are the outlier for human history. Massive technological advancement came with massive social advancements in a really short timespan all things considered. I'm glad that making lots of babies is no longer something that's necessary for the survival of society and the norms that pressure (force) everyone healthy en…

I think that I was being downvoted because people found what I said unpleasant. A certain fraction of people assume that the reason for saying something unpleasant is that you must support that. Which makes it easy to incorrectly jump from my saying that history is full of a specific set of attitudes, to believing that I must support that set of attitudes.

For example, consider reading a biography of a scientist who studies links between IQ and racism. If the scientist finds weak links, most people will judge the scientist not racist. If the scientist finds strong links, most people will say that the scientist is racist. I encountered this example in https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th....

HN tends to be better about this error than most communities. But it is still not immune. Come to a conclusion that people don't like, and people tend to jump on you.

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