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Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#91

The only logical answer here is youth. The younger you are the more fertile you are. This is true for both men and women, but more true for women. If you want children at some point in life then prioritize children first and early. I know, this puts your ambitious career on hold for a while and start ups require huge ambition. Still, start up opportunities will not be hyper critically different in the future than the…

This advice is likely economically bad though. Capital now is better than capital later. I would think money made early and saved by not having children and invested will end up being much more then what will be spent on a fertility clinic later.

If your only goal is to accumulate capital over your lifespan, then you won't have children at all, since they're tremendously expensive and have no dollar return.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#92
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put another way: let's say everyone who is capable of children follows your advice. To whom are these economic gains meaningful in 100 years? Who would their parents be?

What you're implying is meaningless to the ones that are dead. So maybe you can now realize why I wrote my response and it was directed towards anyone considering conceiving a child.

OK, from a pure hedonistic view - let's say at some time in the future, there are no more humans left. Why would it make sense to invest anything into economic gain in the time before that happens? You'd rather run the economy into the ground to extract as much value as you could from it, before the end of human existence. You - or else someone else who is the last human alive - are "leaving something on the table", so to speak. Otherwise they are just leaving value around for wildlife.

In other words there would be a time, maybe dependent on the rate at which remaining humans can unwind the human economy, past which any effort at collective economic gain wouldn't be worth it.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely unethical to have kids and like another commenter has said brings a great disadvantage economically. I would suggest to anyone to not follow your advice. edit: I won't be further commenting on the topic because the same people asking everyone "when are you going to have kids like me?" are just going to downvote. Yes, I rather see an end to humankind because that ends suffering. Less suffering in a uni…

The antinatalist point of view is incredibly damaging to the long term progress of our species.

Seeing as a big chuck of what someone believes is culturally inherited from their parents, and thus hypothesizing that meme* survival partially follows parent-child relationships, I'd say that that's a problem that will end up self-correcting :)

* In the original Richard Dawkins sense, not in the funny gif sense.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#94
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially controversial thought here, but I'd like to bring it up for discussion. I feel like the work ethic I see throughout the industry is extremely toxic to society, and leads to some of this. In China for example there's a so-called "996" work schedule (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) which is basically expected of everyone in tech, unfortunately, and it seems Silicon Valley is heading that direction as well with all…

I'm not sure if you've got the details right, but it is definitely true that if you are taking part in any elite competition, you are probably going to be competing against people who are working very hard. I don't think that this is specific to male cofounders. Even in the counterfactual world where all founders are women, some will work harder than others, and if there is a perception that the harder workers are mo…

> specific to male cofounders

I guess what I was trying to say is, male founders have a few biological choices that female founders don't, and I'm suggesting that it should be considered unethical to set industry work-hour standards to a level that only males can achieve because males are able to de-prioritize biology.

An article about one of the most widely acclaimed male founders today:

"As an Apple employee in the early 1990s, he almost walked out of the delivery room when the impending birth of his first child threatened to disrupt a presentation he was scheduled to give. As president of Google China from 2005 to 2009, he had a special table installed on his bed so that he could sit directly up from sleep and immediately begin responding to emails, without having to waste time standing up or reaching for a laptop."

I'm hypothesizing that behavior like this, at different scales, is quickly becoming both romanticized and expected of founders, and that is marginalizing all groups except single males.

https://qz.com/work/1488217/a-former-symbol-of-silicon-valle...

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#95

The only logical answer here is youth. The younger you are the more fertile you are. This is true for both men and women, but more true for women. If you want children at some point in life then prioritize children first and early. I know, this puts your ambitious career on hold for a while and start ups require huge ambition. Still, start up opportunities will not be hyper critically different in the future than the…

It's completely unethical to have kids and like another commenter has said brings a great disadvantage economically. I would suggest to anyone to not follow your advice. edit: I won't be further commenting on the topic because the same people asking everyone "when are you going to have kids like me?" are just going to downvote. Yes, I rather see an end to humankind because that ends suffering. Less suffering in a uni…

Women are biologically determined to have children with a man that can provide security and resources. It’s natural drive and need on the same level as breathing, eating, drinking.

Men are biologically driven to have many children, from many different women, as their circumstances and resource ps allow.

This is the human condition and anyone born alive accepted the EULA agreement, by being born alive.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#96

The only logical answer here is youth. The younger you are the more fertile you are. This is true for both men and women, but more true for women. If you want children at some point in life then prioritize children first and early. I know, this puts your ambitious career on hold for a while and start ups require huge ambition. Still, start up opportunities will not be hyper critically different in the future than the…

This advice is likely economically bad though. Capital now is better than capital later. I would think money made early and saved by not having children and invested will end up being much more then what will be spent on a fertility clinic later.

It's almost as if human social norms solved this dilemma by division of labor: men bear the brunt of earning capital, while women are freed up to have and raise children.

The women's "empowerment" movement in this context can be seen as a cynical ploy by capital to convince women their "power" is tied to earning wages and having a career instead of having a family and they must pursue economic independence over over strategic "dependence" on a husband to help them realize commons goals.

At the end of the day women, and men, will ultimately want what they want. The argument here is that in the grand scheme of things they want a family, and will regret early choices that threaten this goal long term. Whether they are distracted away from this goal by capitalist propaganda to increase the labor supply, or they combine forces to achieve it is the challenge.

People will argue "men and women should make their own choices and determine this for themselves". Yes, but what is the default cultural message nowadays? What is promoted as the norm? What is the institutional and political rhetoric around this question? Western liberal democratic, capitalist nations stand firmly on the side of promoting careerism for women over early motherhood and marriage.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely unethical to have kids and like another commenter has said brings a great disadvantage economically. I would suggest to anyone to not follow your advice. edit: I won't be further commenting on the topic because the same people asking everyone "when are you going to have kids like me?" are just going to downvote. Yes, I rather see an end to humankind because that ends suffering. Less suffering in a uni…

The antinatalist point of view is incredibly damaging to the long term progress of our species.

I'm not intimately familiar with all the different strains of antinatalism, but I think that's kinda the point? an antinatalist would not consider funding existing people's retirements or possibly even the survival of the species to be sufficient justification for creating new conscious beings who cannot consent to their creation.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that as a hobby, or you can do it as a startup but treat the startup as a 9-5. (Your leisurely pace of work might hurt your chances of staying ahead of your competitors, but that's only important if you want the wealth and fame part.)

Hmm I don't think that's quite right. In order for me to continue building something nobody has built, I need it to be generating revenue. And in order to generate revenue I need to stay ahead of the competition, which probably requires not treating it like a 9-5. So yes I'm pursuing money, but not to achieve vast personal wealth, but rather to ensure my (hopefully) novel business is long-term viable.

Ok, I guess for some founders keeping their business viable at all requires a very large commitment. I think that's going to depend on how saturated is the market you're entering, and various other factors. I still believe that most founders could work much less if they were not in pursuit of vast wealth/fame.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The antinatalist point of view is incredibly damaging to the long term progress of our species.

Seeing as a big chuck of what someone believes is culturally inherited from their parents, and thus hypothesizing that meme* survival partially follows parent-child relationships, I'd say that that's a problem that will end up self-correcting :) * In the original Richard Dawkins sense, not in the funny gif sense.

You would think this is the case. But yet, they keep on reproducing while complaining bitterly about it.

Above commenter will likely have children very shortly.

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