In the long run, we're all Dad
astralcodexten.com
astralcodexten.com
This was a clear presentation of a thought that has bothered me a lot. It's easy for me to get engaged and keep teaching my children specific techniques, so I have to occasionally stop and remind myself to teach them things like falsification, self-monitoring, incorporating feedback, noise filtering, pattern recognition, and other meta-skills that they can use to build far more skills than I could ever teach them.
Somewhat related example from my life: you can take as many piano lessons as you want, but there's really no substitute for hearing someone play music that moves you and trying to figure out how to recreate that feeling. Many students of piano have never had that experience and as a result piano lessons will simply never work on them.
I’m an expert software developer but have not spent time teaching these skills to my 10 year old son. He can get that from literally a hundred other places, and while I am a decent teacher, I’d rather spend our time together focusing on the things I place value on that I don’t think he is likely to get through other sources. I sometimes feel like a full-time therapist for my 12 year old daughter, what good is another A on her middle school report card when she is doing herself in trying to mold herself to meet others’ expectations? She needs an advocate more than a trade skill.
Communication and emotional awareness in particular are two areas where I have had to grow immensely myself first in order to be a useful guide to my children.
Instill values. The skills will come naturally.
This article does it masterfully. The title drew me in. The opening sentence finished the job. Well done.
Start-up founders are often of the age to start having children I guess. Even if having a child and a start-up at the same time is most definitely not a good idea.
That said, there's a lot more than startup founders here. Always was.
If it’s the former, I’m a Christian but I don’t just close out articles if they’re written by Richard Dawkins or quickly proclaim that they’re an atheist. There’s still a very real chance that they have some wisdom to share. Just because people share a different religious view than me doesn’t mean I can’t learn from them.
Not that I'm strongly against it, but my attention is challenged by many things, and a man who starts an article about becoming a father with a clear sex-is-for-procreation Bible quote makes it sound like his experience of life is not relevant to mine.
Well, since you chose not to read it, and continue to choose thusly in similar situations, you'll never really be able to confirm or deny whether or not"his experience of life is relevant" to yours. Not sure what the point of engaging in discussion on an article you admit to refusing to read is...
So you are basically refusing to read this simply because the author is even willing to be aware of what's in the bible. What a bizarre and anti intellectual stance.
I've been seeing this strange kind of attitude more lately -- for example, I encountered a young person who refused to read books that were more than 20 years old "because they might have bigoted ideas in them since they're old"
But avoiding reading about the past because it scares you is a great way to remain stupid and cede control of the world to others without such hangups.
> God smote Onan, starting a 4,000-year-old tradition of religious people getting angry about wasting sperm on anything other than procreative sex.
An article who's title implies the inevitability of parenthood is probably not good mental fodder.
It's not like he believes any of it. He just quotes the bible because that makes for a funnier article.
I'd love to hear alternative GOATs.
But Scott's also great, etc etc.
he's a curmudgeon with love in his heart. and style. i'm laughing my head off. love it, thanks!
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.
"If your brains are still too small to process such esoteric terms"
"It’s a crazy thing to try, when even your own local predictions are so far from perfect accuracy."
"I cannot quite remember why I thought this would be a good idea. I blame the pronatalist influencer conspiracy."
I also just wrote a subquery as a column instead of inner join or something. Dunno it might be right. It worked though.
My wife and I raised four children. My wife was blessed to be able to be a “stay at home” mom during the early period. It was a lot of work. I often joke that after the first two weeks of our oldest, I had no recollection of what the first two years of marriage had been like. The child rearing experience is just so all consuming.
Four years ago, that oldest child got pregnant. And then discovered it was twins. We made plans to be there and help like is often the case. Holy crap. Two infants is so much more work than one. It doesn’t double the work load. It compounds geometrically. I think my wife spent the first three months there.
So, yeah, I’m impressed this guy has time to write. Next time you meet someone with twins, give them some cred for making it through the first few months. It is an astronomical effort.
"On the other hand, I know people who want to get good at writing, and make a mighty resolution to write two hundred words a day every day, and then after the first week they find it’s too annoying and give up. These people think I’m amazing, and why shouldn’t they? I’ve written a few hundred to a few thousand words pretty much every day for the past ten years.
But as I’ve said before, this has taken exactly zero willpower. It’s more that I can’t stop even if I want to. Part of that is probably that when I write, I feel really good about having expressed exactly what it was I meant to say. Lots of people read it, they comment, they praise me, I feel good, I’m encouraged to keep writing, and it’s exactly the same virtuous cycle as my brother got from his piano practice."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tal...
Now at 2 and 4 I have the same experience ad you. I hear it gets better!
That required "modern academics" to explain? It was already self-evident in the original telling, a couple of millenia ago... Sure, the other cases of condemnation of masturbation might not be so clear cut.
A little surprised on the 50% death rate for children before the age of 5 in 1800. It’s amazing how recent that is.
Stories of families with ten kids and even the little ones having adult responsibilities.
It was an all-hands-on-deck affair to prepare for the winter and without everyone’s help, someone probably dead.
This sounds like some sort of confusion of the inverse.
The fact that most twins are borne through IVF does not imply that any conceptiin (assisted or not) can expect twins. They are still rare in both cases.
It sounds like you think this was an IVF pregnancy? But Scott says it wasn't: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-the-long-run-were-all-da...
Heh too true
> The engines heroically tested hyperprior after hyperprior to compress the data into something predictable.
Heh, which hyperpriors do exist is still a matter of debate.
> Your mother worked for a company synthesizing genetically engineered tooth bacteria that prevent cavities
Ah that part is actually surprising!
I wish you hadn’t phrased it snarkily tho: is it really “sad” that someone doesn’t know an interesting fact that you do, or is it a fun opportunity for others to learn something?
Blog authors like this remind me of ChatGPT: they write with an affected authoritativeness completely disconnected from the actual value of their words.
This gains them a following in the same sort of way that Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, or Jordan Peterson gain a following.
That’s also sad to see.
See also "The Tale of Tiffany" from CGP Grey:
I would bet that there are more girls named Guinevere than girls named Jennifer for philologist reasons. :)
A title like that should set the expectation that it’s not _entirely_ serious and there might, just maybe, be a joke or two buried within.
Pretty sure the definition of comment basically encircle "whatever the hell anybody wants to say".
The fact that we all interpret things differently is beautiful; we're not a hive mind even if it does result in all of our strife.
Cheers!
Can't really blame him, though.
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 I still maintain you're not bonding with your baby at 3 am and parents should get that extra sleep and let a robot handle the near-robotic motions required to put a (< 6month old) baby back to sleep.
Don't be too amazed though. What he states isn't the scientific consensus. Persistent sleep deprivation is harmful to human beings, and you don't "reset and go back to well-rested again". Some sleep deprivation can be endured though, as any parent will tell you -- I know I wasn't "well rested" afterwards. I mostly was grumpy and very slow to think.
I'm not so sure about that. There's a lot happening beneath the surface both biologically and psychologically (on both sides) when a parent soothes a baby at 3am.
The alternative is that I'm cranky both night and day and only get that thing that happens "beneath the surface" without the awsome beautiful conscious bit that I personally really care about.
But not all people get cranky from a lack of sleep, so this will vary between families!
I agree that there's no genuinely useful bonding happening in the dead of the night when you're so sleep deprived that you might be hallucinating. It's just base survival after a certain point. I used to run dual feedings overnight with bottled milk so my wife could keep resting as much as possible. I used to time myself and optimize the hell out of it so that I could get back to bed. I would set alarms to wake myself up, get the milk from the fridge, warm the bottles, get the twins out of the Snoo and into their tandem Boppy, soothe them, feed them, change diapers, re-swaddle, and then get them back to bed, clean bottles, make sure the next round of bottles is prepped. I could run all of that, when everything went right, in just under 30 minutes. If the twins were fussy, the dogs woke up and wanted to go out, etc., it could creep up to an hour. I remember my hands being so dry from washing bottles that my skin was cracked and bleeding. We eventually got rid of all of the fancy bullshit and opted for bottles, etc., that had the least number of parts. That entire first year with twins is still mostly a blur today, 4 years later.
I went through basic military training and spent some time overseas in war zones. I've gone through sleep deprivation training and the real thing overseas. With kids, though, you've got a physical, mental, and emotional component to it that nothing can really simulate. It's draining in ways that are hard to describe, even to other parents who are in the trenches around you. You learn a lot about yourself, and your partner, and friends and family, but I don't remember much bonding going on during those late night sessions. Just a lot of wishing and praying that everything goes right. But maybe that's just the holes in my memory.
"I cannot quite remember why I thought this would be a good idea. I blame the pronatalist influencer conspiracy."
Edit: nevermind, not showing as [flagged] anymore, but I'm still curious...
Didn't get much further than that.
But somehow, surprisingly, it’s what I’ve come to expect of most “rationalists”.
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 the body (something he discusses in the article)
I often see having a kid "creates a joy that couldn't be experienced before", but the same thing could be said about drugs: you want to preserve your utility function from such deep influences, so you try to avoid getting addicted to drugs.
If one wouldn't rationally chose to get addicted, why chose getting a child?
The only reason I see is in the title: as a psychological protection about death (the pun on "in the long run, we're all dead")
In case the person finds no other meaning in life, a cheap way out is to create one by reinterpreting the path-dependent set of random events (I wouldn't be here if my parents didn't have a kid, etc, and neither would the human race), choosing to continue this chain and call that "meaning"
I'm not convinced. The whole article seems like an elaborate rationalization (especially the part of lack of sleep and lack of free time) to try to convince the author and the followers as noted in the meta:
> I think it’s a conspiracy. All the pronatalist influencers get together and say that pregnancy isn’t so bad. Young women believe them, and so the human race survives another generation
YES
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 horizon, I can’t say that’s really changed.
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)
I think that is only true if your utility function is a combination of self preservation and hedonistic needs.
We know this doesn't fit everyone, many sacrifice their health, safety, life and comfort for other values.
> All the pronatalist influencers get together and say that pregnancy isn’t so bad.
Many women have one kid, say they're happy they had a kid, but don't want another. However, plenty do elect to have more kids.
Overally though, I'd say for those in life that seek to minimize discomfort and maximize psychological safety, then yeah I think it doesn't make sense to have a kid. But if that doesn't fit someone, there are some great things about it.
It's only perfectly reasonable if you aren't familiar with the broader context.
Breaking the levirate marriage custom was not in itself considered an action worthy of severe punishment. Indeed, there was a well-defined ceremony, spelled out in Deuteronomy 25:8-10 [1], intended to humiliate a man who refuses to marry his brother's widow. But being given an embarrassing nickname is a far cry from being smote by God. And if you get to inherit your brother's riches, it might be a fair price to pay.
But Onan's sin is described as something he did, rather than something he failed to do. It is pretty clear, when you look at the text the way someone of that time would have looked at it, that Onan's offense was not merely that he was being selfish, but that he was employing a method that severed the procreative element of the sexual act. He could have refused to marry Tamar. He could have refused to have sex with Tamar. But instead he fulfilled the letter of the levirate marriage custom without fulfilling its spirit. He used her for his own sexual satisfaction, but then deprived her of the natural ends of that action.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%202...
Which one was that?
Edit: possibly Halizah [0] instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halizah
Further edit: didn't see the [1] in GP...whoops
So by that reading it was only wrong because the understood purpose is the whole arrangement was to give Tamar a chance to have a child, which she was entitled to expect when Onan married her?
It therefore has no bearing on what consensual activities couples may engaged in where no such commitment has been made?
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 based on the idea that marriage was an institution ensuring the continuity of future generations to the family and society. Because the broader family and society had a vested interest in the results of the marriage, the people involved had a responsibility to those around them. This was a widely accepted social norm just a few decades ago.
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 enough to have children to do so have fallen by the wayside as a result.
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.
Islam is not the only no fault divorce in history. For example ancient Rome allowed for no fault divorces, on more even terms than Islam later would. It's terms were closer to modern US no fault divorces than Islam's terms are.
Modern US laws are reasonably equal between men and women, and do not come from either of those sources. US law comes from the fact that in some frontier states, the uneven ratio between men and women meant that people saw no reason for an unhappy couple to remain married. If they don't want to be married, let them divorce. And let some other guy have a shot at the wife.
This specifically became an issue with Nevada, because Nevada only required a 6 month residency in the state before you could get a divorce. As travel became easier, people from other states routinely took advantage of this as the easiest way to get divorced. That lasted until changing attitudes during the Sexual Revolution caused other states to start adopting similar laws. See https://renodivorcehistory.org/themes/law-of-the-land/ for more on this.
Good thing we have modern birth control methods and everyone is cool with them.
In countries without social insurance people have children so the child will take care of them in their old age.
God this. God that. "Natural selection didn't design" which is contradictory. Evolved murder monkeys. Happy to have babies.
Women are indeed saved by childbirth. Men too.
He's an atheist psychiatrist. However, he enjoys how natural selection, social dynamics and reputation can also be modeled by the moral rules of most religions. For example, going to therapy isn't that different from practicing confessions in a church.
If your therapist responds to your sharing by suggesting that straying from their advice, or some kooky ancient text, results in eternal damnation then run far away. Churches can be devastating to ones mental health. Do not recommend.
No issue with your first clause: indeed, churches can be devastating to one's mental health (as can ~anything). That observation does not support your second clause. Religiosity is generally associated with lower mental health problems [0]. Correlation is not causation, of course; difficult to do a prospective study in this field.
[0] E.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8462234/
Depends on the kind of therapy. Some are more dogmatic and one might even call them "religious" (overloading the word), while other forms of therapy are more grounded and based on empiricism -- the latter ones are far removed from religious confession.
Isn't everybody full of contradictions?
saved from what?
To be fair I've been traveling so it could easily be user error.
And regardless it can't possibly be a mentally healthy attitude for any new parent. Your kids are human beings with needs and a moral standing of their own, they're not frickin "engines" or robots for you to train as your minions.
This is similar to a programmer parent getting a “hello world” shirt for their baby.
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.
It may be the most reasonable interpretation.
However, is it rational to want to have a futurama brain slug?
[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/21/repost-the-demiurges-o...
[1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/12/its-bayes-all-the-way-...
[2]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-t...
Talk to a layperson about kubernetes and crypto-anarchy and you'll notice their eyes will glaze over as well.