America's premier pronatalists on having 'tons of kids' to save the world | Hacker News Reader

America's premier pronatalists on having 'tons of kids' to save the world

theguardian.com

22 pointsdefrost16 comments

I work with a man in the Ecuadorian Amazon who is a member of an ethnic group that reached a low of possibly only 400 individuals before a cultural change that made them more open to marriage with outsiders and healed some internal fighting that lead to many deaths.

He claims that his multiple wives and 10 children are all about bringing the numbers back up and a service to his people. I don't think anyone is fooled by this claim, least of all him. If a couple has a nice relationship, like kids and have no love of birth control, have at it, but don't pretend it is a public service.

It is a strange world we live in when there are so many big families with smart kids that would love to have a job and not mind paying taxes when they're the right age, but no one wants to let them near the places where a younger population is needed.

> They’ve had the genomes of their frozen embryos tested and are selecting which ones to implant according to how well they score on intelligence and future health.

There’s a lot to unpack in this article; but the selection of embryos on intelligence sounds like a stretch. Is that much known about the specific polymorphisms that result in intelligence, however you care to define it?

That's a kind of open question. You can't select on specific polymorphisms, because intelligence is very polygenic (as are most health conditions). You can select on polygenic scores, which sum up the effects of millions of polymorphisms. The controversial question is whether there might be unknown side effects. Like, what if intelligence is genetically correlated with autism? Overall, my suspicion is that it'll be fine, because you are selecting on (a sum of) many genetic variants that are common in the population already. But I would not be 100% confident of that statement.

no, it's entirely made up. we might know specific markers for specific disabilities, but if you're talking about how to score above average starting from a baseline of normal (say, healthy with adequate nutrition) then it's all made-up wishful thinking.

Despite the obvious attempt to generate outrage (negative feedback to a child when he does something wrong has to be instant to be effective), a reasonably fair article.

You need to realize that open palm slapping your 2 year old (in public, no less) for accidentally kicking a table is not an "obvious attempt to generate outrage" when the act itself is obviously outrageous to anyone from a place where such things are illegal and seen as morally abhorrent.

Not to mention the fact that when they're not busy slapping their kids around they seem content to leave parenting up to an iPad.

IMO, these people are clearly, obviously unfit to be parents, and the state should intervene before more harm can be done. The children's names alone are tantamount to abuse, honestly..

Yeah, I found that to be unnecessarily prejudicial. Mild, Instant feedback is the best kind of negative reinforcement. Obviously we don’t have enough information to really form an opinion, but I have seen child abuse and this sounds far from it.

Much more concerning is the use of screens to maintain distraction, imho.

I don’t see screens as “abuse” but it is a lot like putting blinders on your children while putting them on a low key opium drip. Is is such a watered down, 2 dimensional portal to the world that strips out the vast majority of context, richness, nuance, and meaning from perception.

I’m pretty convinced that the value in interaction up through 7 years at least Is primarily the complexity and less the content of interaction. Obviously content matters, but without sufficient complexity you’re not going to develop the fundamental abilities necessary for nuanced interactions with the world.

It would be shocking if, as a significant source of training data, screen time doesn’t have a detrimental effect on learning outcomes in the long run.

I am sure Amazon would also be interested in immediate negative reinforcement for their workforce. Shock collars could work well. Of course the adults would need to sign a waiver for this but if it is ok for children then surely an adult should be permitted to be treated that way.

A mild electric shock if they stayed in the bathroom more than 30 seconds, sounds like the latest in bossware! Techbros will love it!

Stuff like this reminds of this song

https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=MU1aD0xbNOw

compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheaper_by_the_Dozen (1948) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_and_His_Dog_(1975_film)

(in a country with ~130m households, there'd have to be an awfully lot of these people to be more than a slow news day)

> Surely that’s because the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to be in control of your fertility, I say. One of the reasons why I chose to have only have two children is because I couldn’t afford to give more kids a good life; the bigger home, the holidays, the large car and everything else they would need.

> A generous smile spreads across Malcolm’s face. “People say this to themselves. But – speaking as someone who has a lot of wealthy friends – people just upgrade their lifestyle as they earn more money. We want to have tons of kids, but as a result of that, we’re not going to be able to send them to private school. We’re not going to be able to pay for them to go to college.” The Collinses plan to home school all their children.

Combined with the text "Elon Musk (father of 11) supports their cause." You know how irrelevant this article is to most people. We are looking at the lifestyle of a couple that is elitist and out of touch.

> Combined with the text "Elon Musk (father of 11) supports their cause."

Another example of Elon's bullshit. Fertility rate isn't determined by how many children men have but by how many children women have.

Sure his 11 children sounds like a lot but if you consider the fertility rates of all the women he's been with the past 20+ years, it's actually lower than 1 per woman. Meaning his existence has contributed to a far lower fertility rate than the average man.

It's like comparing a wealthy emir who has 1 child with each of his 10 concubines in his harem to an average man who has two kids with his one wife. Emir's women have a fertility rate of 1 while the average man's wife has a fertility rate of 2.

Given his wealth, if elon really was a pro-natalist, he'd have dozens or even hundreds of kids.

> You know how irrelevant this article is to most people.

The article is irrelevant because it's just clickbait to generate views and make money. A basic understanding of math by the journalist, elon or the average pro-natalist would show that such movements won't make a dent in the population decline of major countries. They could have 100 children each and it will still be an insignificant drop in the bucket. A change in population trend requires a societal shift where most of the people ( aka non-pro-natalists ) start having more children. Most important of all, it would require society to encourage females to start having children when they are young.

> Given his wealth, if elon really was a pro-natalist, he'd have dozens or even hundreds of kids.

If he was a pro-natalist, he'd be paying people to have kids - his own, or otherwise.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out declining birthrates are a good thing, but it does take someone who is not delusional and grossly out of touch. Cultures come and go, we don't need to preserve all of them forever. We live in a world with finite resources which are stretched ever thinner with an ever growing population and increased consumption and destroyed ecosystems due to climate change, deforestation, and other human activities. Not to mention there's only so many meaningful and valuable economic opportunities for people in the world, and when people don't have good economic opportunities available to them, they either starve or resort to crime. Declining birthrates are a good thing. An ever growing population is bad. It's as simple as that.

If you refuse to teach the kids category theory and queer communism there's no point. Have all the kids you want. The empire is still going to collapse. Knowledge has moved beyond the empire.

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