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Comment by ilaksh | Hacker News Reader

Artificial wombs are fascinating and I hope they eventually become a viable alternative for mothers.

But I see them as being perhaps a somewhat more distant future possibility to fully replace a real womb due to the all of challenges.

When I think about the long term future of humanity and human development, I can't help but assume that things like artificial intelligence and simulation will have a significant role. In other words, trans-human and post-humanism.

Many techno-optimists like myself already anticipate superhuman artificial intelligence in less than 10 years. We might eventually (some decades further down the road) arrive at the point where it is easier to produce a "son" or "daughter" with the exact qualities we desire by 3d printing and model/knowledge configuration.

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Your idea of optimism is literally replacing the entire human race (the lineage of all humans on the planet) with a simulation of humans? That's pretty bleak.

I wasn't trying to connect all those ideas like that. I was just trying to bring up concepts like artificial "offspring" etc. because I think they are relevant to the discussion and interesting.

I think you can look at the potential trajectories for technology and humanity in different ways depending on your perspective. The most dramatic changes are totally speculative. Of course I am not hoping for real humans to become extinct.

> I hope they eventually become a viable alternative for mothers.

Sadly it seems that modern liberal societies that don’t enslave their women seem to not achieve sufficient fertility rates to avoid going extinct. Artificial wombs would be a huge advance toward fixing that problem.

And while at it give them artificially simulated parents as well?

Well in "Brave New World", they replaced parents with institutions where children grew up and were raised by the (basically) teachers. Similar to how schoolchildren are handled today, with one teacher leading a class of 15-30 kids.

Looking at the average state of parenting in the US today, it seems like a potentially huge improvement.

I always figured a kibbutz-style scheme might be something to encourage. Let's try to make spaces where families raising children can live together and cooperate.

From a sheer economic standpoint, sharing the breadwinning and parenting duties might allow the children to get more hours of hands-on parent time. There might be economies of scale in sharing and handing down equipment, clothing, toys, or even provisioning services (if you have 10 families loving together, maybe at that point keeping a pediatrician or tutors on retainer might work?)

There might also be benefits in a more diverse set of ideas in the shared house-- when the kid reaches an age where they develop more complex interests and questions, more "parents" means a better chance they have someone with the appropriate knowledge or skills to help their development.

With the shrinking availability of resources (esp. housing) in many places, I have wondered if, in the near future, more people will create these ad-hoc extended families rather than sticking to the normal 2-person couples. It'll require people to let go of the idea of monogamy though; arrangements like these probably won't work if monogamy is expected, because with so many adults living closely together, it's inevitable that attractions would happen, so the whole thing would only work I think if people are allowed to explore those without everything blowing up. But on the other hand, finding just one person you like to live with is very challenging; throw in just 1 or 2 more and it seems almost impossible (i.e., the extra people have to get along well not just with you, but with your current partner, and any other new people as well).

So yeah, theoretically having 6-20 adults all living together and sleeping with each other sounds fantastic when looking at resource-sharing and time management, but when you think about potential personality clashes it seems impossible to me unfortunately.

Are you aware that the Kibbutzim have largely stopped doing that? Among other things it was found to be mentally damaging to the children. Even the ones that remained communal no longer have communal childrearing anymore.

Some context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_communal_child_rearing...

    "Collective education can be regarded as a failure. The family as the basic social unit has not been abolished in kibbutzim. On the contrary, familistic trends have become stronger than ever, and kibbutz parents have reclaimed their rights to care for their own children. Collective education has not produced a new type of human being, and any differences found between adults raised on and off the kibbutz have been minimal."

> modern liberal societies

Which modern liberal societies do you know? Only societies I know in the western world are the ones that enslave men and women for resource extraction by the ultra wealthy, leaving them poor and tired and helpless and hopeless in the process. Taking their hard earned money and shoving propaganda at them every waking moment. Which is the fundamental reason as to why people aren’t having children. Has nothing to do with “not enslaving women.”

This is probably wrong because nearly every country is experiencing the trend. When you account for that, the reason is simple, the wealthier people are the more expensive children are.

Artificial wombs would be a huge advance toward creating far more problems than would be encouraging couples (couples, not just women) to breed, such as economic incentives.

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