agonmon

I fear that the same people that exhibit this kind of anxiety or trauma that led to social isolation, will inevitably talk to sycophantic chatbots, rather than get the help they desperately need. Though I certainly would not trust a model to "snitch" on a user's mental health to a psychiatric hotline...

I suppose this might seem obvious if you have not talked to many mothers.

Because it shows up in the baby's meconium... That doesn't even get into the second order effects such as mothers then having trouble lactating/nursing. And beyond that, we should probably question why, statistically, the mothers that have the most children don't use painkillers during childbirth.

It says something terrible about the current zeitgeist that these books are as popular as they are.

I look forward to a day when the top scifi is unabashed optimism about humanity's future.

I loved all of Seveneves, and hate Three Body Problem. The biggest difference in theme being, optimism that humanity can overcome any obstacle and flourish. If you want more in that vein, see:

Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Delta-V - Daniel Suarez

We're moderately frugal (eat organic food, paid activities for the kids, live in CA), and our kids are on track to cost us each about 80k before university. That's less than a year salary for most HN readers.

Our friends that try to act rich have much higher costs. I assume that is where your cited number got so inflated.

Re. Parenting Industry: there's an excellent book called Hunt, Gather, Parent - which examines how traditional cultures raised children. Parenting isn't complicated, but modern marketing has completely muddied the waters.

I'm mostly imagining a dysgenic future similar to Idiocracy; but really, it's more of an emotional appeal than an actual argument.

In case anyone is using this to decide on having kids:

1. Babysitting is categorically different from taking care of your own kids. Ask any mother that babysat previously.

2. It doesn't take 250k to raise your child. That is referring to college costs, and between Junior College, summer internships, and some loans I paid off with my first job, it didn't cost my parents anything to put me through college. Your children should have agency.

3. Your parenting decisions don't matter as much as who you chose to make the children with. Don't waste time optimizing things that have little impact.

4. Sleep deprivation has not been an issue for us. People who have this issue probably are trying too hard to sleep train the baby.

5. I was depressed before having kids. Now I'm not. Take that with a grain of salt, but my hypothesis is that children provide existential meaning that keeps me from my previous depression.

6. I've gotten my kids' poop in my mouth. That would have horrified me before. Now it doesn't even register. None of the their smells illicit negative feelings.

7. Both parents should have strong opinions loosely held, since personalities of children differ even in the same family, you will have to collaboratively figure it out.

8. The parenting industrial complex is probably part of the reason birth rates are so low, and should be avoided in favor of more traditional parenting styles.

I have many smart, empathetic friends in tech who are not having kids. Meanwhile my redneck neighbor has 5.

It seems to me that all of the conscientious people who look out for the greater good and environment, are leaving the gene pool. This feels like a problem for the future.

1. The people that don't want kids, cannot accurately model what it is like having kids. Your brain and hormonal output changes after a birth.

2. Children aren't that expensive unless the parents are playing status games (e.g. acting rich), and statistically it's poorer people that end up having more kids.

On the topic of sacrifice: One of my kids is just starting to stand up, and is using my shirt to pull herself up while squealing in triumph and delight. It's hard to express the fulfillment and existential meaning provided from children.

If I was told I would have to give them all up, it would be a soul-crushing sacrifice. Irrecoverable.

I appreciate their sacrifice, though I'm afraid that in most cases it is dysgenic. It's going to be intense for our descendents in a couple generations when the gene pool is only left with high fecundity actors. The real resource wars will start then.

The author also has a long running web fiction about AI taking over the world. It is hilarious and provides a deep insight into modern religious cults.

Better to make mistakes of ambition than of sloth.

If you ever want to stop wallowing in misanthropic nihilism, I recommend reading books like "More From Less" - Mcafee which shows that capitalism does in fact reduce/moderate consumption. Next look at "Speed and Scale" - Doerr, or "How to Solve a Climate Disaster" - Gates for a giant list of human innovations that will in fact decrease/reverse climate change.

Computer vision for satellite imagery. LLMs might be good for harassing oil companies.

I'm guessing this is referring to US cities, where it feels too dangerous/stressful to raise kids. Cities in Europe, like Amsterdam, have a completely different experience.

That seems to be the trend. It makes sense, people who choose a laziness born of pessimism are probably not virile enough to raise children. Surprised to see this kind of thinking here though; if you are an engineer who is good at solving problems, you should raise children that are also good at solving problems. Point them at our climate/sustainability/energy issues.

Yes. If you care about the surrounding people's health.

Physics and statistical arguments about the medical harms of pollution. But if that is too much to dig into, consider the incentives in play, and who has more to gain from spreading disinformation.

"People talk about innovation a whole lot, but what they are usually looking for is cheap wins and novelty." This rings true from being at a Fortune 100 going through "digital transformation". So much jabber about "innovation" and AI / machine learning this and that, when what they really wanted was just to do what everyone else was doing, and just implement similar systems to what Amazon had done a decade+ ago.

I've never seen or heard of a technical manager with an MBA... I've seen plenty of technical people, with an aptitude for it, move into management and pick up the ropes, so I'm skeptical that an MBA provides anything but a neutral or even negative signal in these situations.

Sure, they just spent $150k, and they want to get a ROI for themselves and their friends from the program.

"Management consultants are no longer relevant". But seriously, I encountered MCs at an old-school Fortune-100 recently, and they seemed painfully incompetent at anything software and machine learning related. I had many meetings hashing out strategies related to recommendations and search, and I still scratch my head wondering what came of all their efforts. Maybe they are more relevant in less technical areas?

This is a theme in Taleb's work. He would say that only suckers choose the MBA in this hypothetical, since the MBA (and their network) is optimizing for projecting an image of competence, whereas the non-MBA actually had to have competence to get where they are. https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surg...

What "real problems" are these? Speaking from the side of software Product Management it is far, far harder to make a pitch deck into a solution. Orders of magnitude more brainpower, effort, discipline. Easiest thing to do is sell tech that is already working and solving a pain point.

  Global Industrial output per capita reaches a peak around 2008, followed by a rapid decline
  Global Food per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline
  Global Services per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#Conclusio...

Doesn't look like any of their conclusions are coming true. At what point do we start questioning their assumptions and models?

Don't dump it back then. Should be easy to regulate, each liter of water produced should have a certain number of grams of salt to account for. Personally I would like to see that salt turned into structures: https://gizmodo.com/buildings-you-can-lick-9-spectacular-str...

In the Bay Area the train and bus system is a crammed, stressful experience where you have to worry about being robbed, harassed, or being annoyed by loud music, homeless _smells_, or inebriated people trying to smoke in a packed car. Regarding cars: don't forget the increase of risk of accident and death from driving, as well as the constant stress of avoiding collisions; I can barely retain podcasts while driving.

"[...] Need somewhere around 50 acres' worth of trees, planted in tropical areas, to absorb the typical emissions produced by an average American in her lifetime. Multiply that by the population of the U.S. and you get 25 million square miles, roughly half the landmass of the world." -- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates