gjm comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong

17 Post author: jsalvatier 29 May 2012 06:00PM

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Comment author: Princess_Stargirl 15 January 2015 05:04:12PM 0 points [-]

Sadly this book basically convinced me I cannot have children with my current partner. We would need to adopt and my partner is very smart (singnifigantly more inteelgent than myself and I have 1570/1600 SAT and a PHD in pure math). Even if you adopt from mainland China the IQ of an adopted child is unlikely to be unusually high.

I personally would not care about the IQ of my children. I personally have a very strong aversion to nudging or pushing anyone (unless they are a violent criminal). I am fairly certain a lack of educational success would not other me at all. I have taught low level University math courses. My "gut feeling" was the material was suitable for HS sophomores. But the students lack of math ability/interest/education never annoyed me, despite it annoying many of colleagues. I just wanted to help them get through the annoying math requirement.

My partner on the other hand comes from a family very focused on education. She pays lip service to the idea that intelligence is largely genetic but I know she doesn't alieve it. I am sure she would push any children to be "successful." And given her extremely high intelligence her expectations will be totally unreasonable.

Luckily she is pretty ambivalent about children. She prefers to not have them but I am pretty sure if I was very pro having children she would not be hard to convince. But given her attitude toward parenting I think us having children would be an extremely poor idea.

Comment author: gjm 15 January 2015 06:59:49PM 3 points [-]

It took me a moment to figure out what you're saying came from the book and what didn't; for the benefit of others (and also so you can correct me if I misunderstood) may I make what I think you said more explicit?

  • You and your partner would need to adopt in order to have children (not because of anything you read in the book; I guess both female, or one partner infertile, or something of the kind, but it's none of my business).
  • If you do, then because (at least according to the book) parental behaviour has negligible impact on success of children
    • (because that actually comes down to genetics and environmental things parents don't get to choose)
    • ... they likely will be substantially less successful than would be expected for people as clever as your partner.
  • Your partner would likely
    • be upset about this, and
    • (despite the lessons of this book) try to push these children to greater success than they're likely capable of.
  • This would make everyone miserable, so it's best for you not to have children.

I have to say, looking at what you've written, that actually it seems like having children would be a whole lot of No Fun for you and your partner even if everything in this book is wrong -- because your partner would want to push them to succeed while you have a "very strong aversion" to even nudging them. It seems like such a major disagreement over how children should be raised would suggest not having any, regardless of whether your preferences or your partner's fit the evidence better.

(I feel uncomfortable making such personal remarks about a couple I don't even know. My apologies if it makes you uncomfortable too.)

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