Zubon comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

65 Post author: Yvain 03 November 2012 11:00PM

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Comment author: Zubon 04 November 2012 11:07:46AM 15 points [-]

On "having" children: should we be counting that as birth, raising, what you think of as "yours," something else? I am thinking of sperm donors, surrogate mothers, children given up for adoption, and adoptive parents. If I am the biological parent of X offspring and raise Y of them, should I be reporting X or X-Y? And if I have step/adopted/foster children, +Z? "Raise" might be bad too, as there are people who have (biological or not) children they think of as "theirs" without custody or visitation.

The count might be fuzzier than intended. I would expect upward bias.

Comment author: Cakoluchiam 18 November 2012 08:25:13AM 1 point [-]

Interesting you don't consider what I thought would be the obvious interpretation of counting Y(+Z) alone, even after you considered adding adopted and foster children, which would, over the population, double-count any choice with the inclusion of X.