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eli_sennesh comments on Another Critique of Effective Altruism - Less Wrong
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Comments (108)
It is interesting, what people inside EA find troubling, compared to people outside. (I do not identify myself as EA).
For me, the most repellent things are mentioned here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/j8n/a_critique_of_effective_altruism/#poor-psychological-understanding
In other words, self sacrifice is expected from me to the extent, that my life would suck. No, thanks.
Specifically, the issues about children: 1. I want to have them. 2. Apart from my psychological need - do the damned EA know what they are doing ? Is it really that helpful, that western middle class should have even lower population growth, than there is know ? Some people predict, that Europe, as my (our ??) children will know it, will be Islamic. I hope I will not offend the muslim rationalists, I know there are some on this site. Anyway, the culture currently associated with Islam does not seem to me like truth-seeking-friendly. It certainly will fix itself later, like Christianity fixed itself from the bigotry stage in cca 600 years. But do we really want to withdraw from the population battle entirely ? (OK, the word battle probably does not attract You altruist folks, but I do not know the other way to say it). I can imagine the counterarguments, that spreading memes inside familes is not that efficient, that children often rebel. And that memes can be spread outside the family. Well, good luck turning the significant portion of Muslim imigrants into rationalists ! USA is different from EU, but I guess withdrawing middle class from children bearing pool there is also no victory.
I mean, I do not force anybody to have children if they do not want to. It is a lot of work and resources. But to guilt anybody into not having them ? There are way too many people in that cathegory, who are lazy to have them. Why adding another incentive by making it virtuous ?
I do have to say, I've never understood the European/Western liberal (in the broad classical sense, not the "social democratic sense", but more strongly among social democrats) impulse to devalue one's own culture and values so very much that one would rather go extinct in the process of helping others than survive in any form.
Yes, our planet cannot currently sustain a population of 9 billion (projected population peak in 2050) living at Western standards of income/consumption. Population reduction and/or (inshallah!) space colonization are necessary for humanity to live sustainably. This does not mean that we should segregate the species by belief into "Those who believe in sustainability", who then go extinct from non-breeding, and "Those who believe in having as many babies as possible", who then suffer an overpopulation crisis right quick.
Sustainability yes, voluntary extinction no.
I think you are confusing correlation for causation. I don't think the sustainability movement is largely responsible for declining birth rates, but rather that Western culture values many other things OVER child rearing, andmore advanced civilization requires delaying child birth until later. Most of the adult couples I know who are childless aren't childless for ethical reasons, but instead for things like careers,etc. This isn't a devaluing of culture, its the expression of it.
Hence, France managed to bring back their declining birth rates by making it easier to have kids, so the trade-off between (for instance) career/family is lessened. I'd be happy to see other first world countries address the problem in similar ways.
That's usually my first explanation, actually. You're probably right and I just got misdirected.
Do you expect space colonization before 2050?
Anyway, historically colonization didn't significantly reduce homeland population size.
Extremely difficult to forecast, since we're already in political turmoil in many parts of the world. I can't really say what sorts of governments will be in power by 2050.
I don't think it's matter of politics. We don't have the technology for space colonization, neither now nor in the foreseeable future (~100 years).
We may be able to create stable colonies off-planet, and we almost certainly will be able to in 100 years, barring total nuclear war or self-replicating paperclips eating the planet or something. What we don't have the technology to do is to move a significant fraction of Earth's population off-planet -- that would cost in the high trillions of dollars even at cargo launch rates to LEO, and human-rated launches to any of the places we might actually want to colonize are much more expensive. Economies of scale could improve this, but not enough.
Space elevators or one of their relatives might make this more attractive in a "not burning all of Earth's available hydrocarbons" sense, but the energy balance is still pretty daunting.
Earth-dependent outposts, e.g. an ISS on Mars, possibly yes, at great financial expenses and risk for those who would live there. Self-sustaining colonies, no.
Jayman provides a pretty interesting story for why Western liberalism might be the way it is.
http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/liberalism-hbd-population-and-solutions-for-the-future/