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mwengler comments on Happiness and Children - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Carinthium 26 June 2014 07:36AM

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Comment author: mwengler 29 June 2014 01:57:19PM 2 points [-]

Your attitude is constantly being bread out of the species, on the margin. People who want children, and to a lesser extent people who want to make children, define the future of the species. Anybody who wants to can opt out without either fear of the species disappearing, but also without the ability to cause the species to disappear by opting out .

Comment author: ShardPhoenix 29 June 2014 11:39:50PM 1 point [-]

I was thinking more about principles (ie, what would I want people to do) rather than what is actually likely to happen.

Comment author: mwengler 30 June 2014 01:05:02AM 0 points [-]

In my opinion, there are no principles that are not tied to outcomes. There is no point having a principle against doing X if it will never be the case that the people doing X are going to get a bad result.

Should there be a principle against homosexual sex because we don't want to run out of humans? I'd venture to say more bad than good arises from principled thinking like that. More utility is lost than is gained when principle is not tied to outcomes.