Shephard comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - LessWrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (257)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Shephard 30 May 2012 06:11:04PM -1 points [-]

That sounds like what he might say, but I agree with Waveman. For one thing, the overall economic and environmental impact of one child in the developing world far outweighs that of one child born in poorer countries. Furthermore, if there's any detrimental impact of the bloated world population, then we need as many people as possible encouraging self-restraint, even if any one group of citizens can afford to indulge themselves.

Also, the claim that the percentage of innovators born to each generation is enough to offset the overall negative externalities is dubious at best. I'd say that our pace of innovation is still very obviously struggling to keep up with the pace our reproduction.

Comment author: gwern 30 May 2012 07:15:42PM 12 points [-]

For one thing, the overall economic and environmental impact of one child in the developing world far outweighs that of one child born in poorer countries.

This also holds true for their positive impacts too. Not much good science is conducted by Africans in Africa.

Comment author: Emile 30 May 2012 08:00:30PM 9 points [-]

I'd say that our pace of innovation is still very obviously struggling to keep up with the pace our reproduction.

That's not "very obvious" to me at all.