Shephard
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Shephard has not written any posts yet.
Shephard has not written any posts yet.
I respect your emphasis on trying to avoid hyperbole, but there's got to be some room for speaking loosely (even in the hyper-vigilant Less Wrong community). And notice I prefaced that sentence with "I'd say that" which I think is a pretty good indication that it was more of an opinion than a bold assertion of fact. I haven't made up my mind about anything, but I can have strong opinions about an issue without getting a degree in the relevant field.
If you disagreed with me, why not skip the reprimand, and instead shame me (and enlighten me) by offering a strong counter-argument to my perspective?
Okay, so it's not obvious to you. But do you think there's enough evidence for the opposite opinion to warrant encouraging people to stop thinking about the impact of how many children they might have?
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.
I've commented more extensively on the scientific and logical basis for Caplan's ideas elsewhere, including my serious concern about his reliance on separated-at-birth twin studies, but I'll limit my comments here to something a little more subtle.
While some of his data about intelligence and physical health seemed pretty sound, I remember his conclusions about personality and happiness seeming a lot sketchier. Which makes sense since the psychological health of any given individual is extremely difficult to quantify (much less the effect of one person's psychological health on another's). But I think it's these aspects that good parents are most concerned with: Will my child live a life that is largely stress free?... (read more)
I don't believe LW is a cult, but I can see where intelligent, critical thinking people might get that impression. I also think that there may be elitist and clannish tendencies within LW that are detrimental in ways that could stand to be (regularly) examined. Vigilance against irrational bias is the whole point here, right? Shouldn't that be embraced on the group level as much as on an individual one?
Part of the problem as I see it is that LW can't decide if it's a philosophy/science or a cultural movement.
For instance, as already mentioned, there's a great deal of jargon, and there's a general attitude of impatience for anyone not thoroughly... (read more)
While I personally agree that "personality can and does change" and that such changes have the potential to trump so-called "external" factors, the research cited in this article doesn't seem to pack much of a punch.
Furthermore, I think that there are some major obstacles in the way of this kind of research in general. The average person's concept of what shapes one's personality is still heavily influenced by poorly understood notions of genetic determinism, philosophically naive definitions of free-will, and lingering ideas about human beings possessing a "soul" (even if such ideas are subconscious or secularly re-imagined).
Until there is a significant paradigm shift in those respects, I don't think we'll see the support or funding necessary to produce studies that yield actionable data.
There definitely are parallels between studying either the process or the "content" of a scientific field and studying what I would refer to as "technique" in the art world. Musical composition is one example, and as a visual artist I can add things like color theory, semiotics, visual composition, and the handling of various mediums. These are phenomena that can and have been taught and written about. They can be as objectively addressed as any scientific subject in that you can say "if you follow procedure X, you'll get Y result".
But these things are supplemental to the primary goals of art/artists which are profoundly different from the goals of science/scientists. The goals... (read more)
Imagine a snowball that's rolling down an infinite slope. As it descends, it picks up more snow, rocks, sticks, maybe some bugs, I don't know. Maybe there are dry patches, too, and the snowball loses some snow. Maybe the snowball hits a boulder and loses half of its snow, and what remains is less than 10% original snow material. But it still can be said to be this snowball and not that snowball because its composition and history are unique to it - it can be identified by its past travels, its momentum, and the resulting trajectory. If this can be taken to be one's life (an analogy that I hope was obvious), then the "I" that we refer to in our own lives isn't even the whole snowball but merely the place where the snowball touches the ground.
Evidence has smashed my belief's face quite solidly in the nose, though.
Evidence other than the repeated denials of the subjects in question and a non-systematic observation of them acting as largely rational people in most respects? (That's not meant to be rhetorical/mocking - I'm genuinely curious to know where the benefit of the doubt is coming from here)
"I knew eating a cookie wasn't good for me, but I felt like it and so I did it anyway."
The problem here is that there is a kind of perfectly rational decision making that involves being aware of a detrimental consequence but coming to the conclusion that it's an acceptable cost. In fact that's what... (read more)
I don't think you should consider doing it if you don't actually feel any over desire, but it might be worthwhile to take a closer look at that lack of desire. I feel the same way, actually, and I plan on never having children, but I often wonder if that ties into deeper, subconscious issues that might be doing me a disservice.
Also keep in mind that agreeing to have a child out of a sense of obligation or a desire to please your partner could have a detrimental (if unintentional) impact on how you treat the child (especially if something went awry with the original relationship, which can happen).