Thomas, I normally buy into most of your ideas, even if they feel hard to imagine or unconventional, but this one definitely feels dystopian to me.
My biggest pushback (said as a father of 3) is the Myth of Quality Time. You mentioned that things like school pickup or doing chores or rocking the baby to sleep are things we could give up to robots, but we can keep dinner time and vacations, etc. Many of the most profound moments for me as a father, and developmentally important moments for my children, happened during these "boring, everyday" situations. Driving the kids home from school lets you really understand the mood of your children that day -- what was exciting for them, what made them feel sad, etc. Outsourcing those moments as "inefficiencies" seems to really miss the important moments of human connection.
I hear you, but you are only valuing the positive of these moments, not the cost-benefit. My kids take the bus every morning and the bus stop is literally 1m away. I miss the ride you discuss, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have 4 children, and that bus stop allows me to have a sane life while still having 4. I would never want to sacrifice my 4th child for more boring time with my other children. I’m just pushing this idea to an extreme.
Notice that the most important thing to feel fulfilled is the life narratives we give ourselves. So it makes sense you’d think your current setup is optimal, and you should extremely reluctant to imagine that other setups could be better. Ponder that bias.
People used to have lots of babies because most of them died young. Once sanitation, asepsis and refrigeration lowered infant mortality and immunizations and antibiotics lowered later childhood mortality, many people chose to go with fewer and fewer children. The persistence of larger families is a holdover from the early mortality era. Also, the cost of all the artificial replacements for pregnancy and child-rearing would be catastrophic. Just look at the distortion AI investment has made in the economy. What you describe from fertilization to adulthood would exceed even our bloated military budget.
Although this is a factor, it is not the only one by any means. The fertility drop happened in France 140 years before Britain, where it happened triggered by a lawsuit. The cultural component is much more important than what people realize.
Also, if you were right, there would have been no mid-20th century baby boom
My son was born at 34 and a half weeks and spent 2 weeks in an intensive care nursery. The care he received there was 24/7, hooked up to monitors and a CPAP machine to help with his breathing and oxygen saturation as his lungs weren't fully developed. He was fed via a stomach tube with special formula that cost about $1,000 a day. All that to do what a mother's body does for free, without the risk of blindness from too much oxygen or brain damage from too little oxygen.
So you're right about the cost of artificial replacements being catastrophic. It would remain the province of the very wealthy to have lots of children. There is also a disconnect between the assumption that the cost of providing for children will become cheaper when the rising cost of energy, driven not just by the Iran war but by long-term physical constraints on producing energy, will make everything more expensive.
Your son's care was like many premature babies I cared for, with even more intervention and expense at younger birth ages. I hope your son has done well; I'm sure his doctors and nurses did everything possible to ensure he has a full and healthy life.
Thanks, my son is now 29 and working in IT support. His weight was 6 1/2 pounds at birth so his life was never really in danger, as it is with much more premature babies. That is why it concerns me that Tomas proposes 24 weeks as foetus viability in an artificial womb. Like many premature babies, he was an exceptionally clingy baby once he left the hospital. He would scream if I stopped holding him tight and required many paediatric check-ups. There really is no replacement for human skin to skin contact.
I shiver at this idea of a future as someone who is now spending years processing childhood trauma from neglect. My childhood looked normal and adequate from the outside: fed, clothed, sent to school, had my own room, lived with both parents, they paid for things like hobbies & after-school activities, etc.
Except they hardly interacted with me, including rarely co-regulating, and never really got to know me. If robots had been an option, my parents would’ve chosen that too, and I’d likely be even worse off. Human nervous systems need to co-regulate with other human nervous systems to learn how to self-regulate. Without learning self-regulation, the human doesn’t immediately die, but goes on to live under stressful, dysregulated conditions— with no understanding of what’s wrong or why things are hard (because neglect is an absence; you can’t point at it the way you can point at explicit abuse).
Parentified children raising each other is already documented as not being good for their development. Adding robots to the mix wouldn’t solve this and could make it worse.
I would prefer for future tech to boost parent-child time/connection, not replace it. If it’s possible to have more than 4 or 5 kids and spend adequate quality time with all of them, I’m unaware of it. In a world where you don’t need child labor on your farm and there isn’t a high chance of childhood mortality, why would anyone have more children than they can adequately parent?
Anyway. I still enjoyed this article, as it got my mind a-crankin’. I just happen to disagree / to hold a very different hope for the future of fertility.
Thank you for sharing. I deeply appreciate. That must have been hard.
It sounds like your parents did not want to hang out with their children. That's definitely not the ideal parenting style.
The article is more geared towards those who do want to connect with their children, but can't have as many as they want for lack of time or other limitations. You say "I would prefer for future tech to boost parent-child time/connection, not replace it.", and that's exactly what the tech described here could do.
My father was one of eight. He never received any emotional support from either parent, or his older siblings. As a result, though he is extremely well-adjusted in life, he still has a deep-seated need to be accepted and loved by others, and for others to pay attention to him.
It comes out as him being friendly, funny, compassionate, and engaging to everyone he meets; but underneath, it's a desire not to be ignored. Yes, he needs his "alone time", but when we're in a group, my Dad is usually at the center of attention.
Same with my mother, for the opposite reason. She was raised by one parent, plus relatives, and was mostly neglected.
And it had the same result too: Outwardly well-adjusted and healthy, but with a massive vacuum of emotional and social need which translates into unwittingly taking emotional control of a group and becoming the center of it. Most people don't notice it (they're having too much fun being around her), but seeing the pattern over and over all of our lives, my siblings and I do notice.
Again, they're caring, empathetic, compassionate people who believe in being loving and accepting to everyone. But the lack of close, emotional connection to their parents, scarred them emotionally and psychologically on a very deep level. One which they each partially acknowledge, but partially ignore. It's not detrimental to their lives, but it is noticeable.
Thanks for sharing. This is very interesting indeed, it raises lots of questions.
1. Are their lives worth being lived? I'd argue yes, they are, therefore it's better if people like them are born than not.
2. How much of these descriptions can be traced back to nature vs nurture? And within nurture, to parenting vs other factors? Very hard to tell I reckon. Maybe they would have ended up this way anyway?
3. Would they have been better off with more parents (in the case of your mother) or more presence of his parents (your father)? Maybe not.
4. Would your paternal grandparents have had more children if it had been easier? Doesn't sound like it.
I think my takeaway on this is that this type of problem exists and will always exist, and that it's up to the parents to decide how many kids they want. The more they love them, the more they will usually have, and the better off these children will be—better than not being born, that's for sure.
"1. Are their lives worth being lived? I'd argue yes, they are, therefore it's better if people like them are born than not."
1a. If we could genetically code for decency, kindness, honesty, and emotional maturity? Sure. But we can't simply have more people and hope that they turn out "good". In any random sample of humans, some will be good, some neutral, and some bad. My experience has shown a 30-40-30 split along those lines: 30% good (loving, compassionate, thougtful, productive), 40% neutral (not actively constuctive or destructive in life, just bumping around), and 30% bad (selfish, cruel, destructive).
"2. How much of these descriptions can be traced back to nature vs nurture? And within nurture, to parenting vs other factors? Very hard to tell I reckon. Maybe they would have ended up this way anyway?"
2a. They would still be happy, loving people, but with each of them raised by two loving parents in a stable family size, they would likely have been more successful, earlier in life (more confidence and support) and would've enjoyed healthier relationships as teens and young adults, including possibly their own failed marriage. In fact, my siblings and I took our parents' failures to heart, to help navigate "what not to do" in life, and it has kept us out of most of the trouble that other people get into.
"3. Would they have been better off with more parents (in the case of your mother) or more presence of his parents (your father)? Maybe not."
3a. Both of my parents have acknowledged that they would have likely enjoyed happier childhoods had they each been raised by a pair of loving parents. My father, by parents not overwhelmed with eight children and low income (and who responded by shutting down emotionally, as to not be overwhelmed), and my mother with parents who were both alive and present to give her the love and affection she was denied by being raised relatives who had no direct emotional interest in her.
"4. Would your paternal grandparents have had more children if it had been easier? Doesn't sound like it."
4a. They had eight children because of a lack of birth control, and the social stigma of contraception. My father's mother has openly said that though she loves all of her children, she still regretted having so many. It ruined both her body, and decades of her life, and having to deal with so many of them prevented her from bonding strongly with any of them. She has long been a supporter of birth control and women's right not to have children if they don't want to do so.
"I think my takeaway on this is that this type of problem exists and will always exist, and that it's up to the parents to decide how many kids they want. The more they love them, the more they will usually have, and the better off these children will be—better than not being born, that's for sure."
-- Even in my own, smaller family, we like to keep gatherings small, so that everyone has more time to spend with everyone else over the course of the visit (1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks). Too many relatives in once place at one time, and either we have to ignore folks to spend any significant time with anyone, or we each feel that we didn't spend enough time with anyone.
Scale that over to families. My parents had three, and there was enough time in life for each of them to focus on each of us as we needed. But simple math shows that families over three or four start to become too large for the parents to get in enough quality time with everyone during each day, and one or more children inevitably suffer from long-term neglect, either real or perceived.
Again, while neglect and emotional deprivation can occur in families of any size, every time I talk to people from large families, where children outnumber parents at least 2.5 to 1, they almost always describe their parents with terminology which shows a lack of attention or quality realtionship-building.
- "Mom was too busy."
- "Dad wasn't there."
- "I was raised by older siblings."
- "They never treated us as individuals."
- "We never had enough."
- "Time and money were always an issue."
Perhaps in a post-scarcity society, where work is optional, and robots do all the chores (?), it will be easier to spend time with each child. But there are still only 24 hours in a day, and only so much attention and energy for a parent to give during that time.
NOTE: This applies to managers as well. Smaller teams often perform better because the manager can focus on the needs of each employee, rather than delegating to "team leads", just as smaller families let Mom and Dad raise the kids directly, rather than relying on older children or a nanny to be "surrogate".
1a. As I explain in the corresponding section, gamete selection won't be random
2a. Therefore it was positive for them to have you and your siblings despite being imperfect parents.
I appreciate your preference for small gatherings. I had huge ones, and I loved them. I would like for people to be able to be free to do what they prefer. If that means big families, good for them.
The CEO of NVIDIA, the most valuable company in the world, has 60 direct reports.
"As I explain in the corresponding section, gamete selection won't be random"
1b. Genetic selection with humans is a slippery slope to designer babies and eugenics, no matter how well-intentioned.
I was born early, had complications, and could list imperfect physical traits which would've caused a product recall, had I been a consumer product. I still have the scars from neonatal surgery, and my prescription glasses are $500-$1000 per pair. I'm not unattractive, but I'm never getting on the cover of GQ magazine.
Still, rather than discard me for being imperfect (as the Romans and Greeks would have done), my parents raised me along with my siblings, and I've been joyfully successful in my life, on all counts. Life hasn't always been easy, but it's been amazing, and I love it.
I'm grateful that I wasn't conceived in an era where people can discard anything which isn't "perfect". Should we use gene therapy to correct major defects which can severely impede someone's quality of life? Absolutely.
But we already discard 60% of produce for being "imperfect", which is highly wasteful. Let's not start that with people.
"The CEO of NVIDIA, the most valuable company in the world, has 60 direct reports."
But do they feel safe, courageous, and satisfied with their job role? Do they feel that "the boss has their back"?
Every team I've been on where the team size was more than around 10-20, consisted of one person (the manager) watching weekly numbers and holding short performance meetings with each person to fill a check box.
The personal touch was basically non-existant, and neither was the long-term loyalty, except for that one person with whom the manager connected. The rest of us were just meat puppets from whom the manager required performance.
However, teams with 20 or fewer employees (when the manager was professional, talented, and caring) often fostered interpersonal friendships, and the manager was able to cultivate at least a semi-personal/professional friendship with each team member.
We became a cross-loyal mini-tribe, and functioned well to excel at our job positions. We also knew that the manager actually cared (again, when the manager was leadership material) and that we could be courageous and feel safe, because through our developed relationship, we earned mutual trust.
Small teams with bad managers were just exercizes in frustration, but they often didn't last long due to a lack of leadership on the part of the manager.
"I report to eight different bosses, Bob..." - Office Space (1999)
This is designing the process so all products work.
The right comparison is with a factory that has 0 errors or one in one thousand. Would you like your cars to always work, or randomly break all the time?
You can have an infinite amount of cars that work, but ideally they work.
I'm glad you take a tribe of 20 as something that worked really well. In fact, in companies below 130-150ppl, everybody knows each other well and are similar to what you say. Hence dunbar, and a proxy for family unit size limits
So many thoughts about this, but I would like to add one from some knowledge originating in personal experience. I am an early offspring of artificial insemination by anonymous sperm provider, and have an estimated 600 half-siblings from the same mysterious man. There are serious issues with respect to both the lying usually involved in anonymous gamete 'donation' (a misnomer, because most often gametes are sold), as well as, more subtly, the difference in the relationship of a parent who is a close genetic relative and one who is not. To dismiss these and many other issues is like dismissing some adoptees' desire to know their genetic parents; a need which for decades was broadly rejected with contempt. For too long, the reproductive and fertility industry has ignored the difficulties resulting from various innovations and interventions -- the goal being to produce a baby by whatever means, with little thought to the baby's becoming an adult. Thomas, I always admire your willingness to logically think through our challenges and to imagine more courageously than most. But I urge you to pay attention to both the risks of casting aside what humans have done for thousands of years, and what we already know about the difficulties faced by the products of reproductive technologies -- those of us born of science, not sex -- because I can assure you that there are dangers lurking in your brave new world.
It sounds to me like the issues you raise are valid and should be addressed:
- Children should be able to know their DNA parents
- There should be full transparency on who is a parent to how many children. 600 might be a bit over the top if it’s not clearly known who these children are, and if the mothers don’t know this guy has fathered so many children.
Population expansion I think is hugely problematic. But I want to read an earlier post of yours before commenting more than that. WRT 'donor' conception, thanks, you are right on both points. Yes, secrecy is poisonous, and to be able to know who you came from is important. Also, having hundreds of offspring increases risks of founder effect illness (which is real in our case -- nothing fatal, but difficulties with a common source). And of course consanguinity is bound to happen. (The US industry has some rule like 10 families per 800,000 population, but there is a smaller class who have the means to do these processes, and people who are similar tend to choose the same 'donor'. In my extended and expanding family (every Christmas a few people get DNA tests as presents and then have a big surprise) a number of my half-siblings knew each other before they knew they were related. They tended to gravitate to similar professions (media, journalism, science, arts) and so... So there are children born of half-siblings. Mind you, half-siblings having kids is not a death sentence, but it's kind of icky when they find out.
I think you have off the deep end now. Trying to create your own AI. Believing that human beings can be normal without other humans to raise and teach them. Wanting the human population to grow without limit. Thinking that technology will create utopia. I do like your maps, but I've seen fewer of those lately.
Interesting and fun to read Tomas. Having our two kids is the best thing I've done in my life. Yes they demanded lots of time and energy when really young, but it was worth it to see the bright and interesting young adults they have grown up to be. There are more reasons to have kids than just the economic ones. As a biologist, the desire to pass my genes on was a strong drive, especially after watching my mother die in my early 30s and realizing how transient life is. Studying evolution and behavior in animals, and teaching population genetics to students, led me to view individuals as temporary aggregations of genes which can either be passed on in new combinations to offspring or terminated by not reproducing. Being so invested in this biological framework led me to view my only lasting role to be to pass on 50% of my genes to the next generation. Having tried to explain this perspective to non-biologists only to get strange looks shows that not everyone will understand or share this view. I think it is common among fellow life scientists, however. On a more tangible level, having kids has benefits in helping adults to focus on their children rather than themselves. It's not a good look for older adults to be excessively wrapped up in their own wants and needs. There are other ways to have a broader impact than having kids, of course. None of what I have said should be interpreted as an argument that everyone must reproduce. I'm just trying to present an additional perspective on this topic.
Interesting. I feel the same way but I had never connected it so directly to the knowledge of evo psych. Is this a widespread thing? Do ppl knowledgeable in evo psych have more children?
Yes I think it is widespread among those who think about evo psych/evolution. All of my colleague/friends in the business have kids. We're subject to the same financial/time/energy constraints that you discussed and so most have two kids. I do know some evolution warriors, however, who have more than two kids, usually with different partners at different life stages. I don't know whether they are doing this consciously or just acting out their genetic destiny unconsciously.
Since you have four children, I won't tell you you know nothing about this topic. But this still reads more like engagement bait than like your personal wisdom.
As a mother of three children and hopefully four someday, I will tell you this essay comes from a more patrifocal than matrifocal perspective. And mothers rather than fathers are the bottleneck when it comes to fertility, so our perspective is especially important.
For mothers even more than fathers, parenthood is a visceral and hormonal bonding experience, not just a normal relationship like you'd have with a student, a friend, or even a spouse.
Yes, one can offspringmaxx by outsourcing most of the process. If I were forced to have 20 kids, I'd probably prefer/need to skip a lot of the experience. But absent such a dystopia, I can let myself - and my kids - enjoy it more.
Gestation is part of the bonding process. Birth is part of the bonding process. Breastfeeding is part of the bonding process. They're a feature, not a bug. Those female abilities are indeed expensive to use, but they also have the biggest payoffs. Not only the costs but also the benefits of motherhood are relevant when competing with the awesomeness of the childfree lifestyle.
In terms of what parents find fulfilling, most mothers find gestation, birth, and breastfeeding to be extremely meaningful parts of their experience of motherhood, and load-bearing in terms of bonding and the hormonal transition of matrescence.
Males can't do those things regardless, so they generally don't understand what is lost without them. I think females who choose to become mothers, and who listen to the wisdom of mothers who have made that transition before them, will want to continue to enjoy exercising their superpowers. It helps us enjoy the other parts of motherhood more too.
I've discussed this with several women, some of whom love the idea to have lots of children, no chores, and no birth.
You don't need to want 20 kids if you don't want to. Nobody is forcing you! But maybe if you had less work at home you could choose to have 5 children instead of aiming for 4 maybe. The option is a net positive, even if you decide not to go for it!
Gestation is part of the bonding process up till now, and the women who will want to conserve it in the future will be able to enjoy it. Those that don't, won't. Breastfeeding is the perfect example. Wanna do it? Good for you! Don't want to do it? Good for you! It has virtually no difference in the long term to the child.
I am surprised you see no difference between formula in a bottle and nursing from a mother.
Having nursed my two children for 3-plus years each, I can tell you it had a profound effect on us. This is what humans always did until quite recently; our milk is quite different from that of a cow, and all the engineering we do to the cow's milk or soy milk only gets us so far. But more important to me than the nutrition, antibodies etc is the process. You really can't compare giving a child a bottle to nursing a child with your body.
Pre-Internet, I used to hit the nearest medical school library regularly to read the literature about it. I was very interested in the subject. The difference is clear.
One thing on the fertility rate decline we are seeing now. Childlessness rates amongst 40 year olds hasn't really changed significantly in most countries. This is significant, since it means it's not the case that fewer people are having children, it's that the people that do have children are having them later, and as a result, having fewer. The later in her fertile window a woman has her first child, the less time there is remaining to decide to have a second, or third, or fourth.
This makes sense. Before it was normal for women to have careers, there wasn't really any barrier to starting a family except finding someone you want to start a family with. The woman was already available to raise the children, so no childcare costs necessary. There was nothing particular to wait for.
These days, many women want to study, and it makes sense to wait until after that before starting a family. Then it makes sense to establish a career. Then, these days, a double income isn't a luxury, it's a necessity to afford the cost of living, so either, the (usually) man's career needs to advance to a point where they can live off a single income, or they need to be able to afford expensive childcare. Buying a house is also very expensive, so it makes sense to get this done before starting a family. All of these things push starting a family back for many people, such they the average age of motherhood is now almost 30.
If AI automates everything, and we end up living on some form if UBI, we are back in a world of stay at home mothers, but this time also with stay at home fathers. I would be surprised if this doesn't completely reverse the fertility crisis by itself.
I agree with you. I hope that that future of more stay at home parents comes to pass, and I agree it would probably resolve the fertility crisis.
I fear that instead, AI will replace labor to such a degree that states decide that having more population is a burden rather than a blessing, and will penalize parents.
Historically, yes. More population has meant more taxes, as well as more soldiers (since the advent of firearms, quantity of soldiers has mattered more than quality).
This has historically also been an incentive for states to invest in their populations and keep them happy with with things like education, labor rights, and democracy.
After AI? If AI takes most of the jobs that generate taxes and defense, and the remaining population just lives on UBI, why would states want more humans around? Especially if AI takes most of the jobs that require smart people, you barely need a population to exist even as a pipeline for occasionally creating smart people. If you need one now and then, poach them from a different country.
A Pew survey of 17 advanced economies says the #1 thing people find meaningful in life is their family and children. But I don't think that even an aligned AI will prioritize that in the face of the structural disincentives emerging as AI replaces humans. ☹️
I feel like i have been noticing a pattern: i am way more categorically excited and into Tomas' articles about (patterns / systems of) the past, then i am when he speculates about the future.
Thinking about why this might be, I feel like for me personally it's because he seems to delve too much on the potential positives of such speculation, and barely seems to acknowledge potential negatives. With such a (seemingly) skewed view, his overall speculation lands squarely in "overly-rosey techno-optimism" territory, which here in the 2020s feels tone-deaf and lacking acknowledgement of the "rosey future" from yesteryear that we're all currently living in... And noticing that it is definitely not all roses.
I'm thinking of the shiny, clean futures predicted from the 50s and 60s, that imagined ends to all problems, the Jetsons' city in the sky with no pollution, no crime, all just shiny, happy people using technology with no downsides.
Yes, it is truly amazing (and improves my QoL...right?) that I can hail a taxi from an electronic computer in my pocket. Or order food and get it delivered. But then: what about the humans actually executing those services? I (a white male working a six-figure salary tech job in America, aka a fairly privileged position) have been learning in recent years of how rough it is for uber drivers, for delivery drivers, as the capitalist systems that birthed them moves to cut costs as much as possible, without actually caring about these humans' actual well-being.
And thats just one example: i imagine there were plenty of nothing-but-positive gushes in the 90s and early 00s about the new golden age the internet, and burgeoning social media, was going to bring. I wonder, did anyone predict the other, darker side? - the rise of a generation nurtured on the infinite feed, the manyfold issues only just starting to be publicized about social media addiction + its impacts on developing minds, etc.
To be fair, im sure the generation prior was worried the same about a generation of kids raised on a screen in the living room (TV "classic") but that's a discussion for a whole nother thread. Suffice to say the scale of a screen in pocket is orders of mag (time) more than just the one in the living room.
Anyway, the main point is: I suspect every era has their nothing-but-good-around-the-corner speculators of technology, but we know, time and again, that there also waits around the corner, not-so-good aspects of that bright and shining future society-place.
Tomas, I feel like you would get less pushback (and more earnest engagement, and serious consideration of oppositional views) if you at least made an effort to enumerate, acknowledge, and work through some of the potential "hidden" downsides that these sparkly ever-more-technical futures might have. I know its a tough line to walk, not getting too pessimistic, but too-optimistic to the point of ignoring reality about how human systems tend to go (especially capitalist ones, and do we see that going anywhere any time soon?) is also not helpful in its divorce from real causes and effects.
For one, i would chime with what a lot of others are saying: walking away from 1000s of years of human history and best practices of child rearing and bonding, et al without a care in the world as to what we are discarding in digitizing, we do at our own /childrens peril. I do earnestly believe modern science has not fully captured (quantified) all the things that contribute to a fully well-rounded human's development + QoL. Multiplied by "the future is already here, just not evenly distributed" = not all new parents are necessarily aware of what the latest science has to say anyway!
And i think to act like we have (Fully Figured It All Out with science), with a "live your way and others can live theirs!" feels blind to potential dangers in kind of a similar way as some parents in the 1950s deciding not to smoke their cigarettes indoors around their children, but "oh you go ahead and smoke your cigarettes around your kids and let them breathe in that smoke - you live life your way, thats ok!" - some things we do not simply "live and let live" because we realize its actually causing harm. I worry that science has not fully understood the child-rearing equation sufficiently and some of these ideas you propose re: artificial wombs, 10+ children, will also be found to be quite harmful on longer scales.
One of the reasons for that is what I'm reacting to. I'm not trying to give a full picture, but rather react to a standard narrative that the future is dark. I use that as a baseline, and show the counterpoint. But maybe I should strive not to provide the counterpoint, but the entire perspective. I'll ponder that, thanks.
Potentially related: unspoken in a lot of this dialogue about the future/ how humans should or shouldn't live: the near-fetishization of "comfort" over the past several hundred years. This is a large topic and very open to misinterpretation but in short, I wonder if Modern Man's (modern Capitalism?) quest to basically eradicate anything even remotely uncomfortable is not the truly best one for over all QoL. To be clear i am talking about the more minor, discomforts of the privileged: i "shouldn't" have the discomfort of: engaging with another human for xyz service; having to go get (nevermind source + process lol) my own food; waiting for something; having to change my own child's diaper, etc. again, lots of nuances abound; im not saying all things that make life comfortable are bad, but i fear there is a bit of moderation that has been forgotten, and as it relates to the child birthing/rearing equation: I fear many ("parents") will opt out of discomfort, at the increased cost of the discomfort of their offspring down the line, because of lack of proper attunement, eg.
Not a monolith either; its probably possible for a child raised essentially by robots to develop into a well-rounded human, and vice versa (no robots and not well-rounded) but that doesnt mean there arent trends and general outcomes at work! (Ie, it may be that children raised by robots tend not to develop as well-roundedly)
Reading through the other comments... I think we need a different (i.e., lower) equivalent Dunbar number for a family. The family dynamics are slightly different from that of a "tribe" - or social basic group - and my intuition says that we would be better off with families with 10 children or less, mainly for the reasons listed in the comments. Let alone the thesis that brings up the problem that today's human beings are R-selected (denormalized) animals, prone to uncontrolled expansion, that my very well end up in population overshoot followed by a drastic collapse (human nature and energy deficit induced).
Now, the main questions is: are we able to get past the upcoming energy and material resources bottlenecks? Again, looking at the human nature, future looks grim. We seem more eager to burn more fuel and resources in wars, but neglect that a transition to (truly) renewable energy and critical materials' recycling would require global planning and cooperation over a (longer than initially estimated) transition time. That, if ever possible (Mars?? Really?? We are technologically quite far from that endeavour - please go deeper into the engineering challenges and leave aside anything that is more marketing-oriented or wishful thinking). I am an engineer, but not a techno-optimistic. Trends may be up (and encouraging) for AI and some novel technologies, but they may get broken before they reach full potential (by external factors). Or, more precisely, by our own mistakes. Or, even more accurately, by our leaders' incompetence and our collective incapacity of correcting the course...
I am not saying it is impossible, but that the chances are quite low for both of the above to happen. Let's talk again (if we will be alive) in 2036! Cheers to you all, inquiring minds!
I read your fertility piece. Genuinely enjoyed it.
You're asking the right questions, but that said, I think the piece has some serious problems, and I'd feel dishonest not mentioning them.
The fertility decline section reads like it's settled when it isn't. You open by acknowledging nobody knows why fertility is falling, which is refreshingly honest, and then immediately present a three-point framework as if it explains everything. It doesn't. It can't account for why Korea's fertility rate is 0.72 while France holds near replacement, despite both being wealthy, educated, secular societies with high female labor participation. The opportunity cost argument is real but it's also 30 years old. It needs way, way more than a paragraph. You have no idea why fertility is falling. Nobody does.
The technology section is where things get shakier. Artificial wombs, in-vitro gametogenesis, humanoid robot caregivers...each one is a civilization-scale challenge that gets roughly one paragraph and a confident shrug. Like, c'mon man. "It's a challenge but not an impossible one!" is C-grade Substack shit.
Finally, vertical farming economics in particular are pretty badly wrong. You claim the two main costs are labor and energy and imply that solving them makes vertical farming obviously viable for feeding large families. But energy in vertical farming isn't primarily a cost problem, it's a physics problem. Crops need photons. Sunlight is free! LED replacement isn't, and no amount of cheap electricity changes the underlying photon math. That's why vertical farming economics are horrific, funding has cratered, and a ton of vertical farming startups have failed. They couldn't compete against the fucking sun.
(Also, the crops that actually feed people, wheat, rice, potatoes, are the worst possible candidates for vertical farming. The economics today only work for leafy greens and herbs. These are garnishes. A family of 50 cannot be calorie-fed by a vertical lettuce rack.)
And then there's the graph. You present a fertility distribution curve as the quantitative backbone of your argument about future family sizes, and then note (almost as an aside) that you made it up. I understand the impulse to visualize a hypothesis, but fabricated data dressed as a chart doesn't become analysis just because you disclosed it.
Look man, the central thesis is genuinely worth arguing. If even a fraction of these technologies arrive, the economics of parenthood change substantially. But this reads like a general fifth-grade technology enthusiasm essay.
And if that was your goal, fine. But let's not pretend otherwise.
I mention it;s a hypothesis, and I've backed it up some in other articles. But I might be wrong. If so, reducing the friction in child creation will not increase fertility.
AFAIK SK is quite sexist and women hate that, and that's one of the reasons why they have fewer children (massive friction for women once they have it, expectation to stop working, etc). France conversely has a pretty good system for fertility, with lots of economic incentives (CAF, free preschool...), so it aligns with the thesis.
Fair that I don't get into the detail of each tech section. They are worth one article each (in the list of drafts).
I linked to 3 articles in the vertical farming section, that's because I have looked into the tech there and I'm pretty confident about it. The key data point is that plants take ~1-2% of sunlight, whereas solar panels can capture 20-30% of it. This factor of 15x means you can grow 15x more food within the same space. Water and fertilizer usage is also ~20x better. And of course there's no weather disruption. So at the end of the day the issue is that the solar + battery + LED installation costs need to drop enough for the increase in productivity be worthwhile. Given the trajectories of these techs, I think it's a matter of time. That's for energy. For work, I'm tabling on humanoid robots, which might be ready to start mass adoption in 4-5 years as per the draft I'm working on.
It's not fabricated data, it's quantification of the hypothesis. I think it's useful. But I'll make it clearer in the future, thx.
Appreciate the swift response. Only major area of disagreement it seems is vertical farming. My colleague Brian did some research on this and came to the conclusion that it was simply uneconomical.
I don’t buy into the idea that robots would be commonplace. We said they’d be everywhere 40 years ago, the reason they’re not is because metal and chips are expensive. I don’t think this problem will be solved in the near future - we already have robots being used by Amazon, Google and more - but you don’t see them because theyre cost prohibitive.
I doubt humans are particularly rational in complex life-changing decisions like having (or not having) children.
Actually I would argue the opposite! I think there is a profound unconscious pursue of life in the fact of having children. The rationalisation comes later to support our already made unconscious decision.
Re: artificial wombs. What do you think the can psychological consequences of this can be for the child and parents? I think the burden of pregnancy, birth and childcare are necessary to create a healthy bond.
Maybe you're right. ROI doesn't need to be economic though. It can be in pain vs fulfillment for example.
Regarding the artificial wombs, as a father I feel like I have a tremendous connection to my children. I also know a woman who had a child naturally and another through a surrogate and she loves them the same.
I also know women who carried babies and don't particularly enjoyed it or seem extremely connected to their children.
So I think the pregnancy and childbirth definitely contribute to a bond, but they´re not required for a strong bond.
I didn't say that people *should* have 10-20 kids, but that some *would want to*. My guess is still that a majority of families would have 1-6 children.
I find it hideous to relinquish most of parental duties to robots. it remind me most that movie, The Nanny Diaries starring the wonderful Scarlett Johansson.
I wouldn't mind some help with the house chores (cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc.), but I would not let go on the day to day upbringing of my kids, even though they get on my nerves on a daily basis.
I think we're going through a love filter. In the past guys only needed sex drive and power to have kids, and women needed them for status. Love not required.
Now guys can have sex without kids, and women can have status without kids. And kids are bad deal for material wealth and career status. So only people that prioritise the joy of loving over those things will have descendance. Genes and values that don't, selected out of the gene and culture pool.
Filtering is brutal so within a couple generation, we'll only have people that prioritise a life filled with love over status and wealth. Fertility should stabilise then, perhaps increase again. Anyways will be safe by then to have tech for the easy-baby world you describe.
Not sure if true, but it has the merit of reversing the doom narrative, where people will feel like it's a duty to have kids to avoid collapse. As a personal sacrifice. Nope, in fact, the losers are those that don't have kids, selecting themselves out. This should be better incentive to have kids than the sacrifice thing.
"Nope, in fact, the losers are those that don't have kids, selecting themselves out."
I and my fellow childfree siblings each chose not to have children. We didn't want them, and we are glad that we don't have them.
We each have happy, fulfilled, vibrant lives filled with calm evenings, quiet weekends, zero debt, low-stress holiday gatherings, mutliple indoor and outdoor hobbies, restful nights of sleep, spontaneous meetings with friends, low bills, multiple international travels per year, satisfying, loving relationships with our partners, healthy friendships, and the ability to pursue the lives we want, fully able to give time and energy to our communities.
And if anything happens financially, employment-wise, family-wise, or so forth, we can quickly pivot to adjust and deal with the issue.
Most of our friends who have kids, however, are exhausted, depressed, in debt, scared for their children's futures. And while they indeed love their children (and that's a good thing!), several of them wonder what they could have done with their lives if they never had kids.
Will I or my siblings pass on our genes? Nope! And if all you're counting is genetics, then then yes, on that level, we "lose".
But unlike eugenic or fascist societies, the value of human life in a modern, democratic society is not based solely on whether you're a successful breeder, but on what value you bring to your society, regardless of whether or not you had children.
Eugenics and fascism? Chill out. Only talking about love. I've known love before having kids. And I just know it's a different thing with kids you raise.
It's not about genes - the values you most cherish to transmit in the new world. And just passing down love, as we've received and our ancestors did. Can be with adopted kids, genes are much less important.
Your choice is fine. If you're happy with it. There's other ways to contribute to society than loving and raising kids.
First point: Telling someone to "chill out" is an emotionally disrespectful, and "ad hominim", way to begin a rebuttal. If you disagree with a point, gently refute the statement. But don't attack the person's emotions.
Second point: "So only people that prioritise the joy of loving over those things will have descendance. Genes and values that don't, selected out of the gene and culture pool. ... Nope, in fact, the losers are those that don't have kids, selecting themselves out."
You mentioned genes multiple times and referred to people without children as "losers" who value material greed over "love" (however you choose to define it).
Whether or not you meant to equate childbearing to being successful and compassionate in life (however it's defined), your comment implied that childfree people are somehow bad people who are doing something ethically and morally wrong in life.
Also, clustering genetics and childbearing closely with "success" can come off as elitist or eugenic to people. Again, even if that wasn't your intention, that's how your comment was interpreted.
"Often, perception matters more than intent. It shouldn't, but it does."
Third point: I've known plenty of jerks who had children. "Love" (however you define it) has never been the key factor into whether or not you produce offspring; the key factor has always been whether your DNA combines with someone else's. Usually through sex; but sometimes not.
And we will always have kind and cruel people in the World, and each can be born to either kind or cruel parents. As we are not dogs or cats, we can't screen that out.
We can only teach people, as best we can, to be compassionate and kind, then hope that most of them act that way of their own accord.
This intersects with the plot of a novel I'm writing, The Mother, which is set in the near future. So I've been thinking about and researching all these things intensively.
But personally, I would not be interested in using an artificial womb. I wasn't interested in using bottles, either. Not only did I not have a nanny, I barely used any babysitters. I wanted the full experience, and I got it. I enjoyed having, nursing and raising my children. I'd have been sorry to have missed out on it.
Thomas, I normally buy into most of your ideas, even if they feel hard to imagine or unconventional, but this one definitely feels dystopian to me.
My biggest pushback (said as a father of 3) is the Myth of Quality Time. You mentioned that things like school pickup or doing chores or rocking the baby to sleep are things we could give up to robots, but we can keep dinner time and vacations, etc. Many of the most profound moments for me as a father, and developmentally important moments for my children, happened during these "boring, everyday" situations. Driving the kids home from school lets you really understand the mood of your children that day -- what was exciting for them, what made them feel sad, etc. Outsourcing those moments as "inefficiencies" seems to really miss the important moments of human connection.
I hear you, but you are only valuing the positive of these moments, not the cost-benefit. My kids take the bus every morning and the bus stop is literally 1m away. I miss the ride you discuss, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have 4 children, and that bus stop allows me to have a sane life while still having 4. I would never want to sacrifice my 4th child for more boring time with my other children. I’m just pushing this idea to an extreme.
Notice that the most important thing to feel fulfilled is the life narratives we give ourselves. So it makes sense you’d think your current setup is optimal, and you should extremely reluctant to imagine that other setups could be better. Ponder that bias.
Yes. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Cut out the quiet moments and you have nothing left.
People used to have lots of babies because most of them died young. Once sanitation, asepsis and refrigeration lowered infant mortality and immunizations and antibiotics lowered later childhood mortality, many people chose to go with fewer and fewer children. The persistence of larger families is a holdover from the early mortality era. Also, the cost of all the artificial replacements for pregnancy and child-rearing would be catastrophic. Just look at the distortion AI investment has made in the economy. What you describe from fertilization to adulthood would exceed even our bloated military budget.
Although this is a factor, it is not the only one by any means. The fertility drop happened in France 140 years before Britain, where it happened triggered by a lawsuit. The cultural component is much more important than what people realize.
Also, if you were right, there would have been no mid-20th century baby boom
My son was born at 34 and a half weeks and spent 2 weeks in an intensive care nursery. The care he received there was 24/7, hooked up to monitors and a CPAP machine to help with his breathing and oxygen saturation as his lungs weren't fully developed. He was fed via a stomach tube with special formula that cost about $1,000 a day. All that to do what a mother's body does for free, without the risk of blindness from too much oxygen or brain damage from too little oxygen.
So you're right about the cost of artificial replacements being catastrophic. It would remain the province of the very wealthy to have lots of children. There is also a disconnect between the assumption that the cost of providing for children will become cheaper when the rising cost of energy, driven not just by the Iran war but by long-term physical constraints on producing energy, will make everything more expensive.
Your son's care was like many premature babies I cared for, with even more intervention and expense at younger birth ages. I hope your son has done well; I'm sure his doctors and nurses did everything possible to ensure he has a full and healthy life.
Thanks, my son is now 29 and working in IT support. His weight was 6 1/2 pounds at birth so his life was never really in danger, as it is with much more premature babies. That is why it concerns me that Tomas proposes 24 weeks as foetus viability in an artificial womb. Like many premature babies, he was an exceptionally clingy baby once he left the hospital. He would scream if I stopped holding him tight and required many paediatric check-ups. There really is no replacement for human skin to skin contact.
I shiver at this idea of a future as someone who is now spending years processing childhood trauma from neglect. My childhood looked normal and adequate from the outside: fed, clothed, sent to school, had my own room, lived with both parents, they paid for things like hobbies & after-school activities, etc.
Except they hardly interacted with me, including rarely co-regulating, and never really got to know me. If robots had been an option, my parents would’ve chosen that too, and I’d likely be even worse off. Human nervous systems need to co-regulate with other human nervous systems to learn how to self-regulate. Without learning self-regulation, the human doesn’t immediately die, but goes on to live under stressful, dysregulated conditions— with no understanding of what’s wrong or why things are hard (because neglect is an absence; you can’t point at it the way you can point at explicit abuse).
Parentified children raising each other is already documented as not being good for their development. Adding robots to the mix wouldn’t solve this and could make it worse.
I would prefer for future tech to boost parent-child time/connection, not replace it. If it’s possible to have more than 4 or 5 kids and spend adequate quality time with all of them, I’m unaware of it. In a world where you don’t need child labor on your farm and there isn’t a high chance of childhood mortality, why would anyone have more children than they can adequately parent?
Anyway. I still enjoyed this article, as it got my mind a-crankin’. I just happen to disagree / to hold a very different hope for the future of fertility.
Thank you for sharing. I deeply appreciate. That must have been hard.
It sounds like your parents did not want to hang out with their children. That's definitely not the ideal parenting style.
The article is more geared towards those who do want to connect with their children, but can't have as many as they want for lack of time or other limitations. You say "I would prefer for future tech to boost parent-child time/connection, not replace it.", and that's exactly what the tech described here could do.
My father was one of eight. He never received any emotional support from either parent, or his older siblings. As a result, though he is extremely well-adjusted in life, he still has a deep-seated need to be accepted and loved by others, and for others to pay attention to him.
It comes out as him being friendly, funny, compassionate, and engaging to everyone he meets; but underneath, it's a desire not to be ignored. Yes, he needs his "alone time", but when we're in a group, my Dad is usually at the center of attention.
Same with my mother, for the opposite reason. She was raised by one parent, plus relatives, and was mostly neglected.
And it had the same result too: Outwardly well-adjusted and healthy, but with a massive vacuum of emotional and social need which translates into unwittingly taking emotional control of a group and becoming the center of it. Most people don't notice it (they're having too much fun being around her), but seeing the pattern over and over all of our lives, my siblings and I do notice.
Again, they're caring, empathetic, compassionate people who believe in being loving and accepting to everyone. But the lack of close, emotional connection to their parents, scarred them emotionally and psychologically on a very deep level. One which they each partially acknowledge, but partially ignore. It's not detrimental to their lives, but it is noticeable.
Thanks for sharing. This is very interesting indeed, it raises lots of questions.
1. Are their lives worth being lived? I'd argue yes, they are, therefore it's better if people like them are born than not.
2. How much of these descriptions can be traced back to nature vs nurture? And within nurture, to parenting vs other factors? Very hard to tell I reckon. Maybe they would have ended up this way anyway?
3. Would they have been better off with more parents (in the case of your mother) or more presence of his parents (your father)? Maybe not.
4. Would your paternal grandparents have had more children if it had been easier? Doesn't sound like it.
I think my takeaway on this is that this type of problem exists and will always exist, and that it's up to the parents to decide how many kids they want. The more they love them, the more they will usually have, and the better off these children will be—better than not being born, that's for sure.
"1. Are their lives worth being lived? I'd argue yes, they are, therefore it's better if people like them are born than not."
1a. If we could genetically code for decency, kindness, honesty, and emotional maturity? Sure. But we can't simply have more people and hope that they turn out "good". In any random sample of humans, some will be good, some neutral, and some bad. My experience has shown a 30-40-30 split along those lines: 30% good (loving, compassionate, thougtful, productive), 40% neutral (not actively constuctive or destructive in life, just bumping around), and 30% bad (selfish, cruel, destructive).
"2. How much of these descriptions can be traced back to nature vs nurture? And within nurture, to parenting vs other factors? Very hard to tell I reckon. Maybe they would have ended up this way anyway?"
2a. They would still be happy, loving people, but with each of them raised by two loving parents in a stable family size, they would likely have been more successful, earlier in life (more confidence and support) and would've enjoyed healthier relationships as teens and young adults, including possibly their own failed marriage. In fact, my siblings and I took our parents' failures to heart, to help navigate "what not to do" in life, and it has kept us out of most of the trouble that other people get into.
"3. Would they have been better off with more parents (in the case of your mother) or more presence of his parents (your father)? Maybe not."
3a. Both of my parents have acknowledged that they would have likely enjoyed happier childhoods had they each been raised by a pair of loving parents. My father, by parents not overwhelmed with eight children and low income (and who responded by shutting down emotionally, as to not be overwhelmed), and my mother with parents who were both alive and present to give her the love and affection she was denied by being raised relatives who had no direct emotional interest in her.
"4. Would your paternal grandparents have had more children if it had been easier? Doesn't sound like it."
4a. They had eight children because of a lack of birth control, and the social stigma of contraception. My father's mother has openly said that though she loves all of her children, she still regretted having so many. It ruined both her body, and decades of her life, and having to deal with so many of them prevented her from bonding strongly with any of them. She has long been a supporter of birth control and women's right not to have children if they don't want to do so.
"I think my takeaway on this is that this type of problem exists and will always exist, and that it's up to the parents to decide how many kids they want. The more they love them, the more they will usually have, and the better off these children will be—better than not being born, that's for sure."
-- Even in my own, smaller family, we like to keep gatherings small, so that everyone has more time to spend with everyone else over the course of the visit (1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks). Too many relatives in once place at one time, and either we have to ignore folks to spend any significant time with anyone, or we each feel that we didn't spend enough time with anyone.
Scale that over to families. My parents had three, and there was enough time in life for each of them to focus on each of us as we needed. But simple math shows that families over three or four start to become too large for the parents to get in enough quality time with everyone during each day, and one or more children inevitably suffer from long-term neglect, either real or perceived.
Again, while neglect and emotional deprivation can occur in families of any size, every time I talk to people from large families, where children outnumber parents at least 2.5 to 1, they almost always describe their parents with terminology which shows a lack of attention or quality realtionship-building.
- "Mom was too busy."
- "Dad wasn't there."
- "I was raised by older siblings."
- "They never treated us as individuals."
- "We never had enough."
- "Time and money were always an issue."
Perhaps in a post-scarcity society, where work is optional, and robots do all the chores (?), it will be easier to spend time with each child. But there are still only 24 hours in a day, and only so much attention and energy for a parent to give during that time.
NOTE: This applies to managers as well. Smaller teams often perform better because the manager can focus on the needs of each employee, rather than delegating to "team leads", just as smaller families let Mom and Dad raise the kids directly, rather than relying on older children or a nanny to be "surrogate".
1a. As I explain in the corresponding section, gamete selection won't be random
2a. Therefore it was positive for them to have you and your siblings despite being imperfect parents.
I appreciate your preference for small gatherings. I had huge ones, and I loved them. I would like for people to be able to be free to do what they prefer. If that means big families, good for them.
The CEO of NVIDIA, the most valuable company in the world, has 60 direct reports.
"As I explain in the corresponding section, gamete selection won't be random"
1b. Genetic selection with humans is a slippery slope to designer babies and eugenics, no matter how well-intentioned.
I was born early, had complications, and could list imperfect physical traits which would've caused a product recall, had I been a consumer product. I still have the scars from neonatal surgery, and my prescription glasses are $500-$1000 per pair. I'm not unattractive, but I'm never getting on the cover of GQ magazine.
Still, rather than discard me for being imperfect (as the Romans and Greeks would have done), my parents raised me along with my siblings, and I've been joyfully successful in my life, on all counts. Life hasn't always been easy, but it's been amazing, and I love it.
I'm grateful that I wasn't conceived in an era where people can discard anything which isn't "perfect". Should we use gene therapy to correct major defects which can severely impede someone's quality of life? Absolutely.
But we already discard 60% of produce for being "imperfect", which is highly wasteful. Let's not start that with people.
"The CEO of NVIDIA, the most valuable company in the world, has 60 direct reports."
But do they feel safe, courageous, and satisfied with their job role? Do they feel that "the boss has their back"?
Every team I've been on where the team size was more than around 10-20, consisted of one person (the manager) watching weekly numbers and holding short performance meetings with each person to fill a check box.
The personal touch was basically non-existant, and neither was the long-term loyalty, except for that one person with whom the manager connected. The rest of us were just meat puppets from whom the manager required performance.
However, teams with 20 or fewer employees (when the manager was professional, talented, and caring) often fostered interpersonal friendships, and the manager was able to cultivate at least a semi-personal/professional friendship with each team member.
We became a cross-loyal mini-tribe, and functioned well to excel at our job positions. We also knew that the manager actually cared (again, when the manager was leadership material) and that we could be courageous and feel safe, because through our developed relationship, we earned mutual trust.
Small teams with bad managers were just exercizes in frustration, but they often didn't last long due to a lack of leadership on the part of the manager.
"I report to eight different bosses, Bob..." - Office Space (1999)
This is not discarding an imperfect product.
This is designing the process so all products work.
The right comparison is with a factory that has 0 errors or one in one thousand. Would you like your cars to always work, or randomly break all the time?
You can have an infinite amount of cars that work, but ideally they work.
I'm glad you take a tribe of 20 as something that worked really well. In fact, in companies below 130-150ppl, everybody knows each other well and are similar to what you say. Hence dunbar, and a proxy for family unit size limits
You are absolutely right. Parent interaction is absolutely fundamental. Better a slightly bad one than one at all
So many thoughts about this, but I would like to add one from some knowledge originating in personal experience. I am an early offspring of artificial insemination by anonymous sperm provider, and have an estimated 600 half-siblings from the same mysterious man. There are serious issues with respect to both the lying usually involved in anonymous gamete 'donation' (a misnomer, because most often gametes are sold), as well as, more subtly, the difference in the relationship of a parent who is a close genetic relative and one who is not. To dismiss these and many other issues is like dismissing some adoptees' desire to know their genetic parents; a need which for decades was broadly rejected with contempt. For too long, the reproductive and fertility industry has ignored the difficulties resulting from various innovations and interventions -- the goal being to produce a baby by whatever means, with little thought to the baby's becoming an adult. Thomas, I always admire your willingness to logically think through our challenges and to imagine more courageously than most. But I urge you to pay attention to both the risks of casting aside what humans have done for thousands of years, and what we already know about the difficulties faced by the products of reproductive technologies -- those of us born of science, not sex -- because I can assure you that there are dangers lurking in your brave new world.
So let’s think about them!
It sounds to me like the issues you raise are valid and should be addressed:
- Children should be able to know their DNA parents
- There should be full transparency on who is a parent to how many children. 600 might be a bit over the top if it’s not clearly known who these children are, and if the mothers don’t know this guy has fathered so many children.
What else?
Population expansion I think is hugely problematic. But I want to read an earlier post of yours before commenting more than that. WRT 'donor' conception, thanks, you are right on both points. Yes, secrecy is poisonous, and to be able to know who you came from is important. Also, having hundreds of offspring increases risks of founder effect illness (which is real in our case -- nothing fatal, but difficulties with a common source). And of course consanguinity is bound to happen. (The US industry has some rule like 10 families per 800,000 population, but there is a smaller class who have the means to do these processes, and people who are similar tend to choose the same 'donor'. In my extended and expanding family (every Christmas a few people get DNA tests as presents and then have a big surprise) a number of my half-siblings knew each other before they knew they were related. They tended to gravitate to similar professions (media, journalism, science, arts) and so... So there are children born of half-siblings. Mind you, half-siblings having kids is not a death sentence, but it's kind of icky when they find out.
Yeah that’s definitely bad!
In-vitro gametogenesis solves that!
I think you have off the deep end now. Trying to create your own AI. Believing that human beings can be normal without other humans to raise and teach them. Wanting the human population to grow without limit. Thinking that technology will create utopia. I do like your maps, but I've seen fewer of those lately.
Who is not out of their depth when projecting 40 years into the future? This should not prevent us from thinking through that.
My last article had maps!
Interesting and fun to read Tomas. Having our two kids is the best thing I've done in my life. Yes they demanded lots of time and energy when really young, but it was worth it to see the bright and interesting young adults they have grown up to be. There are more reasons to have kids than just the economic ones. As a biologist, the desire to pass my genes on was a strong drive, especially after watching my mother die in my early 30s and realizing how transient life is. Studying evolution and behavior in animals, and teaching population genetics to students, led me to view individuals as temporary aggregations of genes which can either be passed on in new combinations to offspring or terminated by not reproducing. Being so invested in this biological framework led me to view my only lasting role to be to pass on 50% of my genes to the next generation. Having tried to explain this perspective to non-biologists only to get strange looks shows that not everyone will understand or share this view. I think it is common among fellow life scientists, however. On a more tangible level, having kids has benefits in helping adults to focus on their children rather than themselves. It's not a good look for older adults to be excessively wrapped up in their own wants and needs. There are other ways to have a broader impact than having kids, of course. None of what I have said should be interpreted as an argument that everyone must reproduce. I'm just trying to present an additional perspective on this topic.
Interesting. I feel the same way but I had never connected it so directly to the knowledge of evo psych. Is this a widespread thing? Do ppl knowledgeable in evo psych have more children?
Yes I think it is widespread among those who think about evo psych/evolution. All of my colleague/friends in the business have kids. We're subject to the same financial/time/energy constraints that you discussed and so most have two kids. I do know some evolution warriors, however, who have more than two kids, usually with different partners at different life stages. I don't know whether they are doing this consciously or just acting out their genetic destiny unconsciously.
Since you have four children, I won't tell you you know nothing about this topic. But this still reads more like engagement bait than like your personal wisdom.
As a mother of three children and hopefully four someday, I will tell you this essay comes from a more patrifocal than matrifocal perspective. And mothers rather than fathers are the bottleneck when it comes to fertility, so our perspective is especially important.
For mothers even more than fathers, parenthood is a visceral and hormonal bonding experience, not just a normal relationship like you'd have with a student, a friend, or even a spouse.
Yes, one can offspringmaxx by outsourcing most of the process. If I were forced to have 20 kids, I'd probably prefer/need to skip a lot of the experience. But absent such a dystopia, I can let myself - and my kids - enjoy it more.
Gestation is part of the bonding process. Birth is part of the bonding process. Breastfeeding is part of the bonding process. They're a feature, not a bug. Those female abilities are indeed expensive to use, but they also have the biggest payoffs. Not only the costs but also the benefits of motherhood are relevant when competing with the awesomeness of the childfree lifestyle.
In terms of what parents find fulfilling, most mothers find gestation, birth, and breastfeeding to be extremely meaningful parts of their experience of motherhood, and load-bearing in terms of bonding and the hormonal transition of matrescence.
Males can't do those things regardless, so they generally don't understand what is lost without them. I think females who choose to become mothers, and who listen to the wisdom of mothers who have made that transition before them, will want to continue to enjoy exercising their superpowers. It helps us enjoy the other parts of motherhood more too.
Thanks Julia
I've discussed this with several women, some of whom love the idea to have lots of children, no chores, and no birth.
You don't need to want 20 kids if you don't want to. Nobody is forcing you! But maybe if you had less work at home you could choose to have 5 children instead of aiming for 4 maybe. The option is a net positive, even if you decide not to go for it!
Gestation is part of the bonding process up till now, and the women who will want to conserve it in the future will be able to enjoy it. Those that don't, won't. Breastfeeding is the perfect example. Wanna do it? Good for you! Don't want to do it? Good for you! It has virtually no difference in the long term to the child.
I am surprised you see no difference between formula in a bottle and nursing from a mother.
Having nursed my two children for 3-plus years each, I can tell you it had a profound effect on us. This is what humans always did until quite recently; our milk is quite different from that of a cow, and all the engineering we do to the cow's milk or soy milk only gets us so far. But more important to me than the nutrition, antibodies etc is the process. You really can't compare giving a child a bottle to nursing a child with your body.
I'm glad it worked for you!
Data says it's not statistically necessary, which is fantastic. Whatever suits you is what's right for you!
Pre-Internet, I used to hit the nearest medical school library regularly to read the literature about it. I was very interested in the subject. The difference is clear.
One thing on the fertility rate decline we are seeing now. Childlessness rates amongst 40 year olds hasn't really changed significantly in most countries. This is significant, since it means it's not the case that fewer people are having children, it's that the people that do have children are having them later, and as a result, having fewer. The later in her fertile window a woman has her first child, the less time there is remaining to decide to have a second, or third, or fourth.
This makes sense. Before it was normal for women to have careers, there wasn't really any barrier to starting a family except finding someone you want to start a family with. The woman was already available to raise the children, so no childcare costs necessary. There was nothing particular to wait for.
These days, many women want to study, and it makes sense to wait until after that before starting a family. Then it makes sense to establish a career. Then, these days, a double income isn't a luxury, it's a necessity to afford the cost of living, so either, the (usually) man's career needs to advance to a point where they can live off a single income, or they need to be able to afford expensive childcare. Buying a house is also very expensive, so it makes sense to get this done before starting a family. All of these things push starting a family back for many people, such they the average age of motherhood is now almost 30.
If AI automates everything, and we end up living on some form if UBI, we are back in a world of stay at home mothers, but this time also with stay at home fathers. I would be surprised if this doesn't completely reverse the fertility crisis by itself.
I agree with you. I hope that that future of more stay at home parents comes to pass, and I agree it would probably resolve the fertility crisis.
I fear that instead, AI will replace labor to such a degree that states decide that having more population is a burden rather than a blessing, and will penalize parents.
Historically they prefer more, not fewer citizens. More taxes and more power.
Historically, yes. More population has meant more taxes, as well as more soldiers (since the advent of firearms, quantity of soldiers has mattered more than quality).
This has historically also been an incentive for states to invest in their populations and keep them happy with with things like education, labor rights, and democracy.
After AI? If AI takes most of the jobs that generate taxes and defense, and the remaining population just lives on UBI, why would states want more humans around? Especially if AI takes most of the jobs that require smart people, you barely need a population to exist even as a pipeline for occasionally creating smart people. If you need one now and then, poach them from a different country.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KFFaKu27FNugCHFmh/by-default-capital-will-matter-more-than-ever-after-agi
A Pew survey of 17 advanced economies says the #1 thing people find meaningful in life is their family and children. But I don't think that even an aligned AI will prioritize that in the face of the structural disincentives emerging as AI replaces humans. ☹️
I think childlessness at age 40 is increasing?
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Childlessness-at-age-40-45-and-50-year-by-cohort-men-Childlessness_fig4_270190595
But you are still right that later 1st children is also a factor.
And I agree with your conclusion
I feel like i have been noticing a pattern: i am way more categorically excited and into Tomas' articles about (patterns / systems of) the past, then i am when he speculates about the future.
Thinking about why this might be, I feel like for me personally it's because he seems to delve too much on the potential positives of such speculation, and barely seems to acknowledge potential negatives. With such a (seemingly) skewed view, his overall speculation lands squarely in "overly-rosey techno-optimism" territory, which here in the 2020s feels tone-deaf and lacking acknowledgement of the "rosey future" from yesteryear that we're all currently living in... And noticing that it is definitely not all roses.
I'm thinking of the shiny, clean futures predicted from the 50s and 60s, that imagined ends to all problems, the Jetsons' city in the sky with no pollution, no crime, all just shiny, happy people using technology with no downsides.
Yes, it is truly amazing (and improves my QoL...right?) that I can hail a taxi from an electronic computer in my pocket. Or order food and get it delivered. But then: what about the humans actually executing those services? I (a white male working a six-figure salary tech job in America, aka a fairly privileged position) have been learning in recent years of how rough it is for uber drivers, for delivery drivers, as the capitalist systems that birthed them moves to cut costs as much as possible, without actually caring about these humans' actual well-being.
And thats just one example: i imagine there were plenty of nothing-but-positive gushes in the 90s and early 00s about the new golden age the internet, and burgeoning social media, was going to bring. I wonder, did anyone predict the other, darker side? - the rise of a generation nurtured on the infinite feed, the manyfold issues only just starting to be publicized about social media addiction + its impacts on developing minds, etc.
To be fair, im sure the generation prior was worried the same about a generation of kids raised on a screen in the living room (TV "classic") but that's a discussion for a whole nother thread. Suffice to say the scale of a screen in pocket is orders of mag (time) more than just the one in the living room.
Anyway, the main point is: I suspect every era has their nothing-but-good-around-the-corner speculators of technology, but we know, time and again, that there also waits around the corner, not-so-good aspects of that bright and shining future society-place.
Tomas, I feel like you would get less pushback (and more earnest engagement, and serious consideration of oppositional views) if you at least made an effort to enumerate, acknowledge, and work through some of the potential "hidden" downsides that these sparkly ever-more-technical futures might have. I know its a tough line to walk, not getting too pessimistic, but too-optimistic to the point of ignoring reality about how human systems tend to go (especially capitalist ones, and do we see that going anywhere any time soon?) is also not helpful in its divorce from real causes and effects.
For one, i would chime with what a lot of others are saying: walking away from 1000s of years of human history and best practices of child rearing and bonding, et al without a care in the world as to what we are discarding in digitizing, we do at our own /childrens peril. I do earnestly believe modern science has not fully captured (quantified) all the things that contribute to a fully well-rounded human's development + QoL. Multiplied by "the future is already here, just not evenly distributed" = not all new parents are necessarily aware of what the latest science has to say anyway!
And i think to act like we have (Fully Figured It All Out with science), with a "live your way and others can live theirs!" feels blind to potential dangers in kind of a similar way as some parents in the 1950s deciding not to smoke their cigarettes indoors around their children, but "oh you go ahead and smoke your cigarettes around your kids and let them breathe in that smoke - you live life your way, thats ok!" - some things we do not simply "live and let live" because we realize its actually causing harm. I worry that science has not fully understood the child-rearing equation sufficiently and some of these ideas you propose re: artificial wombs, 10+ children, will also be found to be quite harmful on longer scales.
Thanks for sharting, Brad. This is very insightful. I appreciate.
You're right that my articles on the future tend to be positive. Not all though. Notice this one for example.
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-end-of-nation-states
One of the reasons for that is what I'm reacting to. I'm not trying to give a full picture, but rather react to a standard narrative that the future is dark. I use that as a baseline, and show the counterpoint. But maybe I should strive not to provide the counterpoint, but the entire perspective. I'll ponder that, thanks.
Potentially related: unspoken in a lot of this dialogue about the future/ how humans should or shouldn't live: the near-fetishization of "comfort" over the past several hundred years. This is a large topic and very open to misinterpretation but in short, I wonder if Modern Man's (modern Capitalism?) quest to basically eradicate anything even remotely uncomfortable is not the truly best one for over all QoL. To be clear i am talking about the more minor, discomforts of the privileged: i "shouldn't" have the discomfort of: engaging with another human for xyz service; having to go get (nevermind source + process lol) my own food; waiting for something; having to change my own child's diaper, etc. again, lots of nuances abound; im not saying all things that make life comfortable are bad, but i fear there is a bit of moderation that has been forgotten, and as it relates to the child birthing/rearing equation: I fear many ("parents") will opt out of discomfort, at the increased cost of the discomfort of their offspring down the line, because of lack of proper attunement, eg.
Not a monolith either; its probably possible for a child raised essentially by robots to develop into a well-rounded human, and vice versa (no robots and not well-rounded) but that doesnt mean there arent trends and general outcomes at work! (Ie, it may be that children raised by robots tend not to develop as well-roundedly)
I agree with this.
Hi Thomas,
Reading through the other comments... I think we need a different (i.e., lower) equivalent Dunbar number for a family. The family dynamics are slightly different from that of a "tribe" - or social basic group - and my intuition says that we would be better off with families with 10 children or less, mainly for the reasons listed in the comments. Let alone the thesis that brings up the problem that today's human beings are R-selected (denormalized) animals, prone to uncontrolled expansion, that my very well end up in population overshoot followed by a drastic collapse (human nature and energy deficit induced).
Now, the main questions is: are we able to get past the upcoming energy and material resources bottlenecks? Again, looking at the human nature, future looks grim. We seem more eager to burn more fuel and resources in wars, but neglect that a transition to (truly) renewable energy and critical materials' recycling would require global planning and cooperation over a (longer than initially estimated) transition time. That, if ever possible (Mars?? Really?? We are technologically quite far from that endeavour - please go deeper into the engineering challenges and leave aside anything that is more marketing-oriented or wishful thinking). I am an engineer, but not a techno-optimistic. Trends may be up (and encouraging) for AI and some novel technologies, but they may get broken before they reach full potential (by external factors). Or, more precisely, by our own mistakes. Or, even more accurately, by our leaders' incompetence and our collective incapacity of correcting the course...
I have 4 articles on the topic! Yes we have enough resources, until at least 100B humans, 10x what we have now.
We're not so far from Mars. SpaceX might send a mission with robots in 6-8 years, and hopefully a base might be established within 10 years of that.
I am not saying it is impossible, but that the chances are quite low for both of the above to happen. Let's talk again (if we will be alive) in 2036! Cheers to you all, inquiring minds!
Hey Tomas,
I read your fertility piece. Genuinely enjoyed it.
You're asking the right questions, but that said, I think the piece has some serious problems, and I'd feel dishonest not mentioning them.
The fertility decline section reads like it's settled when it isn't. You open by acknowledging nobody knows why fertility is falling, which is refreshingly honest, and then immediately present a three-point framework as if it explains everything. It doesn't. It can't account for why Korea's fertility rate is 0.72 while France holds near replacement, despite both being wealthy, educated, secular societies with high female labor participation. The opportunity cost argument is real but it's also 30 years old. It needs way, way more than a paragraph. You have no idea why fertility is falling. Nobody does.
The technology section is where things get shakier. Artificial wombs, in-vitro gametogenesis, humanoid robot caregivers...each one is a civilization-scale challenge that gets roughly one paragraph and a confident shrug. Like, c'mon man. "It's a challenge but not an impossible one!" is C-grade Substack shit.
Finally, vertical farming economics in particular are pretty badly wrong. You claim the two main costs are labor and energy and imply that solving them makes vertical farming obviously viable for feeding large families. But energy in vertical farming isn't primarily a cost problem, it's a physics problem. Crops need photons. Sunlight is free! LED replacement isn't, and no amount of cheap electricity changes the underlying photon math. That's why vertical farming economics are horrific, funding has cratered, and a ton of vertical farming startups have failed. They couldn't compete against the fucking sun.
(Also, the crops that actually feed people, wheat, rice, potatoes, are the worst possible candidates for vertical farming. The economics today only work for leafy greens and herbs. These are garnishes. A family of 50 cannot be calorie-fed by a vertical lettuce rack.)
And then there's the graph. You present a fertility distribution curve as the quantitative backbone of your argument about future family sizes, and then note (almost as an aside) that you made it up. I understand the impulse to visualize a hypothesis, but fabricated data dressed as a chart doesn't become analysis just because you disclosed it.
Look man, the central thesis is genuinely worth arguing. If even a fraction of these technologies arrive, the economics of parenthood change substantially. But this reads like a general fifth-grade technology enthusiasm essay.
And if that was your goal, fine. But let's not pretend otherwise.
Cheers,
Stefan
I agree.
I mention it;s a hypothesis, and I've backed it up some in other articles. But I might be wrong. If so, reducing the friction in child creation will not increase fertility.
AFAIK SK is quite sexist and women hate that, and that's one of the reasons why they have fewer children (massive friction for women once they have it, expectation to stop working, etc). France conversely has a pretty good system for fertility, with lots of economic incentives (CAF, free preschool...), so it aligns with the thesis.
Fair that I don't get into the detail of each tech section. They are worth one article each (in the list of drafts).
I linked to 3 articles in the vertical farming section, that's because I have looked into the tech there and I'm pretty confident about it. The key data point is that plants take ~1-2% of sunlight, whereas solar panels can capture 20-30% of it. This factor of 15x means you can grow 15x more food within the same space. Water and fertilizer usage is also ~20x better. And of course there's no weather disruption. So at the end of the day the issue is that the solar + battery + LED installation costs need to drop enough for the increase in productivity be worthwhile. Given the trajectories of these techs, I think it's a matter of time. That's for energy. For work, I'm tabling on humanoid robots, which might be ready to start mass adoption in 4-5 years as per the draft I'm working on.
It's not fabricated data, it's quantification of the hypothesis. I think it's useful. But I'll make it clearer in the future, thx.
Appreciate the swift response. Only major area of disagreement it seems is vertical farming. My colleague Brian did some research on this and came to the conclusion that it was simply uneconomical.
https://alternativeassets.substack.com/p/vertical-farming-explained
Worth a quick gander. But also worth a quick update on our side, as it has been some time since we published.
thanks again
I don’t buy into the idea that robots would be commonplace. We said they’d be everywhere 40 years ago, the reason they’re not is because metal and chips are expensive. I don’t think this problem will be solved in the near future - we already have robots being used by Amazon, Google and more - but you don’t see them because theyre cost prohibitive.
The fertility points might come true though.
Fair point, I have a draft on this!
I doubt humans are particularly rational in complex life-changing decisions like having (or not having) children.
Actually I would argue the opposite! I think there is a profound unconscious pursue of life in the fact of having children. The rationalisation comes later to support our already made unconscious decision.
Re: artificial wombs. What do you think the can psychological consequences of this can be for the child and parents? I think the burden of pregnancy, birth and childcare are necessary to create a healthy bond.
Maybe you're right. ROI doesn't need to be economic though. It can be in pain vs fulfillment for example.
Regarding the artificial wombs, as a father I feel like I have a tremendous connection to my children. I also know a woman who had a child naturally and another through a surrogate and she loves them the same.
I also know women who carried babies and don't particularly enjoyed it or seem extremely connected to their children.
So I think the pregnancy and childbirth definitely contribute to a bond, but they´re not required for a strong bond.
Why strive for 10-20 kids? Wouldn’t a rate of 4-6 per family be healthy for society?
I didn't say that people *should* have 10-20 kids, but that some *would want to*. My guess is still that a majority of families would have 1-6 children.
I find it hideous to relinquish most of parental duties to robots. it remind me most that movie, The Nanny Diaries starring the wonderful Scarlett Johansson.
I wouldn't mind some help with the house chores (cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc.), but I would not let go on the day to day upbringing of my kids, even though they get on my nerves on a daily basis.
That’s great! Then you should do that, and that would allow you to have 4-5 kids!
I think we're going through a love filter. In the past guys only needed sex drive and power to have kids, and women needed them for status. Love not required.
Now guys can have sex without kids, and women can have status without kids. And kids are bad deal for material wealth and career status. So only people that prioritise the joy of loving over those things will have descendance. Genes and values that don't, selected out of the gene and culture pool.
Filtering is brutal so within a couple generation, we'll only have people that prioritise a life filled with love over status and wealth. Fertility should stabilise then, perhaps increase again. Anyways will be safe by then to have tech for the easy-baby world you describe.
Not sure if true, but it has the merit of reversing the doom narrative, where people will feel like it's a duty to have kids to avoid collapse. As a personal sacrifice. Nope, in fact, the losers are those that don't have kids, selecting themselves out. This should be better incentive to have kids than the sacrifice thing.
Agreed that female status is one factor. I bundle it into awesomeness.
Also agreed that the filtering is super brutal here. Both genetic and cultural.
"Nope, in fact, the losers are those that don't have kids, selecting themselves out."
I and my fellow childfree siblings each chose not to have children. We didn't want them, and we are glad that we don't have them.
We each have happy, fulfilled, vibrant lives filled with calm evenings, quiet weekends, zero debt, low-stress holiday gatherings, mutliple indoor and outdoor hobbies, restful nights of sleep, spontaneous meetings with friends, low bills, multiple international travels per year, satisfying, loving relationships with our partners, healthy friendships, and the ability to pursue the lives we want, fully able to give time and energy to our communities.
And if anything happens financially, employment-wise, family-wise, or so forth, we can quickly pivot to adjust and deal with the issue.
Most of our friends who have kids, however, are exhausted, depressed, in debt, scared for their children's futures. And while they indeed love their children (and that's a good thing!), several of them wonder what they could have done with their lives if they never had kids.
Will I or my siblings pass on our genes? Nope! And if all you're counting is genetics, then then yes, on that level, we "lose".
But unlike eugenic or fascist societies, the value of human life in a modern, democratic society is not based solely on whether you're a successful breeder, but on what value you bring to your society, regardless of whether or not you had children.
Eugenics and fascism? Chill out. Only talking about love. I've known love before having kids. And I just know it's a different thing with kids you raise.
It's not about genes - the values you most cherish to transmit in the new world. And just passing down love, as we've received and our ancestors did. Can be with adopted kids, genes are much less important.
Your choice is fine. If you're happy with it. There's other ways to contribute to society than loving and raising kids.
First point: Telling someone to "chill out" is an emotionally disrespectful, and "ad hominim", way to begin a rebuttal. If you disagree with a point, gently refute the statement. But don't attack the person's emotions.
Second point: "So only people that prioritise the joy of loving over those things will have descendance. Genes and values that don't, selected out of the gene and culture pool. ... Nope, in fact, the losers are those that don't have kids, selecting themselves out."
You mentioned genes multiple times and referred to people without children as "losers" who value material greed over "love" (however you choose to define it).
Whether or not you meant to equate childbearing to being successful and compassionate in life (however it's defined), your comment implied that childfree people are somehow bad people who are doing something ethically and morally wrong in life.
Also, clustering genetics and childbearing closely with "success" can come off as elitist or eugenic to people. Again, even if that wasn't your intention, that's how your comment was interpreted.
"Often, perception matters more than intent. It shouldn't, but it does."
Third point: I've known plenty of jerks who had children. "Love" (however you define it) has never been the key factor into whether or not you produce offspring; the key factor has always been whether your DNA combines with someone else's. Usually through sex; but sometimes not.
And we will always have kind and cruel people in the World, and each can be born to either kind or cruel parents. As we are not dogs or cats, we can't screen that out.
We can only teach people, as best we can, to be compassionate and kind, then hope that most of them act that way of their own accord.
This intersects with the plot of a novel I'm writing, The Mother, which is set in the near future. So I've been thinking about and researching all these things intensively.
But personally, I would not be interested in using an artificial womb. I wasn't interested in using bottles, either. Not only did I not have a nanny, I barely used any babysitters. I wanted the full experience, and I got it. I enjoyed having, nursing and raising my children. I'd have been sorry to have missed out on it.