If the "right thing to do" is to not have kids, who do you think IS having kids?

[Kriegsspiel]

There are some premises in the OP that need validation;

1. Smarter people are having less children (are they? where are the numbers? what is the correlation number between iq and not having children?)

There is some discussion of this in the Kanazawa paper I linked

2. High IQ is fundamentally genetic and can't be had if you don't have the proper genes. Is it? how much of it is determined by genetics? Also, does "being smart" equals having high IQ for the OP definition of being smart?

It can be, since people with high IQ are born to parents of low IQ (beneficial mutation, I guess?). IIRC, in The Bell Curve, they pegged it at something like 70%, I believe by taking the middle ground of several studies.

3. If 1 and 2 were true, how big of a percentage of smart people would need to abstain from reproducing such as the genetic patrimony is actually affected? How many smart people do we need in the population to carry on the heritage? How low we can go before we are statistically at risk of loosing those traits?

I'm pretty sure I read something about this, I'll see if I can find it.

4. If having high IQ or being very smart does not contribute to higher chances of survival and reproduction, is it even beneficial for the species? Why should we treasure it? Are we not like the dinousaurs who grew too big and hungry for resources that when the meteor came, they could not survive?

With that condition, it wouldn't be beneficial for the continuance of the species (it would be irrelevant). But it seems clear to me that being smart (enough) does confer survival and reproductive advantages.

[Quadalupe]

Another angle is risk appetite. The world is not black and white, full of certainties of what will come about. Quite the opposite, it's fraught with probabilities on what might or might not happen. If you are more optimistic, you might
i) assign a lower probability to The Bad Stuff Happening™,
ii) assign a higher probability to your ability to raise happy and healthy children in a worse environment or
iii) just feel more confident, even though you believe the same facts as a Doomer who [is a Doomer *because* he] has a lower risk appetite

Hence, I don't think that the relation Having Children -> Low IQ necessarily holds.

Still, I don't think that the argument 'Men cried wolf plenty of times before, so it won't happen now either' is a sound one. It might *actually* be different this time.

[unemployable]

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbor that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. -- Oscar Wilde

I was going to quote just the first sentence, but the whole thing is worth it.

[jacob]

It doesn't seem rational to me. How do we know they will decline? How much will they decline? How much will the decline of 'standards of living' affect future human's happiness?

I think it is "rationalized" out of a sense of [innate] human fairness. There's an experiment in psychology in which you're given $100 and you get to choose how much you keep and how much you give me, say. Say you keep $70 and give me $30. After you've made your decision, I get to choose whether to accept your distribution or torch the money so both of us get nothing. Rationally, I should accept ALL deals over $1 since any amount even $1 is always better than nothing for me. In actual experience, it is highly recommend you be more generous I forget what the actual number is (science has been done), but IIRC, it's around $30. This is the case even if we only play the game once (so non-recurring prisoners dilemma). Turns out that humans would rather get nothing and punish the other human for being unfair than optimize for income.

I can see some [potential] parents having the same choice with their [potential] children. I know that is certainly a discussion I have had with myself. I think it's fairly common that parents will sacrifice if it means that their [or at least their own] children actually have a better life than themselves, that is, maybe they figuratively offer $60 and keep $40 for themselves. This is compatible with human behavior whether it's the medieval times or the 20th century. It makes humans feel good.

However, now in the 21st century, for some people the choice not to have children might be driven by an inability to offer their children more than they've enjoyed themselves. E.g. if I've already spent $80 and I know future kiddo only gets $20, will I make that offer? Rationally speaking kiddo should be happy about that and some comments above seem to suggest that being alive is better than not no matter how shitty the situation is---I also note that suicide rates in the US are up 25% over the past 15 years, so clearly not everybody agrees that any living is better than no living---but others might not want to make that offer to their [own] children and those who do make the offer by having children should be prepared for their children's response in terms of accepting the deal or "changing" it, for example, by raiding medicare and the social security trust fund to build levees.

As for how much things will decline (or improve) and when ... there's a kind of science called integrated assessment modelling that takes into account demographics, economics, resources, pollution, etc. and how they all affect each other ... and then spits out things like longevity, wealth, food calories/person, consumption/investment rates, and so on,... I have not seen one that computes happiness. It's kinda hard to get a handle on that anyway. Countries/people who can afford it might offer a chemical solution to this. If you look around the world today you'll see that the suckier places also happen to enjoy heavier levels of recreational drug use. Are the people living there still happy. In a way they are, right. Or maybe they just feel that way.

Obviously the world is a complex adaptive system ... but it's still possible to have a fair idea wrt timing and magnitude because unlike a computer game there are some boundary conditions and physical relations that can not be negotiated with nature and some relations (e.g. speed of the political process) that humans historically have never succeeded in changing above a certain rate of speed. This allows modellers to give ranges of possibilities in those numbers e.g. what longevity, food availability, income, etc. is around 2025-2050, 2050-2075, 2075-2100, and so on. It tells us something about how much and how fast these variables can decline although having less experience with collapses what the results really tell us is how low the variables can go (answer: quite low... 50% drops in longevity, 90% drops in economic activity) and not what this feels like or how a global civilization specifically reacts.

[Jason]

My understanding is that there is no correlation between success and IQ. Smart people do not necessarily become successful people, stupid people do not necessarily remain unsuccessful. And then you get into the question of "what is success." Some people think Hitler was successful. We also know how it can be a deterrent i.e. "He/she was ahead of his/her time." We have all had stupid bosses. People who have simply stayed in the game and failed up. I have a relative who is genius level IQ and greatly disappointed his family by becoming a scientist and not a tech gazillionaire. He now has three kids. His idiot cousin (me) has none. We know net worth is more tied to behavior than intelligence. From all accounts, Ted Bundy was very intelligent. Some really intelligent people are otherworldly assholes. There is a guy I work with who I often think "I wish I was that stupid" because overthinking would be eliminated. "The Best and The Brightest" by David Halberstam detailing egregious policy failure is titled for it's irony. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in between taking breaks from banging slave girls. It doesn't necessarily correlate to ethics. There is also always historical reinterpretation i.e. Ulysses Grant wasn't an idiot informing us that intelligence is subject to interpretation and reevaluation. This goes for ourselves "How could I have been so stupid for selling that stock." Maybe these intelligent people not having kids will look back in 20 years and say "How could I have been so stupid and foregone the joy of parenthood." You think of depression era kids who grew up in abject poverty and learned to value money. You heard of survivors of the Holocaust who had kids as a testimony to the endurance of the human spirit. Einstein had kids and grandkids. They all pretty much did by general standards, pretty well. But not in comparison to him. I would think there is always regression to the means in this.

[jacob]

BTW, I'm 99.9% sure that the missing ingredient in terms of preventing a hard landing is NOT the lack of IQ whether it's phenotypic or genotypic. The world already has "enough intelligence" to recognize the predicament and figure out the solutions in great detail but this is apparently not enough to change course. What's missing may be a concern for other humans (and plants and animals) including both those far away in space and those far away in time. Insofar one thinks the right thing to do is to have kids while selecting for personal characteristics, I suggest selecting for altruism, which incidentally is also heritable, rather than intelligence.

[platypus]

It seems initial question assumes a correlation between having a high IQ people and deciding not to have kids to save the environment. I'm not so sure there is.

For example, I have an IQ of 131, and most of my siblings are at least as intelligent as I am if not more so. And all of us intend to have children. I've also met some pretty stupid people who say they don't want children because global warming.

This is certainly not to say that there's no smart people who don't want to reproduce, or no stupid people who do. But I'm not sure that the correlation assumed in the OP is there. The number of people who care enough about the environment to actually do something about it is very low, and the number of those people who believe a good solution is to end their family line is even lower. There's a lot of high IQ people out there who don't care about the environment, or have a different plan to make things better.

[Frita]

+1 to 2Birds1Stone’s “Idiocracy” comment

Fair disclosure: I have kids (by choice and using reproductive technology, long story) and, while parenting is challenging, it adds another layer of meaning.

What I observe as a teacher is that most people have kids reflectively, not necessarily in this order:

• Equate personal value to other things (I.e., recognition, stuff, approval).
• Be born. Check
• Buy crap I don’t need. Check
• Get into debt. Check
• Have kids. Check
• Repeat in no particular order. Check
• Become a wage slave. Check
• Train offspring to follow this cycle. Check
• Die. Check

[Jason]

Maybe I'm the stupid one but people not having kids because the arctic ice cap is melting faster than normal is the most idiotic rationalization I can think of for not having kids. So you're saying you're not having kids because of Al Gore? I mean what else you got. Trepidation of a future, world wide sex doll rebellion. Well, come to think of it, that could happen. How about not wanting to see your kids grow up in a world with a President named "The Rock." And what's so great about old age anyways. Every old person I know just complains about being old. Seems to me they would be just fine with the earth melting down as long as it happens after the early bird special. Everyone getting all upset because their kids won't get old and bitter before they die. Like that's some invaluable life experience no one should be deprived of. Been to a nursing home recently? I'd rather freeze to death on the fucking fourth of July in the prime of my life than live in one of those hell came to earth places for a fucking day.

[daylen]

Maybe I'm the stupid one but people not having kids because the arctic ice cap is melting faster than normal is the most idiotic rationalization I can think of for not having kids. So you're saying you're not having kids because of Al Gore?

Strawman of the year?

[Peanut]

Very, very few people forego having children for environmental reasons right now. Although I certainly understand the argument. While I was trying to conceive my second I saw that a new, big report on climate change had been released. My stomach just sank, and I immediately thought, "I should read this, but if I do I won't be able to keep trying to have another baby." So I didn't, and now we have two kids. Wilful ignorance. I would definitely call that selfish behavior on some level.

I am fearful of the future. My son already experienced environmental heartbreak when he was 4 years old. He had learned about coral reefs in preschool and then we happened to hear an NPR story about the Great Barrier Reef in the car. At first he was excited listening to and understanding it, but you know how that story goes, and after the horrible news was reported he actually said to me, "This is too sad. I don't want to listen to this." It was a moment filled with so many emotions on my part, from "hmm, this kid is smarter than I thought," to "man, this is the world I brought him into."

I guess what worries me most beyond the effects of climate change is that they themselves will not be able to maintain an optimistic enough outlook on humanity to want to have children themselves. In my life having children has brought so much joy and I would want that for them as well. But if things become bad enough I think that might change the way people view their reproductive choices.

[jennypenny]

This isn't the first generation of would-be parents who've been in this situation. This might be the first generation who hasn't assumed that the future for their offspring was risky at the very least. Most previous generations have grown up with the threat of war (DH and I met during the height of the '80s cold war obsession). Environmentally, the last 200 years have been fraught with industrial waste, environmental catastrophes, increased pollution, and chemical and biological mishaps. I remember vividly the stories about Love Canal, Thalidomide, Union Carbide, DDT, etc. from my youth. If one chooses to consider such things when deciding whether to procreate, there have always been reasons to assume the future is too uncertain for offspring.

Our standard of living (in the US at least) is so phenomenal that even if it were cut in half, it would be infinitely better than most humans who've come before us. Some of the statistics given upthread like the increased suicide rate might be the result of our abundance and/or a loss of meaning by straying from the inherent structures (like extended family units) that have provided us the support needed in previous generations. Choosing smaller or child-free families when one wants children might exacerbate those problems by producing even more unhappy/unsatisfied people.

It could be that making life decisions that make us happiest might also make us better equipped societally to tackle bigger problems ... and more willing to work together on them when we aren't being so judgmental about others' choices, especially when others haven't 'sacrificed' like we perceive we have.

[IlliniDave]

... I want to ask a serious question: if the smart people decide it's environmentally sounder to not have children, what does that do to the overall intelligence of the human species? Is this just a very intelligent way of stating that humans are doomed and the effort to raise children is a waste of time?

Maybe nature's estimation of intelligence is different than that of affluent western humans?

[chenda]

@jennypenny +1. And women today are amongst the first generations to have much choice in the matter, as well as not risking a high possibility of death in childbirth.

I was reading only today memoirs my aunt wrote, whose grandmother told her she kept her family small by numerous DIY abortions, hence her few children didn't go hungry and were noticeably better fed than her bigger family neighbours. Horrendous, but probably not uncommon in those days.

Thoughts about planetary responsibility almost seems like a 'nice' problem compared with that.

[daylen]

Maybe I am in a very deep skeptic pit at this point in my life, but I am like 80% confident that confidence, knowledge, good/bad outcomes, will, intelligence, information, and complexity do not exist. The other 20% is responsible for that statement. That 20% needs to build a solid ethical framework, because it takes me forever to make decisions.

With that 20%, I am like 90% certain that having kids would be a disaster. I do not care to judge other people on the issue of reproduction. I will say that perhaps ignorance is bliss and affluent western humans are actually miserable. Consider the difference between a human that grows up in a coherent community, learns a skill, reproduces, fights a war, and dies for their "group" all in the delusion that it was "for the greater good". Now consider a human that is too busy being reminded of all the things they are not that they never actually have anything to live for (whatever that entails).

We have grown up in a specific spacetime location, and we are attempting to make inferences about the universal quantification of life. Perhaps it is all relative and we do not have a clue about anything.

[slsdly]

@jacob, right on the money. It is a famous experiment, so it is hard to know in a vacuum my untainted behavior, but I imagine if I was making the $100 split offer, I would give $50. Relatives on the other hand.... .

I'd like to just make it clear, I'm not making a judgement call or seeking praise for my "virtue" (please, I'm on the ERE forums, and it isn't like I'm not getting rich off capitalism too...I imagine you'll find the SJWs elsewhere). OP asked a question, I answered it. Take from it what you will. I've grown pretty zen with my belief humanity will decline. If you have/want children, great, I sincerely hope the future is bright. I would like nothing more to be wrong. I understand others feel there have always been problems, but at some point it really will be "different this time" and my own risk estimator tells me we are at that junction. Maybe that won't be true until the Sun starts expanding and consumes the Earth . Or maybe even that is wrong because we will just strap ourselves to a giant rocket. I feel some disappointment in society's interest in dealing with what I consider a serious problem, but really, I'm not the activist type. I'll try my best in my own life, but I have little interest in telling people they are wrong/selfish/whatever.

[Jason]

Strawman of the year?

I read that Barbra Streisand blamed Donald Trump for her pronounced weight gain so it might be runner-up.

[7Wannabe5]

Maybe we should attempt "Silas Marner" as our next book group read? I would note that you don't have to contribute your gametes directly in order to contribute to raising of next generation of humans. For instance, as I type there are 9 year old children incarcerated in detention centers in the city of Detroit. So, double-dip of unselfish is also an option.

Anyways, there are still plenty of highly intelligent women giving birth to many children in regions of the world where they don't have other options, so no reason to fret for the future of the species. Also, absent birth control, high IQ and fertility in women are well correlated, so as soon as we run out of petroleum and industrial pharmaceutical production comes to a halt, and there is no Netflix to watch at night, the numbers will quickly turn around (see late 1970s Tehran.)

[Kriegsspiel]

absent birth control, high IQ and fertility in women are well correlated

What's your source for this?

[7Wannabe5]

@Kriegsspiel:

Both traits are correlated with waist-to-hip ratio=gluteofemoral fat storage.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3268185/