Cross-posted from my Substack.
Epistemic status: I’ve puzzled over this for a long time but I’m not sure I came to the right answers. I'm sharing this partly because it might help others work on resource allocation, but mostly because some smarter reader might tell me how to do it better.
TL;DR:
* I he...
With the AI windfall, mental health may be taken increasingly seriously by mainstream EA. There’s increasingly room to explore the cause area and answer some of the biggest uncertainties; at the same time, costs of the most effective interventions are continuing to fall. StrongMinds is now treating for ~$35, about a third of GiveWell’s best guess from a few years ago, and is expected to...
EAs should be aware that it is easy to traumatize (their own) kids with apocalyptic narratives.
EAs population is getting older: we are no longer in our early twenties but at a more respectable age. That alone will lead to more and more children being born to EAs. MacAskill recommends in WWOTF having children. Not sure how many babies will his endorsement ensure, but likely nonzero.
Raising a child is hard, but EAs have probably one additional opportunity to mess it up a bit more than the average parent. Since we believe the world might end if we don't do enough, we might traumatize our children with that.
Many, many apocalyptic movements do that. On the religious side, you have cults like (Jehovah's witnesses)[https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/religious-trauma-is-real-and-more-survivors-need-to-speak-up-about-it-39429c677756] and (mainstream religions)[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/religion-evangelical-christian-apocalypse-josiah-hesse] with their Armageddons (i am not saying EA is a cult, I am saying there is a similarity and potential risk in this specific thing, nothing more). Climate change movement has its (own share )[https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/19/our-children-face-pretraumatic-stress-from-worries-about-climate-change/]
This is not inevitable. Climate movement produced guides (e.g. (this one)[https://media.ourkidsclimate.org/2021/06/Talk-about-climate-guide-for-parents-2021-06-01.pdf] which is very similar to other lists when googling "how to talk to kids about climate change") and probably more material about this topic. (which I know nothing about)
this is literally just random though I had which I haven't seen discussed yet. I spent effectively 0 minutes of my life thinking about raising children, child psychology, whether EAs should have children, etc.