"Pronatalists" may look to co-opt effective altruism or longtermism

Great! I also want to reduce x-risk to keep my family safe. But do you also strongly endorse the claims listed in the article that are attributed to pronatalism, and do you consider yourself an EA / a longtermist?

i.e.
"fear that falling birth rates in certain developed countries like the United States and most of Europe will lead to the extinction of cultures, the breakdown of economies, and, ultimately, the collapse of civilization."

"worry that the overlap between the types of people deciding not to have children with the part of the population that values things like gay rights, education for women, and climate activism — traits they believe are genetically coded — is so great that these values could ultimately disappear."

Do you think focusing on birth rates in "Western Civilization" is a good way of creating 'intergenerationally, durable cultures that will lead to our species being a diverse, thriving, innovative interplanetary empire one day that isn't at risk from, you know, a single asteroid strike or a single huge disease?', and do you think it's something that longtermists should focus on?

I think the crux here might be differences around the definition of what pronatalism is. I'm clearly not advocating for antinatalism, and you can argue that the article is misrepresenting pronatalism.

But call it whatever you prefer-it doesn't change the concern of this group of people holding this set of views, the explicit claim around their "faction becoming a real, dominant faction in the EA space" and their well-funded nature. It should be seen as a clear potential risk for the EA movement going forwards, if it does not similarly endorse their ideology. If you're a pronatalist and don't think these views represent your movement, this concern applies to you too (perhaps even more so).
 

Reviving this old thread to discuss the animal welfare objection to pro-natalism that I think is changing my mind on pro-natalism. I'm a regular listener to Simone and Malcolm Collins's podcast. Since maybe 2021 I've gone on an arc of first fairly neutral to then being strongly pro-natalist, third being pro-natalist but not rating it as an effective cause area, and now entering a fourth phase where I might reject pro-natalism altogether.

I value animal welfare and at least on an intellectual level I care equally about their welfare and humanity's. For every additional human we bring into existence at a time in history where humans have never eaten more meat per capita, on expectation, you will get years or--depending on their diet--perhaps even hundreds of years of animal suffering induced by the additional consumer demand for more meat. This is known as the meat-eater problem, but I haven't seen anyone explicitly connect it to pro-natalism yet. It seems like an obvious connection to make.

There are significant caveats to add:

• this is not an argument against the value of having your own kids, who you then raise with appropriate respect for the welfare of other sentient creatures. While you can't control their choices as adults, if you raise them right, your expectation they will cause large amounts of suffering will be substantially reduced, potentially enough to make it a net positive choice. However, pro-natalism as a political movement aimed at raising birthrates at large will likely cause more animal suffering outweighing the value of human happiness it will create.
• In the long term, we will hopefully invent forms of delicious meat like cultured meat that do not involve sentient animal suffering. The average person might still eat some farmed meat at the time, but hopefully, with delicious cultured meat options available, public opinion may allow for appropriate animal welfare for farmed animals, such that those farmed animals' lives are at least net positive. When that happens, pro-natalism might make more sense. But we don't know when cultured meat will appear. It is possible that widespread adoption is several decades away, in a slower AGI timeline world or where some form of cultural or legal turn prevents the widespread adoption of cultured meat even if it is technically possible.
• I anticipate some people will argue that more humans will make the long term future go well because in expectation this will create more people going into the long term. I think this is a reasonable position to take but I don't find it convincing because of the problem of moral cluelessness: there is far too much random chaos (in the butterfly effect sense of the term) for us to have any idea what the effect of more people now will be on the next few generations.

I might make a top level post soon to discuss this, but in the meantime I'm curious if you have any clear response to the animal welfare objection to pro-natalism.

Oh wow, thanks! Well, that ticks off most of the bullet points from my earlier comment I guess. Yeah think they definitely have some takes I wouldn't want EA to be associated with.

The main reason for the post is not to start a discussion on whether or not the Collins' brand of pronatalism is appropriate or a logical conclusion to longtermism. I already have a fairly settled view on this, and if it's the case that we sit here and discuss the merits of this type of pronatalism and suggest that it is a natural conclusion to longtermism, I'm simply going to reject longtermism, or at least many attempts to implement this in practice.

The main reason for the post is to serve as a PSA, to bring attention to a faction that may be at least opportunistically looking to gain influence within the EA space for their own goals, and not for the truth-seeking goals that you deem important, and let others decide whether they think this is what they want for EA, or whether this is the type of EA they want to be associated with. I'll note that as a result of this post, someone kindly pointed me (and other readers) to this post's existence. It has since been heavily downvoted, and a comment engaging with the object level points were left. (This has additional benefits for those of us who don't want anything to do with that brand of pronatalism, like having a place to point to next time some journalist associates these viewpoints with EA).

If a flat earther faction (especially one now successfully funded by the SFF) expressed a desire to become a dominant faction in the EA space to further their aims, I would make a similar post about this, and I don't think I should be expected to engage with debunking flat-earth viewpoints before making this post. It sounds like you disagree?

I think the “for just 11 generations” thing is obviously a joke. Obviously they can’t influence the culture of their kids by that much.

Same thing with the old Epstein “impregnate 20 women in a day” thing. It’s obviously impossible.

Yeah I basically agree with all of this!

But I also think they're just hilariously wrong about the odds that an altruistic movement focused on either making the world better for people alive today or on surviving the next century will be coopted by 'well, if your children commit to having eight children...' 

Nitpick: Longtermism does do work on beyond the next century right? But yeah I agree, I don't think EA will be co-opted like this, but I also don't think the co-opting will look like a group of people randomly coming up to EA and saying "hey you all should have 8 children, lets sign a pact".

But it could look something like:

• Funding research and advocacy that advocates for increasing birth rates/demographics-related topics
• Funding genetic engineering or IVF research or reproductive technologies
• Proposing population collapse as a new cause area
• Using shared language like "preserving future generations", "preventing technological stagnation", "preserving longtermist values/EA values" "ensuring moral progress" to justify things that might/could pass the bar on longtermist grounds, but also are beneficial for population growth.

It could also be the case that a large influx of funding means that the longtermism funding bar becomes much lower, such that this seems fine compared to a lot of other things that are being funded. After all, the other areas are talent constrained anyway, so it's not like funding this is harmful.

Of course, these things could be good to fund/research regardless, and I'm not suggesting these things shouldn't be funded on principle. But the point is that if there's a plan to co-opt the EA/longtermist movement or piggy back off its influence, it's not going to be obvious. This is getting a little conspiratorial (I probably would have dismissed it if it wasn't a literal quote), and none of these claims are particularly falsifiable, so it's probably not worth too much discussion time anyway. I'm just bringing this to the attention of people who should be caring about this, and people who might have more reliable information about the overlaps in subcultures to chime in.

From What We Owe the Future, near the end of Chapter 7 on Stagnation:

Advances in biotechnology could provide another pathway to
rebooting growth. If scientists with Einstein-level research abilities
were cloned and trained from an early age, or if human beings were
genetically engineered to have greater research abilities, this could
compensate for having fewer people overall and thereby sustain
technological progress. But in addition to questions of technological
feasibility, there will likely be regulatory prohibitions and strong social
norms against the use of this technology—especially against the
most radical forms, which would be necessary to multiply effective
research efforts manyfold. Human cloning is already within
technological reach, but as a global society we’ve decided not to go
forward with it—which may well be for the best, as human cloning
could plausibly increase the risk of bad value lock-in.
In sum, if we neither develop and deploy breakthrough technology
in time nor see a renewed population boom, it doesn’t look like we’ll
be able to keep quadrupling research effort. In that case, stagnation
seems likely.

Did you want to elaborate on this in any way?