Which Effective Altruism groups are addressing the issue of fertility rates?

MysteryMeat

[Question]

Which Effective Altruism groups are addressing the issue of fertility rates?

MysteryMeat

1 min readOct 6, 2023

-18

Comments 19

Sorted by

New & upvoted

Rubi J. Hudson

Pronatalist.org is not an EA group. It's great that EA considerations have started entering the public consciousness and I would love if every charity was expected to answer "why is this the most effective thing you could be doing?", but that doesn't mean that any group claiming their mission is really important is part of EA. It's very difficult to argue a rigorous case that promoting pronatalist sentiment is an effective use of money or time, and so far they haven't.

Rather than ask how we can build more (and better) groups, ask whether we should.

Jeff Kaufman 🔸

Pronatalist.org is not an EA group. ... It's very difficult to argue a rigorous case that promoting pronatalist sentiment is an effective use of money or time, and so far they haven't.

The founders did write a detailed (and poorly received) post arguing for considering demographic collapse as a high-priority cause area.

Daniel_Eth

I don't think that's enough to consider an org an EA org. Specifically, if that was all it took for an org to be considered an EA org, I'd worry about how it could be abused by anyone who wanted to get an EA stamp of approval (which might have been what happened here – note that post is the founders' only post on the forum).

Jeff Kaufman 🔸

Maybe I'm being too nitpicky, but I think "EA org" is usually used in a stronger sense than "EA group"? I interpret the latter as more like "a group of EAs", at which point I think we're arguing whether pronatalist.org folks count as EAs?

Daniel_Eth

That's fair. I also don't think simply putting a post on the forum is in itself enough to constitute a group being an EA group.

MysteryMeat

It's not, I just seem a lot of association especially in negative news about them and they keep talking about longtermism

MysteryMeat

This a very long and inconsistent post with wayyy tooo much self promotion

Jeff Kaufman 🔸

I agree it's not a good post, and the negative reception in comments and voting reflects that. On the other hand, it's not clear to me that to be considered an EA you need to be doing work other EAs think highly of, as opposed to be trying your best to do EA?

ElliotJDavies

Would you be able to cite any strong reasoning for this as an important cause area. Past research into this suggests not.

Some key reasons I find the issue uncompelling :

It's very likely a sociological phenomena, and so behaviour change could occur if/when time occurs
It will play out over an extremely long time - unless you considering more near term economic effects
It seems closesly related to current (and likely to change) paradigms of labour and child rearing
- It's sorta like worrying about horse-manure disposal right before the invention of the car

burner

It's very likely a sociological phenomena, and so behaviour change could occur if/when time occurs

This is extremely vague and hard to parse.

ElliotJDavies

-3

Broadly speaking, there's 2 categories of explanations for depopulation: sociological (e.g. richer people want less kids) and biological (e.g. sperm counts are declining).

Because the conversation around depopulation is very emotive, which doesn't bring out the best epistemics in people. It's worth pointing out that the cause is almost certainly sociological.

Said another way, I think some actors refer to depopulation as a "fertility crisis" and this is misleading, and aspecially unhelpful when trying to derive solutions and forecasts.

burner

sociological (e.g. richer people want less kids)

This misunderstands the fertility problem. Most fertility advocates focus on the fertility gap - the gap between how many children people want to have and actually have (which is fewer than they want). It's also not that richer people (within countries) want to have less kids. We're seeing U shaped fertiliy trends, where the rich have more children than the middle class.

This implies it is not a "sociological phenomenon" (except in a trivial sense) and is instead a complex mix of social, cultural and economic factors that we do not yet totally understand.

biological (e.g. sperm counts are declining).

It's extremely dubious whether these are a factor at all. See Ritchie here, for example.

But the crux of of my disagreement was your phrasing:

so behaviour change could occur if/when time occurs

I'm still not sure what that means, but if your general point is that we can't influence behavioral changes through interventions (economic, education, etc) that is obviously incorrect.

ElliotJDavies

I'm still not sure what that means, but if your general point is that we can't influence behavioral changes through interventions (economic, education, etc) that is obviously incorrect.

My claim is (1) The topic is often sensationalised by many who talk about it (2) some of these people, infer that it could result in humanity going extinct. (3) If it's a sociological phenomenon, it's substantially less likely to result in x-risk, because presumably when faced with extinction, future humans would be willing to have more children.

complex mix of social, cultural and economic factors

All of these fit squarely under a broad term like "sociological factors".

It's extremely dubious whether these are a factor at all. See Ritchie here, for example.

To be clear, my point wasn't that fertility advocates are correct to point towards this category of explanations, but that they often do, and they're wrong in doing so.

burner

(1) The topic is often sensationalised by many who talk about it

Many things are sensationalized. This is not good evidence for or against fertility being a problem. Many accuse AIXR of being sensationalized.

(2) some of these people, infer that it could result in humanity going extinct.

I do not think smart fertility advocates believe that populations would slowly dwindle until there was one person left. Obviously that is a silly model. The serious model, described in Ch. 7 of What We Owe the Future, is that economic growth will slow to a crawl, and the time of perils will be extended. You can also see this model in Aschenbrenner 2020.

(3) If it's a sociological phenomenon, it's substantially less likely to result in x-risk, because presumably when faced with extinction, future humans would be willing to have more children.

This is why I think "sociological phenomenon" is confusing more than it is enlightening here. Humans make fertility decisions - based on a wide variety of factors which we do not fully understand - and those decisions matter long before we are on the verge of extinction from depopulation. We do have a number of handles to influence these decisions, should we choose to use them.

Ultimately, I do not believe fertility is a risk because AI will accelerate economic growth even as populations decline, but it is frustrating to see people fail to appreciate the key factors here in their model, and instead dismiss the issue as sensationalized.

Larks

It seems like a plausible cause area to me but I am not aware of a lot of EA work on the subject.

MysteryMeat

Yeah, I was wondering about that and wanted to see all of the options

burner

Chapter 7 of What We Owe the Future has some discussion along these lines. I hope that most EAs are not prioritizing this issue not because it's not important, but because short to medium AI timelines present a more urgent problem.

nemeryxu

-13

OP just joined the forum and has not provided any reason why, given the strong ties of pronatalism to the far-right, this cause is noticeably more pressing than even adjacent causes such as immigration reform. I'd recommend not engaging.

MysteryMeat

Others can put it in better terms than I can : https://worksinprogress.co/issue/natalism-for-progressives
While Pronatalist.org can be considered to be on the right with it's obsession with culture and technology. 'Stop Population Decline' stuff has a far more progressive focus in it's articles (https://stoppopulationdecline.org/young-peoples-unhappiness-is-older-generations-fault/)

Comments

Curated and popular this week

Hard-to-reverse decisions destroy option value

Stefan_Schubert·9y ago·Curated 2d ago·14m read

This post is co-authored with Ben Garfinkel. It is cross-posted from the CEA blog. A PDF version can be found here. Summary: Some strategic decisions available to the effective altruism m...

Introducing Impact List: a ranking of philanthropists by expected lives saved

Elliot Olds·3d ago·6m read

TL;DR: I'm releasing a website that ranks philanthropists according to EA principles and research, and allows users to re-rank the list using their own assumptions. I'd like feedback and help making it better. I'd especially like ideas for how to make the results more trustworthy. Funding may be available. Crossposted to LessWrong. ...

If you're agentic, work in biosecurity

sharmaayushmaan🔸·6d ago·7m read

Disclaimer: Although I work on the Groups Team at CEA, I’m writing this in a personal capacity, and this post does not constitute an endorsement by CEA. Agency - the realisation that you really can just do things. TL;DR Biosecurity needs people (of any background) who are agentic and have a high execution velocity and track record....

Recent opportunities to take action

Marginal Victories: career advising and opportunities for U.S. democracy preservation & political work

Annika Burman 🔸·5d ago·2m read

I'm stepping down as Hive's Executive Director, and we're hiring my successor

SofiaBalderson, Hive·5d ago·3m read

Starting an EA group @ SUNY Binghamton

micahzarin·4d ago·1m read