Comments on: Prefer Fem Babes?

By: gimli4thewest

gimli4thewest — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:57:15 +0000

I knew it had something to do with pork or pork products.

By: Pablo Stafforini

Pablo Stafforini — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:32:59 +0000

I don't know which pill you are referring to, but your example has the added complication the pill would not only cause some new person to exist, but destroy a person which existed before. Incidentally, Hal Finney above makes essentially the same point I made in my comment.

By: Jason Malloy

Jason Malloy — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:20:13 +0000

Not only do males have lower life expectancies, but they also lower the life expectancy of their mother and siblings!

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:50:02 +0000

Is this why we shouldn’t give a pill to a kid that makes them living five years longer, because a person given a pill becomes a different person?

By: Pablo Stafforini

Pablo Stafforini — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:23:46 +0000

Robin, common sense draws a fundamental distinction between prolonging the lives of those already alive and bringing new people into existence. This view may be mistaken–and I believe it is–but is at the basis of people’s decisions about health and reproduction. There is, accordingly, no tension between spending lots of money on end-of-life medicine and showing no preference for female children. In one case you are extending lives which existed already, whereas in the other case you are causing new lives to exist.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:13:00 +0000

But the drug would lower their IQ 1% for each year it prolonged their life. Then what?

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:08:49 +0000

Actions extending the last years of a child’s life are unimportant compared to other factors.Other methods of prolonging life such as forced exercise and forced caloric restriction are not employed,even though they work in animals. As parents you expect both boys and girls to live long past your death and don’t concern yourself their senescence.
If it is medical costs you are worrying about, don’t women consume more resources?
If it is pain and suffering,don’t women suffer more from,depression, osteoporosis and fractures than men? In terms of social equity,isn’t it unfair to burden the social safety net with too many additional old crones?

By: Doug S.

Doug S. — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:06:58 +0000

That’s because Robin Hanson is a sexist pig.

By: Colonel

Colonel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:05:59 +0000

“For children we may prefer for them to attain high status while we are alive (thus given us more status by proxy).”

Do parents really want their kids to get high status for the sake of “status by proxy?” I always thought it was because they assume, rightly or wrongly, that a person with high status will probably have a more pleasant life.

By: Greg Conen

Greg Conen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:41:30 +0000

Haven’t we already established that people don’t really care about maximizing (healthy) lifespan? The public’s disdain for cryonics and general life extension research establishes this rather more strongly than failing to sex-select.