Bryan Caplan complains about evo psych folk who say we didn’t inherit “an overwhelming, conscious desire to have children”, and about my suggestion that “It is hard to tell grand hero stories” about high fertility”:
The most amazing thing about his article is the "what would you encourage in scenarios A and B" question, mostly because I wouldn't remotely presume the typical response that the author does, and not a single comment has called him on it. Meaning: I was probably woefully ignorant of the typical person's responses, and had to rely on my bias that everyone else would think like I do. It's a real eye-opener. Now I have to wrap my head around why people would encourage more kids from people who will be less able to support them well.
The end of this article goes into Singapore's massive failure to raise the birth rate using monetary and other material incentives:http://www.weeklystandard.c...
The idea that having "more kids earlier tends to make you look bad" seems to be a value judgement of a kind which would be made by someone with non-Darwinian values. In nature's eyes, such things are seen differently.
I can't speak for drivers or janitors, but while reception desks certainly don't necessarily demand a world-beater, they're usually staffed by basically literate people, and they require at least average personal presentation skills and reliability, which calls for a decent amount of conscientiousness, which is correlated with IQ. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself to take the sting out of the status-smackdown that was that "Now imagine you had a child who seemed of unusually low ability" paragraph for me.
The more talented your kid is, the more you’d encourage them to put off having kids. Which creates a signaling effect: having kids earlier tells other folks that you see yourself as being less talented. This effect encourages delayed fertility, which tends toward reduced fertility.
This effect seems to begin by being enforced by the parents and end with the children enforcing it themselves - once educated and/ or in a good job, it is difficult to see (at least in the short term) how parenting could rival the high status that follows from a good education and/ or good job.
On my (limited) empirical observation, these seems particularly true of young women in professions traditionally dominated by males, which may be seen an additional signal of ability/ assertiveness. Parenting certainly cannot make up for this signal and early parenting would perhaps preclude this signal from being given at all.
May God be with you and bless youMay you have many childrenAnd live to see your children's childrenMay you be poor in misfortunes, but rich in blessingsMay you know nothing but happiness from this day forward
I don't think it's just about status and stories. Having children reduces one's attractiveness to the opposite sex, whether one is male or female. Since we don't force people to stay in lifetime monogamous or polygynous unions, the appeal of a new partner is always present. Adults with children often try to disguise their parent status (e.g., driving an SUV instead of a minivan) to try to get the best of both worlds.
>Seems to me that in our modern world, the obvious answer is: more. The more talented your kid is, the more you’d encourage them to put off having kids.
That's the conventional response all right. But it is not the best response. I realized more than twenty years ago that today it actually makes more sense for a would be professional or career woman to have children early, to stretch out her education rather than interrupt her career.
Logically you make a good point (one would think that if people could sell, kill, or work their kids they'd feel more hedged against the risk of having them) but in practice generous child welfare states don't seem to do better in encouraging population growth than, for example, the USA. So I think it makes sense to look at other things like the social status signal of having kids and the effects of certain types of religions on population growth.
Now that I think about it, it's obvious, unusually low-skilled laborer is the career path for unusually low ability children. I think the focus in the OP on "unusual" might be sending us down the wrong path. Having kids earlier might not specifically signal "unusual low ability" but rather simply "lack of unusual high ability" or at worst "moderately below average ability" -a category janitors probably fit (I'm not sure how drivers and receptionists make out).
What of the question: why do we need umpteen children and a population explosion? The only answer I can think of when this topic arises is that the civilised parts of the world are depopulating whereas the barbarian parts of the world are still breeding up and becoming a majority thus sending the humans bacs millennia in evolution. If all humans in all parts of the world were all civilised, peaceful and scientifically-minded then it wouldn't really matter what the population was. It would the same as say saying "going on diet isn't the same as being an anorexic" and "putting some fat is the same as having an obesity problem".
On the other hand, what of the Libertarian economics notion "the more expensive something become, the less desired it beocmes"? Children were cheap and expendable in the olden days. Once a child exited infancy they had to earn their keep or hit the road (usually the latter). This is consistent with most animal species - once the young can basically fend for themselves they leave the nest and the parents make another batch of babies. Hence Libertarians would argue governments in modern welfare states make children artificially expensive: anti-child abandonment laws, anti-child labour laws, compulsory education laws, etc.
TGGP, I noticed that, but I have a feeling that they wrongly conflated truck driver with construction worker, given that one of the criteria for lowest skill level classification is "could not locate an intersection on a street map".
My sense is truck (and other types of) drivers have to have threshhold levels of literacy, numeracy, and conscientiousness that lift them above the lowest skill level class. But I'm arguing here from intuition, not specific sources.
In certain religious groups having plenty of children is the norm. For instance, among Laestadians families with 10 children are common. I suspect these groups will inherit the Earth, so in the future (some centuries ahead) mankind will be even more religious than now.
The most amazing thing about his article is the "what would you encourage in scenarios A and B" question, mostly because I wouldn't remotely presume the typical response that the author does, and not a single comment has called him on it. Meaning: I was probably woefully ignorant of the typical person's responses, and had to rely on my bias that everyone else would think like I do. It's a real eye-opener. Now I have to wrap my head around why people would encourage more kids from people who will be less able to support them well.
People are adaptation executors not fitness maximizers. Those adaptations may be for another time.
The end of this article goes into Singapore's massive failure to raise the birth rate using monetary and other material incentives:http://www.weeklystandard.c...
Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
The idea that having "more kids earlier tends to make you look bad" seems to be a value judgement of a kind which would be made by someone with non-Darwinian values. In nature's eyes, such things are seen differently.
I can't speak for drivers or janitors, but while reception desks certainly don't necessarily demand a world-beater, they're usually staffed by basically literate people, and they require at least average personal presentation skills and reliability, which calls for a decent amount of conscientiousness, which is correlated with IQ. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself to take the sting out of the status-smackdown that was that "Now imagine you had a child who seemed of unusually low ability" paragraph for me.
The more talented your kid is, the more you’d encourage them to put off having kids. Which creates a signaling effect: having kids earlier tells other folks that you see yourself as being less talented. This effect encourages delayed fertility, which tends toward reduced fertility.
This effect seems to begin by being enforced by the parents and end with the children enforcing it themselves - once educated and/ or in a good job, it is difficult to see (at least in the short term) how parenting could rival the high status that follows from a good education and/ or good job.
On my (limited) empirical observation, these seems particularly true of young women in professions traditionally dominated by males, which may be seen an additional signal of ability/ assertiveness. Parenting certainly cannot make up for this signal and early parenting would perhaps preclude this signal from being given at all.
This sounds good to me.
Simple Irish Wedding Blessing
May God be with you and bless youMay you have many childrenAnd live to see your children's childrenMay you be poor in misfortunes, but rich in blessingsMay you know nothing but happiness from this day forward
I don't think it's just about status and stories. Having children reduces one's attractiveness to the opposite sex, whether one is male or female. Since we don't force people to stay in lifetime monogamous or polygynous unions, the appeal of a new partner is always present. Adults with children often try to disguise their parent status (e.g., driving an SUV instead of a minivan) to try to get the best of both worlds.
Mormons don't have this problem.
>Seems to me that in our modern world, the obvious answer is: more. The more talented your kid is, the more you’d encourage them to put off having kids.
That's the conventional response all right. But it is not the best response. I realized more than twenty years ago that today it actually makes more sense for a would be professional or career woman to have children early, to stretch out her education rather than interrupt her career.
Logically you make a good point (one would think that if people could sell, kill, or work their kids they'd feel more hedged against the risk of having them) but in practice generous child welfare states don't seem to do better in encouraging population growth than, for example, the USA. So I think it makes sense to look at other things like the social status signal of having kids and the effects of certain types of religions on population growth.
Now that I think about it, it's obvious, unusually low-skilled laborer is the career path for unusually low ability children. I think the focus in the OP on "unusual" might be sending us down the wrong path. Having kids earlier might not specifically signal "unusual low ability" but rather simply "lack of unusual high ability" or at worst "moderately below average ability" -a category janitors probably fit (I'm not sure how drivers and receptionists make out).
What of the question: why do we need umpteen children and a population explosion? The only answer I can think of when this topic arises is that the civilised parts of the world are depopulating whereas the barbarian parts of the world are still breeding up and becoming a majority thus sending the humans bacs millennia in evolution. If all humans in all parts of the world were all civilised, peaceful and scientifically-minded then it wouldn't really matter what the population was. It would the same as say saying "going on diet isn't the same as being an anorexic" and "putting some fat is the same as having an obesity problem".
On the other hand, what of the Libertarian economics notion "the more expensive something become, the less desired it beocmes"? Children were cheap and expendable in the olden days. Once a child exited infancy they had to earn their keep or hit the road (usually the latter). This is consistent with most animal species - once the young can basically fend for themselves they leave the nest and the parents make another batch of babies. Hence Libertarians would argue governments in modern welfare states make children artificially expensive: anti-child abandonment laws, anti-child labour laws, compulsory education laws, etc.
TGGP, I noticed that, but I have a feeling that they wrongly conflated truck driver with construction worker, given that one of the criteria for lowest skill level classification is "could not locate an intersection on a street map".
My sense is truck (and other types of) drivers have to have threshhold levels of literacy, numeracy, and conscientiousness that lift them above the lowest skill level class. But I'm arguing here from intuition, not specific sources.
In certain religious groups having plenty of children is the norm. For instance, among Laestadians families with 10 children are common. I suspect these groups will inherit the Earth, so in the future (some centuries ahead) mankind will be even more religious than now.