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Why wouldn’t you want to have a kid? I don’t get the logic here. Are the first 5-10 years of life net-negative? I guess it’s evidence that Eliezer’s P(doom) is less that 99%, but this seems consistent with his P(doom) being 90%. Even if the GPU clusters get JDAM’d, someone has to figure out alignment eventually. Why not try selective breeding?
I suppose that depends on his timelines. If he really thinks we're dead in 20-30 years, then the logic of having a kid makes a lot more sense. Kids add immense variety and experience to life that you don't get without them. If you have a median doom target of 6-10 years then I don't see why you'd have a kid. The last thing a kid needs are parents who are constantly freaking out about how the world is ending.
IMO, the kids need stable homes with both parents present and there to care about them and properly pass on their values, and it just seems, to me, like parents who are constantly worried about how we're all dead in ten years might not make the best home for a kid to grow up healthy and adjusted in.
And I suppose I'm assuming that Eliezer has enough self-awareness to realize this and thus, if his timelines were short, he would choose not to.
The way people act when they believe they are going to die soon is not that different from how they act normally.
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