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Comment by _qn5w | Hacker News Reader

You’re fulfilling the Idiocracy prophecy. Those who think about their life choices are less likely to breed than those who are more reckless and have children with less hesitation. The similar survival rate of children of the two groups means the more-reckless genes & culture will out-propagate the less-reckless genes & culture. I’m pretty sure less-reckless is what we need more of, but without some extreme and questionable measures, I don’t see how it’s possible to sway the force of nature.

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This. Think of the marshmallow study where long-term planning kids turned out richer than the short-term minded ones. We need to push back against the Idiocracy mindset.

It is our prerogative as the less reckless to breed and propagate our genes, and teach our culture to our young. As you mentioned, the force of nature is against that, so we need campaigns, perhaps by the State, for the “careful thinkers” to breed and hold control over culture.

The marshmallow test also selects for kids with food insecurity, you know.

Not only that, it selects for children that have learned to trust other people's promises. If you have learned that a promised reward will never materialize, the rational choice is to take the treat now.

It’s almost like human behavior is really really complicated, and resists being boiled down to a single number.

If you believe that your child will have a net-negative life, but you have one anyway (and force them to live under the horrible conditions you recognized!), just to balance out the more-reckless children, I question your ethical framework.

It doesn't seem ethical at all to bring new beings into an existence you acknowledge to be negative, and thrust the responsibility of fixing the world onto them.

You probably also don’t want to propagate the gene for “I don’t really want to have kids, but I’m still going to because I think I’m better than the people who are already having kids.”

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