Oh, and I think that people are entitled to a properly formative childhood. From a lack of FAS to proper nutrition and education. I think that parents who deny their children these things are making a moral error.
What should people be "entitled" to?
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Oh, and I think that people are entitled to a properly formative childhood. From a lack of FAS to proper nutrition and education. I think that parents who deny their children these things are making a moral error.
"'Entitlement?' Boo! Hiss!"
What's the threshold for 'proper nutrition'? Or 'proper education'? Are parents who don't work overtime to send their children to private schools - thereby spending less time at home - committing a moral error?
That's tough to quantify. Enough such that the kid ends up having at least a 50% chance of having an above average life.
I'm not sure. I don't know the expected relative value of attending a private school. Is attending a public school a significant disadvantage?
Attending a good private school is undoubtedly an advantage, so in some parts of the country I'd argue that yes, it is. What I'm getting at is that I'm troubled by any moral analysis which makes being poor a moral deficiency - it all sounds a bit Dickensian to me.
Being poor isn't a moral deficiency. I think that intentionally forcing a child into a substandard life is a moral deficiency. Remember, I didn't ask to be born. It's one person forcing a quality of life onto another. I don't think we have the right.
I find that quite troubling, to be honest, but at least it's thought out.
Yeah, it's troubling. It's also counter-intuitive. But, if your child doesn't end up being grateful that they were born, then it's a question of how much the parents are to blame. Because, a person who isn't grateful they were born ended up being created merely for the pleasure of others.
I'm not sure that you can make that judgement based on starting circumstances, though, nor am I sure that anyone has the right to tell anybody else that they don't have the right to have children.
Soylent. I linked it already.
I don't think that works out, you'd need to bring down the fortunes of children of the wealthy elite to have a 50% chance of having a below average life.
I'm also curious as to what parents are expected to do when their financial circumstances take a turn for the worse.
Mise
isle of lucy
One thought that is consistently on the back of my mind throughout this conversation, El Mach, is that literally anyone can be happy. I was born in a developing country, where my family (those who we left behind) and compatriots didn't have 1/10th of the opportunities that I was given when my parents emigrated to the UK. They were well educated medical professionals, and so were a lot of their friends and family. Some of those well educated people stayed behind, in my country of birth, where their children had much more limited opportunities along every single axis of development you can think of. They were less well fed, less well educated, got less prestigious degrees, had fewer employment opportunities, had more medical problems (partly arising from the poorer medical care in my home country), and had lower life expectancy. On every single indicator of human development, those children would score lower than me, and this is a direct result of their parents' decision not to emigrate to the UK.
But those children are happy. Hell, some of them are happier than I am, despite my superior developmental indicators. They've had happy childhoods, started happy families, brought happy children of their own into the world, and will probably die happy too, even if they die 10 years younger and significantly poorer than me. The idea that poor people have lives that are unambiguously worse than rich people is pretty arrogant, condescending, and rude. There is no doubt that human development indicators are useful, and that raising them is a good thing. But to attach a "moral"/"gratitude" component to that in the way that you are doing is completely anathema to all of my experiences thus far. Am I grateful that my parents chose to move to the UK? Absolutely. Are my cousins grateful that their parents chose not to move to the UK? Absolutely! I can't see how you can properly judge any of this.
So my questions are several.
1) Are parents with the means to move country (say) obliged to do so if it means a material increase in their children's developmental indicators?
2) Where does happiness fit in to all of this? 3rd world children are just as happy as 1st world ones. In many cases, even more so. How do you judge that?
3) How useful is this framework of yours, overall? I can't predict how happy my children are going to be before they have been born. I don't even know what makes me happy! What can your framework actually prescribe for me?
There's probably more questions in there too that I've muddled up. Basically I see no way of fitting it into my learned experiences.
But those children are happy. Hell, some of them are happier than I am, despite my superior developmental indicators. They've had happy childhoods, started happy families, brought happy children of their own into the world, and will probably die happy too, even if they die 10 years younger and significantly poorer than me. The idea that poor people have lives that are unambiguously worse than rich people is pretty arrogant, condescending, and rude. There is no doubt that human development indicators are useful, and that raising them is a good thing. But to attach a "moral"/"gratitude" component to that in the way that you are doing is completely anathema to all of my experiences thus far. Am I grateful that my parents chose to move to the UK? Absolutely. Are my cousins grateful that their parents chose not to move to the UK? Absolutely! I can't see how you can properly judge any of this.
So my questions are several.
1) Are parents with the means to move country (say) obliged to do so if it means a material increase in their children's developmental indicators?
2) Where does happiness fit in to all of this? 3rd world children are just as happy as 1st world ones. In many cases, even more so. How do you judge that?
3) How useful is this framework of yours, overall? I can't predict how happy my children are going to be before they have been born. I don't even know what makes me happy! What can your framework actually prescribe for me?
There's probably more questions in there too that I've muddled up. Basically I see no way of fitting it into my learned experiences.
I certainly don't have that right. I don't even have the right to stop a pregnant woman from sniffing glue. I can still recognise a moral error when I see one.
The 'right' to children is a two-way obligation. If you're having children for your own personal pleasure, then the wellbeing of that entity you're creating is your obligation. Not entirely so, because you cannot control all exogenous events. But, just because you cannot control all exogenous inputs into a child's life doesn't mean you can just play Russian roulette with their wellbeing. You can make reasonable predictions.
I happen to think that people have the right to a reasonable chance at a good life, and intentionally stymieing that right, before they're even conceived, is a moral error.
I don't see any serious issue if they have a strong chance at an above average life.
Yes. But, unless happiness is completely unpredictable, we can still look at other factors.
Why? If they're happier than you are, then why in gods green earth would we want to make them more like you? Seems like a horrible thing to do. At least, it's a hell of a risk. If 3rd world people are happier than 1st world people, then what's the point about giving a crap?
I don't think so. Only if there's good reason to believe that the children will end up perceiving that their lives were above average as a result.
I think it's paramount. What's the point of forcing someone into existence if they're not happy that they were? For your own pleasure?
I've allowed the ideas to intersect, but 'happy they were born' and 'general happiness' aren't completely the same thing. You quickly spiral into hypotheticals regarding opiates. What do I prescribe? Well, if you think it's likely your kids will end up not being happy they were born, maybe don't have kids? It's not hard, but I find the idea of creating little unhappy beings for your own personal pleasure kinda disgusting.
What you have to remember is that not everyone is like you. Not everyone is 'happy they were born'. An incredible number of people aren't, and have been basically coddling suicidal thoughts for a significant portion of their teenage years onwards. What was the value in creating them in the first place? They didn't benefit. The ones creating them might have, as long as these victims can put on a shiny happy face and fake it, or if the creators are sociopathic enough to not care about the misery they created. Now, we can ignore their existence, but that just requires a lack of empathy and insight.
Now, my belief is that there's a stronger genetic component than we realize, but I think there are exogenous factors to people's happiness. And yeah, some of those are with regards to material wealth.
Why is average the benchmark here? Obviously, half of children have no chance at all of having above-average lives. Why aren't we setting a basic quality of life - perhaps one to which all people should be entitled? That solves the problem rather nicely.
I'm trying to be fair. I think there's too much we just cannot predict. While half of people will have below average lives (if we only include humans), I don't think you can really know ahead of time if your kids will. Now, you can be sure that sniffing glue while pregnant drastically reduces their odds, but even then you cannot be sure. The best you can do is play the odds. I don't think you're as morally culpable for an effort if it was stymied through bad luck.
We had a foster child who was deliriously happy. He had a specific type of brain damage where nearly everything was both interesting and amusing. Now, he couldn't feed himself, and things went south when he was hungry, but ehn.
Now, knowing about this brain damage certainly doesn't give me the right to use a nail gun on my next baby, trying to mimic the effect. My intentions may be amazingly pure, but I've still gotta play the odds. It won't just be 'bad luck' if that nail gun ends up making things worse, it would be expected!
edit: let's spin this around, what gives someone the right to intentionally create someone they can reasonably expect to have a below-average quality of life? And, if I have that right with my own kids, why can't I just do it to other kids/animals/etc.?
The right to have a child is important in itself, because family life is such an important part of human society, so nobody should be forced to give up their children unless they prove that they can't look after them. Innocent until proven guilty, as it were. That and the mere pragmatics of not forcing half of the population to be childless!
I can understand that the right to have children is important. What gives you the right to intentionally create someone that will have a low-quality life? It's not a one-sided right, it's a right that needs to be balanced against the rights of the entity being created.
I mean, the right to eat is important, but what gives you the right to take food from someone else?
I mean, the right to eat is important, but what gives you the right to take food from someone else?
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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No. But maybe more than half have a chance of perceiving their lives are above-average.
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