Things People Want

Consider these two lists of desiderata.  

A: Money, promotions, badges of honor, votes and endorsements, friends, sexual partners, servants or assistants, vanquished enemies, lives saved, items sold, sports records, likes and retweets, precious items, expensive cars, houses and their size.

B: Happiness, virtue, wisdom, serenity, learning, rationality, sanity, compassion, connection, positive impact, a sense of meaning and fulfillment, self-individuation, self-awareness, quality of relationships, love and respect, mastery, flow, kindness, sensitivity, spirituality, enlightenment, transcendence, creativity, heroism.

Both include things that people generally find desirable and worth pursuing. But, like me, you might feel that A and B differ in some important dimensions. 

For starters, Bs have higher status. If you're doing a job interview, you would not tell your recruiter that you'd like the job so you can get a fat salary, buy a car and hire five assistants. You are probably better off saying that you want to learn new things, have a positive impact and develop your talents. 

The most successful religions and moral systems encourage followers to pursue Bs, while marking As as empty or non-central at best, and harmful or corrupting at worst. 

Corporations get a bad rap because they are motivated by profit, which is an A. So they try to improve their reputation by signalling that they want to have a positive impact on the world and help people realize some of the Bs. 

If we looked at what people actually want vs. what they say they want, I suspect we would find that the former category mainly samples from A, while the latter mainly samples from B. In other words, people tend to signal that they are pursuing the Bs, even when they are pursuing the As. Or especially then. 

Conversely, explaining people's behavior by mentioning the As is considered cynical and mistrustful. "He is supporting the cause to make friends". "She only said that to get votes". "He'll do anything to impress a girl." 

Whence this distinction? 

There are important differences between As and Bs. First, the desiderata in A are related to zero-sum games. There is only so much money, cars or sexual partners in the world: if you get more, the rest of us are going to have less. This fact may be less obvious for some of the listed items. Likes and retweets, for instance, are virtually unlimited; and if you sell vacuum cleaners and I sell stamps, your selling more does not necessarily cause my selling less. However, if we model likes and retweets as proxies of the users' attention, we must conclude that their supply is limited. And everyone on the market is ultimately competing for the consumers' money. 

Furthermore, As often come in power-law distributions, meaning that a few individuals have a lot of them while most individuals have little or none. And many of them tend to concentrate according to the Matthew effect: the more money, sexual partners or followers you have, the easier it is to get even more. 

On the other hand, Bs are related to positive-sum games. If I become more knowledgeable, it does not imply that someone has become more ignorant; the general store of knowledge in the world has only increased. The same applies to rationality, compassion and mastery. 

The distributions of Bs, if we could measure them, would look normal rather than power-law. Yes, some people score high on self-awareness, serenity or kindness, while others score particularly low. But even those are within a few standard deviations of the mean: there are no people who are 20, 100 or 1000 times kinder or more self-aware than the average human, except perhaps the Buddha. 

Qualities like creativity, rationality and self-awareness are so consequential that marginal advantages determine significant differences between individuals. But ultimately their size is capped by the limits of human architecture. You cannot accumulate insane amounts of Bs the way you may do with As, as in Jeff Bezos having ~2 million times the net worth of an average U.S. household or Mick Jagger sleeping with 400 times as many women as the average man, plus David Bowie (citation needed). 

The other fundamental difference is that As are easily measurable, while Bs are generally not. In fact, Bs are mostly internal qualities which cannot be observed directly. They are also harder to define. I would have a hard time explaining what enlightenment, self-individuation or transcendence are, let alone try to determine whether someone has them or not. There is no objective, consensual method for determining how much of a B-type quality anyone has. 

The non-observability of Bs has some interesting consequences. For one thing, it is easier to be deceived about them, both because we cannot easily observe our level, and because it is difficult to make comparisons. The French say that everybody is satisfied with their wits, while nobody is satisfied with their purse. This is explained by the fact that one's income is easily ascertained, so it is harder to be biased about it. Given that wits are more difficult to measure, most people will happily assume they are above average and not think too much of it. Inequality on these attributes, while significant, will be less salient. 

It is not common to envy one's neighbor for their wisdom or serenity. First, it is hard to tell how wise they are (maybe they are just good at signalling wisdom). Second, the illusion of superiority ensures that we feel very wise, and there is little chance that reality will intrude upon us and correct our bias. Third, we know that a third party will have a hard time determining whether our neighbor is wiser than us. For the same reasons, it is more likely that we will envy them for having more money or friends. 

Let us take a step back and restate our observations.

As are related to zero-sum games, come in power-law distributions, accumulate according to the Matthew effect, and are easily measurable.

Bs are related to positive-sum games, come in normal distributions, one cannot have insane amounts of them, and are not easily measurable. 

The fundamental difference between As and Bs seems to be their ability to generate social conflict. 

For 90% of history, humans lived in foraging societies with egalitarian social structures. In this context, a person's fate was strongly dependent on the judgment and opinions of the community. At any moment, an individual who was deemed dangerous could be punished, ostracized or exiled; and in the absence of a strong central power or a system of codified laws, there was nothing in the way of her peers' wrath. Hence, it was very dangerous to stand out or inspire envy, and even more so to reveal antagonistic goals. The ancient proverb, "The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the scythe" was especially valid. 

In horizontal, egalitarian environments of this sort, we would expect individuals to be very careful about their stated goals and aspirations. In particular, we would expect them to under-emphasize any aims or projects which could make them dangerous to their peers, and to over-emphasize innocuous or universally beneficial goals. Conversely, in stratified environments where some individuals hold significant power and are protected by laws and other social structures, we would expect high-ranking individuals to be more candid about holding competitive A-type objectives, and even to display them conspicuously for purposes of status-boosting, power signalling and intimidation. (Low-ranking individuals, on the other hand, would be still incentivized to appear innocuous, to avoid being punished or preemptively dispatched by the powerful). 

Robin Hanson has pointed out that the industrial era has brought about a revival of forager values [1] [2] [3]. In fact, since the French Revolution, the highly stratified regime of monarchic/feudal/agrarian societies has given way to an egalitarian ethos where everyone is entitled to the same level of deference and overt display of status and resources is generally frowned upon. Our social environments have become more forager-like; hence, we are less likely to reveal our interest in A-type resources and zero-sum games. 

Unlike in forager societies, we cannot be punished or exiled on a whim. But our peers still hold great power over us. They determine our standing and reputation, influence our self-worth and self-esteem, and can release or withhold precious resources. The social pressures shaping our persona are as strong as ever.

More Reasons to Have Kids

In the previous post I explained what, according to me, is the best reason for why people have kids. There are more explanations of course, and they're not at odds with each other. 

I've been told that these explanations sound cynical. That was not my intention at all. I don't think any of these are intrinsically immoral. And I'm not opposed to having children (I might have them myself someday). 

Interestingly, there might be a social norm against explaining some life choices. We like to pretend that having children is something natural, a basic act that we do out of  'free will', or maybe out of love (which is one of my explanations). In short, it is a 'moral' action: moral in the sense that it has no personal motive. Just like it would be considered rude and cynical to ask someone why they are doing an act of charity (as the question seems to imply that there is an 'ulterior motive' beyond the will to do good) it might be the same with asking people why they procreate.   

I disagree with this view. Everything we do, we do for a reason. As a consequentialist, I (generally) judge actions based on outcomes, not on motives. And I don't think that an action is only moral if the agent doesn't get a payoff. For example, when it comes to charity, a dollar spent out of envy or narcissism is just as good as a dollar spent out of love or altruism or self-sacrifice.  

Anyway, here are the reasons (in no particular order): 

A genuine love and liking for children and the stuff they do.

Securing affection and admiration.

Having someone who will accept one’s love, care and affection. 

Fighting boredom and loneliness, giving meaning to one’s life or relationship. 

To acquire and exercise power. Most folks will never have as much power over another human being as they have over their children. 

To resolve psychological conflicts. Example: some people don’t like how their parents treated them, and they want a do-over.   

Conformism to peer pressure and social norms. Will be stronger in some groups and cultures. 

Rational herding. “Everyone around me is having children, so perhaps I should too, even if I don't fully understand the reasons.”

Regret aversion. “If I don’t have children now, I might regret it later." I expect this to be stronger in women.

Wanting someone to take care of you in old age.

Feel free to add yours in the comments.

Having children is about memetics, not genetics

Why do people have children? I’ve been wondering about this for a while. In my experience, the question is subject to something I call the ‘Hanson effect’, because Robin Hanson writes so often about it: "everyone thinks they know the answer, but all they know different answers." (source)

In the US, the cost of raising a child through age 17 is around $230,000 (no, that does not include college). And the financial cost is not even the most significant. For the mothers, there’s the physical burden of pregnancy. Children claim enormous amounts of time, energy and attention. Potentially, the years of young adulthood (roughly 25-35) are among the most productive and enjoyable in a person’s life. Yet many people in that age group will go on to have children, constraining their choices and placing considerable pressure on their material and mental resources. While you can always make more money, you will never get that time back. That despite all of this, having children is still the norm rather than the exception, is something that I find genuinely surprising. 

The site wehavekids.com lists ten reasons why people have children. One in particular struck me: “It’s human nature. The simple fact of biology is that we are hardwired to procreate and pass on our genes to the next generation. This biological imperative and drive are strong in many people, who feel the need to have and raise children.” When you ask why people want to have children, this is one of the most common answers you will get. It’s easy, intuitive, and in accord with science. It's also completely wrong. 

The folk theory of “people want children so they can spread their genes” seems to assume that reproduction, which is the objective of evolution, is working in our minds as a semi-conscious motive, through the so-called “reproductive instinct”, a mysterious inner force that leads us to desire procreation. 

But it doesn’t work that way. There is no “instinct”; there are only adaptations. When Nature designed us to procreate, we didn’t yet have a neocortex with advanced representational capabilities. Our genes could not anticipate that we would think about having children, just as they could not imagine that we would invent contraception or engage in family planning. Instead of encoding their objective function in our brains, they did something much simpler: since reproduction happens through sex, they made sex pleasurable. And since newborn children need care, they made us want to care for them. That’s pretty much all there is to it. 

If there was such a thing as a “reproductive instinct” - if evolution’s goals were explicitly encoded in our minds - it would look quite different than what people imagine. The only thing we would care about would be to spread our genes. As a result, nobody would use contraception. Folks would pay to be egg donors and sperm donors. They would sacrifice all their resources to keep making babies. Even better, they would discard babies altogether and invest in making millions of copies of their DNA and storing them in freezers, like in that SlateStarCodex story. 

If that doesn’t appeal to your intuition, then what do you think gene spreading means? (Hint: it’s not about making cute little things that call you “daddy” or “mommy”. It’s about making copies of your genes: that’s the only thing evolution cares about. Babies are just Nature’s best solution for protecting and spreading genes. That said, freezers would definitely work better.) 

The bottom line is that when people are willing and able to use contraception, the biological drives explain little to nothing about their decision to have children. 

However, there is a basic intuition at work in this explanation, which I think is true. Folks do want to perpetuate themselves in their progeny: it’s one of their main motivations for having children. But what is it that they see as themselves? 

Answer: it’s not their genes. It’s their values, attitudes, and ideas; their language, religion, and customs; their mannerisms and sense of humor, their beliefs and aspirations; their family name and family legends and heirlooms. In a word, their memes. 

This may be the single best explanation for why people have children. When we think of our identity, we think of our memes and memeplexes. Spreading our memes is a way to gain status and expand our influence. Seeing our memes replicate in others appeals to our self-love, since we see more of ourselves in the world. Finally, passing on memes can give us a sense that we are projecting our person beyond death and gaining some sort of immortality, which helps us cope with our fear of death. 

It turns out that having children is not about genetics. It’s about memetics. And meme-spreading, I believe, is an important and much overlooked motivator of human behavior. 

This theory has some interesting implications. For example, we might expect that individuals who have a strong platform for spreading their memes over the long term (e.g. actors, artists, scientists, philosophers) would be less motivated towards parenthood. But there are two caveats: first, some memes are so personal that they can only be spread within a family. Second, since these people will tend to be successful, they may not have to face a trade-off between career and parenthood. Women are interesting in this sense, because personal success does not always spare them this choice. 

Anyway, the conflict between gene-spreading and meme-spreading is not a rule. It should only apply to individuals who could achieve a lot of influence, but only at the cost of forsaking parenthood. Apart from that, meme-spreading may ironically become the unexpected savior of gene-spreading. In an age where safe sex is widely practiced, contraception is advancing, and having children is increasingly difficult and expensive, people may still be willing to go through the trouble — for the love of their memes.

Added 22/11/20. Many would-be parents show a strong preference for having natural children vs. adopting, to the point of going through difficult or expensive procedures such as IVF. This may be taken as a disproof of my theory. However, I would argue that parents are interested in the child's phenotype, not their genotype. A child who shares my genes is more likely to be phenotypically similar to me and to share my looks and behaviors. Parents are interested in their children's genetic composition indirectly, i.e. only insofar as it makes the children more similar to them. A mental experiment will clarify this. Imagine you have a gene G1 which results in the observable attribute A1. Which of these would you choose: a child with the same gene G1 that results in a different attribute A2, or a child with a different gene G2 which results in the same attribute A1?