Created: July 10, 2020
Modified: February 25, 2022
Modified: February 25, 2022
thoughts about kids
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- I want kids, eventually. I want to be able to talk with them, to build a relationship, to see the world through someone else's eyes. I want to have family, I want to see a human being grow. As an old person, I want to have youth in my life. At some level, I want to give my parents grandkids. But I want kids even if my parents aren't around to see them.
- I don't want kids so badly that I'd have them as a single parent. I'd need a stable relationship first. And it's so hard to count on that or know what that'll look like that it doesn't really feel okay to think about kids deeply or seriously yet.
- Objections:
- I don't want to bring kids into a negative-utility world where they'll suffer (despite my best intentions).
- This is hard to know. Suffering is unavoidable. But utility comes from attention, which I think means the world is not necessarily negative-utility if you think about it positively. (people don't entirely drive their own attention, of course, but agency is a thing).
- Even if the current world is negative-utility on average, and my kid's life is negative-utility in particular, they might still be able to help other people and have a net total positive impact on utility. If I think I can train them as a force for good, I might have a duty to bring them into the world.
- I won't be a good role model or a worthy parent. They'll grow up to be depressed and tentative like me.
- this might be giving me too much credit. kids can and will rebel and define themselves against me. If they have enough other role models, they won't need to be limited by me. And they'll have my partner as a role model!
- I still have a lot to offer a kid: maybe I can't train them to be a perfect AI researcher, but a kid is not a grad student. I have at least as much as most people who parent. I can orient them to science, to love.
- I don't want to bring kids into a negative-utility world where they'll suffer (despite my best intentions).
- What do I want for my kids?
- they should learn music, young. Piano, cello, singing, whatever they want.
- they should get in the habit of exercise: sports, skiing, running, biking.
- they should get many opportunities to play and create.
- legos, play-dough, construction-like toys
- simple programmable computers: raspberry pi. Learn to make games, or music, or
- if they get an ipad or tablet, it should be locked down,
- but their roaming and creation shouldn't be controlled by me: they should see the city, be able to wander early on.
- they should understand there is no speed limit
- if they want to learn to drive at 8, we can do that
- if they want to play a hard piano piece, or program a game, or
- there's no reason they can't learn hard philosophy at young ages: free will, personal identity, utilitarianism vs deontology vs aristetelianism virtue ethics.
- how do I ensure they can do this stuff? just do it.
- they should have lots of opportunity for social interaction, with a range of peers.
- we should live somewhere with enough 'smart kids' that they'll have people to talk with about math, books, music, whatever.
- they'll learn most of what they know about life from peers. I want those peers to be good people, raised by parents that will teach them to be kind, intelligent inquisitive. This means living in a major city or a college town. Ideally it means public school, if the schools are good, but I'm not solid on that.
- I want them to learn something about the diversity of the world. Hendrik and Augustus growing up in Switzerland are bilingual, they're growing up Swiss, but they have American heritage and if they come back to America they'll always have had the experience of growing up in another country. I don't know how to best get this for my kids: of course we can travel together, but it's not the same. The best would be to actually live somewhere else for at least a few years. Or do something like UWC?
- Leadership: I want them to understand the importance of leadership. Building a group of friends, or a team. Helping organize everyone to get on the same page, to a common view of the world. They should learn that leadership isn't a moral good necessarily -- it's not better to be a leader than a follower -- but it is a form of service, of
- Love: I want to tell my kids "I love you" and have them say it back, and mean it. The best way to get here is to first model this in my own relationships: I want to have a partner and a relationship where we can be open with each other, and talk about love and what it means to us. And also talk about the difficulties on a relationship: they should know that relationships are amazing, but they take constant work and dedication.
- I would love for them to have many adult role models: a community of parents. This could be co-parenting with another couple or couples, or otherwise living in tight community.
- Despite all of this, I also want my kids to rebel. I want them to build their own identity, in opposition to mine. I want them to practice thinking for themselves, asserting what they want, not just assuming that they should be imitation learners. Just like in grad school: the real victory for the advisor comes when the student stops doing what you tell them to, and starts choosing their own projects.
- What would I do with my kids? What activities am I actually excited for?
- reading to / with them. Giving them good books.
- building stuff with them:
- cooking, baking, gardening
- physical stuff (a solar oven, rockets, airplanes, electronics)
- computer stuff: we could pair program, make a game, train neural nets or otherwise do ML projects
- teaching them: math, physics, ML
- teaching them how to be a good person. being emotionally vulnerable with them. I want to be able to tell them when I'm sad, or worried, or anxious, and show them that they can help.