You don't declare your position on this issue, which irritating. What do you actually think is good or bad? It seems like you're anti-individual, pro-religion (or "telos", but that always seems to be a subset of some religion whenever you mention it), and pro-reproduction, but only as a side effect of the religion. You don't want us to be coerced, or coerced into approving of pressure to conform, but you want us to conform willingly. You want us to have a sense of place and community identity, and you want us to live like ants and reproduce a lot with diminished individualism. Why? Just because, I guess.
Well, I don't want that, those aren't my values, I like individualism. You use words in odd ways (what's "formation"?) so I lose track of your meaning anyway, so maybe I got your values wrong, who knows. You're kind of shady about your values.
This makes me wonder about whether having a purpose (telos) is a good value, and about the purpose of purpose. But I think wondering that is not the way forward. People have a sense of purpose innately, it just gets foggy sometimes, we don't need to tell them to have one, only tell them what it might be.
Incidentally I give my full approval to the title of the article. Measuring things doesn't tell you answers, because it doesn't tell you theories. The idea that you can get answers from data without interpretation is logical positivism (or something associated with logical positivism), and it's nonsense, truth doesn't seep directly into our heads through our pores, we have to reason in order to be able to see any thing.
But that's all an incidental lead-in to the author's views about birth rates.
It's a shame the author falls a little foul of the very thing he criticizes - out of a wish, perhaps, to needle individualist liberals with UnHerd-style communitarian-conservative talking points.
But let's ask some more questions.
The positive correlation between income and number of children, within education bands, is intriguing - and yet doesn't explain why policies intended to be pro-birth - generous financial support for young families, for example, seem to be ineffective. Even accepting that education does suppress the birth rate relative to income, increasing income ought to fix that.. but doesn't.
Perhaps there's a different story here, that income and number of children within a given education bracket isn't causal - that a third factor is behind both - or even that the causal arrow points the other way: if you've got lots of kids, you _have_ to take that higher-paying job, because you need to keep them fed and housed.
And there's an unspoken assumption that education = individualism, and that these are antonyms to communitarian-conservatism. Which isn't exactly true, and we can look at societies which sustain relatively high levels of both.
Denmark being a case in point. Its international reputation may be free-living liberal-Scandi, but it's communitarian, place-based and in many ways conservative. Not in the obvious way along Islamic or shouty Evangelical lines - morals around sex and alcohol are relatively relaxed - but in most other respects it's a distinct, cohesive and traditionalist culture, one which places more value on faith and nation than many.
They've high income, strong child support policy, and their birth rate is.. not much better than avowedly secular-liberal countries nearby. And a disproportionate number of kids are born to immigrants, which of course upsets the traditionalists.
But again, look for third factors. Do immigrants have more children because they're from "that kind of culture", or does the sort of innate drive which motivates somebody to pack their bags for a new life in a new country (by no means the easy path) also motivate them to have a family?
Or, flip that around, is there a "drag" factor affecting people who don't emigrate/immigrate, and that's suppressing "native" births? I certainly know more than a few people for whom that appears to be a thing, they're just kind of lightly anesthetized to life.
But I've also heard it said that some folks have always been that way, and that what's driving lower birth rates is more that on one hand fewer unplanned kids are being born (because contraception, and vastly lower teen pregnancy rates), and on the other, the women who do have kids (which has never been anywhere near "all") are often having one or two less than they'd ideally like for economic reasons.
I wouldn't have offspring because I don't want to have anyone be born into this world; it's awful. On the other paw, I would adopt if it could help someone already having to exist in this world to lead their best life.
Birth is as inevitable as existence, there is no opt out in the grander metaphysical scheme of things.
Also just a thought - is that really your reason for not having them? If a person truly believes the bad outweighs the good I'm less inclined to believe them when they're still among the living, because the choice to stay alive shows they see some inherent value in the state of being alive.
Personally I'm clear on why I don't want kids: because I'm a hedonist.
Hedonism itself isn't very clear, if basic gratification is vacuous. You end up seeking gratification through aims, because having a goal is satisfying, and then you're reintroducing values other than pure pleasure, by the back door (ooer).
> the choice to stay alive shows they see some inherent value in the state of being alive.
Eh, you don't choose to live any more than you choose to breathe. Even if you don't want to live anymore you can't simply "choose" to no longer be alive. There's no suicide-fairy that neatly and quietly removes you from existence on command, and that would keep taking care of anyone who's depending on you.
But then the next generation is all made of the people who turned this world awful. What about being the change you want? I guess if you gave an orphan a good life, that would count though.
This is a great article. It's why I roll my eyes when someone asks "Show me the data" or the classic "Sources please."
Unless we're literally having a debate about raw statistics, the data likely adds nothing to either side of the debate; because the data is not answering any actual questions and you can draw opposite conclusions from the same data. Just because the data appears to fit nicely to a particular mainstream narrative, that doesn't make the narrative true because one could come up with an infinite number of different narratives which provide a better fit for the data...
Which narrative is more likely to be right? The one narrative which you happen to have inside your head or the infinite number of other possible narratives which you haven't even heard of?
My experience is that the mainstream narrative is designed to cater to the lowest common denominator amongst the masses... Which nowadays are made up of a lot of highly educated people... But the narrative is nonetheless simplistic. There are many people out there who have had exposure to enough different data points in their lives that the mainstream narratives don't make sense to them.
Your understanding of the world is narratives + data. When you say that you make decisions "entirely based on data," you're missing some crucial aspect because you're almost certainly using a narrative to fill in the many gaps in the data.
Not to mention that many correlations are self-reinforcing feedback cycles without clear causality.
The very idea that causality is always simple and unidirectional is itself a narrative... And I would argue an incorrect one! Yet many scientific fields are founded on this narrative!
In my experience, I can't recall reading a single paper in the social sciences describing causality as "likely a self-reinforcing feedback cycle" - Even this language sounds unscientific. They're always trying to prove causality. It seems like nobody ever tries to prove "Likely a feedback cycle" because nobody likes these ambiguous answers.
I suspect this is because science almost always has a financial goal behind it and people want definite answers. They want to be able to use the data to craft a narrative like "No, drug X definitely doesn't cause condition Y."
> This is a great article. It's why I roll my eyes when someone asks "Show me the data" or the classic "Sources please."
That doesn't follow. Yes, there are going to be multiple interpretation of the data, however the data must exist otherwise you're just pulling claims out of thin air.
Being asked to provide the data is just an easy filter for people who just say things, who only have the narrative, like "the earth is a flat disc" - okay, show me some experimental data that would show this to be true.
You don't declare your position on this issue, which irritating. What do you actually think is good or bad? It seems like you're anti-individual, pro-religion (or "telos", but that always seems to be a subset of some religion whenever you mention it), and pro-reproduction, but only as a side effect of the religion. You don't want us to be coerced, or coerced into approving of pressure to conform, but you want us to conform willingly. You want us to have a sense of place and community identity, and you want us to live like ants and reproduce a lot with diminished individualism. Why? Just because, I guess.
Well, I don't want that, those aren't my values, I like individualism. You use words in odd ways (what's "formation"?) so I lose track of your meaning anyway, so maybe I got your values wrong, who knows. You're kind of shady about your values.
This makes me wonder about whether having a purpose (telos) is a good value, and about the purpose of purpose. But I think wondering that is not the way forward. People have a sense of purpose innately, it just gets foggy sometimes, we don't need to tell them to have one, only tell them what it might be.
These views are despicable. HN so desperately needs a native ignore function.
Which, mine? Why?
Incidentally I give my full approval to the title of the article. Measuring things doesn't tell you answers, because it doesn't tell you theories. The idea that you can get answers from data without interpretation is logical positivism (or something associated with logical positivism), and it's nonsense, truth doesn't seep directly into our heads through our pores, we have to reason in order to be able to see any thing.
But that's all an incidental lead-in to the author's views about birth rates.
It's a shame the author falls a little foul of the very thing he criticizes - out of a wish, perhaps, to needle individualist liberals with UnHerd-style communitarian-conservative talking points.
But let's ask some more questions.
The positive correlation between income and number of children, within education bands, is intriguing - and yet doesn't explain why policies intended to be pro-birth - generous financial support for young families, for example, seem to be ineffective. Even accepting that education does suppress the birth rate relative to income, increasing income ought to fix that.. but doesn't.
Perhaps there's a different story here, that income and number of children within a given education bracket isn't causal - that a third factor is behind both - or even that the causal arrow points the other way: if you've got lots of kids, you _have_ to take that higher-paying job, because you need to keep them fed and housed.
And there's an unspoken assumption that education = individualism, and that these are antonyms to communitarian-conservatism. Which isn't exactly true, and we can look at societies which sustain relatively high levels of both.
Denmark being a case in point. Its international reputation may be free-living liberal-Scandi, but it's communitarian, place-based and in many ways conservative. Not in the obvious way along Islamic or shouty Evangelical lines - morals around sex and alcohol are relatively relaxed - but in most other respects it's a distinct, cohesive and traditionalist culture, one which places more value on faith and nation than many.
They've high income, strong child support policy, and their birth rate is.. not much better than avowedly secular-liberal countries nearby. And a disproportionate number of kids are born to immigrants, which of course upsets the traditionalists.
But again, look for third factors. Do immigrants have more children because they're from "that kind of culture", or does the sort of innate drive which motivates somebody to pack their bags for a new life in a new country (by no means the easy path) also motivate them to have a family?
Or, flip that around, is there a "drag" factor affecting people who don't emigrate/immigrate, and that's suppressing "native" births? I certainly know more than a few people for whom that appears to be a thing, they're just kind of lightly anesthetized to life.
But I've also heard it said that some folks have always been that way, and that what's driving lower birth rates is more that on one hand fewer unplanned kids are being born (because contraception, and vastly lower teen pregnancy rates), and on the other, the women who do have kids (which has never been anywhere near "all") are often having one or two less than they'd ideally like for economic reasons.
The elevation of the individual as supreme to the communal is inherently anti-child rearing, the most communal of acts
Then the community is creepy and it can do one.
I wouldn't have offspring because I don't want to have anyone be born into this world; it's awful. On the other paw, I would adopt if it could help someone already having to exist in this world to lead their best life.
Birth is as inevitable as existence, there is no opt out in the grander metaphysical scheme of things.
Also just a thought - is that really your reason for not having them? If a person truly believes the bad outweighs the good I'm less inclined to believe them when they're still among the living, because the choice to stay alive shows they see some inherent value in the state of being alive.
Personally I'm clear on why I don't want kids: because I'm a hedonist.
Hedonism itself isn't very clear, if basic gratification is vacuous. You end up seeking gratification through aims, because having a goal is satisfying, and then you're reintroducing values other than pure pleasure, by the back door (ooer).
> the choice to stay alive shows they see some inherent value in the state of being alive.
Eh, you don't choose to live any more than you choose to breathe. Even if you don't want to live anymore you can't simply "choose" to no longer be alive. There's no suicide-fairy that neatly and quietly removes you from existence on command, and that would keep taking care of anyone who's depending on you.
But then the next generation is all made of the people who turned this world awful. What about being the change you want? I guess if you gave an orphan a good life, that would count though.
They are there awaiting you to act
You're reeking of "positivity", please do not adopt a child.
This is a great article. It's why I roll my eyes when someone asks "Show me the data" or the classic "Sources please."
Unless we're literally having a debate about raw statistics, the data likely adds nothing to either side of the debate; because the data is not answering any actual questions and you can draw opposite conclusions from the same data. Just because the data appears to fit nicely to a particular mainstream narrative, that doesn't make the narrative true because one could come up with an infinite number of different narratives which provide a better fit for the data...
Which narrative is more likely to be right? The one narrative which you happen to have inside your head or the infinite number of other possible narratives which you haven't even heard of?
My experience is that the mainstream narrative is designed to cater to the lowest common denominator amongst the masses... Which nowadays are made up of a lot of highly educated people... But the narrative is nonetheless simplistic. There are many people out there who have had exposure to enough different data points in their lives that the mainstream narratives don't make sense to them.
Your understanding of the world is narratives + data. When you say that you make decisions "entirely based on data," you're missing some crucial aspect because you're almost certainly using a narrative to fill in the many gaps in the data.
Not to mention that many correlations are self-reinforcing feedback cycles without clear causality.
The very idea that causality is always simple and unidirectional is itself a narrative... And I would argue an incorrect one! Yet many scientific fields are founded on this narrative!
In my experience, I can't recall reading a single paper in the social sciences describing causality as "likely a self-reinforcing feedback cycle" - Even this language sounds unscientific. They're always trying to prove causality. It seems like nobody ever tries to prove "Likely a feedback cycle" because nobody likes these ambiguous answers.
I suspect this is because science almost always has a financial goal behind it and people want definite answers. They want to be able to use the data to craft a narrative like "No, drug X definitely doesn't cause condition Y."
> This is a great article. It's why I roll my eyes when someone asks "Show me the data" or the classic "Sources please."
That doesn't follow. Yes, there are going to be multiple interpretation of the data, however the data must exist otherwise you're just pulling claims out of thin air.
Being asked to provide the data is just an easy filter for people who just say things, who only have the narrative, like "the earth is a flat disc" - okay, show me some experimental data that would show this to be true.