This document discusses arguments for and against effective altruists having children. It acknowledges the potential harms of having kids but also notes possible benefits like kids adopting EA principles or making significant contributions. Factors that could select against EA values are discussed. Evidence is presented that traits like intelligence and altruism have genetic components and outliers could have outsized positive impact. Options for mitigating risks of kids hindering important work are considered, like using advanced reproductive technologies or extraordinary donors.

1. Should EAs have kids?
Or
“Shut Up, Go Forth and Multiply!”

2. Objections
 Having kids is intrinsically harmful
 Kids may not adopt EA principles
 The median smart kid contributes little
 It is more important to act now

3. Is having kids intrinsically bad?
 Even if you take the view that creating a new person is
intrinsically harmful, kids often have extrinsic benefits
 One example of an extrinsic benefit would be if your
kids became EAs and did a lot of good
 Even antinatalists should probably have 1 kid to
prevent 5 kids from being born

4. What factors select against EA
values?
 Weirdness
 Lack of prestige
 Irrationality on certain views or utility functions

5. Will your kids adopt EA principles?
 Certain weird beliefs have a reasonably high intergenerational retention rate e.g. cryonics has a retention rate of 50%, according to an Alcor employee
 Intelligence is probably 50% genetically determined; the other 50% is not due to shared environment, so could be genetic noise
 Current best guess is that altruism is 30-50% heritable, though this is much harder to study because you need to distinguish ideally altruistic tendencies from low-effort
“virtue signalling”
 Conscientiousness and extraversion are 40-50% heritable

6. Sam Bankman-Fried
 SBF is the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has a net
worth of about 26.5 billion at age 29
 His parents are EA-adjacent; his mother has published a book on
utilitarianism
 EA collectively spent 263 million in 2020, which is approximately
1/100 of SBF’s net worth

7. Median < Average
 More intelligence + altruism could be exponentially better, even
if the median is significantly lower than the average
 1 Newton raises the average EV of equivalently intelligent
scientists who did not achieve as much as he did
 1 Sam Bankman Fried or John Stuart Mill raises the average
EV of the children of utilitarians who did not achieve as much
good as they did

8. Short AI Timelines
 How certain are you?
 How much can you do personally to help FAI development?
 To what degree will a child hinder your ability to help? Can you
mitigate that in any way?
 How much good could your child do, if AGI timelines are longer
than your best guess?


9. Best ways to have kids?
 Ideally avoid procreating with your husband or wife, since you have probably selected him or her partly on the basis of
chemistry and sex appeal rather than napkin math
 Get Nobel laureate or successful entrepreneur/CEO/EA-extraordinaire sperm and egg donors (both?)
 Ask Sam Bankman Fried for his sperm (seriously)
 Use iterated embryo selection and other emerging reproductive technologies to select for high IQ
 Have 6+ kids
 Make sure they have good nutrition in the womb & growing up
 Teach them about EA & take their education seriously (e.g. if you have the means, consider tutors rather than school)