All of Matt_in_AZ's Comments + Replies
Great post. As the father of a daughter in her second year of college, I'd make two quick comments:
- The cost estimates of raising a child -- at least in our case -- our vastly overblown.
- This might be impossible to answer for sure, but seems a more important question than it seems to be given credit: "Finally we may ask whether parenthood – and the resulting person created – will benefit the wider world?" Not that this would be the norm, but because of our daughter, there are many more vegetarians and non-chicken-eating people in the world. At
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10y
Thank you.
I think my reluctance to give a lot of argumentative weight to the benefits my child might add to the world come from how hard it is to be certain - at least from this end. I'm very much aware of being new to the parenting game with untested skills. Also, while both Toby and I have parents who feel strongly about justice and equality, and who almost certainly helped form us to who we are, we also have siblings who differ from us. I am trying not to have too specific a set of expectations for my child. However your daughter sounds like someone to be very proud of - congratulations, and well done!
"We will have content there to help people learn about the core concepts behind EA, as well as lots of links to other organisations" One thing psychological research warns about is the "curse of choice" -- give people too many options, and they end up choosing nothing (or they choose the easiest, as per your "give 1% to Oxfam and they're done" example). Organizing the large amount of information and options available such that no one is scared off will be a difficult but vital task.