craschworks

I want to live in a world filled with smart, interesting people. Therefore, I have an interest in seeing that more smart, interesting kids are raised to adulthood. Unfortunately,a dismaying number of smart, interesting couples on my friend's list have no plans to have children.

Of course, I agree with the logic of their position–the direct and opportunity costs of having children are huge. It's easy for me to be wistful for the kids that will never be — I'm not the one paying the cost. But it's disheartening to think that their genes will disappear from the gene pool.

On the other hand, in a few hundred years or so, it will likely be a moot point anyway — I expect that to the extent most people reproduce at all, it will be via robotic children. And in the relatively near-term, I expect that children will be heavily tweaked to optimize their genetics before birth. So, as long as we know how to reproduce the 'good genes' at will, nothing has truly been lost. And if anti-aging research pans out, most of the child-free couples themselves will still be around.