I don't want the world to be populated by people who think like me. I just appreciate it for what it is.
It's a big old interesting world, and I'll only ever get to see bits of it.
There are so many people in the world, all of them different, each of them thinking different things and trying to get to different places. That's what I like about the world. It's an interesting, surprising place, full of variety, unexpected schema, and ways to do things that have never occurred to me.
What parents want for their kids is just the starting point for kids anyway. Where they end up and why, who knows?
I didn’t want kids for the same reasons, and because I am highly anxious and the world seems pretty grim place.
Ended up marrying a girl who wanted kids, so now we have kids. I am happy to be parent but now that I am hanging out with other parents, there are no longer intellectual discussions. Everyone seems more focused on the money. And honestly it seems there is a relationship between number of kids and intelligence. These people are happier though.
Now I sort of hope my kids don’t think like me. Even if it means overpopulation.
I think that very few interesting behavioral traits are so simple as to have a binary presence depending on one mutation. Instead, we inherit complex systems of behavioral tendencies which can be actively expressed or silently carried depending on circumstance. Similarly, epigenetics have been demonstrated to even carry some memory of circumstances requiring trait expression across generations. This further "smears" adaptation over time. Also, these notions of adaptation and evolutionary pressure are statistical concepts applied whole populations, not some morality play embodied by individual actors who evolve or perish.
For nearly every situation where one can worry about valuable traits dying out due to non-reproduction, can we not just as easily imagine that it is expression of well-tested, adaptive traits already present in our broader gene pool? It is quite arbitrary to embrace evolutionary ideas and yet decide that one's impulses and inherited tendencies are somehow maladaptive and must be denied.
The impulses could be a refined adaptive trait which serves to protect the broader gene line of families and communities. Why should one level of meta-analysis be granted a higher value? Perhaps the pure impulse without meta-analysis is the real value. Or perhaps it is two levels: first considering to procreate in spite of the lack of desire, then realizing that this second guessing is unnecessary...
You are a draw from the pool of genes of your ancestors - with mutations.
Assuming a specific mutation didn’t give you an evolutionary advantage that you’d feel compelled to pass on, sometimes the optimum play is to optimize for the _pool of genes_ you came from and not your specific draw.
There is an counter-intuitive evolutionary advantage to altruistic behavior, in which an organism can most efficiently propagate its own genes by increasing the probability of the overall species/sub-species survival - even if that means self-sacrifice.
I don’t regret this decision.
Whilst I might have enjoyed being a parent, had things gone that way, there’s infinitely much to enjoy about being alive solo and free, and nothing to worry about in the aftermath.