What is the truth around happiness?
Marriage
>> parents are happier. You get happier
when you get happier.
>> No, not true. Especially women take a
happiness hit. Women in diapers.
>> They do not. Their happiness. No.
Intentional fertility causes a rise in
happiness. The problem is we mix
unintentional and intentional fertility
in the data. It's very difficult to
separate because you don't have
preferences. I guarantee you in
longitudinal data, happiness rises
shortterm.
In the long run, it's a little more
ambiguous because happiness scales reset
over time. Happiness rises with
engagement. That is, it rises before
marriage basically, but then marriage
locks it in. If you don't get married,
the happiness of a cohabiting union
rapidly returns to baseline. The
happiness of a married union uh tends to
remain above baseline as long as you
remain married, which people don't
always. Um, but widowage and divorce
tend to return you to your premarital
happiness level. There's three different
longitudinal surveys I can demonstrate
all this in. Having kids that you want
to have, which is a big stipulation,
unwanted kids, unintended kids is a
different dynamic, but having kids you
want to have increases happiness. Um, in
the most robust models we know of,
unintended fertility is a different
beast. Um, and it is true that in every
in almost every survey, um, unless you
add like a million controls where you're
basically controlling away the effect of
having kids, people with kids are
happier. And one reason is because
happier people have more kids
>> especially when there's like abundant
child care in that in that country but
more social in places where there's less
social support which is like the modern
developed country like in the United
States where you're not really getting a
lot of help especially if you're a
middle class or above woman especially
do take a short-term hit per the
research that I've seen and then it goes
up over the long run but I think this
focus on hedonistic happiness is is over
wrought and again it's cultural you have
to look for meaning beyond that um and I
mean we also have to look at really
pragmatic For what it's worth, I would
say meaningfulness is more important.
>> We can talk about broken dating markets,
but like what are we we can't we can't
fix it. I mean, what my my husband and I
literally have an index of other parents
with kids close to our age. We're going
to intermar our children. My new way of
skezing on people is like I want our
children to intermar like we're we
parents used to be very involved in
matchmaking their children. And so we
have to talk about what are we actually
going to do because we can't fix the
swipe based dating model. That's gone.
It's done. Uh what we're trying to do
now is just manually matchmake again.
Maybe bring back the London. See
matchmaking is coming back. It is
totally coming back. Arranged marriages.
People are like I mean zoomers are like
sign me. Where do I sign up for the
arranged marriage group you guys have?
Like it is it is a real church.
>> Well church is a big thing honestly like
Catholic colleges religious colleges are
like the new hottest place to find a
spouse. I mean we need to look at what
practically to do because we can talk
about this big problem. The whole thing
is like so what? I guess I'm going to
like die alone and and without any sort
of support or I'm never going to marry.
There are many things that people can do
now. And that's what's important too is
this is a wicked problem. It's very
scary. But like with every endemic and
existential problem, there are
manageable things that you can do. Like
if you're worried about, you know,
changing sea levels, like maybe we
should look at like managing um a mass
migration and getting people off
coastlines and shifting the home
insurance market and shifting
regulation, expecting it to happen. We
need to look at how we on a micro and
macro level are going to manage falling
and declining fertility rates and our
own personal lives based on the
expectation of that. And I think too
much of the discussion around
demographic apps is like is this a real
problem? Like how bad is it? Let's all
like ruminate on that. When really it's
like okay well what are we going to do?
And some of the solutions are very
radical. Like literally arranged
marriages sounds kind of crazy but this
is what we've come to. And I think very
similar to CO people are like, "Oh, this
will like blow over in a couple months
and like the world shuts down. This is
another co you think this can't possibly
get super bad. It's not going to be be
so crazy. It's going to be profoundly
more crazy than CO. This is cities
crumbling. This is pension funds falling
apart. This is people dying on mass.
Millions and millions of people. Uh we
need to realize that, but then also just
actually plan for that. No more
performative pernatalism, actual
prenatalism.
>> Can you comment on the dying on mass? I
just want to mention because I don't
know if if all listeners will will get
this
>> in industrialized countries our social
support systems are probably good enough
probably that for the most part most old
people will kind of get through. It's
places like Thailand where fertility is
below one and the money is not there to
support a big social security system for
old people. That's and where the health
system is not as strong or like India or
increasingly African countries. Those
are the places where the death toll will
become apocalyptic.
>> Well, I I I agree. Places like Thailand
are in for an extraordinary level of old
age loneliness and challenges. India. My
gosh, my worry about India population
right now is its aging population two,
three decades from now. No one's
thinking about that. That's a
humanitarian crisis uh is a ticking time
bomb. But in terms of happiness, I think
one of the things we have to isolate out
here is the 10% of people who don't want
children. Now, in making the Birth Gap
documentary, I interviewed five, six
women, 40s, 50s, who had never wanted a
child ever,
>> and they're completely happy.
>> Yep.
>> And
>> that's why I emphasize wanted children,
>> right? Yeah.
>> So, when you average happiness across
women and don't separate those out,
you're kind of missing something. Now th
those people who don't want women or who
don't want children.
I believe it's almost binary.
Now you change from not
>> unconditional. Everyone has a price. But
a a a life that's hedonistic and single
and childless can be perfectly fun and
we should design around that. I mean
like our it's incredibly fun. I I think
though that the the people who never
ever ever have the desire, there is
something that means that they will be
happy.
>> Yeah.
>> Whether they have kids or not, that does
not manifest itself. And those people
are just postponing it.
>> They're going to be super h like we're
we're big pornatalists. All of our time
now is in developing. We're doing like
we're building an AI platform. It's it's
called RFAB AI. We're trying to replace
humans, replace employees, replace
husbands and wives. Like you can see
this all happening with other people who
are in AI as well who are also
pronatalists. They're investing in all
this repro tech. They're having a lot of
kids themselves. Meanwhile, they're also
replacing humans for all the people who
choose to not create new humans, to not
own the future. And those pe I think AI
can be this literal dexmachina that's
coming in and going to correct for a lot
of this. A lot of the loneliness, a lot
of the lack of happiness. These people
are going to die in their little
pleasure pods with their fake families
or their fake realities and they're
going to be happy and I want them to be
happy. And we're literally trying to
build things to make them happy. Are you
I do you want them to be happy? There's
a there's a glee. There's a note of
glee.
>> It's gross when people aren't happy.
It's very like disruptive. Their cries
are annoying. Um so I I do I want them I
I believe in for example euthanasia. I
love this. I love I love euthania.
>> No, I think it's terrible.
>> It's Oh, it's beautiful. Is the smartest
thing Canada ever did. That's going to
be the solution to healthcare in the
future.
>> No, I I I think it creates a society
where I already see it. I've heard it
from young people in Japan who are
looking older people saying why are they
still here?
>> No, really. They they need to we need
made in Japan. We need made in we need
>> youth in Asia. I think it's worth noting
like just a second ago I was saying well
kids might make happiness and you said
well we shouldn't prioritize happiness
so much.
>> Yeah.
>> But when it comes to youth in Asia well
people shouldn't be unhappy. But I would
say no old people you know suffering
people their unhappiness is not a
problem. meaningfulness is ultimately
the greatest value and I think we can
argue is suffering meaningful or not but
earlier you said you know suffering the
avoidance of ne you know negative
utilitarianism the avoidance of
suffering is a kind of bankrupt view and
I would agree I would just strongly
agree and say whatever the broader
wisdom of euthanasia and I think that's
a whole debate which we can do
>> I want to see I want to see that book be
written the wisdom of euthanasia
>> but whatever it is I would just say that
it's not about suffering or happiness
because ultimately what truly makes
human lives worthwhile is not the
quotient of their suffering or the
number of their util utils. It is
meaningfulness and it is the things that
they build of benefit for others.
>> Well, then let the ones who lack meaning
get out of the way. All right? And this
is not like I will die by my own hands
if I'm lucky enough to live long enough.
When I'm no longer in useful, I will end
myself. Probably not the metric. But
look, it's not. So one of the one of the
problems that I see with that again is
that there are certain people who have
not through really any fault of their
own had 90% of women want to have kids.
Right? Around about four in five
childless women who breach the top of
their reproductive threshold say that
that didn't have kids say that they
wanted to. 10% can't. 10% don't want to.
80% did. It seems to me that we kind of
have a duty to try and help people live
the better lives that they can. It's the
same reason that we tell people that
smoking is bad for them. The same reason
that they tell people that they should
moderate their alcohol. It's the same
reason that we tell people they should
get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. And
that to someone that's in a health
desert or someone that's in the
equivalent of an information desert,
this is the same for 80% of women who
reach menopause, can't have kids, and
didn't have kids. 80% of them.
>> Is this still correct this data? Yes.
So, and to me, even if we were to solve
this phenomenon through, let's say,
people having larger families, those who
do have families, and we still have this
contingent, large contingent of people
who dreamed of having families and end
up childless for life. That's still a
major crisis to me that we still need to
address.
>> I don't want it bad enough. Look, there
are
>> No, I don't agree. No, there are a super
infertile. I have five kids. How does
that work? We made it work. We slept on
a mattress on a floor for a year.
>> You had someone to do that with.
>> You You can do it by yourself. And we've
met so many people who have. No. No.
>> Well, but hold on. You can do it by
yourself, but let's go back to this.
People don't just want kids. They want a
specific kind of family. They might want
it very, very badly. So, and what you
all have is beautiful for you all, but
it's not what everyone is going to want.
>> Then they can go out and get it.
>> But my point is, some people's version
of family day is not something you can
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