Fatherhood

`4:20:02`

I always thought about burdens as a negative things. Why would I want the burden of a child? I might screw it up. I might be a bad parent. They might have bad... all this stuff, right? All the reasons why you shouldn't. And so few voices articulating why you should. — Yeah, but there I should also add on top of that thing you mentioned currently, perhaps in the west, the matchmaking process is broken. Is broken and technology made it worse. Yeah, it's fascinating. This whole thing that that hasn't been solved. So hiring great teams, that's probably been solved the best out of matchmaking. Finding great people to hire. Second, finding great friends. That's like, that's also hasn't been solved. — And it's breaking down. — It's breaking down. And third is matchmaking for like relationships. That's like the worst. And in fact, technology made it even worse. It's fascinating. — It is. It's a great example again of how all the greatest intentions

`4:21:04`

still led us straight to hell. I really enjoyed Louis Perry's analysis of the sexual revolution not being an unqualified good, which was something I hadn't thought about at all before she articulated it. That of course women should be able to have freedom and self determination and abortions and all of these things. And Louise Perry is not arguing against that either, of course. But there are second order facts that we don't appreciate at the time and we may not have ready-made solutions for. And that's just interesting. You make life better in a million different ways and somehow we end up more miserable. Why is that? Why is it that humans find meaning in hardship? And I think some of that is that it's a difficult question to answers through science. And again, Peterson articulates well

`4:22:05`

this idea that you have to find some of it through art, some of it through authors, some of it through different... I was just about to say modes of knowing before I stopped myself, because that sounds like woo bullshit. But there are different ways to acquire those deep lessons that sort of paper is not gonna tell you. — I mean, this is really, the point also applies to religion, for example. If you remove from society the software of religion, you better have a good replacement. — And we've had a bunch of bad replacements, especially over the last few decades. Religion is one of those things I've struggled with a lot because I'm not religious. I sort of wish I was. I can now fully appreciate the enormous value having an operating system like that

`4:23:06`

brings not just at the individual level, but rather at a societal level. And it's not clear at all what the answer is. I think we've tried a lot of dead ends when it came to replacements and people have been filling that void in a million different ways that seem worse than all the religions, despite their faults in a myriad of ways have been able to deliver. — Yeah, religions like the cobalt code. It's just... — Yes, it's the institutions where we don't fully understand the rules and why they're there and what's gonna happen if we remove them. Yeah, some of them seems obvious to me are just bullshit of the time. Oh, you should need whatever shellfish, because in that region of the world. There was something, something, something, okay, fine. But there's a bunch of other things that are pivotal to keeping society functioning for the long term, and we don't fully understand which is which. What's the bullshit and what's the load-bearing pillars of society. — Can you speak to the hit on productivity that kids have?

`4:24:09`

Did they increase your productivity, decrease it, or is that even the wrong question to ask? — I think it's one of the reasons why ambitious people are often afraid of having children because they think I have so much more to do and I barely have enough time now. How would I possibly be able to accomplish the things I wanna accomplish if I add another human into the mix? Now, A, we've always worked 40 hours a week, not 80 or 100 or 120. I think that's very beneficial. B, kids don't exist in this vacuum of just them alone being entered into your life. Hopefully there's a partner. And in my life, I'm married to a wonderful woman who decided to stop working her corporate job when we got together and have been able to carry a huge part of that responsibility. I was just about to say burden. And I think that's exactly how it often gets presented, especially from a feminist perspective,