Considerations on Procreation

Not having kids – is it like drinking unicorn blood, in that you’ll lead a cursed life, a half-life?

How The Woman Got Her Period (“The endometrium seals off our main blood supply from the newly implanted embryo. The growing placenta literally burrows through this layer, rips into arterial walls and re-wires them to channel blood straight to the hungry embryo. It delves deep into the surrounding tissues, razes them and pumps the arteries full of hormones so they expand into the space created. It paralyzes these arteries so the mother cannot even constrict them. What this means is that the growing fetus now has direct, unrestricted access to its mother’s blood supply. It can manufacture hormones and use them to manipulate her.”)

DeathStalker 4!

Steven said something about people living today don’t have great lives compared to people of the past. He couldn’t find a link to this in particular, but it seems related to Antinatalism.

The monetary value of human life by US agency, and calculating the value of future lives.

Survey of what age of child-death makes people the most sad.

Robin Hanson on Lots of People Now vs Very Few People For A Long Time, in four parts: Us v Them, Allies, Genocide, and Personal.

Turkheimer’s Three Laws of Behavior Genetics

Vegan Offsets

Eneasz was wrong – only 8% of asian men are descended from Genghis Khan

Bryan Caplan’s book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think

Paul Bloom book on kid’s life outcomes being most gene-driven, so don’t sweat parenting too much. He said this one of the times he was on the Sam Harris Podcast. (Here or here)

Jonathan Coultan’s songs

John Hodgman’s book of lies <3

We haven’t been able to track down the story on the mansion in California where single parents and their children live together, but it probably exists.

Related: A multi-generational intentional community supporting foster/adoptive families.

Hand-painted masterpieces, recreated by the thousands, in Dafen – China’s Oil Painting Village.

Steven said something about a survey of skeptics offered a hypothetical $10,000 to exchange your wedding ring for a duplicate. He couldn’t find the link, but he’s pretty sure Massimo Pigliucci was talking about it at TAM 8. (Here’s his powerpoint from the talk. Either I’m misremembering or he talked about it during QA).

RadioLab Episode on Triage (aka Killing Old Ladies)

Please don’t support tiger cub petting or their use in entertainment.  Siegfried and Roy‘s tigers are dangerously inbred. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums statement against breeding white tigers. – Katrina

Do NOT firebomb you local RNC office (or any other place for that matter)

Good article on the annual Turing Test Competition. The Most Human Human is a book on the same. Official site of the Loebner Prize here.