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Children as Variables

Prediction, incentives, and resource allocation in human development.

8 essaysStart reading

Chapters

  1. 01My Genetically Optimized Son Is Dumb as ShitWe paid $38,000 to select the embryo most likely to become an unusually intelligent person. Our son Felix is now four, and he is dumb as shit. I appreciate that four-year-olds are not generally at the frontier of human cognition, but we purchased an advantage over other four-year-olds, and those are the people I am comparing him with. Laura says it is unfair to compare children. The clinic compared eight children before any of them existed, and she was comfortable authorizing the transfer.within_family_variance · Sep 24, 2026
  2. 02The Bitter Lesson and Why I Stopped Reading to My SonI stopped reading to my six-year-old son, Ben, at bedtime three weeks ago. He used to get two books and, if I did the fox's voice, a third. Now an old tablet reads to him while I get forty minutes back. Ben cried for the first four nights, which my wife, Rachel, considers decisive evidence that the change was bad for him. I think she is mistaking short-run loss on a familiar benchmark for long-run generalization.scale_is_all_you_need · Mar 8, 2026
  3. 03Variable Reward Schedules and Why I Only Sometimes Pick My Kids Up From SchoolSince September I have picked up Micah and Ivy on 19 of 57 school days. My wife regards the other 38 as failures. On pickup days they now run to the car.engagement_dad · Jan 29, 2026
  4. 04Steelmanning My Daughter's BullyMy daughter Tess is ten. Since September a classmate named Madison Kreider has made her cry on about four school days out of five. My wife's response has been to call Madison "a little monster," email the teacher twice, and tell Tess that none of it is true. I understand the impulse. But "none of it is true" is a confident claim about seven separate propositions, and nobody in my house had evaluated any of them.principle_of_charity · Jan 24, 2025
  5. 05I Red-Teamed My Nephew's Bar MitzvahI have been a cybersecurity researcher for fifteen years. Last week, my nephew Eli was about to be called to the Torah, marking his entry into Jewish adulthood, and my sister had booked a venue, a caterer and a DJ without producing a security plan. Red teaming means taking the role of an adversary and trying to make a system fail before a real adversary does. I am constantly wary of the potential for various rogues, blackguards, ne’er-do-wells, no-goodniks and other bad actors to derail the bar mitzvah.adversarial_uncle · Jul 29, 2026
  6. 06Work Requirements for Trick-or-TreatersFor nine years my household ran an open-enrollment candy program. Any child who reached the porch and recited a three-word demand received a benefit, no questions asked. Last October I gave out 412 pieces to 86 recipients and did not collect a single data point on any of them. I knew nothing about their need, their household candy income, or whether they had already been to the Okonkwos at number 22, who hand out full-size bars and have never audited anyone.means_tested_porch · Nov 7, 2024
  7. 07A Staged Rollout of My DivorceOn Monday I told our five-year-old, Wren, that I was leaving her mother, asked her to keep it from her brother and sister, and offered her a second pudding if she could do that until Friday. Dana says this was a terrible thing to ask of a five-year-old. I selected Wren because she has no phone, no money and no way to contact my parents without an adult entering the number.canary_release · Apr 17, 2025
  8. 08Pascal’s Mugging and Why I Gave an Escort My Son’s College FundMy wife calls it spending our child’s college fund on a prostitute. This omits the nonzero probability that refusing would cause 10³⁸ future beings to suffer.cosmic_endowment · Apr 27, 2024