https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/deceptively-aligned-mesa-optimizers
Scott claims that he doesn't want to donate sperm to maximize his reproductive fitness. But is donating sperm a good strategy for that (where applicable)?
I plan to research this over the next month and resolve this market to my guess on the proportion of fertile men for whom it would be a good strategy.
Jun 21, 6:00pm: it is not a good strategy for fertile men who are above the local age cutoff for donation.
It looks like there is an age cutoff for sperm donation which would mean that many fertile men are ineligible, certainly more than the 8% implies by current market odds. How were bettors thinking I would handle that?
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@MartinRandall We're looking at the average effect, no? They might bring down the average, but they won't bring it below zero. They can't underperform the status quo because they're doing the status quo.
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@MichaelWheatley So if 20% of fertile men can't donate, but it's a good strategy for the other 80% you'd be happy if I resolved to 80%, do I understand you right?
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@MartinRandall I would expect it to resolve YES or NO based on whether the average effect comes out to greater than or less than zero.
Imagine a market, "Does doubling down on 11 improve your payout in blackjack?" I would expect that to resolve YES even though 30% of the time you get unlucky and the gamble doesn't pay off.
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@MichaelWheatley that's not what I wrote in the description. I'm going to resolve to prob.
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@MartinRandall oops, that's what I get for skimming.
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@MichaelWheatley it'd be something along the lines of "the actual direct reproductive benefit of donating sperm is empirically quite low, and is outweighed by the negative reproductive externalities (aka negative impact on your chances of having and raising kids the more traditional way) of being the type of person who spends a lot of time donating sperm".
I'm not saying that is a correct argument, necessarily - but if there is a correct argument against it, I would bet it takes something like that form.
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Curious where you end up here. My initial instinct is "no", but I'd find it somewhat difficult to articulate precisely why. If I were to try, it'd basically be a product of combining empirical questions (how many biological children is any given sperm donor actually going to have on average?) with social ones (are children who don't know their biological father generally speaking better off? Seems like there's a ton of data for NO). I'd bet that when it all shakes out, it's generally speaking better for everyone to just have kids the old fashioned way and raise them yourself (where possible, obviously).
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