Rationalism is leading people to weirder places than ever. A case in point is Malcolm and Simone Collins, a Pennsylvania couple who have four children and hope to have at least seven, and founded a nonprofit to convince more people to do the same. They’re in the news frequently, including an interview in the Guardian where they explain their natalist philosophy.

The most attention-getting part is that the Collinses are atheists. They don’t belong to Quiverfull or any of the other patriarchal religious cults which teach that God commands us to have as many children as possible. Quite the opposite:

The Collinses are atheists; they believe in science and data, studies and research. Their pronatalism is born from the hyper-rational effective altruism movement – most recently made notorious by Sam Bankman-Fried – which uses utilitarian principles and cool-headed logic to determine what is best for life on Earth.

As with effective altruism or longtermism, reading about their philosophy gave me intellectual vertigo, because it starts off with seemingly-reasonable premises but ends up in a bizarre place. At a generous estimate, I’d say I agree with about 70% of what they say – but the remaining 30% jumps the tracks and becomes ludicrous nonsense.

I’ll start with the good. They claim to be gender egalitarians; both of them agree that Malcolm does all the parenting after their babies turn 18 months old. They also say they’re pro-choice and in favor of flexible work policies that are easier on working parents.

The Collinses argue that their natalism is rooted in concern for the future of human civilization. As more people delay childbearing and have fewer kids, many industrialized countries, from the U.S. to Europe to China, are having children at lower than replacement rates. If this trend continues over decades, populations will shrink, even crash. Social welfare programs and pension funds will run dry.

What’s worse, against a backdrop of shrinking population, the cultures that prosper could end up being the ones that have the least concern for women’s autonomy:

The Collinses say women’s rights will suffer unless the birthrate improves. “The only cultural groups that survive will be the ones that don’t give women a choice. And that’s a terrifying world for us,” says Malcolm, wide eyed. “People are like, ‘You’re bringing a Handmaid’s Tale into the world!’ – that’s exactly what we’re trying to prevent.”

One more thing I agree with is this: they reject the mindset, born from capitalist marketing, that parents have an obligation to pay for every possible activity that might give their children an advantage (some people call this Ivy League Preschool Syndrome):

“People say this to themselves. But – speaking as someone who has a lot of wealthy friends – people just upgrade their lifestyle as they earn more money. We want to have tons of kids, but as a result of that, we’re not going to be able to send them to private school. We’re not going to be able to pay for them to go to college.” The Collinses plan to home school all their children.

“We also don’t raise them like they’re retired millionaires, which is what many Americans do: driving them like private chauffeurs to soccer, to juggling and robotics class. We’re just not going to do that,” says Simone, still folding vests.

“When people say, ‘I can’t afford kids,’ what they mean is, ‘I cannot afford to have kids at the standards that I find to be culturally normative,” Malcolm continues.

To be clear, I don’t think it’s mandatory to send kids to private school, or to sign them up for other expensive extracurriculars to pad their resumes. Those mostly serve to perpetuate class privilege. I do think it’s good to make sure you’re in a position to give your kids some assistance with college, if that’s where they choose to go.

Those are the good, or at least less objectionable, parts of their philosophy. Now for the bad ones.

All the Collinses’ children were conceived through IVF. They’re using genetic screening on their frozen embryos to pick the ones that supposedly will be the most intelligent and successful. I doubt whether this is knowable, and it recalls a long and ugly history of eugenics.

They’re also involved in politics – as Republicans. Malcolm says he’s not racist, but he’s shown few qualms about sharing the stage at conservative conferences with white supremacists pushing great-replacement conspiracies. In fairness, he says he’s doing it to convert them; but also in fairness, it’s typically overconfident – some would say arrogant – of a white rationalist to assume that the influence only runs one way.

I have a simple policy: I won’t share a stage with racists. If you want to debate them, you should do it in a way that doesn’t give them a public platform to spew hate. What does their vaunted rationalism say about the likelihood of converting the general public to their philosophy, if they’re willing to rub elbows with white supremacists?

Then there’s the most infamous part of the Guardian article. It’s the slap heard round the world:

Torsten has knocked the table with his foot and caused it to teeter, to almost topple, before it rights itself. Immediately – like a reflex – Malcolm hits him in the face.

It is not a heavy blow, but it is a slap with the palm of his hand direct to his two-year-old son’s face that’s firm enough for me to hear on my voice recorder when I play it back later. And Malcolm has done it in the middle of a public place, in front of a journalist, who he knows is recording everything.

…Smacking is not illegal in Pennsylvania. But the way Malcolm has done it – so casually, so openly, and to such a young child – leaves me speechless.

…Maybe he noticed how appalled I was when he hit Torsten. On the way back to the farmhouse, Malcolm tells me that he and Simone have developed a parenting style based on something she observed when she saw tigers in the wild: they react to bad behaviour from their cubs with a paw, a quick negative response in the moment, which they find very effective with their own kids. “I was just giving you the context so you don’t think I’m abusive or something,” he says.

Above and beyond the cruelty of striking a child, this is all the more shocking because it’s so incongruous. I can concede that the Collinses at least have reasons for most of the things they’re doing, even if they’re reasons I disagree with or find bizarre. This – his willingness to smack a toddler in the face because tigers do it (!?) – is the stark exception. Is this a rational strategy?

Nature doesn’t exist for us to draw moral lessons from. Tiger males kill cubs sired by competitors, but that doesn’t make it OK for us. You’re not allowed to hit another adult to make them do what you want; that’s a crime. Why should it be different with children?

If anything, it’s worse to hit a child who’s small and helpless. Robert Ingersoll said this in 1877, and he’s still right:

I tell you the children have the same rights that we have, and we ought to treat them as though they were human beings. They should be reared with love, with kindness, with tenderness, and not with brutality. That is my idea of children.

…Do not treat your children like orthodox posts to be set in a row. Treat them like trees that need light and sun and air. Be fair and honest with them; give them a chance. Recollect that their rights are equal to yours. Do not have it in your mind that you must govern them; that they must obey. Throw away forever the idea of master and slave.

To be clear, I don’t think every instance of swatting or slapping a child should be prosecuted as abuse. Parents are human beings with emotions like everyone else, and parenting tests your patience to the limit. I’ve never hit my son, but I understand it’s possible to lose one’s temper. However, there’s a big difference between doing it in the heat of the moment, and recognizing it’s wrong, versus doing it on purpose, coolly and with forethought.

My biggest question to all natalists, religious or secular, is: How long do you expect the population to grow? Where does it stop?

Infinite growth is the mentality of a cancer cell. The population can’t increase forever on a finite planet, and right now, space colonization is nothing but sci-fi fantasy. It has to level off eventually. If we do it by choice, by voluntarily reproducing less, it will be better for us than if we slam into natural limits and die back like any other species that overshoots the capacity of its environment.

Natalism is unnecessary. We’re in no danger of running out of people. Even with slowing birth rates, the population is forecast to plateau around 10 billion by 2100. That’s plenty of humans to accomplish anything we might desire, if they’re all educated and lifted out of poverty.

As I said in my post on the decline of West Virginia, the only barrier is getting people from where they are to where labor is needed: in other words, immigration. I don’t know what the Collinses’ view on this is (although, again, they seem happy enough to share a stage with white supremacists). But if you’re concerned about population shrinkage, but against open borders, that’s the number-one giveaway that you’re a racist.