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I think population control is worth discussing, but I do not see its implementation as ever being very feasible. I also don't think the demographic transition w

I think population control is worth discussing, but I do not see its implementation as ever being very feasible. I also don't think the demographic transition will last long. People are as affected by selection effects as any other animal. Those who choose not to have children will be out-breed by those with a more deliberate need for children. To the extent that this deliberate desire is heritable, (either genetically or mimetically or both) it will eventually reach fixation. As a side note, the way modern people riducle Malthus (both libertarian and liberals alike) is very arrogant. Of course there are temporary boons, even very large ones. His point was gains will eventually be eaten. In the absence of outside intervention by an agent with more power than any individual, there are very general reasons to believe he will be correct in the long run. However, I'm one of those nutters who thinks a technological singularity is reasonably plausible. So I think an AI speciation event (a sort of Cambrian explosion of non-biological intelligent agents, a key point here is selection operates just as much on non-biological agents and much faster) is more concerning than a population bomb.

brlewis 11y ago
I used to subscribe to the same theory, that having lots of children would breed itself into the dominant behavior. But that theory has not borne out in many developed countries. You actually need incentives to get educated people to have more children; it's a lot of work. If the theory were correct, this wouldn't be a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  I agree that the demographic transition has occurred; I do not think it will last.
  - brlewis 11y ago
    What mechanism do you think will cause it not to last? Why would the same mechanism allow it to occur in the first place? The U.S. had a lot of large families generations ago. This behavior not been generally inherited. What makes you think the future will be different from what we've observed so far?
    - Symmetry 11y ago
      Evolution. The propensity to have many children in our current environment was not selected for previously because our species evolution didn't occur in this environment. But it is selected for now.
    - WildUtah 11y ago
      We had two massively destructive events that devastated the human population in the twentieth century. The first was the development of reliable birth control and the second was widespread learning about fertility cycles. For the first time, people could be in control of their fertility without celibacy. Our genes programmed us to be mostly unable to be celibate but the allowed us to continue wishing that we could have fewer children so that we could care for them better and not see so many of them crowded in misery and starving. Once reliably vulcanized and molded rubber was practical around 1910, our wish for fewer children could be realized and evolution is slowly breeding out the desire to have a reasonable number of children and stop. The pill and rhythm just intensified the effect. You mostly see evolution in the form of population replacement. Educated and modern Iranians and Egyptians, along with other Middle East and Sahel populations filled up cities and created an Islamic rebirth of learned culture, education, and prosperity in the early and mid 1900s. The people who stayed behind in rural areas continued having eight babies each while the urbanites averaged one. It's amazing to see the photos of free educated modern young men and especially women on the streets of Cairo or Teheran in the 1950s. Those people planned to educate the next generation into modernity but the next generation weren't their children; they were the children of the villages they left behind. Now we have a fertile and intensely fundamentalist, rural, and violent predominant culture in those nations and the renascence exists only in exile populations in the West. European descended populations that plan ahead to have fewer babies are being replaced by more fertile populations from elsewhere across Europe and by native populations in Latin America. Within the USA, you can watch Mormons and fertile evangelicals expand their share of the white population every generation. The demographic transition is a temporary thing. Evolution absolutely demands it. Creationism or Lamarckism is not going to just start being true because it would be convenient to our demographic comfort.
      - selimthegrim 11y ago
cousin_it 11y ago
I'm not too afraid. We already have many ideas to reduce population growth, some more drastic than others. In fact it already happens by itself as countries get richer. Even if these ideas stop working in the future, a government can come up with new ideas faster than evolution can react.

brlewis 11y ago

I used to subscribe to the same theory, that having lots of children would breed itself into the dominant behavior. But that theory has not borne out in many developed countries. You actually need incentives to get educated people to have more children; it's a lot of work. If the theory were correct, this wouldn't be a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
I agree that the demographic transition has occurred; I do not think it will last.
- brlewis 11y ago
  What mechanism do you think will cause it not to last? Why would the same mechanism allow it to occur in the first place? The U.S. had a lot of large families generations ago. This behavior not been generally inherited. What makes you think the future will be different from what we've observed so far?
  - Symmetry 11y ago
    Evolution. The propensity to have many children in our current environment was not selected for previously because our species evolution didn't occur in this environment. But it is selected for now.
  - WildUtah 11y ago
    We had two massively destructive events that devastated the human population in the twentieth century. The first was the development of reliable birth control and the second was widespread learning about fertility cycles. For the first time, people could be in control of their fertility without celibacy. Our genes programmed us to be mostly unable to be celibate but the allowed us to continue wishing that we could have fewer children so that we could care for them better and not see so many of them crowded in misery and starving. Once reliably vulcanized and molded rubber was practical around 1910, our wish for fewer children could be realized and evolution is slowly breeding out the desire to have a reasonable number of children and stop. The pill and rhythm just intensified the effect. You mostly see evolution in the form of population replacement. Educated and modern Iranians and Egyptians, along with other Middle East and Sahel populations filled up cities and created an Islamic rebirth of learned culture, education, and prosperity in the early and mid 1900s. The people who stayed behind in rural areas continued having eight babies each while the urbanites averaged one. It's amazing to see the photos of free educated modern young men and especially women on the streets of Cairo or Teheran in the 1950s. Those people planned to educate the next generation into modernity but the next generation weren't their children; they were the children of the villages they left behind. Now we have a fertile and intensely fundamentalist, rural, and violent predominant culture in those nations and the renascence exists only in exile populations in the West. European descended populations that plan ahead to have fewer babies are being replaced by more fertile populations from elsewhere across Europe and by native populations in Latin America. Within the USA, you can watch Mormons and fertile evangelicals expand their share of the white population every generation. The demographic transition is a temporary thing. Evolution absolutely demands it. Creationism or Lamarckism is not going to just start being true because it would be convenient to our demographic comfort.
    - selimthegrim 11y ago

cousin_it 11y ago

I'm not too afraid. We already have many ideas to reduce population growth, some more drastic than others. In fact it already happens by itself as countries get richer. Even if these ideas stop working in the future, a government can come up with new ideas faster than evolution can react.