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Perhaps this is what will happen across the world in 200 years time? People in advanced economies seem less keen to have lots of children, perhaps vast tracts o
by sgt101 10y ago
Perhaps this is what will happen across the world in 200 years time? People in advanced economies seem less keen to have lots of children, perhaps vast tracts of the earth will be abandoned to wildlife?
I actually hope so, I wonder if culture will change and adapt and eventually find a new equilibrium, but at a much lower population. Perhaps people will enjoy reliving the experiences of people from "the crush". Perhaps they will struggle to understand the science of the artifacts that surround them and progress will effectively end - after all 10 billion people can go a lot faster than 100 million. There are no facts about the future.
- arkitaip 10y agoThe trend is towards larger and larger cities and city networks, not a Mad Max type of future.
- Snargorf 10y agoNot in 200 years. What we're seeing now is a partial die-off. Eventually, evolution will re-assert itself. The sub-populations who, for whatever reason, continue to grow in population will come to dominate the numbers, after the non-breeding groups die off. E.g. in America, fertility is passing below replacement rates - on average. But the Amish population still doubles every 20 years. In 200 years, there will be hundreds of millions of Amish. We could be looking at a world of Amish, Quiverfulls, poor tribalistic Africans, religious Muslims, and orthodox Jews. There will be very few left-liberals, the childfree movement will be gone (like the Shakers already are). Gays and other queer people may breed out of the gene pool if their modern freedom reduces the fertility of their genes. Modernity may very well be self-defeating, because the future belongs to those who show up.
- collyw 10y agoReligious nuts will rule. Not a good future.
- ggamecrazy 10y agoA lot of us are all descendants of religious nuts. I'm not too worried.
- collyw 10y agoConsidering the amount of problems that religion causes at present, I am more skeptical.
- mafribe 10y agoOur religious nut ancestors didn't have nuclear weapons.
- cjslep 10y agoYou're right, and so far the only religious nuts to have used nuclear weapons are Anglican Christian Americans. When should Americans start protesting their presence in the USA?
- yongjik 10y agoYet they managed to raze cities just fine. If anything, modern religious nuts are quite tame compared to our ancestors.
- ittekimasu 10y agoDigression: There is some reason to believe that "religion" has no real epistemological grounding outside the Abrahamic world.
- speeder 10y agoThis is not coincidence. The "traditional" policies and politics that many people claim that are "backward" or "evil", came from eras where the most important thing was breed soldiers like there is no tomorrow to fight against other tribes, then cities, then countries... The point of allowing men having multiple wives, but not women with multiple husbands, prohibiting homosexual relationships, virgin marriage, encouragement of marriage, prohibition of adultery, prohibition of divorce, militarism, and a long string of other policies, are geared to one simple thing: make women "pop out" babies that can pick up weapons and fight (as soon as 12 years old if needed) the fastest as possible. Those that follow these rules, will on long term always win, out of sheer numbers and resiliency.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoExcept that a few billion people can be exterminated by a few people if it comes to that, which is a very new situation.
- mrexroad 10y agoLikewise, having a population of 1-2B also introduces the risk of scaling beyond the food production capabilities of the land. Obviously an overpopulated country can (and likely will) take from an underpopulated country, but modern weapons create a new dynamic if an invading force attempting to occupation farm land or capture grain stores is viewed as mortal threat.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThat's exactly it, and it creates a situation in which relatively poor, very densely populated countries fight with each other for resources, rather than attempting to take from an underpopulated country armed to the teeth. I think we've seen a preview in the Middle East and North Africa, and gotten a hint of how Western nations are going to respond to the inevitable influx of refugees.
- Natales 10y agoMy biggest concern is the direct correlation to the reproductive rates and lower education in virtually every culture. More than specific concerns about particular religions or ethnic origins, I fear for a world where the uneducated rules.
- toasterlovin 10y agoThen you should have lots of kids! And encourage your intelligent friends to do the same.
- ginko 10y agoWell, it's not as if you can just choose to have kids.
- toasterlovin 10y agoTrue in the technical sense that a person cannot just unilaterally decide to have children RIGHT NOW. But most people, over the course of their life, have the opportunity to have children. In the developed world, a huge portion of these people decide to have 0 or 1 child.
- sdfin 10y agoHa, that's the starting premise of Idiocracy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
- Snargorf 10y agoIt's not in every culture, it's between cultures as well. Africa adds 30 millions people every year. Pretty much everywhere outside of Africa is below replacement fertility. In the 20th century, Africans were 10-15% of the world population; by the end of the 21st the could be >50%.
- int_19h 10y agoThe same problem was posited for China. Yet, as their quality of life improved, the problem had, essentially, resolved itself. Similar trends have been observed elsewhere. There's no reason to believe that Africa will be an exception from that rule.
- noobermin 10y ago>Gays and other queer people may breed out of the gene pool if their modern freedom reduces the fertility of their genes. By that logic gays shouldn't exist today.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoFor most of history whatever your sexuality, you married and had children. Period. You also did whatever else you did, and maybe you had a terrible marriage, but that probably wasn't unusual for straight people for most of history either.
- noobermin 10y agoLet me expand my objection, homosexuality not only exists in humans but in many other animals, many of which do not have social stigma of homosexuality.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoIt may just be that in any system as complicated as sexual aim and expression, you will have variations like homosexuality.
- nikdaheratik 10y agoActually no, historically large percentages of the population (whatever their sexuality), especially the male population, did not marry as it was very expensive to start their own household. That's one reason why so many gifts were traditionally given for weddings. Though you do have a point WRT divorce being very uncommon.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThat... seems wrong, but I don't know enough about this to dispute what you're saying. :|
- amargherio 10y agoHe's not saying that they shouldn't exist today, just that their genes will never make it back into the collective gene pool, stopping their traits and characteristics from ever propagating forward.
- adamsea 10y agoUntil the posthumans and transhumanists and left-liberals and queers get their baby-birthing clone facilities up and running.... #cyteen #arianeemory #reseune
- toasterlovin 10y agoYou still have to want to have children. Children are a hassle, even after they're out of the womb.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- JabavuAdams 10y agoWhy do we assume that non-majority sexualities are genetic? As society relaxes wrt sexuality, we may see that many more people who do not identify as gay per se may openly display flexible sexuality. E.g. saying you're left-handed is no big deal anymore. One day one's sexuality may be equally irrelevant.
- int_19h 10y agoWe don't assume it; we are still studying this extensively, and so far more evidence seems to be in favor of nature vs nurture. If it were a matter of "relaxing", you'd expect that children raised in homosexual families would tend to be more open about flexible sexuality, and more would identify as gay, or at least as non-hetero - but that is not the case. The ratio of children becoming homosexual vs heterosexual is the same in both homosexual and heterosexual families, insofar as our studies can identify. At the same time, there have been some observed correlations between sexuality and specific genetic markers. Really, the more interesting question at this point is whether it's mainly genetic, or mainly epigenetic.
- nikdaheratik 10y agoThis is just myopic. The reason why many of those groups have more children is because in any agrarian household, more children = more free labor = more productivity. This can kick in at even a very young age. In more urban centers, however, more children often means more cost for the family. It has next to nothing to do with religion, and in fact, most of the religious teachings that seem to encourage more fertility are probably just a case of putting the cart before the horse. Those teachings were emphasized because the households that listened to them already had a strong incentive to have more children. The future, as far as anyone is able to predict, will still have much more urban, educated, and "liberal" people than not, even if those households have fewer children individually. And this will be true so long as we remain an urban rather than an agrarian society.
- flashman 10y agoYou're extrapolating current trends as if they won't change in the future. Who is to say the Amish will continue to have as many children in the future? What if it turns out that reproduction is intrinsically tied to economic success, and the most successful groups of people always have declining birth rates?
- mrexroad 10y ago...or maybe there are advantages with not being faced with the crisis of how to handle unsustainable growth? I'd love to see population / GDP growth models reflect the "oh sh*t, there's no food for half the population" inflection point [edit: Any commentary for the downvote? impact on max-size of military aside, wouldn't a non-growing population be an advantage when many countries will be scrambling (with varying degrees of success) to scale food production to match population growth?
- autokad 10y agono population shrinking economy (that i know of) ever did anything better than depression. it always follows the same path: boom times as less people have what more people had followed by a never ending downward spiral.
- Animats 10y ago"Perhaps vast tracts of the earth will be abandoned to wildlife?" That's already happened in the US.[1] The Buffalo Commons proposal, to depopulate a large part of the Great Plains and let buffalo roam, was a joke when it was first proposed in 1987. Much of the depopulation has already happened. So far, not many buffalo, but they may come back. Small town America is slowly emptying out.[2] It has no function. Small towns existed mostly to support agriculture. Agriculture is only 3% of the US workforce. Most of the food comes from about 20% of the farms; the rest are marginal producers. Farming is doing fine; it just doesn't take many people. "Mill towns", where one big employer dominates, die when their mill closes. These can be sizable cities, such as Youngstown, OH. More often, they're small towns with one big plant. Young people leave; old people stay and die in place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Commons [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303325204579463761632103386 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023033252045794637...
- toomuchtodo 10y agoAutomate the rest of food production, and return most of the land to nature as preserves outside of major metros. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/science/e-o-wilson-half-earth-biodiversity.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/science/e-o-wilson-half-ea...
- taxicabjesus 10y ago> Most of the food comes from about 20% of the farms; the rest are marginal producers. Farming is doing fine; it just doesn't take many people. Better food is more labor-intensive. The best-tasting eggs I've ever bought were from a grass-fed beef farmer. He'd rotate his cattle through the pastures, and move the chickens to where the cattle had been previously. The chickens would stomp through the cow waste, and eat all the bugs. Industrial food is tasteless.
- Animats 10y agoFoodies claim that, but in blind testing, McDonalds does quite well.[1] [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/10/23/358324106/don-t-mock-these-organic-food-experts-for-praising-mcdonald-s http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/10/23/358324106/don...
- toasterlovin 10y agoWe are witnessing evolution in action. Most humans are genetically unfit for modern life. That is, their fertility drops below replacement level when they grow up in a developed country. But some humans seem to be immune to the reproductive trap of modern life, and they take advantage of the abundance available in developed countries to have lots of children. These people will make up the future of post second demographic transition[1] humanity. It seems like a lot of these people are incredibly religious (Amish, Haredi, Hutterites, Mennonites). But perhaps there are non-religious people in this group as well. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition#Second_demographic_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition#Second_...
- reddytowns 10y agoIt depends... if technology evolves fast enough, it could satiate human desires to the extent that even the people with the most extreme instincts to breed will lose interest. Evolution often can't work fast enough to thwart the pace of technology.
- toasterlovin 10y agoThis is true. I don't think it is a coincidence that most of the religious groups I mentioned (Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, and Haredi) have a very cautious stance toward new technology. Whether they can keep it up indefinitely is another question, though the Amish have been outbreeding the surrounding civilization at a 12x rate for about 100 years, during which most of what we call modern life was invented (mass personal transportation, most recreational drugs, TV, the Internet, mobile phones, etc.).
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoAnd yet demographically they are insignificant.
- toasterlovin 10y agoExponential growth has a way of catching up with negative growth...
- mathattack 10y agoBy and large "more capital per person" is good. People will live better. Perhaps at 100 million we won't be able to keep everything that 10 billion can keep in their heads, but computers and AI will make up the difference. (Once it's out of your head, does it matter whose it is in?) The planet will be much more survivable with smaller populations too.
- kamaal 10y ago>>Perhaps this is what will happen across the world in 200 years time? If people like Ray Kurzweil are right, we will all live inside computers. It won't matter what happens where. We get to simulate whatever we want.