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> Other events (if in the next decades) that might kill billions of humans: > > - meteorites. No asteroid large enough to kill billions of humans is likely to
by grondilu 9y ago
> Other events (if in the next decades) that might kill billions of humans:
>
> - meteorites.
No asteroid large enough to kill billions of humans is likely to impact Earth in this century. After that, it's likely that humanity will be so advanced that it'll be able to either mitigate or deter an impact of any magnitude.
An overlooked possibility imho would be a catastrophic population decline[1]. Basically women not having children anymore. Japanese style, only worse.
It's difficult to imagine it leading to extinction, since there will always be groups, at the very least religious groups, who will keep having babies. But still, it wouldn't take much of a cultural change for it to expand to all women.
Not saying it's plausible, but to me in terms of population dynamics it's at least as much of a concern as climate change (by this I mean that I believe reproductive behavior will have more impact on demography than climate change).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline
- gepi79 9y agoIMO the problem today is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation. I can not imagine that lack of babies could ever become a problem for humanity until humans decide to build humans so that the "natural human species" dies out. The solution for the aging population: - Automation. - Biochemical solutions and genetic engineering to remain/become capable. Replacement of natural body parts by machine body parts.
- grondilu 9y ago> IMO the problem today is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation. Worrying about overpopulation is short-sighted. Also, no matter what kind of problems overpopulation brings, it's hard to imagine how that could lead to extinction, which is what we were discussing.
- gepi79 9y agoOverpopulation is a problem right now. I mentioned overpopulation as reply to the fear of too few babies. I hope that poverty and the culture to have as many children as possible will not exist anymore after 2030 CE.
- toasterlovin 9y agoI would view the comfortable lives of humans in the developed world as a very peculiar circumstance, not as something which will persist as the norm. Life expands to consume all available resources. Humans are part of the lineage that we call life. That we are poorly adapted to modern life is just a temporary state of affairs. Though many people are opting out of large families, not all are. And the people who aren't are the future of the species.
- muninn_ 9y agoYou're right - it is a very peculiar circumstance and one that is increasingly impossible to achieve on large scale because of overpopulation. No matter what way you slice it, more people means fewer resources per person. We need to find a way to reduce growing populations in the United States, China, India South East Asia in general, and Africa.
- mattrices 9y agoOverpopulation is frequently the cause of steep popuation decline (90+%) in ecology due to input resource depletion and the building of toxins that are the end products of that species metabolism. Pollution and resource scarcity are the obvious limits that can send population numbers off a cliff.
- mseebach 9y agoThat doesn't kill people, just cause them to not be born - and won't happen in the next few decades anyway.
- mdemare 9y agoThere is _massive_ evolutionary pressure going against this. To the extent that not wanting to have children is at all genetic, it will disappear from the gene pool within a few generations. That the desire to "not want to have children" (especially among women) exists at all is caused by the sexual revolution (contraceptives), which changed who had children from "people who desired sex" to "people who desired to have children."
- scardine 9y agoA data scientist would say we are overfitted to sex.
- grondilu 9y agoMaybe contraceptives are a dead-end against which evolution can't do much. Maternal instinct exists : it pushes a woman to keep her offspring alive at all cost. I suppose it also makes women yearn for having a baby to take care of. But apparently, having just one is enough for them. Maybe two, but they seem to be content with no more than that. What makes a woman pregnant in the first place is the sexual impulse of the male. That sexual impulse is the primary way nature gets animal organisms to reproduce. With contraceptives, males can satisfy that sexual impulse without creating new offspring. How will nature induce highly-intelligent animals to make an offspring if the sexual intercourse is no more sufficient? It's hard to imagine how genes could intervene high enough on cognitive functions to induce a thought such as "I must have intercourse with this women without contraception because I want children". It could be an evolutionary dead-end.
- DougWebb 9y agoPaternal instinct, and women who like sex, exist too.
- grondilu 9y agoWell, no rule is written in stone. What you talk about could be a consequence of the fact that men and women are more or less built the same way after all. Kind of like why men have nipples, even if they are useless to them. My point remains anyway : even if there was a perfect symmetry in gender roles, parenting instinct would be what makes parents desire to have at least one offspring and keep it alive at all cost, but what would drive them to have more than two would be sexual impulse.