4 ms·

Reading this made me think a lot about "Brave New World". The beginning of the book triumphantly describes the conditioning of newborns to optimize economic con

Reading this made me think a lot about "Brave New World". The beginning of the book triumphantly describes the conditioning of newborns to optimize economic contribution. A really good but dark read.

magduf 8y ago
The idea of deliberately stunting embryos' development to have enough dummies to do the boring jobs probably made some sense in 1949, but obviously ignores the rise of automation, which even back then was on the radar with a lot of sci-fi depicting robots handling mundane or dangerous tasks. With sufficient automation, we don't need idiots to do boring jobs, so hopefully this would never come to pass. However, the idea of making the state responsible for reproduction and child-rearing is promising, considering how awful so many parents are, and the fact that economically comfortable people generally don't have enough kids to maintain the population.
- monadgonad 8y ago
  >However, the idea of making the state responsible for reproduction and child-rearing is promising, considering how awful so many parents are, and the fact that economically comfortable people generally don't have enough kids to maintain the population. I've seen some out-there political opinions on HN, but I never thought I'd see someone calling a totalitarian eugenics program "promising". And that's not hyperbole. "Making the state responsible for reproduction" necessarily means them deciding who can and can't reproduce, which is literally eugenics.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Ok then, what's your plan for dealing with a population implosion caused by people simply not wanting to have kids any more? Every industrialized nation is seeing this now, and only avoiding population implosion because of immigration, which is not a long-term solution to the problem (eventually everyone will reach some kind of wealth parity, and history shows that sufficiently wealthy modern societies don't produce enough children). The only alternative plan I can think of is to hope that anti-aging treatments advance enough so that people live much, much longer lives, thus greatly reducing the need for replacement people (instead of increasing the birth rate, decrease the death rate). But this is just sci-fi at this point. As a hypothetical situation, imagine that, for some strange reason, all immigration between countries was suddenly stopped magically, so they had to either come up with some new solution to get people to have more kids, or face population decline and the economic problems that come with that. What's your solution to this? Forcing citizens to have more children at gunpoint sounds a lot worse than having the state create and raise children (which, BTW, does not necessarily mean that private individuals/couples are prevented from having their own children; I never advocated preventing people from reproducing).
    - philwelch 8y ago
      I'm not sold on the "population implosion". Eventually, some subculture will reproduce at a higher rate than the predominant culture and gradually become the predominant culture. You already see the beginnings of this in the United States, where Mormon and Hispanic (i.e. predominantly Catholic) birthrates exceed the rest of the country.
      - magduf 8y ago
        In Japan, there is no subculture reproducing at a higher rate. In the US, the population is only growing because of immigration, not from Catholics. To be fair, they're a big contributor, so the demographics are shifting in their favor, but if it weren't for immigration, our population would not be growing I'm pretty sure. And Mormons, while they have a bunch of kids, are still a very small portion of the overall population.
        philwelch 8y ago
        > And Mormons, while they have a bunch of kids, are still a very small portion of the overall population. If they keep having a bunch of kids, and the rest of America doesn’t, they won’t stay a very small portion of the overall population forever.
        magduf 8y ago
        By the time that happens, centuries will have passed and the problems caused by population loss will have already been experienced. Also, I've worked with and known Mormons, and I've never known them to be huge kid-producers, so I'm questioning this assumption. They have more kids than the current white American average AFAICT, but not hugely so. They tend to be higher income and put a lot of energy and resources into their kids; you can't do that and have 10 kids. In general, it's low-education people who have tons of kids. Mormons are not like this; they're generally very well educated.
    - triangleman 8y ago
      On the one hand you have people on this site advocating for UBI to make up for lost jobs due to automation, and on the other hand you are saying there is going to be a population implosion and that is bad and something needs to be done. Can't we just do nothing if both of these scenarios are likely?

Reading this made me think a lot about "Brave New World". The beginning of the book triumphantly describes the conditioning of newborns to optimize economic contribution. A really good but dark read.

magduf 8y ago

The idea of deliberately stunting embryos' development to have enough dummies to do the boring jobs probably made some sense in 1949, but obviously ignores the rise of automation, which even back then was on the radar with a lot of sci-fi depicting robots handling mundane or dangerous tasks. With sufficient automation, we don't need idiots to do boring jobs, so hopefully this would never come to pass. However, the idea of making the state responsible for reproduction and child-rearing is promising, considering how awful so many parents are, and the fact that economically comfortable people generally don't have enough kids to maintain the population.

monadgonad 8y ago
>However, the idea of making the state responsible for reproduction and child-rearing is promising, considering how awful so many parents are, and the fact that economically comfortable people generally don't have enough kids to maintain the population. I've seen some out-there political opinions on HN, but I never thought I'd see someone calling a totalitarian eugenics program "promising". And that's not hyperbole. "Making the state responsible for reproduction" necessarily means them deciding who can and can't reproduce, which is literally eugenics.
- magduf 8y ago
  Ok then, what's your plan for dealing with a population implosion caused by people simply not wanting to have kids any more? Every industrialized nation is seeing this now, and only avoiding population implosion because of immigration, which is not a long-term solution to the problem (eventually everyone will reach some kind of wealth parity, and history shows that sufficiently wealthy modern societies don't produce enough children). The only alternative plan I can think of is to hope that anti-aging treatments advance enough so that people live much, much longer lives, thus greatly reducing the need for replacement people (instead of increasing the birth rate, decrease the death rate). But this is just sci-fi at this point. As a hypothetical situation, imagine that, for some strange reason, all immigration between countries was suddenly stopped magically, so they had to either come up with some new solution to get people to have more kids, or face population decline and the economic problems that come with that. What's your solution to this? Forcing citizens to have more children at gunpoint sounds a lot worse than having the state create and raise children (which, BTW, does not necessarily mean that private individuals/couples are prevented from having their own children; I never advocated preventing people from reproducing).
  - philwelch 8y ago
    I'm not sold on the "population implosion". Eventually, some subculture will reproduce at a higher rate than the predominant culture and gradually become the predominant culture. You already see the beginnings of this in the United States, where Mormon and Hispanic (i.e. predominantly Catholic) birthrates exceed the rest of the country.
    - magduf 8y ago
      In Japan, there is no subculture reproducing at a higher rate. In the US, the population is only growing because of immigration, not from Catholics. To be fair, they're a big contributor, so the demographics are shifting in their favor, but if it weren't for immigration, our population would not be growing I'm pretty sure. And Mormons, while they have a bunch of kids, are still a very small portion of the overall population.
      - philwelch 8y ago
        > And Mormons, while they have a bunch of kids, are still a very small portion of the overall population. If they keep having a bunch of kids, and the rest of America doesn’t, they won’t stay a very small portion of the overall population forever.
        magduf 8y ago
        By the time that happens, centuries will have passed and the problems caused by population loss will have already been experienced. Also, I've worked with and known Mormons, and I've never known them to be huge kid-producers, so I'm questioning this assumption. They have more kids than the current white American average AFAICT, but not hugely so. They tend to be higher income and put a lot of energy and resources into their kids; you can't do that and have 10 kids. In general, it's low-education people who have tons of kids. Mormons are not like this; they're generally very well educated.
  - triangleman 8y ago
    On the one hand you have people on this site advocating for UBI to make up for lost jobs due to automation, and on the other hand you are saying there is going to be a population implosion and that is bad and something needs to be done. Can't we just do nothing if both of these scenarios are likely?