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It’s temporary. The humans of the future will be the descendants of the people having lots of kids right now. You should basically never extrapolate out any tre

It’s temporary. The humans of the future will be the descendants of the people having lots of kids right now. You should basically never extrapolate out any trends that are driven by people with below replacement fertility rates.

jpatokal 8y ago
No, it's not temporary. The trend is global and will see the world's fertility go below replacement level soon enough. Of course there are various hotspots, but they'll be smoothed out eventually by emigration or less pleasant means (famine, war, disease).
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  The three necessary and sufficient ingredients for evolution are: 1) Inheritance, 2) Variation, and 3) Selection. Let’s consider fertility using this lens: 1) Fertility rate is heritable, 2) Fertility rates vary from person to person, and 3) People with higher fertility have higher reproductive success (it’s almost a tautology). I’ll let you work out the implications.
  - htns 8y ago
    That struggles to explain how fertility rates have ever dropped. For higher fertility you would need stronger biologic instincts, the present lack of which suggests they would conflict with something else important for viability, a high "materialist profit" from having having children, which the man's child protection services will catch on to if your group grows big enough, or a "sense of duty", which again seems increasingly hard to maintain as the group grows for an array of reasons.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      > That struggles to explain how fertility rates have ever dropped. No, it doesn’t. The environment we inhabit has changed drastically in the last 150 years. We were well adapted to the environment we lived in 150 years ago. We are poorly adapted to the environment which we live in now. That will change as evolution does its thing. For a glance into the future, take a look at the habits and lifestyles of people with lots of children. There is an interesting bi-mods distribution, btw.
klaudius 8y ago
Well, we are descendants of people who had lots of kids for a very long time. By that logic we should be having lots of kids today, but it's obviously not the case.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  The environment we find ourselves in has undergone rapid and drastic change. Many people are poorly adapted to this changed environment. But not everybody. Their adaptations will spread. And, thus, we shall evolve.

jpatokal 8y ago

No, it's not temporary. The trend is global and will see the world's fertility go below replacement level soon enough. Of course there are various hotspots, but they'll be smoothed out eventually by emigration or less pleasant means (famine, war, disease).

toasterlovin 8y ago
The three necessary and sufficient ingredients for evolution are: 1) Inheritance, 2) Variation, and 3) Selection. Let’s consider fertility using this lens: 1) Fertility rate is heritable, 2) Fertility rates vary from person to person, and 3) People with higher fertility have higher reproductive success (it’s almost a tautology). I’ll let you work out the implications.
- htns 8y ago
  That struggles to explain how fertility rates have ever dropped. For higher fertility you would need stronger biologic instincts, the present lack of which suggests they would conflict with something else important for viability, a high "materialist profit" from having having children, which the man's child protection services will catch on to if your group grows big enough, or a "sense of duty", which again seems increasingly hard to maintain as the group grows for an array of reasons.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    > That struggles to explain how fertility rates have ever dropped. No, it doesn’t. The environment we inhabit has changed drastically in the last 150 years. We were well adapted to the environment we lived in 150 years ago. We are poorly adapted to the environment which we live in now. That will change as evolution does its thing. For a glance into the future, take a look at the habits and lifestyles of people with lots of children. There is an interesting bi-mods distribution, btw.

klaudius 8y ago

Well, we are descendants of people who had lots of kids for a very long time. By that logic we should be having lots of kids today, but it's obviously not the case.

toasterlovin 8y ago
The environment we find ourselves in has undergone rapid and drastic change. Many people are poorly adapted to this changed environment. But not everybody. Their adaptations will spread. And, thus, we shall evolve.