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Population didn’t stabilise, anywhere, ever. Nothing “worked” for Europe. Most of Eastern Europe is losing population to emigration. If you look at breeding pop
by barry-cotter 7y ago
Population didn’t stabilise, anywhere, ever. Nothing “worked” for Europe. Most of Eastern Europe is losing population to emigration. If you look at breeding populations rather than geographies you see some populations growing and others shrinking. You don’t see steady states.
The population behaviour of the British and that of descendants of those resident in Britain in 1900 are not the same thing. Focusing on nations obscures that fact.
- Al-Khwarizmi 7y agoSorry, I didn't make the best choice of words. With "stabilized" I really meant "stopped growing". And indeed, in practice this has resulted into shrinking, not a steady state.
- toasterlovin 7y agoFertility rates declining for several generations is not stabilization. It’s a bump in the road while humanity evolves resistance to whatever it is about modernity that causes us to have fewer children.
- ForHackernews 7y agoI don't think humans are every going to evolve past being a K-selected species.
- toasterlovin 7y agoThey can evolve past having below replacement fertility, though. And then they can evolve to something like 3-4 children per woman while remaining K selected. With 3-4 children per woman, the human population will quickly expand to fill out our ecological niche, just as we have done in the last several hundred years.
- username90 7y agoHuman females can easily have over 10 children each, so we are R-selected compared to a lot of species like Bonobos. Just a minor behavioral adjustment and we'll growing by a factor of 5 per generation, that will never happen to Bonobos who can only get pregnant every 5 years.