5 ms·
Sorry, 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
by Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
Sorry, 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.