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> The premise of heritable fertility driving population and reproduction rates in humans is really far off. Yes, until reliably accessible contraception fertil
by barry-cotter 7y ago
> The premise of heritable fertility driving population and reproduction rates in humans is really far off.
Yes, until reliably accessible contraception fertility was driven by the desire to have sex.
> If it were true fertility rates could not possibly have dropped so far in so few generations after modern medicine and the insane reduction in violent death rates seen in the last thousand years.
This assumes no change in the environment, when it has manifestly changed. In this new environment in which desire to have children leads to having more children, on average, the desire to have more children will be selected for.
- ema 7y agoI agree, however this doesn't necessarily mean that average fertility will rise again. The environment could keep changing faster than the genes can adapt. Also "desire to have children" might be difficult to encode in DNA so genetic adaptation to the availability of contraceptives might be really slow.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- im3w1l 7y agoThis is the strongest (only?) counterargument I've seen. I don't believe it will happen soon though. Politicians only do something when doing something is less controversial than doing nothing and that's pretty far off.