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We think it's different for us because the reversal in population growth is correlated with education and development levels. These are factors which aren't pre

We think it's different for us because the reversal in population growth is correlated with education and development levels. These are factors which aren't present in animal populations. If we lived in a world where every culture had achieved a certain level of education and development (and most all of them do want to get there), it's likely they would all have flat or declining populations. They might have to heavily subsidize reproduction just to sustain themselves and all this talk about building space habitats would be even more abstract than it is today.

eloff 7y ago
This seems to currently be a thing. It's a little premature to say it's going to apply to all cultures across all time. In fact I'd take the opposite side of that bet. The thing is if there's any culture for which that's not true, like Mormons, Orthodox Jews, some groups of Muslims, whatever. In a few generations they replace the cultures that don't have a lot of children like our own. Then expansion continues. I could see expansion slowing even reversing temporarily, but it seems hard to imagine it permanently ending.
- apatters 7y ago
  Well, while they're still dominant, all the other cultures might decide to band together and discourage, eradicate or dilute the one that keeps growing. Anyway I agree that we can't say for certain whether population will grow or shrink. In fact in the context of this discussion I think that's the most important point. Many discussions about alien civilizations tend to assume that they'll evolve into huge multiplanetary populations with large energy/EM/whatever footprints. When in reality our most developed cultures are slowly declining in population. If an underground cache of brains in pleasure boxes is the end stage for most civs we will probably never know.
  - eloff 7y ago
    That's a good point, and one I often wonder about too. Maybe advanced civilizations are not expansionist. However it doesn't make a good solution to Fermi's Paradox because all civilizations would have to not be expansionist, if there were just a few exceptions they'd expand all over and we'd likely spot them.

eloff 7y ago

This seems to currently be a thing. It's a little premature to say it's going to apply to all cultures across all time. In fact I'd take the opposite side of that bet. The thing is if there's any culture for which that's not true, like Mormons, Orthodox Jews, some groups of Muslims, whatever. In a few generations they replace the cultures that don't have a lot of children like our own. Then expansion continues. I could see expansion slowing even reversing temporarily, but it seems hard to imagine it permanently ending.

apatters 7y ago
Well, while they're still dominant, all the other cultures might decide to band together and discourage, eradicate or dilute the one that keeps growing. Anyway I agree that we can't say for certain whether population will grow or shrink. In fact in the context of this discussion I think that's the most important point. Many discussions about alien civilizations tend to assume that they'll evolve into huge multiplanetary populations with large energy/EM/whatever footprints. When in reality our most developed cultures are slowly declining in population. If an underground cache of brains in pleasure boxes is the end stage for most civs we will probably never know.
- eloff 7y ago
  That's a good point, and one I often wonder about too. Maybe advanced civilizations are not expansionist. However it doesn't make a good solution to Fermi's Paradox because all civilizations would have to not be expansionist, if there were just a few exceptions they'd expand all over and we'd likely spot them.