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So as far as the progress goes, people are less and less interested in reproducing. With fertility rates rapidly falling towards 0 all over the world, I see on

by xpl 3y ago

So as far as the progress goes, people are less and less interested in reproducing. With fertility rates rapidly falling towards 0 all over the world, I see only three viable long-term options, if we want to self-preserve (and not just fade away): 1. Growing humans on industrial scale in bio-reactors. Government+AI would take care of raising them. Basically a cyber-communism. Probably could happen in China. 2. Replacing/surpassing humans with AI+robots completely. Then reproducing is as easy as scaling up a K8S cluster. Seems that we're heading towards it. 3. Reverting progress. Could happen anyway via some apocalypse scenario. But also could be deliberate, like Neo-Amish or something.

jameskilton 3y ago
Why does it have to always be the apocalypse? In the 90s people were freaking out about overpopulation and how society was eventually going to collapse. 20-30 years later the opposite is now happening. Some things just take decades to change, and are always changing in one way or another.
- xpl 3y ago
  > Why does it have to always be the apocalypse? It is just a likely thing to happen IMO. WW3 or extreme climate change... or a depopulation so severe that the infrastructure will slowly collapse, and nobody could ever fix it, because all the smart people who built and maintained it are retired or dead? Or maybe even all of those combined.
mcphage 3y ago
Option 4, get people interested in reproducing?
- xpl 3y ago
  But how? They're more interested in how to survive in a housing crisis on a low wage, with their employment/career prospects fading away due to the rise of AI. And the modern attention-sucking entertainment doesn't help.
dwb 3y ago
Do you have any particular evidence or qualifications that would help convince me that this could actually be an exhaustive list of options? What do you estimate their relative probability to be?
- xpl 3y ago
  I'm not here to convince, I'm just having fun. Personally I'm betting on a climate-change apocalypse, as it seems that we're stupid enough to sleepwalk towards it until its too late. The least probable option is that we become smart and fix the society so people will once again be happy to reproduce — I haven't even included this one on the list.
  - dwb 3y ago
    You sounded way more confident and definitive than someone just doing some fun speculation.
    - xpl 3y ago
      Part of the fun. Sorry if that was disturbing!
      - dwb 3y ago
        It wasn’t disturbing, it was tiresome.
tivert 3y ago
You're nuts. > 1. Growing humans on industrial scale in bio-reactors. Government+AI would take care of raising them. Basically a cyber-communism. Probably could happen in China. "Probably could happen in China." It's about 1000 times more likely China will just crank up the carrots and sticks until their reproduction rate recovers. Right now they're going with carrots and propaganda, but unlike the West, they don't have any qualms about sticks. They could probably solve the problem (in the medium term) by kicking women out of the workforce (or implementing a low glass ceiling) along with heavy fines for childlessness. Quit reading sci-fi. > 2. Replacing/surpassing humans with AI+robots completely. Then reproducing is as easy as scaling up a K8S cluster. Seems that we're heading towards it. That's just the fantasy of weirdo tech fetishists (who are in disproportionately great supply in SV and on HN). Not going to happen unless some psycho billionaire manages to build a robot army. Quit reading sci-fi. > 3. Reverting progress. Could happen anyway via some apocalypse scenario. But also could be deliberate, like Neo-Amish or something. "Progress" is a myth. There's no direction to history. Even if current social trends continue, at least with sub-replacement reproduction, there will be selection against them and an inflection point after which things start to go in a different direction, though perhaps it will take a couple hundred years to get there. Quit reading sci-fi.
- xpl 3y ago
  > Not going to happen unless some psycho billionaire manages to build a robot army. It isn't about a robot revolt. It is about slowly pushing humans out of economy, until we're not economic actors anymore, because we're uncompetitive. Combined with rapid depopulation, many generations after, there will be no carbon based economy anymore. Everything will be owned and driven by silicon-based profit-seeking self-improving autonomous entities, rapidly expanding all over in space at a significant fraction of speed of light (the "grabby alien" thing). It might happen very gradually, over many decades (or even centuries). But why wouldn't it? Yeah, I might need to quit reading sci-fi. But many of our sci-fi predictions became reality recently.

by xpl 3y ago

jameskilton 3y ago

Why does it have to always be the apocalypse? In the 90s people were freaking out about overpopulation and how society was eventually going to collapse. 20-30 years later the opposite is now happening. Some things just take decades to change, and are always changing in one way or another.

xpl 3y ago
> Why does it have to always be the apocalypse? It is just a likely thing to happen IMO. WW3 or extreme climate change... or a depopulation so severe that the infrastructure will slowly collapse, and nobody could ever fix it, because all the smart people who built and maintained it are retired or dead? Or maybe even all of those combined.

mcphage 3y ago

Option 4, get people interested in reproducing?

xpl 3y ago
But how? They're more interested in how to survive in a housing crisis on a low wage, with their employment/career prospects fading away due to the rise of AI. And the modern attention-sucking entertainment doesn't help.

dwb 3y ago

Do you have any particular evidence or qualifications that would help convince me that this could actually be an exhaustive list of options? What do you estimate their relative probability to be?

xpl 3y ago
I'm not here to convince, I'm just having fun. Personally I'm betting on a climate-change apocalypse, as it seems that we're stupid enough to sleepwalk towards it until its too late. The least probable option is that we become smart and fix the society so people will once again be happy to reproduce — I haven't even included this one on the list.
- dwb 3y ago
  You sounded way more confident and definitive than someone just doing some fun speculation.
  - xpl 3y ago
    Part of the fun. Sorry if that was disturbing!
    - dwb 3y ago
      It wasn’t disturbing, it was tiresome.

tivert 3y ago

You're nuts. > 1. Growing humans on industrial scale in bio-reactors. Government+AI would take care of raising them. Basically a cyber-communism. Probably could happen in China. "Probably could happen in China." It's about 1000 times more likely China will just crank up the carrots and sticks until their reproduction rate recovers. Right now they're going with carrots and propaganda, but unlike the West, they don't have any qualms about sticks. They could probably solve the problem (in the medium term) by kicking women out of the workforce (or implementing a low glass ceiling) along with heavy fines for childlessness. Quit reading sci-fi. > 2. Replacing/surpassing humans with AI+robots completely. Then reproducing is as easy as scaling up a K8S cluster. Seems that we're heading towards it. That's just the fantasy of weirdo tech fetishists (who are in disproportionately great supply in SV and on HN). Not going to happen unless some psycho billionaire manages to build a robot army. Quit reading sci-fi. > 3. Reverting progress. Could happen anyway via some apocalypse scenario. But also could be deliberate, like Neo-Amish or something. "Progress" is a myth. There's no direction to history. Even if current social trends continue, at least with sub-replacement reproduction, there will be selection against them and an inflection point after which things start to go in a different direction, though perhaps it will take a couple hundred years to get there. Quit reading sci-fi.

xpl 3y ago
> Not going to happen unless some psycho billionaire manages to build a robot army. It isn't about a robot revolt. It is about slowly pushing humans out of economy, until we're not economic actors anymore, because we're uncompetitive. Combined with rapid depopulation, many generations after, there will be no carbon based economy anymore. Everything will be owned and driven by silicon-based profit-seeking self-improving autonomous entities, rapidly expanding all over in space at a significant fraction of speed of light (the "grabby alien" thing). It might happen very gradually, over many decades (or even centuries). But why wouldn't it? Yeah, I might need to quit reading sci-fi. But many of our sci-fi predictions became reality recently.