5 ms·

> Are there intelligent beings with a drive to limitlessly expand their population? Since the development of contraceptives we are now selecting hard for any a

by api 2y ago

> Are there intelligent beings with a drive to limitlessly expand their population? Since the development of contraceptives we are now selecting hard for any and all traits associated with intentional reproduction or the desire for children. A few thousand years of this and the only thing left will be people who really want kids, or who are prone to adopt beliefs or attitudes that lead them to want kids. Maybe this is how you get a Dyson swarm. I’m not even including potential AI “life” in this picture.

Zigurd 2y ago
When you give women literacy, opportunity, and bodily autonomy, population problems go away.
- api 2y ago
  … for now. What happens after ten generations of selection for the ones who reproduced? (This is also a major reason I think the current right wing fertility panic is mostly bullshit with the exception of maybe a few places with unusually low rates of reproduction.)
  - robbiep 2y ago
    You’re talking as though the only decision behind reproducing is an active rejection of contraception. Whilst this be practically happening during the fecund period, it is hardly the only influence and is certainly not responsible for the decrease in average fecundity women have seen across the world. The idea that this is a trait that is going to be selected for when every breeding pair are part of it is patently ridiculous to my perception, there is no population bottleneck or significant progeny advantage that you are gaining against every other reproducing couple that drives an evolutionary advantage; and we’re certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation or increased/earlier independence of the young
    - barfbagginus 2y ago
      > we're certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation period or increased/earlier independence of the young. I've decided to not have kids until artificially sentient children are a thing - and I'm hoping to find like minded individuals. Hopefully our work will help pave the ground for artificially sentient humans, and establish hybrid families of biological and AI humans. And my AI babies will probably have faster gestation and development times than normal human babies. But they're still going to be my babies. l will consider them human offspring, assuming I can properly socialize and humanize them. And maybe many humans will make similar choices to have artificial children. So the range of standard gestation and child rearing times could change a lot, perhaps over a very short period! That said, I wanted to ask a question about your argument. OP argues that the cohort of contraceptive users will simply select itself out of existence by choosing to reproduce less. You seem to argue that this can't happen because all breeding pairs are part of the global drop in fecundity. If it was happening, the trend would be for higher fecundity, not less. That makes a strong argument for the present. Does that dismiss their claim that the drop of fecundity will lead to a critical situation where fertility collapses, and it's up to reproductive rights deniers to save the day? The reason I want to dismiss that argument, in no unclear terms, is that I believe it may be a sort of indirect or wishful thinking eugenic argument. The moral failings of reproductive rights advocates are supposed to end up ironically being the mechanism for their own genetic culling. It sounds fishy.
  - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
    What do you think will happen after ten generations, when population will start to grow exponentially? Will Dyson swarm, food, shelter and infinite resources immediately materialize ex nihilo?
05 2y ago
> A few thousand years of this and the only thing left will be people who really want kids It would take less than a hundred years to create the first baby from scratch without human intervention. From there, the possibilities are endless. China seems like a probable candidate that lacks human rights controls and has enough biotech to build world’s first baby factory, but even if only North Korea has the tech and political will initially, the pressure on the depopulating countries would either legalize these or at least relax immigration to the extent necessary to benefit from them.
- toasterlovin 2y ago
  The problem with this theory is that the family is the most important human institution and all of human evolutionary history has occurred in the context of this fact. So if you think you can just make babies without families, well… just go see how things went whenever communists have tried to replace the family with the state.
pavel_lishin 2y ago
> A few thousand years of this and the only thing left will be people who really want kids, or who are prone to adopt beliefs or attitudes that lead them to want kids. I don't think this follows. If this general line of thought were true, there would be no gay men, few gay women, and almost no infertile people in general.
- operationlllll 2y ago
  [dead]
- api 2y ago
  It is probably why these traits are not in the majority. Humans have complex social behaviors and are subject to a lot of higher order group selection. There can be lots of people who don’t directly participate in reproduction who indirectly do so. Community and economy are central to what made us the top large organism on Earth. We are very complex social creatures, probably the most on this planet. But as long as humans reproduce as they do with such high overhead, the mainstream of our population is going to be selected so that the center is aligned with that.
  - barfbagginus 2y ago
    I wondered if you are responding to the risk of population collapse / aging population, and feel resentful towards reproductive rights believers because you feel they are to blame. It seems you're hoping that reproductive rights supporters will ironically self inflict an eugenics program upon themselves, leaving only virtuous breeders. I don't think that's necessarily true, because of the higher order selection factors like education and income. See r/K selection theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory In humans, fast breeders may be likened to r-selectors that select for quantity of offspring. They tend to be poor and uneducated and select for quantity despite constrained resources and the developmental setbacks that will cause their offspring. So fast breeding is not necessarily an overall selection advantage. Otoh, reproductive rights believers (which are like K-selectors) tend to have higher incomes and education levels, and select for low offspring count and high investment in individual offspring. So while they may have fewer children, they will have more resources to give to their children, and their traits may enjoy selection because of this higher fitness in the offspring. In the end, you should expect to see an equilibrium with both fast and slow reproducers - since both are in competition, both have some weaknesses and advantages, and neither is dominant. There may be a shift happening one direction or another. But it can't be a winner take all outcome, because there are too many factors in tension. For example, the upper class are likely to remain K-selectors, because they draw their fitness from their wealth, not their offspring count. In other words, they can afford it. That won't change without social collapse or revolution.

by api 2y ago

Zigurd 2y ago

When you give women literacy, opportunity, and bodily autonomy, population problems go away.

api 2y ago
… for now. What happens after ten generations of selection for the ones who reproduced? (This is also a major reason I think the current right wing fertility panic is mostly bullshit with the exception of maybe a few places with unusually low rates of reproduction.)
- robbiep 2y ago
  You’re talking as though the only decision behind reproducing is an active rejection of contraception. Whilst this be practically happening during the fecund period, it is hardly the only influence and is certainly not responsible for the decrease in average fecundity women have seen across the world. The idea that this is a trait that is going to be selected for when every breeding pair are part of it is patently ridiculous to my perception, there is no population bottleneck or significant progeny advantage that you are gaining against every other reproducing couple that drives an evolutionary advantage; and we’re certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation or increased/earlier independence of the young
  - barfbagginus 2y ago
    > we're certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation period or increased/earlier independence of the young. I've decided to not have kids until artificially sentient children are a thing - and I'm hoping to find like minded individuals. Hopefully our work will help pave the ground for artificially sentient humans, and establish hybrid families of biological and AI humans. And my AI babies will probably have faster gestation and development times than normal human babies. But they're still going to be my babies. l will consider them human offspring, assuming I can properly socialize and humanize them. And maybe many humans will make similar choices to have artificial children. So the range of standard gestation and child rearing times could change a lot, perhaps over a very short period! That said, I wanted to ask a question about your argument. OP argues that the cohort of contraceptive users will simply select itself out of existence by choosing to reproduce less. You seem to argue that this can't happen because all breeding pairs are part of the global drop in fecundity. If it was happening, the trend would be for higher fecundity, not less. That makes a strong argument for the present. Does that dismiss their claim that the drop of fecundity will lead to a critical situation where fertility collapses, and it's up to reproductive rights deniers to save the day? The reason I want to dismiss that argument, in no unclear terms, is that I believe it may be a sort of indirect or wishful thinking eugenic argument. The moral failings of reproductive rights advocates are supposed to end up ironically being the mechanism for their own genetic culling. It sounds fishy.
- GoblinSlayer 2y ago
  What do you think will happen after ten generations, when population will start to grow exponentially? Will Dyson swarm, food, shelter and infinite resources immediately materialize ex nihilo?

05 2y ago

> A few thousand years of this and the only thing left will be people who really want kids It would take less than a hundred years to create the first baby from scratch without human intervention. From there, the possibilities are endless. China seems like a probable candidate that lacks human rights controls and has enough biotech to build world’s first baby factory, but even if only North Korea has the tech and political will initially, the pressure on the depopulating countries would either legalize these or at least relax immigration to the extent necessary to benefit from them.

toasterlovin 2y ago
The problem with this theory is that the family is the most important human institution and all of human evolutionary history has occurred in the context of this fact. So if you think you can just make babies without families, well… just go see how things went whenever communists have tried to replace the family with the state.

pavel_lishin 2y ago

> A few thousand years of this and the only thing left will be people who really want kids, or who are prone to adopt beliefs or attitudes that lead them to want kids. I don't think this follows. If this general line of thought were true, there would be no gay men, few gay women, and almost no infertile people in general.

operationlllll 2y ago
[dead]
api 2y ago
It is probably why these traits are not in the majority. Humans have complex social behaviors and are subject to a lot of higher order group selection. There can be lots of people who don’t directly participate in reproduction who indirectly do so. Community and economy are central to what made us the top large organism on Earth. We are very complex social creatures, probably the most on this planet. But as long as humans reproduce as they do with such high overhead, the mainstream of our population is going to be selected so that the center is aligned with that.
- barfbagginus 2y ago
  I wondered if you are responding to the risk of population collapse / aging population, and feel resentful towards reproductive rights believers because you feel they are to blame. It seems you're hoping that reproductive rights supporters will ironically self inflict an eugenics program upon themselves, leaving only virtuous breeders. I don't think that's necessarily true, because of the higher order selection factors like education and income. See r/K selection theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory In humans, fast breeders may be likened to r-selectors that select for quantity of offspring. They tend to be poor and uneducated and select for quantity despite constrained resources and the developmental setbacks that will cause their offspring. So fast breeding is not necessarily an overall selection advantage. Otoh, reproductive rights believers (which are like K-selectors) tend to have higher incomes and education levels, and select for low offspring count and high investment in individual offspring. So while they may have fewer children, they will have more resources to give to their children, and their traits may enjoy selection because of this higher fitness in the offspring. In the end, you should expect to see an equilibrium with both fast and slow reproducers - since both are in competition, both have some weaknesses and advantages, and neither is dominant. There may be a shift happening one direction or another. But it can't be a winner take all outcome, because there are too many factors in tension. For example, the upper class are likely to remain K-selectors, because they draw their fitness from their wealth, not their offspring count. In other words, they can afford it. That won't change without social collapse or revolution.