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TFR should be considered the basis of economics rather than GDP. It’s no longer difficult to imagine a society in which GDP is growing year over year through an
by ipnon 1y ago
TFR should be considered the basis of economics rather than GDP. It’s no longer difficult to imagine a society in which GDP is growing year over year through an automated economy of AI and robotics. But the humans who are supposedly consuming its goods and services are so miserable they can’t even be bothered to reproduce themselves.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoWhat if people are more happy not having kids? TFR is a poor metric in this regard.
- ipnon 1y agoThe genetic basis of sexual reproduction means that over a long enough time span the people who are happy not having kids become irrelevant because they no longer exist.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoSo? They lived happy lives, that's all that matters. We're all irrelevant eventually due to death. Over a long enough time period, the Earth is cooked by the Sun and this all is gone. Enjoy the ride, in a century you'll be long forgotten.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoKin selection, inclusive fitness, and group selection all beg to differ. Some form of these will be introduced in any evo bio 101 class.
- ipnon 1y agoI find this hand-wavy "I am smart and you are dumb" argument to be lazy and too common on HN. What if I told you I've taken intro to evolution? What if I told you I'm an expert in human evolution? What would you have to say then?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- AlotOfReading 1y agoI would be very surprised if a paleoanthropologist said that individual selection was the only thing that mattered. A geneticist maybe, but I'd look at them funny. The only ones I can imagine saying that earnestly are all like 60+ years old.
- anigbrowl 1y agoI'd say you should like a bullshit artist, because you are just making assertions rather than providing people with information that supports your assertions (based on this whole sub-thread).
- staticman2 1y agoPeople who are happy having kids also no longer exist over time.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago>What if people are more happy not having kids? Not sure what the point of this question is. If what you were supposing had any truth to it, then this is equivalent to wanting humanity to become extinct. I will concede that many people are dim enough that they can't follow through and therefor don't realize that it's equivalent, but there are a minimum number of children that must be born or our species is gone someday (soon). If you somehow wish to hold the contradictory views that you both are unhappy with and do not want children, and you wish humanity to continue indefinitely, then what this would say is that your some sort of parasite that does not want to contribute your fair share to the continuation of the species. Let someone else do the work, you'll just benefit from it. At minimum, if such people were to be tolerated they must come to understand that they should have little say in policy, especially those policies dealing with the future.