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The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

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Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#61

Post by danieltillett »

greglindahl wrote: post #49
danieltillett wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eugenics has two strands (negative and positive). Many people are offended by the negative (stopping the "undesirable" from having children), but I haven't met too many people who are offended by the "desirable" choosing to have more children. This is all tangential to my post.

It's not tangential to me, and yes, I'm totally offended by both strands. I used to date the author of the "Darwin Awards" website and books, and I've spent a lot of time interacting with the general public about these concepts.

Why are you offended by people choosing to have children? Seems rather strange to me, but I guess the world is a big place.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#62

Post by danieltillett »

greglindahl wrote: post #56
dabbledash wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. Natural selection disfavors a strategy that requires significant investment in non-reproductive activity (education, career ladder-climbing) during prime reproductive years.

Natural selection works on genes, not individuals. How do my career choices affect my brother's and sister's children?

The selection part works on individuals, what changes from selection is the frequency of alleles in the population. By not having children the alleles you carry will become rarer in the population of the next generation (all things being equal).

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#63

Post by dionidium »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #12
pesfandiar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're grossly overestimating how much an average person cares about anything outside of their family. The decision to have one or more children depends on many other factors (parents' character, their economic status, social safety, ...) before it even gets to any idealistic activism.

So much this. Altruistic, considerate people who hem and haw over how their decisions effect others grossly over estimate other human beings. Take a walk along the side of a high speed road and look at all the garbage thrown there. People don't give a shit.

This entirely misses the point, which is that most people -- yes, even altruistic, considerate ones -- don't think of their decision to have kids as politics.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#65

Post by war1025 »

craftyguy wrote: post #32
cncrnd wrote: post #16

What a shame, back in the day people used to have odd numbers of children.

Interestingly enough, both of my parents came from families with even numbers of children, and it was a lot. BTW, 1 is also odd, so I'm not sure if you're just trying to say "used to have 3 children" or literally an odd number (1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 23, etc)

I think it was supposed to be a joke about how there is only a middle child if there is an odd number of children.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#66

Post by tcbawo »

greglindahl wrote: post #55
squarefoot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us, including the planet under our feet, don't see it as a problem. https://www.populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03... I don't think there was anyone in the 1960s screaming "oh crap... there's only 3 billions of us around here!". We're so used to think the now and here as normal conditions that we lose focus on the global trend which is absolutely disastrous.

"Limits to Growth" was from 1972, but Mathus' idea dates back to 1798, and he was certainly not the first to bring up the concept.

Malthus was probably correct without the invention of fertilizer. Hopefully technology like seaweed and vertical farms come to our rescue!

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#67

Post by tcbawo »

danieltillett wrote: post #59
smt88 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't say it was the only way. You said: > "The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children" ...which is also unsupported by current intelligence research and still relevant to my counterargument.

Actually we know that intelligence is mostly genetic (especially at the high end), but even if it isn’t, the family environment provided by (most) intelligent parents is very conducive to raising intelligent children. It doesn’t matter the means (environment or genetic) as both will contribute to smart parents raising smart children (provided they have children).

I don't know if we need more smart parents or rather caring/nurturing families. You don't have to be smart, but children of dysfunctional families are at a disadvantage for breaking the cycle.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#68

Post by Nasrudith »

robocat wrote: post #48
learc83 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond that fact that the Earth's future population isn't the number one factor in the decision for most couples, 2 children is still below the replacement rate.

Strangely enough 2 is not the replacement rate. One birth per death is the replacement rate. The world population can be increased by everyone having children earlier, or dieing later. Puzzle: Every couple in Binary Town has twins (boy and girl) at age 32. Then half the population stops reproducing, but the other half change to reproducing at age 16. What happens to the population?

Replacement rate depends on the death rate to be precise. If humanity had stuck with three children per couple at most throughout its entire history it would almost certainly be extinct.

2 is only the replacement rate for 'literally immortal up until a certain date' - morbidly with a corresponding high death rate the number could be 'greater than biologically the theoretical biological limits'.

Binary town's birth rate would go down initially due to the loss of participation reducing the reproducing generation by half but the time between generations being cut by half would mean an effective doubling of the per person rate. Without knowing their rate of death we can't know what happens to their true population over time and it goes without saying that the assumptions will break if their reproductive strategies change yet again.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#69

Post by tcbawo »

danieltillett wrote: post #62
greglindahl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural selection works on genes, not individuals. How do my career choices affect my brother's and sister's children?

The selection part works on individuals, what changes from selection is the frequency of alleles in the population. By not having children the alleles you carry will become rarer in the population of the next generation (all things being equal).

Also, having children later in life reduces the role that grandparents play in a childs life, reducing an important safety net.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#70

Post by DoreenMichele »

tcbawo wrote: post #69
danieltillett wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The selection part works on individuals, what changes from selection is the frequency of alleles in the population. By not having children the alleles you carry will become rarer in the population of the next generation (all things being equal).

Also, having children later in life reduces the role that grandparents play in a childs life, reducing an important safety net.

Or removing/reducing neurotic (or even abusive) family nonsense, depending on the family in question.
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