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The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

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Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#121

Post by toasterlovin »

ForHackernews wrote: post #86
toasterlovin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fertility rates declining for several generations is not stabilization. It’s a bump in the road while humanity evolves resistance to whatever it is about modernity that causes us to have fewer children.

I don't think humans are every going to evolve past being a K-selected species.

They can evolve past having below replacement fertility, though. And then they can evolve to something like 3-4 children per woman while remaining K selected. With 3-4 children per woman, the human population will quickly expand to fill out our ecological niche, just as we have done in the last several hundred years.

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#122

Post by j_wtf_all_taken »

_liww wrote: post #119
aluren wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. You first try to publish in a high-IF journal, if they reject you then you try one with lower IF, and so on. I'm all about not taking IF as face value and don't need a n-th reminder about the metric's issues seeing how rehashing them is something of a favorite pastime among scientists, but in this specific case other more qualitative assessments don't line up ei…

Please explain why estimates of the twin & SNP heritability of age at first birth are wrong

I don't really understand how that is relevant for the discussion in this thread.

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#123

Post by _liww »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #122
_liww wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain why estimates of the twin & SNP heritability of age at first birth are wrong

I don't really understand how that is relevant for the discussion in this thread.

If anyone thinks the paper is wrong, they are stating that the measures of those values are wrong. The rest is inevitable.

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#124

Post by benj111 »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #120
mynameishere wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's beyond obvious. Strange that people are arguing against it. And, going one further, in the past people had children as a matter of rote. Now, it has to be a deliberate, overcoming the obstacle of modernity, in a sense. In the same way smallpox had a habit of reducing the population's potential, so too (by a different mechanism) does education, birth control, abortion, etc. A subset of the population will effecti…

Would you then also argue that two smart parents have a much higher chance of having a smart kid than two of average intelligence? If not, why not?

I think you might be misinterpreting the parent.

When they refer to education reducing potential, they mean higher education levels generally correspond with a lower birth rate, for a variety of reasons. So smart parents having smart children does seem to fit with that.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're getting at?

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#125

Post by dang »

_liww wrote: post #116
aluren wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I wasn't talking about you specifically, sorry if you took it that way. On HN curation: while I certainly look up to this community when it comes to coding, technology and latest new software tools in general, I'm sorry to say the standards are not even remotely up to par when it comes to genomics. I assume it's because neither the mod team nor the majority of the community has a relevant background, and it'…

[flagged]

Hey, would you please not post in the flamewar style to Hacker News? It's quite against the spirit of the site and its rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The idea here is to exchange information thoughtfully and to treat others kindly even when they are ignorant or wrong. If you know more, share some of what you know in a way that the rest of us can learn from. Don't post comments to put others down or bash their views.

We don't have these rules for ethical reasons or because we think it's good to be wrong. It's just that we want this place to stay interesting, and when internet users flame each other, that destroys the forum and causes smart people to leave. We want to avoid that scorched-earth outcome.

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#126

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #125
_liww wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Hey, would you please not post in the flamewar style to Hacker News? It's quite against the spirit of the site and its rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . The idea here is to exchange information thoughtfully and to treat others kindly even when they are ignorant or wrong. If you know more, share some of what you know in a way that the rest of us can learn from. Don't post comments to put others…

[deleted]

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#127

Post by jjeaff »

pharke wrote: post #73
barry-cotter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I’m sure the Mormons would cop to traditionalism calling a religion where the median man spent two years of his life in a foreign country insular is slightly odd, considering most Americans never leave their own country. Even aside from that cosmopolitanism Mormons have been state governors and been contenders for the presidency. Insular they are not.

Insular was probably the wrong term to use, culturally rigid or conservative might be better. The point is they maintain a high fidelity to the cultural and behavioural patterns of their group. One of which is to eschew birth control and purposefully create large families.

Mormon's do have and encourage large families. But there is no modern prohibition or even suggestion regarding birth control.

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#128

Post by maratd »

option_greek wrote: post #108
maratd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was advantageous for us to have lots of children, then women would have a dozen at a time, rather than one. There are plenty of mammals that do that. There’s clearly a tradeoff there and the selective pressures for humans tend to lean toward fewer. Not sure where we’ll end up, but time will tell.

Minor correction: Advantageous to the children (conferring evolutionary advantage). Not to us.

I'm not sure I understand your distinction. From a gene-based perspective, the gene, whether in the child or in the parent, is the same. The selection pressure is on a gene level, not on a species or individual level.

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#129

Post by username90 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #86
toasterlovin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fertility rates declining for several generations is not stabilization. It’s a bump in the road while humanity evolves resistance to whatever it is about modernity that causes us to have fewer children.

I don't think humans are every going to evolve past being a K-selected species.

Human females can easily have over 10 children each, so we are R-selected compared to a lot of species like Bonobos. Just a minor behavioral adjustment and we'll growing by a factor of 5 per generation, that will never happen to Bonobos who can only get pregnant every 5 years.

Re: The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely

#130

Post by whitenation1488 »

bad_user wrote: post #14

All of my grandparents come from big families. My grandmother on my father's side comes from a family of 12 children. Yet my grandmother only had 4 children and my father only 2, and now I only have 1. This is an anecdote, but I don't think heritabiliy has anything to do with it. Large families simply happen due to poverty. When poor, you want more children because there's strength in numbers. Plus the women are stay…

One data point is not enough

You need to look at thousands of people who had 12 siblings and then compare number of grandchildren per person

Then compare it to thousands of people who had only 1 or 2 siblings

If say on Average it ended ip being something like 2.6 vs 1.6 children per couple then this shows that fertility might be heritable

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