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Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

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Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#41

Post by jakear »

seoaeu wrote: post #28
atemerev wrote: post #17

Birth rates for humans are self-regulating, like with any other animal population. We are nearing the point of saturation of how many people the current environment can bear. Good. If there will be some mass extinction, or new resources available, birth rates will increase accordingly. No need for intervention here.

If you consider massive amounts of suffering and death caused by resource shortages to be “good” then we have very different values systems

Everyone alive today has suffered. Everyone alive today will be dead in 150 years. Nothing anyone can do will change that.

Yet, Life will go on. With or without humans.

Don’t take it personally. It’s just Nature.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#42

Post by DonnyV »

catchclose8919 wrote: post #32

...maybe if didn't work so hard to make our socity into a hypercompetitive hellhole intelligent and educated people would also start having more children! Give people guranteed free life-time education from daycare to university + some standard of free universal healthcare (sure, you'll have to pay for your antiaging, but not for a broken leg!) and more people will enjoy having more children. Maybe engineer the world…

100% what this guy said ^^^

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#43

Post by sim1collins »

catchclose8919 wrote: post #29
Varyag wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been quite a few posts on here about how AGI is still really far away. I wouldn't put all your hopes on our machine descendant species appearing this century. Nevertheless this is touched on in the linked document; indeed there's an entire section on it.

It's... unpredictably far away! We suck so bad at estimating these kinds of things, that whether it's tomorrow or 500 years from now, I'm convinced we'll be totally surprised, unprepared, and our nor even sincere effort to stear things down a good path (eg. OpenAI and such...) will be either worthless or detrimental! We should simply pursue "organic growth" eg. grow as much people as we can care for and educate prope…

"Unpredictably far away"—nice way of putting it.

Whether we "need" humans depends on where one's values are; for those who would like humans in some form to continue to exist, the idea of AGI making humans obsolete isn't terribly comforting. Even those who might really like the idea of humans sort of evolving into AI (and eventually ceasing to biologically exist) might not be keen to rush toward human obsolescence if they're not thrilled with initial versions of AGI (diversity and optionality is nice).

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#44

Post by gruez »

mpclark wrote: post #26
legostormtroopr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you conculde that "criticism of #MeToo" is akin to "Nazis"? This just cheapens and dilutes the impact of the word and your argument. Nazis had/have a specific, violent ideology. Criticism of a hashtag-activism movement, has nothing to do with it.

nazis != Nazis

Okay but even lowercase-N nazis have a more specific meaning than "ideologies I find icky"

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#45

Post by iggldiggl »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #24
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Addendum Quote "The economic systems of virtually all developed countries are predicated on an assumption of constant growth"—I'm with you that shrinking societies will be facing a wholly new set of societal problems. However an economic system that is predicated on constant growth will necessarily fail at some point in the future because physics. We as a species have to find ways to prevent that from happening. To k…

>However an economic system that is predicated on constant growth will necessarily fail at some point in the future because physics. Nonsense. And the audacity to add "because physics" at the end. Newton himself proved this wrong. 1+ 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125.... Is this sequence constant growing? Yes. Is this sequence infinitely increasing? Yes. Does this sum up to a finite value? Also yes!

Cute counterexample, I'll grant you that, but the parent posts were – if implicitly – talking abound unbounded growth.

Bounded growth on the other hand might mathematically indeed continue for an infinite length of time, but for all practical purposes can most certainly be rounded down to zero past a certain point.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#46

Post by watwut »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #21
krageon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subject attracts armchair nazis, sadly. Collaborative editing is not a good format for those types of things.

How do you conculde that "criticism of #MeToo" is akin to "Nazis"? This just cheapens and dilutes the impact of the word and your argument. Nazis had/have a specific, violent ideology. Criticism of a hashtag-activism movement, has nothing to do with it.

Saying that "falling birth rates are due to the MeToo movement" is the same as "criticism of MeeToo" cheapens the word "criticism" and definitely dilutes impact of both document and what you say.

If in the same message you refer to movement that whose part were multiple real world lawsuits and at least temporary attempts to get some rights to situations with quite serious harassments as "hashtag-activism movement", then you cheapens even more words.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#47

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #24
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Addendum Quote "The economic systems of virtually all developed countries are predicated on an assumption of constant growth"—I'm with you that shrinking societies will be facing a wholly new set of societal problems. However an economic system that is predicated on constant growth will necessarily fail at some point in the future because physics. We as a species have to find ways to prevent that from happening. To k…

>However an economic system that is predicated on constant growth will necessarily fail at some point in the future because physics. Nonsense. And the audacity to add "because physics" at the end. Newton himself proved this wrong. 1+ 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125.... Is this sequence constant growing? Yes. Is this sequence infinitely increasing? Yes. Does this sum up to a finite value? Also yes!

You are right and I am glad I didn't write 'because Maths'. The sum you're quoting from is monotonically growing but at an ever shrinking clip. However, the series does not describe the kind of growth that our economy seemingly needs and our politicians like to promise, nor does it AFAICS describe the OP's idea of continued population growth given his recommendation to shun shrinking populations with fertility below replacement rate; theirs is a constant or in the midterm increasing growth and notwithstanding [minority opinions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww) claiming that 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... equals -1/12 such a series cannot have a finite sum, hence is physically unfeasible to represent.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#48

Post by sim1collins »

Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #8

AKA 'people should have more kids!' 'Wait! Not in those shithole countries!' Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory. Not with words or by shilling the conspiracy online but with their alarmism as conflated to just particular geographic areas without looking at the whole globe. Global population is still growing and will continue to do so during our lifetime. The relativ…

The fact that "Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory" is one of the reasons we put together this document.

Demographic collapse as a risk (and related risks related to declining populations) deserves to be explored from a non-racially/religiously motivated angle. Just because some racially/religiously motivated groups care about a problem does not mean that everyone who cares about that problem is racially/religiously motivated.

We also don't argue in the document that people should NOT be having kids in certain countries, nor do we argue that certain groups should not have so many kids. We don't even argue that people in general should have more kids (having kids is not for everyone). We merely attempt to take a sober approach to issues around population decline and potential solutions.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#49

Post by sim1collins »

erddfre3423 wrote: post #14
Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #8

AKA 'people should have more kids!' 'Wait! Not in those shithole countries!' Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory. Not with words or by shilling the conspiracy online but with their alarmism as conflated to just particular geographic areas without looking at the whole globe. Global population is still growing and will continue to do so during our lifetime. The relativ…

I think it's just good to have open discussion on what these demographics changes might mean in the context of different societies. Both Europe and North America will see increasing migration from more overpopulated and poorer parts of the world, and this obviously presents its challenges to societies in the both ends of the flow. I don't believe in "great replacement theory", what is happening is just a natural cons…

Totally agreed that the implications of population shifts warrant investigation. Demographic changes have significant impacts on variety of factors—even if one ONLY cares about maximizing investment gains, it's an important subject.

Re: Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply

#50

Post by zshrdlu »

Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #8

AKA 'people should have more kids!' 'Wait! Not in those shithole countries!' Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory. Not with words or by shilling the conspiracy online but with their alarmism as conflated to just particular geographic areas without looking at the whole globe. Global population is still growing and will continue to do so during our lifetime. The relativ…

As a black man in Africa, I had not realized that this was not an obvious subtext until I read your comment. Is it not?
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