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The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

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Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have access to the sea and to uranium you can make all the freshwater you need, even recycle your own wastewater nearly infinitely. This is a technological and economic problem, not an overpopulation problem.

> If you have access to the sea and to uranium you can make all the freshwater you need I don't believe that would be true on a large scale because the seaside would quickly become polluted with brine, and then having an infinite supply of uranium wouldn't help you. Desalination only works in the long term if there is an unlimited amount of body water to dilute the brine produced by the process.

Do you have to release brine directly into the seaside? What about long pipes with holes that go 50-100 kilometers into the sea?

There's no question of polluting all the oceans with brine. They get freshwater from the rain and the salt came from the oceans in the first place. We aren't net destroying water molecules.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#332

Maybe expecting every single person to work and no one to homestead and care for the kids, within a system that explicitly does not support families, was a mistake. (Please note that I did not gender the roles. My best friend is a stay-at-home dad and he is amazing. They can afford to do this, though, because his wife's compensation is extremely high.)

No matter the gender of the one staying at home, it creates a problematic power imbalance between the two parts of the couple, where one depends on the other and may be left in trouble if ever the couple should find an end.

True, which was solved like 8,000 years ago by religion/culture, saying you have to marry and support the mother of your children.

It wasn’t perfect of course. Abuse has always been a problem.

Yes, everyone has greater absolute freedom now that we have divorce, and abuse victims are better off, but we have not developed a functioning cultural replacement for the previous cultural arrangement. So, now we have a smaller abuse problem and 2 new problems: both spouses having to maintain excellent careers just in case they get divorced (at the expense of their children and their relationship with their children), AND for those relationship relationships that do end, one or both are still in trouble, as now two households have to be supported with the same amount of income.

I’m not proposing a solution. It’s hard. But I’m just pointing out how we specifically ruined this by completely throwing away the idea of marriage for life and replacing it with “marriage until you’re tired of the person”

PS: I’m divorced (though no kids with that marriage) and remarried, so I’m not pretending to be a moral authority.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any proxy for population count? Like may be mobile users, I understand people use more than one.

Yes, I included that in the brackets. There's roughly ~240M registered SIMs, but unlike American phone line where you sign a contract, Nigerian SIMs are bought OTC and are quite disposable. But, they're tied to the National Identity Number which is biometric and hard/impossible to circumvent. It's quite common to have up to 2-3-4 SIMs also. When when you account for that, you have ~60M-80M-100M phone users. Another p…

This is fascinating, thank you for bringing this to the discussion!

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> internally I end up having thoughts like this that I typically only feel safe sharing non-anonymously with people who are close. Ever tried flipping the lid on this? You'd start opening up a lot of people. Those who would try to use that against you or judge have no relevance since they are not close anyway. > why the traditionalists/far right haven’t taken this propaganda approach ... they have little, low quality…

“they have little, low quality sex” This is funny to mention, because studies on sex life show the opposite: https://www.peterhaas.org/why-church-attendees-have-the-best...

there's too many good licks in this one.

the issue is, of course, the lying:

from the article:

> We Don’t Participate in Pre-marital or Extra-marital Sex

Yeah, people say that a lot but if you know church people, you know that they are, on average, pretty much like all the other liars.

Except they might hope to get punished for their sins, which does make for some nice and regular kinky evenings, I guess, but that would only be true for people further to the right of the bell curve, if you believe.

Also: the suspense and excitement in fantasies definitely improves the experience. And living free of bullshit other than the classics in the Bible and the consequences of a virtuous and communal life don't sound too bad of a foreplay at all.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> internally I end up having thoughts like this that I typically only feel safe sharing non-anonymously with people who are close. Ever tried flipping the lid on this? You'd start opening up a lot of people. Those who would try to use that against you or judge have no relevance since they are not close anyway. > why the traditionalists/far right haven’t taken this propaganda approach ... they have little, low quality…

“they have little, low quality sex” This is funny to mention, because studies on sex life show the opposite: https://www.peterhaas.org/why-church-attendees-have-the-best...

Your source is incredibly biased.

Here's a source that's less biased that your source cites: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/07/19/the_family_r...

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families. Disagree on both. Pornography, like any media, has a multitude of styles and types that can evoke different sets of emotions from the viewer. It's an art form that speaks uniquely to each individual, and I've foun…

This is probably a common take by someone with survivor bias though. Days show porn use and fertility rate negatively correlate. Makes sense from first order effects researchers see on ED rates, etc.

That's lazy reasoning. You can invert the cause and effect and it still makes perfect sense. In fact I'd say that's the more plausible theory. That people experiencing dissatisfaction for whatever reason are more likely to seek it out.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a technological solution, I've previously suggested changing the male/female ratio of new births. Filter out most of the Y bearing sperm cells. In this new imbalanced society, a TFR well below 2 will still allow a stable, or even growing, population.

Who is going to fix things, then?

Not sure what you question is there.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#338
post #263
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left vs right theatre is really just two sides of the same coin. By now every western democracy is being dragged along the same path with different stages of progression. 1. Move domestic production and jobs to lesser developed countries to increase profits. 2. Open the gates for mass immigration under the guise of openness and empathy to import wage slaves for the service sector and use every media channel to os…

> any common idea that we can agree on I'm afraid there is no common ground anymore. There is nothing "smug" about having an opinion. And there are no compromises in sight. However, while 2020 helped a lot to escalate the situation, I also feel like politics were always pretty hopeless. Its just that if you grow older, you learn more about what is going on, so things seem increasingly bleek.

Having an opinion is totally fine, of course. I meant that "I told you so" is a bit like pouring gasoline on a fire and doesn't really help the situation.

I agree that politics were always hopeless. We don't really have a mechanism to preserve political experiences, so every couple generations we repeat the same stupid mistakes.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably a common take by someone with survivor bias though. Days show porn use and fertility rate negatively correlate. Makes sense from first order effects researchers see on ED rates, etc.

That's lazy reasoning. You can invert the cause and effect and it still makes perfect sense. In fact I'd say that's the more plausible theory. That people experiencing dissatisfaction for whatever reason are more likely to seek it out.

It’s also lazy reasoning to ignore all the self surveys of the youth though, the majority of them are saying it is harmful for their views of the other sex. You can decide not to believe a majority of people if you want, but rationalist assume the data is true.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#340
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain why total fertility rate goes down in direct correlation with women gaining freedom. Seems clear that once “it” could be avoided, the individuals started making choices beneficial for themselves.

I would argue that this is a pretty destructive choice though. Like kids/parenting or not (and even for blessed families without problems it’s always hard work), they’re inherently part of being a biological creature. Of course, individuals can opt out, but if everyone opts out, we are all dead. It’s sad that some people think that’s a good outcome, just because they’re squeamish about diaper changing or dealing with…

I notice you didn’t mention any of the health or physical risks women face in partnering up with a man, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, infant rearing (lack of sleep), loss of income and potential income due to career stagnation (meaning loss of financial security).

Given what we know of how pervasive harassment and violence against women was and is, could you envision a scenario where total fertility rate never reaches replacement rate?

What if it simply doesn’t make sense for women to partner up with the bottom 10% of men? Or even 20% of men? Then you have the women who end up only having 1 child, for whatever reason.

The higher the percentage of women that have 0 or 1 child, the higher the percentage of women that need to have 3 or more children to offset them. But the data shows, even amongst the richest women in the world with servants, that most prefer to experience 2 childbirths. A few will go for 3, in case they didn’t get a boy or girl, but the amount that want more than 3 is basically negligible.

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