Why falling birthrates might be a bigger deal than dominants narratives imply • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by erddfre3423 » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

hamter wrote: post #64

erddfre3423 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure you can have this "discussion" but it comes off as needless (and probably racist) concern trolling. The Sweden thing is a favorite among reactionaries trying to mask their racism. The homicide rate in Sweden is lower than Canada. It's lower than Finland.

Indeed Sweden as a whole is safe, but organized crime related gun violence has become a problem of different size than here in Finland for example. It's quite worrying as gunfights between gangs do carry a high risk to other people who just happen to be nearby. A typical stabbing at least here in Finland involves drunks or drug addicts and happens in a private apartment.

On page 12 you can see statistic of gun-violence related deaths per million inhabitants in Nordic countries. Sweden is clearly doing worse than other countries, where overall trend has been declining rather than rising. The higher rates in Finland at the beginning are due to statistics also including stabbings.

https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/744136/ON_Luod...

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

#82

Post by nootropicat » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

Qem wrote: post #34

nootropicat wrote: post #13

Outside of high-tech solutions (external wombs, anti-aging) there's one social: a totalitarian country forcing women to have kids. The only country I could see it happening is China. In the absence of one of the three solutions, technological civilization will peak this century. It's not poverty or culture that leads to not having kids, it's industrialization. Any culture that automates agriculture to a sufficient le…

Outside high tech solutions, we could just make raising children cheap again. The cost of raising children into adulthood skyrocketed in the last century. No surprise people gave up on being parents. Just make sure housing is affordable, and subside public daycare, education up to university, and health assistance for would be parents, and a lot of people would proudly step forward.

How cheap kids are is irrelevant. Population grew much faster when people lived in abject poverty. People empirically don't want kids, full stop. Raising them could be free and tfr would still be below 2.

"I can't afford kids" is an excuse used by people who don't want kids but are unable to admit that. You can't actually afford kids if they would be under a real risk of starvation - which is a real risk in North Korea, not any Western country.

Don't read me wrong, I'm not saying here having kids is an obligation.

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

#83

Post by erddfre3423 » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

zshrdlu wrote: post #55

erddfre3423 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Genuine question: what part(s) of the world do you consider overpopulated?

Mainly those that are already having trouble feeding their populations. For example in Africa and Middle-East many countries are in trouble with the effects of the Russian invasion. I can only imagine what will happen in these parts of the world if climate change really starts to disrupt farming.

Of course this is just one way to look at the issue. If we look at resource consumption then worst offenders are elsewhere. After all, even current population levels could be sustained if nobody consumed more than the minimum they really need, food was distributed equally and green energy was dominant.

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

#84

Post by DemocracyFTW2 » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

sim1collins wrote: post #63

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…

When creating this document, our goal wasn't to give people the impression that our populations should expand in number indefinitely (especially not on Earth alone). You're right that expecting the planet to shoulder indefinite population growth is impractical. We're just trying to highlight the hazards of population decline that hits humanity like a tidal wave and produces unnecessary suffering and damage. There are…

I'm happy to hear that the overall perspective is relatable and sober although I can not agree on 'tidal wave' and 'apocalypse'. 'Antideluge' or 'negative tsunami', anyone?

You know, you could even blame Russia's current war on its declining population (their leader desperately trying to keep together the country and the people) but I know of another Great War that was fought under the pretense of having the right to expand b/c of a growing population (and they happened to have laid their eyes on the same stretches of fertile farmland). I do not believe in either, the reasons being in both cases largely unrelated to demographic growth or lack thereof. Given that this former event did cause stocks to take a plunge, well, that's what trouble and disorder give you, trouble and disorder. And that can have so many reasons that I'm not afraid of the shrinking population => economic setback linkage, even if and so far as it does have predictive value.

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

#85

Post by jtbayly » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

catchclose8919 wrote: post #78

jtbayly wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not replying to the document, but to catchclose8919's comment where he advocated "handing extra child care support to educated people in helthy societies and contraception to the others."

"Handling contraception" is almost zero cost (so can even be done in bad economie where stuff like child support can't work) and is about choice , not forcing anyone to do anything! If you want to play the "contraception is eugenics" card, have fun with whatever ultra-cristian uneducated mid-american audience you find for that...

You literally described the goal as increasing birth rates in "healthy societies" and suppressing it everywhere else.

So you tell me, what is the definition of a "healthy society" so I can understand which groups you wish would just stop breeding and disappear.

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

#86

Post by jtbayly » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

catchclose8919 wrote: post #77

jtbayly wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the old “More from the fit, less from the unfit” view of reproduction. Where “fit” of course is “like me.” There’s a long history of this sort of eugenics.

It's eugenics when you force it. It's social engineering when you alter the incentives/rewards landscape to get better outcomes. And it's... evolution when nature does it anyway. Just labeling it as generically "bad" and charicaturising it in a way that bundles it with other despicable tendencies like maybe racism brings no insight to the discussion. Only muddies the waters and makes the whole discussion stupider.

> It's eugenics when you force it.

No. Let's take a look at the first two definitions that popped up in my search:

> a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population,[3][4] historically by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior.

Those judged to be superior in this case being those in "healthy" societies.

> The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.

You described a method whereby your goal was to arrange reproduction (birth control to one group, child support to another group), based on their characteristics, on the assumption that those characteristics are heritable. You are simply advocating eugenics. Yes, the theory is based on the theory of evolution. No, most people don't even think it works anymore, whether forced, voluntary, or otherwise.

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

#87

Post by antisthenes » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

Qem wrote: post #34

nootropicat wrote: post #13

Outside of high-tech solutions (external wombs, anti-aging) there's one social: a totalitarian country forcing women to have kids. The only country I could see it happening is China. In the absence of one of the three solutions, technological civilization will peak this century. It's not poverty or culture that leads to not having kids, it's industrialization. Any culture that automates agriculture to a sufficient le…

Outside high tech solutions, we could just make raising children cheap again. The cost of raising children into adulthood skyrocketed in the last century. No surprise people gave up on being parents. Just make sure housing is affordable, and subside public daycare, education up to university, and health assistance for would be parents, and a lot of people would proudly step forward.

Children are expensive because the environment they enter is highly competitive.

If you want to make kids cheap, you have to reduce the competition for resources, or increase resource abundance.

Neither one is particularly achievable through bureaucratic policy.

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

#88

Post by ckrapu » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 7:41 PM UTC

sim1collins wrote: post #33

ckrapu wrote: post #30

My sense was that this interpretation of work on the “behavioral sink” is quite off. I think most reasonable biologists and ecologists would agree that density-dependent stress tends to cause the pathologies of the type that are described in Calhoun’s work. The fact that there are occasional sparse zones in the pen is relevant insofar as it usually implied strong individuals excluding access to those parts of the pen…

We're not sure either (I wrote this with the primary author), but we agree there's something interesting going on. The research is brought up in the deep dive more as an interesting reference point and less as any sort of primary argument.

To play along more with the ideas you guys are raising, I think that strong spatial heterogeneity driven by falling birth rates in sink-type effects are having an outsized effect on how we think about nations even if the sink is due to density. Societies and cultures which are pre- or post-sink might look at clusters of pathological behaviors as signs of cultural or genetic inferiority, causing some degree of conflict and bias.

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

#89

Post by drewcoo » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

sim1collins wrote: post #73

hamter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people haven't developed the muscle to look at anything discussing "demographics" extremely critically.

Exactly. Perhaps one of the biggest barriers slowing down solutions to problems caused by demographic collapse = people not being willing to discuss demographic collapse merely because some racist/religiously extreme groups refer to demographic shifts in some of their arguments. Just because hitler self-identified as a vegetarian doesn't mean that other people who self-identify as vegetarians condone Hitler's views.

And that's Godwin . . . Bingo!

Something like this needs trigger warnings. That's a way to start breaking down those barriers. People won't engage seriously unless they're presented with something seems a little less like stealth hate speech.

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

#90

Post by qualudeheart » Mon, Jul 25, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

Varyag wrote: post #9

qualudeheart wrote: post #6

Where we’re going (AGI land) we won’t need humans.

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.

Human underpopulation as an existential threat is also extremely far away. Ok, less people means a weaker economy. It still won’t be as bad as an event like World War II which killed tens of millions but that humanity still recovered from. I actually want longer AGI timelines because I don’t trust AGI to share my values.

Thanks for recommending the at section of the document. I’ll take a peak at it. I’m not really worried about yhe birthraye decline case because I think there would be subgroups of humanity with higher birthrates. Both small communities like the Amish and large communities like Nigerians still have birth rates well above replacement level. Africa is industrializing fast and could become an industrial powerhouse like China, if automation doesn’t remove the competitive advantage that high population otherwise would give them. Many African countries GDPs are growing at 10% every year.

This comment of mine goes a little off topic but I think the stuff I’m addressing is interesting and important for predicting the future.