Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Simply wanting kids of your own is great, but…If you worry about falling birth rates and preach at those who don’t, it’s meme anxiety. You think your genes can compete in gene pool but fear your memes aren’t strong enough to infect your own kids and that the memes of evil childless people will pwn your spawn
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Underpopulation is not a real issue. The old die. Medium-term labor shortfall can be addressed with automation and immigration from more fertile regions (modulo memetic anxieties). Long-term it self-corrects. Only real problem is endocrine disruption from microplastics preventing those who want kids from having them.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Memetic anxieties are not unreasonable (it would be sad if “Japan” or “Sicily” turn into dead cultures even if the physical societies soft land through automation and immigration). But while sad it’s not new. Many human cultures have gone memetically dead. Look at all the dead languages.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I’m not rooting for that outcome or against humanity expanding and thriving (though not at the expense of the rest of the biosphere). More importantly I don’t think it’s remotely likely. Global population will decline (gradually, then suddenly), hit a low ~6-7b by end century, then recover to stable plateau
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
To say quiet part out loud, “declining birth rates” discourse is 90% about race/ethnicity perpetuation, 10% about microplastics and endocrine disruption, 0% about species survival. I personally don’t give a damn about the first (though admittedly my genetic subset of “Indian” is not at risk, so cheap belief)
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Sharon
@sharonjohn
I think you’re mostly right about this but as @haywirez says, population pyramids inverting to middle aged or older blows up social welfare schemes but that can be offset by immigration + automation like you say at the cost of cultural dilution/extinction.
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h̷a̷y̷w̷i̷r̷e̷z̶
@haywirez
not for long, it will be everywhere. birthrates in africa (the favorite argument of right wing ethnofreaks) are already rapidly declining. and automation cannot offset a culture centered on the old
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Sharon
@sharonjohn
That problem is probably 70-100 years away though. Africa is still growing. I guess we’ll see what the global equilibrium is in terms of number of humans. I suspect the answer at least if we stay on Earth and continue to automate isn’t to stay on the current growth curve.
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