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

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

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.

If you primarily identify as “Japanese” or “Sicilian” over “human” it’s an existential crisis. If the reverse, it’s a tragedy but not an existential crisis.

I’m probably extreme in identifying with post-human. I wouldn’t even be too sad if humans slowly disappeared leaving behind a robot society.

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

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)

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.