Natural selection has been strongly optimizing for pro-natal genes and cultures since the introduction of the birth control pill. The labor gap is a short-term problem and can be fixed with immigration and maybe AI. Birth rates aren't plummeting around the world at the same time. By the time the birth rate becomes a problem in Africa, America would have long recovered.
>Does that mean we are doomed to die out? Henry Gee thinks so, if only because all species die out in the end. The question is simply how long it takes.
Why isn’t this the default position?
The most firmly predictable position is that every biological species will go away eventually. Even humans are vastly different chimeral species from the proto-humans that made up modern anatomical human.
Most europeans have significant Neanderthal genetics, and yet all Neanderthal are existinct. Same with homo denisovian, habilis, etc…
As a species working on transitioning human level intelligence into something that can last longer than human species should be our only goal.
If we're going by "all species die out in the end" then anything we transition to will die too: entropy will get the whole universe in the end. Past that there's nothing that says any species can't expand out, settle whatever planets they want and stick around to the end. I'm also pretty cool with my millions-of-years-from-now descendants looking back at me and thinking about how different they are from me. I would consider it an incredible success to go that long without catastrophically destroying ourselves.
Human history is full of this ridiculous hand-wringing over nothing. some people don't actually do shit, just sit around pointing fingers and nitpicking. They skip the real work of digging into social change and fixate on surface-level bullshit.
The fertility rate mess really boils down to just two core reasons: in fancy democratic developed countries, folks are so damn self-absorbed that the whole system screws over regular people and kills their vibe for having kids. And in poorer countries, it's solar panels and TikTok exploding everywhere, giving way too many fun distractions to keep things lively. But the real root of it all? It's baked into the political systems and setups. Still, barely anyone wants to face the music and admit their "great" democracy and any other policical system is straight-up trash.
This article just flat-out refuses to face the real damn problem.
Either you're banking on robots to save the day, or you gotta crank up the birth rate. But ramping up the birth rate? Only three ways to pull that off: straight-up tank women's rights across the board, socialize childcare big-time, or just smash the current political system to bits and build something better. Thing is, none of those are any more doable than hoping robots magically fix everything.
stage right enter homo paganicus, accompanied by those twins homo philosiphus and homo philobaccus
pass the wine around.
True story, I took a course in environmental microbiology, and at a certain point, the instructor had a slide titled, "Ideal Conditions for Reproduction" and below that the words, "A Swiss Chalet on a cold night, a bottle of wine, and a warm fireplace"
The one thing many people miss - or utterly fail to acknowledge - is how the entire edifice of capitalism is violently against any attempt to reverse fossil fuels, simply because it is far too profitable to turn away from. And when you realize that the only responsibility corporations have is to their shareholders, it makes perfect sense.
It’s why CO2e levels continue to accelerate, why heating has similarly accelerated such that we might see more heating in the next 10 than we have in the last 75, and why we are still on the absolute worst-case-path-possible, all because of “business as usual” being too profitable to ignore.
We’re fucked, not because we aren’t doing anything, but because those who can are the 1% who aren’t, and those who actually want to do something are the 99% who have absolutely no power to affect the former.
Natural selection has been strongly optimizing for pro-natal genes and cultures since the introduction of the birth control pill. The labor gap is a short-term problem and can be fixed with immigration and maybe AI. Birth rates aren't plummeting around the world at the same time. By the time the birth rate becomes a problem in Africa, America would have long recovered.
Natural selection doesn't optimize, it selects.
[dead]
https://archive.today/r8ZP5
Betteridge's Law of Headlines: No.
I remember the freak-out of the 90s. The world was going to be at 10 billion humans and unsustainable, leading to world-wide famine.
Now we're at the other end. It will cycle, the human race will continue.
>Does that mean we are doomed to die out? Henry Gee thinks so, if only because all species die out in the end. The question is simply how long it takes.
Why isn’t this the default position?
The most firmly predictable position is that every biological species will go away eventually. Even humans are vastly different chimeral species from the proto-humans that made up modern anatomical human.
Most europeans have significant Neanderthal genetics, and yet all Neanderthal are existinct. Same with homo denisovian, habilis, etc…
As a species working on transitioning human level intelligence into something that can last longer than human species should be our only goal.
If we're going by "all species die out in the end" then anything we transition to will die too: entropy will get the whole universe in the end. Past that there's nothing that says any species can't expand out, settle whatever planets they want and stick around to the end. I'm also pretty cool with my millions-of-years-from-now descendants looking back at me and thinking about how different they are from me. I would consider it an incredible success to go that long without catastrophically destroying ourselves.
Human history is full of this ridiculous hand-wringing over nothing. some people don't actually do shit, just sit around pointing fingers and nitpicking. They skip the real work of digging into social change and fixate on surface-level bullshit.
The fertility rate mess really boils down to just two core reasons: in fancy democratic developed countries, folks are so damn self-absorbed that the whole system screws over regular people and kills their vibe for having kids. And in poorer countries, it's solar panels and TikTok exploding everywhere, giving way too many fun distractions to keep things lively. But the real root of it all? It's baked into the political systems and setups. Still, barely anyone wants to face the music and admit their "great" democracy and any other policical system is straight-up trash.
This article just flat-out refuses to face the real damn problem.
Either you're banking on robots to save the day, or you gotta crank up the birth rate. But ramping up the birth rate? Only three ways to pull that off: straight-up tank women's rights across the board, socialize childcare big-time, or just smash the current political system to bits and build something better. Thing is, none of those are any more doable than hoping robots magically fix everything.
stage left exit homo economicus
stage right enter homo paganicus, accompanied by those twins homo philosiphus and homo philobaccus
pass the wine around.
True story, I took a course in environmental microbiology, and at a certain point, the instructor had a slide titled, "Ideal Conditions for Reproduction" and below that the words, "A Swiss Chalet on a cold night, a bottle of wine, and a warm fireplace"
With that attitude you are
The one thing many people miss - or utterly fail to acknowledge - is how the entire edifice of capitalism is violently against any attempt to reverse fossil fuels, simply because it is far too profitable to turn away from. And when you realize that the only responsibility corporations have is to their shareholders, it makes perfect sense.
It’s why CO2e levels continue to accelerate, why heating has similarly accelerated such that we might see more heating in the next 10 than we have in the last 75, and why we are still on the absolute worst-case-path-possible, all because of “business as usual” being too profitable to ignore.
We’re fucked, not because we aren’t doing anything, but because those who can are the 1% who aren’t, and those who actually want to do something are the 99% who have absolutely no power to affect the former.
[dead]