Many users welcomed falling fertility rates below replacement for environmental gains like less pollution and more land for nature, while others feared resulting economic and civilizational collapse.
@EricLevitz This seems like another case where a current trend is being projected too confidently into the deep future. Fertility is falling now, but human behavior, technology, economics, migration, gender roles, family policy, and cultural incentives do not move in straight lines.
I don't have a strong opinions on population ethics in general. But I think it will be very socially, economically, and politically destabilizing in the medium-term. The downsides are less severe if population falls but then stabilizes at a lower level. If below-replacement fertility continues indefinitely though, the human species ceases to exist (I am personally open to arguments for that being OK but most people tend to think otherwise)
@EricLevitz Would that be a bad thing, in the short run at least?
@Putney_Kotto definitely possible! Though my understanding is that serious demographers (rather than public intellectuals/ecologists) believed that we were headed for population decline even in the 60s
@benjilachkar @EricLevitz Incredibly unlikely.
The world more than quadrupled in size from 1920 to 2025. It's not going to destroy civilization to go back to where we were 50 years ago.
Lots of policy decisions, lots of changes. Not collapse.
@EricLevitz Decades of men hitting, killing and mistreating women have led to this outcome. All the years of "she trapped me into marriage with this horrible pregnancy"! And now they complain and pretend that they actually love children and family. It's an act. Don't buy it.
@Perrid13 @EricLevitz The basic misunderstanding of the signification of population collapse is really incredible. No it will not be like going back to what was 100 years ago. But you will see for yourself.
@EricLevitz Thanks. I meant for a decade or so
@EricLevitz You miss the consequences of this demographic collapse - economic collapse as well and civilisational collapse. It will not be nice.
@EricLevitz The most interesting feature of this problem to me is that half the adults in the world were educated so firmly in the 20th c “population bomb” panic that they are all like “thank god, that’s good.” It will be a rare problem where we expected the exact opposite until very recent
@anannoyedtexan @EricLevitz That’s just crazy talk. The Billionaires, PHDs and the government know best. Just stop going to Starbucks so much.
@EricLevitz So we're destroying the human population and making ourselves hate one another. But on the plus side, a lot of tech bros in Silicon Valley got extremely rich!
@EricLevitz You're not convincing me that this is a bad thing?
@EricLevitz Buddy...
@EricLevitz Nuking everybody back to the mesolithic hasn't been tried yet.
@EricLevitz Oh, no, I hope the population doesn't drop back to what it was in the 1990s. Life was sure awful back then. Oh, no.
@benjilachkar @EricLevitz are you aware that the world had half as many people 50 years ago?
@EricLevitz Sixty years ago, the dominant fear was overpopulation; now the fear is depopulation. Both anxieties may identify real pressures, but both become suspect when they treat today’s trajectory as destiny. This is an easier one to predict that we will adapt and overcome.
@EricLevitz I suspect some countries will start dystopian projects of insemination/clones and test tube babies with ai and other things as the problem becomes debilitating to the future power of said country.
@EricLevitz Some seem to think that the population will equilibrate out at a TFR below 2.1. A population will shrink and populations will get older at a constant TFR below 2.1. Human fertility trends can change but they haven’t ever resumed a replacement level when it falls below 1.9.
