One of the other things that is usually not taken into account is the aging of the population. Fertility rates may fall but the folks that are still here are likely to be around for a lot more time. The future belongs to the old and technology may make them VERY old. Plus what happens to society once women are completely liberated from the burden of child birth (that day is coming courtesy of the artificial womb).
Human Demography in Science Fiction
- Thread starter Switch
- Start date
A small percentage of people will opt to use things like "artificial wombs" under certain circumstances, but again the idea of widespread adoption of these kinds of things is nonsense. They serve no social, economic, health or other purpose equal to their expense and complexity. In the developed world there are many alternatives now to pregnancy, especially for people of means, and yet most women who want to be mothers are willing to be pregnant.
Switch
Captain
I remember reading Valerie Solanas' SCUM manifesto some years back where she talks about how with modern technology men can now be disposed of and thinking 'yeah, your day will come soon enough'.
Been to Antarctica recently?
I'm sure some folks will go 'places', and that's cool, but I think most of the species will remain right here.
But there are no easy alternatives to pregnancy where the result is a child. And the notion that possible artificial wombs are inherently expensive and complex in comparison to the problem that they would solve is at least shortsighted, if not dismissive.
Pregnancy has rewards but it is also in large part unpleasant, and can also really fuck up a body. I'd suspect the market for artificial wombs is far larger than you surmise.
I agree that I don't think it would make people particularly eager to have more children. I don't think the cervix is the bottleneck here.
Gaith said:
I wonder how badly that would slow down economic growth and technological advancement. I've often suspected that one of the drivers of the late-20th century technological boom has been the increase in the numbers of available brains, and the increased chance of any given individual being cut out for high technology work. The same might be said about the arts.
With one third the people, without any other change, it stands to reason that the global economy will be commensurately less intelligent.
Switch
Captain
I suspect that there are a lot fewer than 2.3bn folks on this planet with high-school level education or better.
Also 2.3bn wasn't that long ago ... 1930 or thereabouts.
True. But the numbers of people who will provide above-average value will rise with population (at least, until you reach the point where the population's resources can no longer educate them effectively).
Say there are 2 million "geniuses" will be born over the next ten years in North America, Europe, Japan, and China, whose work will benefit most everyone in those countries, regardless of their actual population, and assume that the cost of technological innovation is negligible in relation to its ultimate economic effect.
If birthrates decrease by 50%, one would expect 1 million fewer "geniuses" over the next ten years, and a commensurate drop in technological innovation.
It's a shortfall that may or may not be amenable to being made up by increased education. In the developing world, that is certainly true: increased prosperity that serves the as-yet-unserved "geniuses" growing up in Africa and Brazil or wherever might even make the actual decrease invisible for a time.
But eventually there will be, in relative terms, fewer minds thinking about ways to solve problems, and while with a decreased population there will obviously be fewer problems to be solved (because people are, to paraphrase Stalin, nothing if not bundles of problems), it's evident from the last 10,000 years that on balance humans generally bring more benefit to other humans than problems.
Of course, the other way to deal with a slowed growth curve is superhuman intelligences, but I won't go into that here.
Say there are 2 million "geniuses" will be born over the next ten years in North America, Europe, Japan, and China, whose work will benefit most everyone in those countries, regardless of their actual population, and assume that the cost of technological innovation is negligible in relation to its ultimate economic effect.
If birthrates decrease by 50%, one would expect 1 million fewer "geniuses" over the next ten years, and a commensurate drop in technological innovation.
It's a shortfall that may or may not be amenable to being made up by increased education. In the developing world, that is certainly true: increased prosperity that serves the as-yet-unserved "geniuses" growing up in Africa and Brazil or wherever might even make the actual decrease invisible for a time.
But eventually there will be, in relative terms, fewer minds thinking about ways to solve problems, and while with a decreased population there will obviously be fewer problems to be solved (because people are, to paraphrase Stalin, nothing if not bundles of problems), it's evident from the last 10,000 years that on balance humans generally bring more benefit to other humans than problems.
Of course, the other way to deal with a slowed growth curve is superhuman intelligences, but I won't go into that here.
China is below replacement level? I'd thought that even with the one-child policy, there were enough rural births to produce growth. Weird. Source?Ooh I found a map:
Blue = TFR below replacement level
Green = TFR above replacement level
Yellow = The vagina is not a clown car
Orange/Purple = Holy Shit!
Switch
Captain
China is below replacement level? I'd thought that even with the one-child policy, there were enough rural births to produce growth. Weird. Source?Ooh I found a map:
Blue = TFR below replacement level
Green = TFR above replacement level
Yellow = The vagina is not a clown car
Orange/Purple = Holy Shit!
China is well below replacement at 1.4 births/woman, same level as Eastern and Southern Europe.
Data from UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldfertility2009/fertility_wallchart09_table.xls
Switch
Captain
Cut/Paste from UN report associated with prev. linked data:
Flips from red to blue that I can see...
China (dark blue even ... tremble before the power of the CCP!
)
Iran
Brazil
Vietnam
Thailand
Mongolia
What's up with Iran being all lonesome in its sense of demographic responsibility in the Middle East?
Flips from red to blue that I can see...
China (dark blue even ... tremble before the power of the CCP!
)Iran
Brazil
Vietnam
Thailand
Mongolia
What's up with Iran being all lonesome in its sense of demographic responsibility in the Middle East?
Piper has a good story about this idea, too. Day of the Moron.
Heinlein also said when describing the Human Diaspora in Time Enough For Love that it was only about 1% that went to the stars-but they were the best, the brightest and the most intelligent. And that when they got there-they bred like rabbits. He's got a great explanation of why in that book, too.
It's in the chapter where he convinces the head of the Howard families to move the HQ, so to speak, because the current planet is too civilized, too crowded and generally like Earth as it is now....
Switch
Captain
Huh, I've read Time Enough For Love but don't remember that. Or almost anything else from the novel for that matter.
Guess I'll have to give it another go round.
Switch
Captain
Huh, I've read Time Enough For Love but don't remember that. Or almost anything else from the novel for that matter.
Guess I'll have to give it another go round.
What actual information beyond skiffy speculation and what seems logical to you - any kind of surveys or market data - do you have to suggest that any potential market represents a significant percentage of the women on Earth?
I think any projections beyond 50 years are just so much pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
There are far too many people on the planet who get excited about books that are more than 1000 years old. What technology might be developed within the next 1000 years hardly bears imagining.
Three technologies could make the slow colonization of extra-solar worlds possible. 20% of light speed propulsion. Life extension to 300 years. Some form of cold sleep/hibernation.
Of those 3 I think the 20% of light speed would be the most difficult.
But von Neumann probes sent first to find places worth sending live ships. What would 300 year life expectancies do to most people's thinking though. That may be the most likely of the 3 technologies. This century is likely to be one of biological revolution. But who decides how to use what and on whom?
psik
Unlike serious discussion of 20% lightspeed propulsion, which is totally sober.
Unlike serious discussion of 20% lightspeed propulsion, which is totally sober.
Not completely unbelievable. We've gone from a max speed around 40 miles an hour in 1901(trains) to whatever the top speed of the shuttle is ("Speed: 17,460 miles per hour.") in 110 years. What can we do in 100 more? Or even 50?
Switch
Captain
Obviously uncertainty increases the further one looks afield and this is acknowledged.
For example, Australia currently has a population of 23m people. Official projections for the nation's population in 2050 range from 31m to 43m depending upon assumptions made re: fertility, life expectancy and immigration, an already not inconsiderable uncertainty margin of 12m or 55% of the current population. Further afield, official projections for the nation's population in 2100 range from 34m to 62m, an uncertainty margin of 28m or 130% of the current population.
For example, Australia currently has a population of 23m people. Official projections for the nation's population in 2050 range from 31m to 43m depending upon assumptions made re: fertility, life expectancy and immigration, an already not inconsiderable uncertainty margin of 12m or 55% of the current population. Further afield, official projections for the nation's population in 2100 range from 34m to 62m, an uncertainty margin of 28m or 130% of the current population.
Last edited:
Unlike serious discussion of 20% lightspeed propulsion, which is totally sober.
Not completely unbelievable.
Not as impossible as FTL, but there's no reason based on what we know to expect it to happen - rough analogies to the contrary. We have made no engineering progress toward such a thing, for the very good reason that it serves no purpose to anyone sufficient to make even the beginnings of the effort reasonable.
Nor is 2.3bn humans by 2300. Far less unbelievable, actually.Unlike serious discussion of 20% lightspeed propulsion, which is totally sober.
Not completely unbelievable.
Similar threads
