From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 27 1998 - 11:20:25 MDT
Damien Broderick writes:
>>What do you think of the above argument about lower overall birthrate per
>>unit time for longer-living people?
>
>I would hope so too, but this is about the point that Robin Hanson usually
>lobs in to mention that a small fraction with deviant growth rate will
>quickly supplant a more self-controlled majority. (If I understand the
>Great Filter/Fermi argument.) If everyone except a small bunch of
>Catholics swallowed their combined immortality & sterility pill, the world
>would soon be choked with die-hard (ahem) Catholics. No?
Max More writes:
>Decelerating population growth appears to be an inevitable result of growing
>wealth. Early on ... children as “producer goods. Parents put their
>children to work on the farm to generate food and revenue. ... As we become
>wealthier, children become “consumer goods”. That is, we look on them more and
>more as little people to be enjoyed and pampered and educated, not beasts of
>burden to help keep the family alive. ... We come to prefer fewer children to
>a vast mob. Changing tastes resulting from improved education seem to reinforce
>this preference. ... Children cost more to raise in cities and can produce
>less income than in the country.
On Damien B.'s cue, I'll say I think Max's "inevitable" claim is too strong.
There is nothing economically inevitable about wanting to have fewer kids when
you're rich; it's a matter of preferences. And there are in fact a minority
of rich folks who seem to prefer large families, and whose kids do too.
Our current world is very different from the world human preferences were
selected for. For some reason I'm not clear on, our evolved preferences and
behaviors seem to choose to have fewer kids under "industrialized" situations.
But this behavior doesn't seem adapted to our new world. It sure seems like
those who prefer larger families when rich should be eventually selected for.
Of course with human reproduction beingh as slow as it is, such selection takes
time, and by the time it really starts to bite the world will change even more
drastically. I have written elsewhere about how I expect very strong selection
effects with uploads.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-2627
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