Can anything prevent low fertility rates from causing the human race to go extinct?

It won't be a problem. Population is already enormous and the eventual correcting influence will be increasing numbers of people resistant (psychologically or otherwise) to contraception.

Also I hate the guy who invented the word psychology. Who the fuck decides to spell something like that? I don't think I've ever once written it correctly without a spell checker. Something like saikology should replace it.

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(05-15-2017 01:52 PM)Repo Wrote:  Why does Earth need more people? What would be wrong with maintaining a population of say 1 billion worldwide?

At some point machines will take over much of what humans do, and there is no way there will be employment for everyone worldwide.

All good and well. Run it by the Africans and when you get a consensus there we'll get underway.

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As countries in Africa develop, I predict birth rates in Africa will fall just like in the West. When you have high mortality rates, and no government to take care of you, just your children and relatives, it makes sense that they would have high birth rates.

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Don't hold your breath waiting for Africa to develop. In many places it's been going backward since world war 2.

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As others have pointed out, there are too many self correcting factors within civilization and trends for there not to be trends, successes, failures, and reboots.

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I've thought about this and the implication of technological civilization entailing infertility is pretty bleak as there are only two possible long term outcomes:

1. Barbarians. Every time a civilization becomes sufficiently advanced they become highly individualistic and direct their resources towards hedonistic pursuits until they are eventually too weak to resist being replaced by a comparatively low IQ group of highly fertile savages. Each time this happens civilization falls into a dark age until natural selection floats a new group of high IQ people into starting a new civilization and repeating the cycle until some random event destroys humanity.

2. Machine civilization. A civilization can potentially reach a sufficiently advanced point where their attempts to offload human labor into machines drives them to solve AI and produce an intelligence with agency and no hedonistic drives that keep humans from being productive. Eventually this will either cause the AI to exterminate the humans once it realizes they aren't useful, or humans will devolve into a sort of vestigial organ on the computer that's doing all their thinking for them.

For us, either option sucks and is undesirable. For the good of our world in the very long term, the second option is preferable if it produces a sapient and sentient AI rather than just some obsessive ML algorithm trying to figure out all the digits of pi.

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Why is IQ a good evaluator of human intelligence?

Most high IQ people of today have no survival skills and aren't breeding. Maybe the joke is on them.

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(05-16-2017 05:27 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  I've thought about this and the implication of technological civilization entailing infertility is pretty bleak as there are only two possible long term outcomes:

1. Barbarians. Every time a civilization becomes sufficiently advanced they become highly individualistic and direct their resources towards hedonistic pursuits until they are eventually too weak to resist being replaced by a comparatively low IQ group of highly fertile savages. Each time this happens civilization falls into a dark age until natural selection floats a new group of high IQ people into starting a new civilization and repeating the cycle until some random event destroys humanity.

2. Machine civilization. A civilization can potentially reach a sufficiently advanced point where their attempts to offload human labor into machines drives them to solve AI and produce an intelligence with agency and no hedonistic drives that keep humans from being productive. Eventually this will either cause the AI to exterminate the humans once it realizes they aren't useful, or humans will devolve into a sort of vestigial organ on the computer that's doing all their thinking for them.

For us, either option sucks and is undesirable. For the good of our world in the very long term, the second option is preferable if it produces a sapient and sentient AI rather than just some obsessive ML algorithm trying to figure out all the digits of pi.

I don't think we'd returne to a dark age. After the industrial revolution I think it's near impossible for the world to be plunged into a technological dystopia

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Niger has the highest fertility rate (6.62) in the world. I was reading this article, "Niger: Too Little, Too Late", which suggests the reason isn't a lack of contraceptives:

Malcolm Potts Wrote:Since 2002, contraceptives have been provided free in Niger, distribution has been outsourced and some radio programs promoting family planning have been launched; however, contraceptive prevalence remains low. In 2009, 11% of married Nigerien women aged 15–49 were practicing contraception, and fewer than half (5%) relied on a modern method, generally oral contraceptives or the IUD. The most common reasons given for nonuse were a desire for more children, menopause and sterility. Given such low contraceptive prevalence, the country’s population continues to grow rapidly, thus skewing the age structure of the population. Approximately 49% of the population is aged 15 or younger, and only 3% is aged 65 or older. For the contraceptive prevalence to reach 55% (the level needed to reach a TFR of 3.8) by 2050, the number of users would need to increase more than 10 times.

Nigerien family and cultural dynamics largely represent male interests, and many women do not have the autonomy or freedom to manage childbearing. The country has not ratified the Maputo Protocol outlawing early marriage, the median age of marriage among women is 15.5 and the median age at first birth is 17.9. Niger is one of the few countries in the world with little or no overall unmet need for family planning, not because of access to contraceptive methods, but because of a strong pronatalist culture in which the desired family size is higher than the actual family size. In 2006, married women and men reported wanting an average of 8.8 and 12.6 children, respectively. More than one-quarter of women older than 40 have 10 or more children. Only one in 100 women want to have at most two children. . . . .

In 2007, only 15% of women in Niger had any primary education, and only 1% had completed primary school. The German Credit Bank is exploring ways of keeping girls in Niger in school; however, it seems extremely unlikely that investment in education will even keep school enrollment at a pace with population growth. By 2050, the school-age population will be eight times as large as it is today, yet the share of the government’s general budget going to education has fallen over the last decade, from 15% to less than 10%. . . . .

The early age of sexual debut of women in Niger is a key factor influencing the country’s high TFR. The mean age of marriage is younger than 14 in some areas, and the high ratio of young women to older men in the population enables affluent older men to engage in polygynous marriages with teenage women.

Increasing the age of childbearing by five years in a country such as Niger would reduce future population growth by 15–20%. Strategies for postponing the age of marriage are limited, but there is an increasing consensus that much more investment needs to be made in young women: Delaying marriage and childbearing increases the time between generations and slows population growth, young women’s education enhances their autonomy and their power to manage childbearing, and it benefits the next generation as educated mothers invest in their own children. Experimental mechanisms are being explored for creating physically and psychologically “safe spaces” where young women can learn about their bodies and ways of limiting family size. Pilot projects in Hausa communities in Northern Nigeria have found that small cash payments can give parents an incentive to keep their daughters in school.

The Maputo Protocol referenced in the article states, "States Parties shall ensure that women and men enjoy equal rights and are regarded as equal partners in marriage. They shall enact appropriate national legislative measures to guarantee that . . . the minimum age of marriage for women shall be 18 years". It also has a bunch of other pro-feminist requirements, such as "a married woman shall have the right to retain her maiden name, to use it as she pleases, jointly or separately with her husband's surname".

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(05-17-2017 07:14 PM)godzilla Wrote:  Why is IQ a good evaluator of human intelligence?

Most high IQ people of today have no survival skills and aren't breeding. Maybe the joke is on them.

IQ is the best evaluator of human intelligence, by definition, by construction, and by its predictive ability.

As a metric, it is the most useful predictor in forecasting life outcomes, more so than parental socioeconomic status (SES), race, the "big 5 Personality Traits," "grit" (jenniferlawrencerollingeyes.jpg). In the field of psychology, it is the most important and replicable concept--2nd are operant and classical conditioning.

IQ is a measure of general cognitive ability.

"But general cognitive ability doesn't exist!" some idiot might say. "There are different kinds of intelligences!"
"Okay, athletic ability doesn't exist, then..." You say.
"Wow, no... I literally can't even. Of course athletic ability exists. You think you are as athletic as Tom Brady, Lebron James, Roger Federer?"
"Of course not, fag. Do you think you are as smart as Terrence Tao or Elon Musk?"
"[TRIGGERING INTENSIFIES]"

General cognitive ability can be analogized as "all intelligences" blended together in one metric to maximize explanatory power. Like blending 40-yard-dash time, vertical leap, hand-eye-coordination, etc. in one metric.

Standardized tests such as SAT and PISA are very well correlated with IQ. Hence once you adjust for population-based differences (that is, "racial" differences), performance "gaps" across countries go away.

A standardized test (AFQT) can predict ability to emerge from the bottom quintile of SES status (race does not, implying differences in outcome between blacks and whites are only mediated through differences in IQ when it comes to emerging from the bottom quintile of SES status):



SAT Math scores at Age 13 can predict Doctorates, Publications, STEM doctorates, STEM publications, Patents, and Probability of High Income (95th+ Percentile) over 25 years later... among the top 1% of scorers at Age 13--yyyyuuuge range restriction, so the effects on the general population will only be greater.

(05-15-2017 09:47 AM)rudebwoy Wrote:  So people with low IQ should be banned from having children!

That would be bad news for a lot of dudes on this forum, it is a good thing that will never be enforced.

The Eugenics movement has been trying that for years.

Curious as to who will take out your garbage and serve you your latte in the future?

What a vacuous and insipid comment.

As was explained multiple times in this thread--directly and/or indirectly--no "bans" would be involved with regard to having children. Instead of paying $X1 to people to have children as we currently do in many Western Nations, we would pay $X2 to not have children.

This is the kind of hackneyed comment casual liberals would leave on sites like MarginalRevolution and OvercomingBias when Clark's A Farewell to Alms triggered the shit out of them in 2007 (but probably extends before that, 2007 is when these imbecilic comments ramped up [in addition to Clark's book, shortly thereafter came the genomics era] and through the years following), and the kind of comment that reminds me that the "Deep Forum" is but a less-viewed "Everything Else" forum.

I don't drink lattes, but who takes out my garbage and serves lattes now? People who are paid to do so. Who would take out my garbage and serve lattes in a higher-IQ future? People who are paid to do so.

The supply curve of low-skilled laborers is not infinitely inelastic with respect to IQ. We don't live in some Goldilock's Zone for low-skilled laborers.

I'd much rather live in a world where my garbage-men (oh excuse me, garbage-persons [oh excuse me again, extraneous-belongings-disposal-specialists]) have 110 IQs on average and my engineers 150 IQs on average, than a world where my garbage-men have 80 IQs on average and my society's engineers 120 IQs on average, much less a world where my garbage-men have 50 average IQs and engineers 90 IQs.

All else equal, downward mobility is the mark of an improving society--and upward mobility is the mark of a decaying society--despite what PC-liberal polite society would say about their sacred cow that is "upward mobility."

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I wonder, if we subsidized childbearing, how much that would increase the fertility rate.

Let's suppose there are 75 million women of childbearing age in the U.S., and that it takes a $10,000/year subsidy, over a 20-year period, to incentivize women with two kids to have a third kid.

That's only $750 billion a year. Out of a budget of almost $4 billion, that's not all that much. We would just need to quit getting involved in so many wars, and then we could probably afford it.

Maybe some private organizations could get involved in this. That way, they could set certain standards regarding which people they want to subsidize.

Alternately, wealthy men could just get a bunch of mistresses and have lots of kids that way, rather than donating to a charity. That sounds like more fun, and it could be tax deductible.

Could the problem really be solved so easily? Here I was comforting myself by thinking, "The human race is going extinct anyway, so I may as well not worry about anything," but now maybe I actually have to start caring again about stuff that happens in this world.

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(05-15-2017 09:47 AM)rudebwoy Wrote:  Curious as to who will take out your garbage and serve you your latte in the future?

Robots.

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I personally believe that getting rid of mandatory education, and allowing kids to work is the solution for this. If you look at developing countries, having kids is generally good for you economically. In developed countries like the US, especially in a city with a high cost of living, having kids can be a huge economic burden. It's quite sad, actually.

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I honestly dont see us blacks going extinct due to low ferility.

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I don't see anyone going extinct due to low fertility. I see us going extinct by using up what's left of the earth's biocapacity. Whether the overall ethnic mix of the planet changes between now and then won't really matter in the end as we devolve into tiny roving bands of cannibals ala Cormac McCarthy's The Road.



Maybe between now and then we'll also have a brief taste of strong AI and techno-singularity but the planet is really really sick and we're a virus as Agent Smith would say.





I commend people here for starting down the road of thinking about big macro-level issues but I've been studying this situation intensely for about, I dunno, 12+ years. (That's part of what all those years of being a single dad and taking care of my daughter and not getting laid were spent.) I assure you that the world's problems can not be reduced down to just gynocentrism or leftism as many manosphere types suggest. There is a certain amount of scapegoatism behind that. At this point I am basically a closeted misanthrope who feels that we are a failed species that are gleefully driving off a cliff and the root of the problem is unrestricted population growth, otherwise known as tragedy of the commons.

The main reason I went red-pill is to eat drink and be merry while I still can.

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(05-16-2017 05:27 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  1. Barbarians. Every time a civilization becomes sufficiently advanced they become highly individualistic and direct their resources towards hedonistic pursuits until they are eventually too weak to resist being replaced by a comparatively low IQ group of highly fertile savages. Each time this happens civilization falls into a dark age until natural selection floats a new group of high IQ people into starting a new civilization and repeating the cycle until some random event destroys humanity.

Has this happened many times?

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(05-31-2017 10:04 AM)Jean Valjean Wrote:  

(05-16-2017 05:27 PM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  1. Barbarians. Every time a civilization becomes sufficiently advanced they become highly individualistic and direct their resources towards hedonistic pursuits until they are eventually too weak to resist being replaced by a comparatively low IQ group of highly fertile savages. Each time this happens civilization falls into a dark age until natural selection floats a new group of high IQ people into starting a new civilization and repeating the cycle until some random event destroys humanity.

Has this happened many times?

I would say yes.
The main reference point is of course the roman empire.
But you also have the sumerian kingdoms which were conquered by the akkadians, eventually the babylonian empire was conquered by assyrians and these in turn by the persians.
Would the byzantine empire count? I'm not sure as I m not very read in their historical data.
In What is china today many a "civilized" kingdom fell to the mongols. Actually a shit ton of civilizations fell and got literally fucked by the golden horde come to think of it...

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^And Rhodesia fell to the Shona tribe.

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