Uhmm, you realize the world population is nearly 8 billion people and still growing fast?
Let’s imagine a simpler scenario, for those who might read our comments but are bad at math. We won’t use humans (too much baggage), but little aliens we’ll call zoops.
Zoops have two biological sexes that procreate together. There are two specimens, a Y and a Z. They have two offspring, also Y and Z. The population has doubled, but the fertility rate is at exact replacement level. When the two older zoops die, there will be only two. Zoops have no incest taboos, and so the second generation procreates twice.
In this way, the population has reached a steady state. But what if, instead, they only procreated once? This population is dead. Period. Sure, it will hang on a little longer, and sure, you’ll scream “but their population increased by 50% in just minutes” as some sort of lame argument that overpopulation is a concern. No, that was never a concern, instead extinction is the real risk.
We are in the period where humans are just having the one offspring per two parents, and since the parents don’t immediately die, it looks to you as if the population is “still growing fast”.
We will not run out of “them” anytime soon
You will indeed run out of them within 25 years. Within your lifetime. This will be about the time that you personally are relying on them to be the nurse’s aids in your nursing homes and to wipe your geriatric ass.
and even if we do at some point (far in the future) that is probably a good thing as the world is way over-populated as it is right now already.
No one growing up in this world you imagine will think “ok, the population has fallen enough now it’s time to start having 2.1 children again”.
You belong to a death cult. Suicidal at the species level.
I don’t know where you get your figures from, but the global fertility rate is still above replacement level,
Only when including several regions where fertility remains high (mostly Africa). If those are excluded, it’s extinction-level. But hey, you say “that’s how averages work”.
So let’s look at Africa. Their fertility rate is above replacement, but is dropping rapidly. We can measure how fast it is dropping. We know approximately when it will fall below replacement levels. And we don’t see any reason why it should remain above them, when it didn’t remain above replacement (or even just at) anywhere else in the world. It’s natural, and even smart, to assume that the same sociological forces that made it drop elsewhere are those making it drop in Africa, and that they will work the same as elsewhere (since Africans are human like everyone else). It’d actually be sort of racist to assume that it would work differently there wouldn’t it?
Once we have considered the places it’s below replacement, and the places that it’s above replacement but dropping, where else is left at all? Nowhere.
You don’t even understand the phenomenon. You don’t want to understand it. And you’re claiming that somehow it’s not even happening. It’s bizarre.
Also even at a slightly below replacement rate (where the global fertility rate is heading indeed) it will take centuries
No. The effect actually picks up speed the longer it occurs. Children internalize norms. If the 5 children who see everyone around them childless (excepting their own parents who have one), then don’t grow up to have one child also, they’ll have on average 0.2 children or something like that. Each generation shrinks faster than the last.
And if that somehow still translates into “it will be centuries before the last centenarian dies!”… how is that a counter-argument at all?
It’s bizarre that your theory is that we haven’t run out of gas when the speedometer still says we’re doing 100kph.
And even if you extrapolate the current trend it will not drop significantly below replacement rate anytime soon.
Soon for me is “anytime in the next 200 years”. Soon for you is “next 2 minutes”. We do not have the same “soon”.
Oh and there is no evidence that people (on average) have decided to go totally childless.
It wouldn’t have to be average. All it has to do is nudge things below replacement.
They usually only get one or two children, which does indeed drop the average fertility rate below replacement, but only slightly so.
And children who grow up in that world internalize it as a social norm. That becomes their ceiling for how many children to have someday. They then have the same number. Or fewer. The ones that go for “fewer” just nudged the rate down lower still. Iterate that through 30 generations, see what happens.
Even assuming the trend will last for thousands of years (nothing in human history has ever lasted that long!) we will not go anywhere near extinct.
Depends on the “we”. If by “we” you are excluding myself and my descendants, then you most certainly will.
If you are including me, then no. But the subset of humanity that is like yourself, you’re goners. Along with most of your ideology.
With 8 billion people world wide (and still growing above replacement rate right now!) it is simply absolute non-sense to talk about human extinction due to birth-rates dropping below replacement rate.
I forgot. Only climate science is allowed to think long term. The one true science. Measured in human generations, any one of which lasts no longer than about 100 years, each generation staggered with the next, and with a growing sentiment that having children is wrong, dangerous, and unfashionable that we impress upon youth… you people have less than a couple hundred years. Someday, when it becomes impossible to ignore, those of you still alive will look back to times like now, when something might still have been done about it.
Which fact am I resistant to? I’m resistant to your conclusions, which aren’t worthy of being called facts.
But try to do the math at least once: 8 billion people and a fertility rate of 1.8
I’ll wait 20 years until it’s 1.3. Or 40 years until it’s 0.3. The rate’s not constant. You get that right? It’s provably not constant. It’s provably not going up, or fluctuating back or forth, but continues to go downward. That’s not so hard to understand.
Maybe that’s the fact I’m resistant to. Maybe the fact that it’s currently 1.8, and that you imply there it will stay without anything to corroborate the idea. But also that you only imply it, because to assert such a thing sounds so absurd even you can’t possibly say it with a straight face.
Sure you can claim it will go even lower then that, but there is literally zero evidence that people will stop having children all together. Z-E-R-O.
There’s plenty of evidence that the downward trend continues to accelerate, as it has for a century. There’s plenty of evidence that children internalize such things as social norms, and not alot to suggest that this isn’t at least the cause, in part, for the downward trend.
They don’t have to stop having children. It just has to fall below replacement. At that point you are, as a species, effectively dead. It never recovers.
And claiming to know what will happen with the fertility rate in the next thousands of years is just bullshit.
I used to say the same thing about climate. But the difference there is that we’re supposed to believe such things about holy climate science, and disbelieve those things which contradict the dogma of our ideologies.
It might as well go up again in a few hundred years,
Magically? Like, your ideology already makes some assumptions about why it went down in the first place. And I’m not saying you are wrong… what makes you think those assumptions won’t continue to hold, when all the statistics say that they are doing just that?
Dead.
Your arguments are how soon-to-be dead people think. I’m not unhealthy, so what if I’ve put on a few pounds. Sure, it was a heart attack, but just a mild one and with medicine now days. And I’m too old to do the fitness thing anyway, the medications are a better bet. Maybe they’ll invent whizbang medical technology to make me immortal and I’ll vacation on Neptune! Just dead.
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Let’s imagine a simpler scenario, for those who might read our comments but are bad at math. We won’t use humans (too much baggage), but little aliens we’ll call zoops.
Zoops have two biological sexes that procreate together. There are two specimens, a Y and a Z. They have two offspring, also Y and Z. The population has doubled, but the fertility rate is at exact replacement level. When the two older zoops die, there will be only two. Zoops have no incest taboos, and so the second generation procreates twice.
In this way, the population has reached a steady state. But what if, instead, they only procreated once? This population is dead. Period. Sure, it will hang on a little longer, and sure, you’ll scream “but their population increased by 50% in just minutes” as some sort of lame argument that overpopulation is a concern. No, that was never a concern, instead extinction is the real risk.
We are in the period where humans are just having the one offspring per two parents, and since the parents don’t immediately die, it looks to you as if the population is “still growing fast”.
You will indeed run out of them within 25 years. Within your lifetime. This will be about the time that you personally are relying on them to be the nurse’s aids in your nursing homes and to wipe your geriatric ass.
No one growing up in this world you imagine will think “ok, the population has fallen enough now it’s time to start having 2.1 children again”.
You belong to a death cult. Suicidal at the species level.
deleted by creator
Only when including several regions where fertility remains high (mostly Africa). If those are excluded, it’s extinction-level. But hey, you say “that’s how averages work”.
So let’s look at Africa. Their fertility rate is above replacement, but is dropping rapidly. We can measure how fast it is dropping. We know approximately when it will fall below replacement levels. And we don’t see any reason why it should remain above them, when it didn’t remain above replacement (or even just at) anywhere else in the world. It’s natural, and even smart, to assume that the same sociological forces that made it drop elsewhere are those making it drop in Africa, and that they will work the same as elsewhere (since Africans are human like everyone else). It’d actually be sort of racist to assume that it would work differently there wouldn’t it?
Once we have considered the places it’s below replacement, and the places that it’s above replacement but dropping, where else is left at all? Nowhere.
You don’t even understand the phenomenon. You don’t want to understand it. And you’re claiming that somehow it’s not even happening. It’s bizarre.
No. The effect actually picks up speed the longer it occurs. Children internalize norms. If the 5 children who see everyone around them childless (excepting their own parents who have one), then don’t grow up to have one child also, they’ll have on average 0.2 children or something like that. Each generation shrinks faster than the last.
And if that somehow still translates into “it will be centuries before the last centenarian dies!”… how is that a counter-argument at all?
deleted by creator
It’s bizarre that your theory is that we haven’t run out of gas when the speedometer still says we’re doing 100kph.
Soon for me is “anytime in the next 200 years”. Soon for you is “next 2 minutes”. We do not have the same “soon”.
It wouldn’t have to be average. All it has to do is nudge things below replacement.
And children who grow up in that world internalize it as a social norm. That becomes their ceiling for how many children to have someday. They then have the same number. Or fewer. The ones that go for “fewer” just nudged the rate down lower still. Iterate that through 30 generations, see what happens.
Depends on the “we”. If by “we” you are excluding myself and my descendants, then you most certainly will.
If you are including me, then no. But the subset of humanity that is like yourself, you’re goners. Along with most of your ideology.
I forgot. Only climate science is allowed to think long term. The one true science. Measured in human generations, any one of which lasts no longer than about 100 years, each generation staggered with the next, and with a growing sentiment that having children is wrong, dangerous, and unfashionable that we impress upon youth… you people have less than a couple hundred years. Someday, when it becomes impossible to ignore, those of you still alive will look back to times like now, when something might still have been done about it.
deleted by creator
Which fact am I resistant to? I’m resistant to your conclusions, which aren’t worthy of being called facts.
I’ll wait 20 years until it’s 1.3. Or 40 years until it’s 0.3. The rate’s not constant. You get that right? It’s provably not constant. It’s provably not going up, or fluctuating back or forth, but continues to go downward. That’s not so hard to understand.
Maybe that’s the fact I’m resistant to. Maybe the fact that it’s currently 1.8, and that you imply there it will stay without anything to corroborate the idea. But also that you only imply it, because to assert such a thing sounds so absurd even you can’t possibly say it with a straight face.
There’s plenty of evidence that the downward trend continues to accelerate, as it has for a century. There’s plenty of evidence that children internalize such things as social norms, and not alot to suggest that this isn’t at least the cause, in part, for the downward trend.
They don’t have to stop having children. It just has to fall below replacement. At that point you are, as a species, effectively dead. It never recovers.
I used to say the same thing about climate. But the difference there is that we’re supposed to believe such things about holy climate science, and disbelieve those things which contradict the dogma of our ideologies.
Magically? Like, your ideology already makes some assumptions about why it went down in the first place. And I’m not saying you are wrong… what makes you think those assumptions won’t continue to hold, when all the statistics say that they are doing just that?
Dead.
Your arguments are how soon-to-be dead people think. I’m not unhealthy, so what if I’ve put on a few pounds. Sure, it was a heart attack, but just a mild one and with medicine now days. And I’m too old to do the fitness thing anyway, the medications are a better bet. Maybe they’ll invent whizbang medical technology to make me immortal and I’ll vacation on Neptune! Just dead.
deleted by creator