I'm not up-to-date on the population model stuff; thanks for the note there. (I'll defend the post on the grounds that it's mainly immanent critique of socons who invoke r/K language, rather than being strongly committed to it myself.)
As for demographic collapse: I agree sub-replacement levels would be bad! Both because all else being equal more happy people is better, and because I want the human project to continue. I'm an optimist mostly on the grounds that based on the survey data I've seen, if people (in the kinds of developed-country conditions where sub-replacement has already arrived) had as many children as they wanted to have, we'd have above-replacement fertility. We successfully reduced the number of unwanted births and now we "just" need to induce more wanted births, through a mix of policy and medical innovations. Since we have several decades between now and when total world population goes sub-replacement, and a considerable period after that during which population can decline and we can eventually bounce back, I'm not freaking out about it - but it's probably good that some people are.
> Intellectual conservatives (of the kind that are common on Substack) often frame life advice (and goals for policy that cover the same ground as life advice) at a very high level of abstraction.
This is because they are Allistic Humans - All Allistic Humans do this....maybe even All Humans do it, maybe the problem is part of our base design!
> There is no reason to suspect we are at the end of the process.
It isn't possible for you to know this.
> Unless we face civilizational collapse without extinction, a return to social conservatives’ preferred fertility norms is unlikely
It isn't possible for you to know this (that that is the only path possible to increasing fertility norms).
> instead, we will reverse our species’ projected demographic decline through extending lifespan and reproductive period indefinitely.
Maybe! Or, we might continue on our preferred path of destroying the ecosystem of the planet, because "The Science".
If you look at the reasons that these concrete points are favoured, youll find the conservatives dont agree with this pattern matching by eye measure.
They would argue that dating around for a long time before you settle down and get to the kids part is focused on short-term pleasure, that more school doesnt help much or is worse then a head start on career advancement, that safetyism results in more survivors that are worse in some way, etc.
>instead, we will reverse our species’ projected demographic decline through extending lifespan and reproductive period indefinitely
I mean, it seems pretty understandable that people respond to the situation as it is, and not as it will hopefully be.
This is confusing cost with value. If you burn resources in the name of improving the quality of your mate or kid, that isn't K-selected unless it actually increases fitness. The conservatives are just saying that you should pursue fitness at all. Demographic collapse is not a pressing problem, but it is a sign that something has gone wrong.
I have read conservatives accusing liberals of pursuing r-selected strategies, but I don't remember what they actually said. I brainstormed and came up with a couple examples: serial monogamy increases the variance of male fitness, which is a related axis. If education is a lottery that decreases median fitness but increases mean fitness, that actually sounds like r-selection to me. It is possible the instinct favoring education is in fact r-selected (compare Hanson's Kings and Queens post), but probably it is a K-selected instinct.
I recently ran across a conservative pretty explicitly endorsing an r strategy. He felt hopeless against the memetic pressure of society for declining birthrate and thought the solution was to have lots of kids in the hopes that one would be fertile. Perhaps he was one of 8 siblings and the others hardly had any kids, so he estimated that he would have to have 8 children to reproduce himself as someone in favor of fertility. If he knew how to build a culture to make his children value fertility, he would settle for 3, but he has no idea how to do it.
I'm not up-to-date on the population model stuff; thanks for the note there. (I'll defend the post on the grounds that it's mainly immanent critique of socons who invoke r/K language, rather than being strongly committed to it myself.)
As for demographic collapse: I agree sub-replacement levels would be bad! Both because all else being equal more happy people is better, and because I want the human project to continue. I'm an optimist mostly on the grounds that based on the survey data I've seen, if people (in the kinds of developed-country conditions where sub-replacement has already arrived) had as many children as they wanted to have, we'd have above-replacement fertility. We successfully reduced the number of unwanted births and now we "just" need to induce more wanted births, through a mix of policy and medical innovations. Since we have several decades between now and when total world population goes sub-replacement, and a considerable period after that during which population can decline and we can eventually bounce back, I'm not freaking out about it - but it's probably good that some people are.
> Intellectual conservatives (of the kind that are common on Substack) often frame life advice (and goals for policy that cover the same ground as life advice) at a very high level of abstraction.
This is because they are Allistic Humans - All Allistic Humans do this....maybe even All Humans do it, maybe the problem is part of our base design!
> There is no reason to suspect we are at the end of the process.
It isn't possible for you to know this.
> Unless we face civilizational collapse without extinction, a return to social conservatives’ preferred fertility norms is unlikely
It isn't possible for you to know this (that that is the only path possible to increasing fertility norms).
> instead, we will reverse our species’ projected demographic decline through extending lifespan and reproductive period indefinitely.
Maybe! Or, we might continue on our preferred path of destroying the ecosystem of the planet, because "The Science".
>Which of these does this sound more like?
If you look at the reasons that these concrete points are favoured, youll find the conservatives dont agree with this pattern matching by eye measure.
They would argue that dating around for a long time before you settle down and get to the kids part is focused on short-term pleasure, that more school doesnt help much or is worse then a head start on career advancement, that safetyism results in more survivors that are worse in some way, etc.
>instead, we will reverse our species’ projected demographic decline through extending lifespan and reproductive period indefinitely
I mean, it seems pretty understandable that people respond to the situation as it is, and not as it will hopefully be.
This is confusing cost with value. If you burn resources in the name of improving the quality of your mate or kid, that isn't K-selected unless it actually increases fitness. The conservatives are just saying that you should pursue fitness at all. Demographic collapse is not a pressing problem, but it is a sign that something has gone wrong.
I have read conservatives accusing liberals of pursuing r-selected strategies, but I don't remember what they actually said. I brainstormed and came up with a couple examples: serial monogamy increases the variance of male fitness, which is a related axis. If education is a lottery that decreases median fitness but increases mean fitness, that actually sounds like r-selection to me. It is possible the instinct favoring education is in fact r-selected (compare Hanson's Kings and Queens post), but probably it is a K-selected instinct.
I recently ran across a conservative pretty explicitly endorsing an r strategy. He felt hopeless against the memetic pressure of society for declining birthrate and thought the solution was to have lots of kids in the hopes that one would be fertile. Perhaps he was one of 8 siblings and the others hardly had any kids, so he estimated that he would have to have 8 children to reproduce himself as someone in favor of fertility. If he knew how to build a culture to make his children value fertility, he would settle for 3, but he has no idea how to do it.
Is primogeniture K or r?
Incredible. Instant subscription.
I agree, except that small thing: "prone to extinction"