Submitted by Shoddy-Motor t3_11dtsod in Futurology
mhornberger t1_jaati2n wrote
One filter no one before now (that I know of) seems to have thought of is low birthrates.
It seems that wealth, education (mainly for girls), empowerment for women, access to birth control, and other things we mostly consider positive also happens to lower the birthrate. I'm starting to think that wealth and education may be the 'solution' to the Fermi paradox.
Longjumping-Tie-7573 t1_jacxl3g wrote
'There's no aliens in the sky because women won't fuck' is the single-dumbest fucking thing I've ever read on reddit.
sqwuakler t1_jabe728 wrote
This is highly misogynistic garbage and has no connection to the Fermi paradox whatsoever.
mhornberger t1_jabjvkx wrote
I said nothing bad about women, at all. There's nothing in that list demographers trace birthrate declines to that I oppose, other than the coercive measures, like China's one-child policy. Other that that, I celebrate all of those things, even if it leads to exponential population decline.
And it pertains directly to the Fermi Paradox if a declining birthrate can lead to exponential population decline and the collapse of technological civilization. There is no indication that sub-replacement birthrates bounce back automatically, much less to replacement levels. S. Korea, Singapore, Thailand, China, Vietnam, and others are still dropping. They won't drop to zero, but a birthrate of 1 child per woman makes every generation half the size of the one before it. Even the US's 1.6 means that ten women on average will birth eight girls, or 100 women 80. Those 80 women will birth 64, at the same fertility rate. Exponential change is exponential.
There's no way that wouldn't be related to the Fermi paradox. I'm not saying we know for sure this is the answer. There's also the possibility that FTL travel isn't actually possible. Or that technological civilizations are really rare. I'm just saying it's something that no one seems to have seen coming. Of course, before that everyone thought exponential growth would be the great filter, or that Peak Oil or some other Malthusian thing would take us out. But not all exponential change takes the form of growth. But exponential change is still exponential.
RealisticOption9295 t1_jadynul wrote
I agree this is a legitimate possibility. The developed world is all declining when you exclude immigration, and the whole human population should peak in the next 20 years.
The Fermi paradox assumes the pre industrialized human history of a person averavjng around 7 children. As we ended many causes of early death over the past century, the population exploded. Then increasing contraception availability, education and career ambition led to a higher opportunity cost of having children. Now financial constraint is keeping many from deciding to.
It’s reasonable that past 2100 the human population is significantly less than it is now, and continued economic growth eliminates resource scarcity. We won’t have any need to grow to a K1 civilization beyond insane levels of resource abundance and computing power per person.
I think we may start growing again if/when financial constraints or the need to work don’t impact people’s decision to have children.
SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jadr3gk wrote
It's likely that the birth rate will stabilize in the future as we figure out how to create a society that supports families.
Do you have any clue how much kids cost? There are massive economic incentives to stay child free and have very few children, yet the birth rate is still 1.5 in wealthy countries.
A big part of the reason the birth rate is so low is that affordable family housing doesn't exist in many places. Effectively people are rationally responding to resource constraints. If the next generation is much smaller, that will free up a lot of housing and other resources that will make it easier for them to have more kids.
Population change may look exponential, either up or down, but it really isn't. There are a lot of constraints people respond to that affect population growth, like availability of resources, pathogens, and biological desires that we affect this.
mhornberger t1_jadv3nt wrote
> Do you have any clue how much kids cost?
I wasn't going off my own assessment or gut feeling. I'm just pointing out what demographers trace the decline in birthrates to.
> affordable family housing doesn't exist in many places.
Yes, our standards have gone up with our wealth, but faster than our wealth. In the US, new houses are much larger than houses built in previous generations. Plus construction safety code (wiring, etc) have gone up. Plus we've allowed homeowners to restrict the building of density to protect their equity value. We could throw up shacks, but people want proper housing. But our view of what constitutes proper housing has gotten a lot more expensive. That goes with being in a wealthier society.
> If the next generation is much smaller, that will free up a lot of housing
Unless people continue to migrate. The cities have been gaining population, and the losses in population have been in rural areas. Even for moves between countries, it's usually the poorer rural areas where people are fleeing to find better economic opportunity. That there are empty houses in Appalachia, or somewhere in rural Guatemala, doesn't help people who are moving to Houston.
>Population change may look exponential, either up or down, but it really isn't.
Fertility rates do have a cumulatively exponential impact on population size. You are assuming they'll bounce back, but demographers have seen no indication of this. I'm not dropping my own intuitions on you, just deferring to what people who study this professionally have found. Some countries have increased from their nadir, but still stabilized at around 1.4-1.7, i.e. still below the replacement rate.
>There are a lot of constraints people respond to that affect population growth, like availability of resources, pathogens, and biological desires that we affect this.
A lot of things do go into birthrates. The things demographers have found most track with birthrate declines are here:
Poverty correlates with higher birthrates, not lower. Universal healthcare or lower income inequality also don't correlate with higher birthrates. Even the Scandinavian countries have low birthrates.
- Fertility rate: children per woman for countries with the lowest income inequality.
- Fertility rate: children per woman (for the countries with some version of universal healthcare)
- Fertility rate: children per woman (For Scandinavia, France, and a few other W. European countries)
SomeoneSomewhere1984 t1_jaefv24 wrote
>In the US, new houses are much larger than houses built in previous generations
If they sold those house to people of childbearing age, preferably earlier childbearing age, they would drastically increase the birth rate, but they don't. They only sell such house to people later in their careers who are out of, or at the very end of their child bearing years.
Of the people I know who have kids many of them are raising them in one-bedroom apartments the way our grandparents grew up. Talk about ways to ensure one and done.
>Plus we've allowed homeowners to restrict the building of density to protect their equity value.
This is highly effective way to suppress the birth rate. Don't create new living space, and people won't reproduce.
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