If you’re interested in real time demographics updates, you could do worse than follow Cicerone1973.
Every couple of months, he provides an update of the fertility situation in those countries that maintain up to date statistics (s0, mostly the developed world and ex-socialist bloc).
Anyhow, something pretty weird is happening. Fertility is plummeting across pretty much all countries that care to actively measure it in 2018 – and this follows on from a similarly precipitous 2017.
Observations:
- USA is down to 1.74 children per woman (estimate). Whites are usually about 0.1 children below the US as a whole, so American whites will be at 1.65 children per woman this year.
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Russia seems to be settling down to a new normal at around 1.6. Ethnic Russians are around 0.08 children less than the Russian Federation as a whole, so their rate is converging down to 1.5 children per woman.
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Poland is no longer the worst big country in Europe as of a few years ago; settling in at around 1.45 children per woman. Atheist Czechia does the best of the V4 at almost 1.7 children per woman. Hungary and Slovakia are at around 1.5 children per woman, but recall that both have considerable numbers of Gypsies. Romania is at 1.6, so I assume ethnic Romanians are at around 1.5 children per woman.
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Germany’s doing a lot better than it was a few years ago too. Especially since the refugee baby boom must have mostly abated by now.
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It looks like South Korea will become the world’s first “big” country to fall below 1 child per woman. Israel (8.5 million) has running at half as many births as South Korea (51 million).
Cicerone also says this may be the first year in which Best Korea has more total births.
https://twitter.com/Cicerone973/status/1013363122726457345
Anyhow, I wouldn’t read too much into it. A couple of years is not a trend. But the near universality of it is rather curious.
We’re both part of the problem aren’t we?
I mean I might have R-selected children (never pull out), but who knows.
Neither of us are married or have k-selected children.
We should fix this.
Some of the commenters here are family men, which is to be commended, and we should listen to them.
I do have a new girlfriend (22, cuban, but with blue eyes), but who knows where it will go.
Genghis Khan rides again.
It’s probably just a consequence of modernity . Global competition means longer work hours and more bread/circuses for the masses while less time and fewer resources for reproduction. And modern TV/social media raises female mate standards to unreasonably high standards; they delay reproduction so they can get their Brad Pitt billionaire IQ 185 CEO genius, but by the time they are willing to settle down, it is too late.
Poland isn’t “settling”. It’s experiencing a temporary jump due to PiS active pro-natalist policies. Polish norm is actually closer 1.3 children per woman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Poland#After_WWII
You can see Polish TFR starting to rise a bit in 2016, one year after PiS regime seized power.
Look at Estonia. I wounder which nationalities are leading the pact? If its Russians than that may have interesting political implications.
Semi-related, what do commenters here think about this:
https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero
Would be kind of worrying if the worst predictions turn out to be true…
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/921852359763951617
😉
Don’t laugh, it’s probably a problem in Russia as well, if it is indeed due to the use of plastics.
Look it’s because of female education।।
Can ਵੀ stop dancing around this?
Already made this a core point for Hindus now help me do it for Euros esp Fat Karlin & ThorGrinson
http://blogs.worldbank.org/health/female-education-and-childbearing-closer-look-data
In fkn Ethiopia, a high school bitch has 1 kid & a normal one, 5-6.
OT the Boer thing is hype, in any case, Lavrov doesn’t seem to know anything. He dodged the question by a ZA journo about farm expropriations by saying Russia had nothing to do with it because it was too busy meddling in Catalan elections [cheering]
Posting this here in an act of white flight from the unholy mess which is the other thread.
Kazakhstan now has more births than Ukraine. Good for them! Still a bit weird to see that.
hey, you’re back!
Kazakhstan’s TFR has been weirdly stable at 2.7 or 2.8 for a decade.
Of course, there is nothing more healthy than starvation and parasitic worms.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/north-korean-soldiers-have-worms-and-are-starving-defector-reveals/news-story/05c91d29c4274ce7f24b755dc6444823
Really, supporting North Korea is now the official stance of “alt-right”? If so, it is really the time to drink the kool aid.
https://cdn.bandmix.com/bandmix_us/media/1143/1143671/1341932-l.jpg
It is consequence of modernization and urbanization. In traditional society, more children means more working hand on the fields. In modern society, children are consumption goods (more precisely, Giffen inferior goods).
http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/10/the-rich-vs-poor-debate-are-kids-normal-or-inferior-goods/
Simple Econ 101 suffices for explanation, no conspiracy is necessary.
You guys need to revive a marriage culture again where marriage is revered and looked forward to and doesn’t happen more than once (or twice max) in one’s life.
My daughter’s friends are already telling her that they’d like their younger sisters to get married to my eldest son. This is what young girls talk about in a marriage culture.
About the Cuban girl, let me guess – you haven’t spoken to her father yet…do you think she’s marriage material? If not, why waste your time?
Peace.
Why would the German refugee baby boom have abated?
a) Don’t baby booms normally last more than a year or two?
b) Won’t the birth rates go up among migrants as the mostly male Merkel’s Millions bring in their female cousins and start reproducing (paid for by the ethnic German taxpayer of course)?
Imagine that. If trends remained stable and discounting external factors, Israel would reach South Korea’s population within 3-4 generations.
The biggest and most sudden drop in fertility I know off-hand is Iran, from 6 to barely 1 child per woman in a generation. All for the good you might say, except Iranians are still vastly superior to Arabs, central Asians or spits Indians.
Wonder if the rest of the world can copy Isreal.
To reverse their demographic decline Isreal started using breeder Jews to pump out kids. This will no doubt cause a lot of problems as these are significantly lower IQ Jews, but at least they won’t go extinct.
Israel’s going to need a lot of Lebensraum if its population will ever reach South Korea’s level.
In the past decade, non-Asian minorities in the US have seen the greatest decrease in fertility, Hispanics in particular.
Percentage declines since 2007
Asian -5.81
Not Hispanic, any race -7.00
White -9.31
Black -9.65
American Indian/Alaska Native -15.10
Hispanic -18.78
But the “white” fertility figure is a bit misleading, as it includes most Hispanics, who have historically had much higher birth rates than non-Hispanic whites.
Graduate degree -7
Bachelor’s degree -10
No bachelor’s -12
Never-married -21
Ever-married -14
Since 2007, fertility has fallen the most for the youngest women, but in the last year, declines have set in for women in their 30s as well. Fertility declines increasingly seem to be about much more than just postponed fertility, or else these women must be planning to have some very fertile 40s.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/baby-bust-fertility-is-declining-the-most-among-minority-women
Hmmm here is my theory: most things is hereditary, so I imagine is the ability to withstand the current pressures to NOT to have children. Poland was exposed less to such pressures than western countries, which could mean there were less time for selection. That’s why the TFR is lower…
But then, italy and Finland..
I’m never gone I’m never really here।।
Mr. Karlin forgot to push for his favorite solution, artificial wombs, so I, lowly anon, have to do it instead of him. Let the machines replace human labor!
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/paper-review-artificial-wombs
Perhaps the thaw in relations with North Korea will encourage more births in South Korea. But probably not many since the working culture there does not encourage family formation.
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/08/south-korea-needs-more-babies/565169/
Based Northern Ireland
I also thought about that, but then you’d expect fertility to drop in every halfway decently developed country, including Israel.
In fact, many of the rich countries had fairly stable fertility rates until 2008. After 2008, they started to fall (most prominent example being the US) and the trend has continued unabated, despite the economic recovery.
I think we were both sooner laughing at the NYT’s open cuckoldry.
Anyhow I suspect the sperm count thing would be mostly attributable to greater frequency of masturbation.
My theory (low/medium confidence)
While desired fertility is partly genetic, it also strongly depends on culture. And culture has been going against fertility in the past decade. Not even so much because of the Poz, but because of economic improvements – e.g. budget airlines, Uber, AirBnb making travel much cheaper and more pleasant; the expansion of the SWPL lifestyle to encompass more and more regions of the world. There’s more things one can easily “explore” and “experience” before settling down to have children – but said exploration and experiencing takes time.
Still, these things can go either way. Randall Parker speculates that technological developments may promote a pro-natal lifestyle in the next few decades: http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009885.html
Very nice. High five!
Tangential:
Tapeworm Therapy Helps Boy With Autism
Could very well be.
I have the feeling in general that we are going through a period like between WWI and WWII since the crisis of 2009. Slow growing or stagnant economies, birth rates going down, societies having no clue in which direction they want to go, shaky world order, slowing technological progress (visible in leveling off life expectancy for example) etc.
I could imagine that things will improve after 2040, for several reasons:
Population ageing will have come to an end in the Western countries, with the very last baby boomers entering retirement. The continuous worsening of economic prospects will halt as well, as it is not necessary anymore to shove an ever increasing share of the economic pie to feed the elderly. The situation won’t improve after 2040 of course, but at least it can’t get any worse anymore.
The world order will stabilize again, with the US having declined from superpower to great power status and vice versa for China.
Could be bullshit of course, just some ideas to share.
Re Hungary and its gypsies well the pro natalist policies in place there are aimed at increasing the ethnic Hungarian birth rate and as such to claim said benefits you need for example to have a secondary education, employment history and no criminal convictions which applies to most Hungarians and is not applicable to most Gypsies, The Salvini Govt are aiming for the same sort of policy in Italy. Cheers
Why would masturbation have become more frequent (because of porn?) and how could one even measure that? I doubt there’s reliable long-term data about that issue.
Hungarian rules should be applied to the Czech Republic, gypsies here breed like rabbits and they get a lot of welfare. Talking to poor folk that works in my garden or comes to the pub, I discovered that there is a prevalent belief among the white poor that gypsies get preferential treatment in the benefits office.
While I agree with you in principle, I have to look at reality.
We have a legal system in which marriage imposes duties and burdens on men but confers no rights of any kind. And can end at any time and impose a massive financial burden.
My parents divorced and it imposed very heavy financial burdens on my father. My mother felt fully justified in extracting this since he ended it (which, by the way, is not typical).
Hence the necessity of “game”.
Have I spoken to her father yet? Of course not. She’s a modern woman and that would be weird for both of us. Probably her father too. And while it’s premature to think of marriage, one of my demands would be she drop out of med school which might be a non-starter for her.
I agree with you that that SHOULD be the system, but it is not. I envy cultures which have not (yet?) embraced so-called modernity and have preserved the traditional system of courtship.
But I am not from one of those cultures, and I have to deal with the sexual market as it actually exists and not how it should be.
Incidentally it took me time to realize this. Many of us who are “players” have come to this realization precisely because our experience has educated us on how broken our system is.
If only those ‘Islamists’ could be stopped from pumping out an unrelenting stream of propaganda promoting homosexuality, abnormal family structures, feminist nonsense, negative cultural values and general subversive messages from the mass media we might have a chance. Basically do the exact opposite of what Frederick S. Jaffe advocated.
Porn is promoted for a reason.
English Puritans reached the highest fertility rates in Europe. Cheap land due to few people, strong ingroup/outgroup sensibilities and strong social controls geared to promoting fertility. It is no mystery and it is why the exact opposite is promoted by the powers that be.
What about the higher frequency of anal copulation? Sperm having a prospect of being sent into the fecal region prefers to commit suicide.
So if its plastic, porn, wealth, etc, then why is Israel not on that list?
Evolutionary explanation frequently are constructed like stories in psychoanalysis. They are true because they must be true ex definitione within the paradigm. Which may lead to having the same cause to explain two opposite outcomes. This what you get when you enter the cult and the ToE often looks like a cult when you look at it from the outside. The believers do not see it because they lost distance like in any cult which is actually a requirement. The cult demands a belief in the only truth and that the truth have amazing explanatory powers. Ability to explain and being on the side of the truth is power itself. The truth is the most powerful rhetorical device if you can claim it.
You can find many absurd examples in Freudianism and also more and more in Darvinism (or whatever you want to call it) as it is overextending itself. This two examples I run into recently. The are authentic legit from scientific literature:
Now, what about you? At least you overtly stated your credo “most things is hereditary”, which is a good sign of some distancing, and then you presented concocted story that sprang from your genuine belief in the credo. The story like most of such stories are unverifiable and unfalsifiable. So, why are they being made and told? How the ToE would try to explain the need of telling the stories that reinforce the current belief system paradigm? How psychoanalysis would try to explain a compulsion of paradigm reinforcement? It is funny that both ToE and psychoanalysis meet somewhere in genital areas.
No. My credo is materialism and logic. Hereditarianism is compatible with materialism and logic, while postulating no role for hereditarianism (i.e. genes play no role in behaviour) would be contradicting my belief in materialism.
The data about Israel is wrong. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, there were about 200,000 live births in 2017. Source: http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=cw_usr_view_SHTML&ID=638
I definitely get this, which presents an interesting chicken/egg scenario; what came first, the changes in the legal system or are they simply a reflection of the loss of a marriage culture? If you have a marriage culture, the assumption is that you will rarely have to go to divorce court in the first place. Divorce should be the exception to the rule. The way I see it, the courts simply reflect the change in the culture (with a lot of feminist activism – another reflection of the loss of marriage culture in the first place – mixed in to boot) the eventuality of which is likely the dissolution of formal marriage altogether – a bit like what goes on in Sweden.
Traditional females usually understand the setup well enough. A female scholar I keep up with on Twitter recently sent this out:
“‘Patriarchy’ is essentially ‘good’, it is misogyny that’s an evil.
Patriarchy: Male leadership in return for protection and provision.
Misogyny: Male leadership in return for nothing ”
The issue reallyu comes down to how you get that back?
You’d be surprised. Though I can’t speak for everyone, but my father-in-law was not expecting to be involved as early as my wife and I involved him (basically my in-law’s advice on relationships to my wife when they sent her off to UCLA was; “Be sure to use protection.”), but he was pleasantly surprised. His first daughter hooked up with some (White) guy during university and basically shacked up for years with him and married him after close to a decade. That marriage ended up in a colossal failure as he cheated on her and divorced her within like 2 years – complete joke.
Mistake number one – marriage should be the only reason you even spoke to her in the first place. If she is not wife material due to personality, circumstances, etc. it should have been a non-starter. My wife was not the first girl I was interested in, there were three before her – but all were pursued with marriage on the table from the get-go as understood by both parties.
Again, just some advice from a marriage culture. Time is of the essence – time spent pursuing a dead end is time lost on the sealing the real deal. Maybe you can afford that kind of time since you can compensate with your wealth (may God preserve it and increase it for you), but I guarantee you, for the average schmo there is a prime window, beyond which you are simply compounding the difficulties on yourself with respect to getting a family off the ground. Just as if you start off too early.
I get this and you guys have my sympathy for trying to navigate a system that was already fractured before you got here. I guess my question is; who is going to fix it? Aren’t you simply perpetuating it forward one more generation? Who is going to be the ones that turns it around? So say your generation is totally SNAFU due to the previous ones, OK, but will you at least expect/demand a different set of rules/conduct in these matters from your kids?
Peace.
Maybe because the religious ones actually having the high share of kids are not into porn and not very wealthy…? Don’t know their relationship to plastic.
Too bad Greasy isn’t around to pitch in.
Peace.
The TFR figure for the USA is telling. US TFR reached a low point of 1.76 in 1976. Then the boomers started having kids. The Reagan economic renaissance also fueled an increase in the fertility rate through out the 80’s. Today we are in another economic renaissance (one the left seems determined to end due to no reason other than mental illness as far as I can tell) with the Millennial age distribution being essentially the same as that of the boomers around 1983 or so. The fertility rate ought to be similar to that of the early 80’s as well. Instead, it appears that it will drop BELOW the 1976 low point.
This is significant.
Even though the TRF is below 2 in every ethnic European nation and has been for some time, the actual desired family size by women is 2+. A boy and a girl is considered the ideal. If you added the 20% of pregnancies that are aborted the TRF is about 2.1.
Woman are ferocious defenders of reproductive rights and blissfully ignorant of practical reproductive biological reality at the same time. They’re not very good at Planned Parenthood.
Personally, I believe a gradually declining population similar to the Japan experience is a positive thing socially, economically and ecologically.
So I was mistaken. You have no distance. The cult owned you to the marrow of your bones.
The first two columns are not “births per year”, but “births per time period given in column 4”
Israel was going to make it illegal for watching porn websites last year (which is something more like Saudi Arabia or Iran, than a developed country), but it was rejected by the judges.
This year they are criminalizing prostitution.
Influence of Orthodox Jews is growing there.
At the same time, they do sometimes, somethings cool like decriminalizing cannabis this year.
It’s not about distance. It’s about what’s more plausible and what can logically follow from my assumptions. The only cult is the idea, that everything should be explainable, there is no spiritual world, no magic, no souls etc
So, you are a machine. A biological one but still a machine. Where do the rights of the machine to be not turned off come from in your plausible and logical system.
That’s right. There are no universal human rights. Universe owes you nothing. Morality and rights are created by humans. Before you will ask I know I am moral only because that’s how I was shaped by an evolution and culture, I am unable to be immoral, just like I know why I like certain food and dislike certain and I can’t change my preferences despite that knowledge.
This is a paradox, certainly – but exactly because I am a machine and a free will is an illusion, I cannot do anything about that. Killing people is immoral not because it’s a logical consequence of objective rights, but because I am unable to think otherwise.
Excellent response – here’s an atheist who actually follows the logical path of his initial premises. Bravo sir – I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to deal with atheists that have not thought the whole thing through and are straddling conflicting paradigms.
Peace.
When another machine comes to you with an ‘intention’ of turning you off what kind of arguments the program that runs you would use to dissuade the other machine? You would not appeal to justice or rights or morality because these things as you said do not exist?
If you knew the other machine is pretty much programmed like you, what would be your argument line if you did not want to be tuned off?
And next what if the other machine was running by a different program that believes in free will and the whole shebang of things that you do not, would your arguments be different? I assume here that your program can lie and decide and to be not consistent with its true believes.
“Some “red flag” behaviors include:
…Insists that you stop participating in hobbies or activities that you enjoy, quit school, or quit your job.”
https://houseofruth.org/get-help/signs-of-domestic-abuse/
If a girl is in her right mind, she will run.
Tech-iyyah…
Peace.
How do you put together a porcelain vase that is broken?
The truth is that none of us know.
But at least some of us know it’s broken.
That’s really all I can say on the matter.
I’m so used to pursuing every female I think is attractive that the opposite has never even occurred to me.
The vague idea I have is that we start by getting married and raising our children differently than we were raised–in networks that agree with us.
Good thing not everyone is a fag who takes this nonsense seriously then.
Maybe. But it’s the high IQ types who do most of the civilisation-wrecking (and I’m not just talking about Jews in this context). A decline in the proportion of high IQ types might turn out to be a major survival advantage for a society.
I’d rather have Israel’s demographic problems than South Korea’s.
The irony here is that the expansion of the SWPL lifestyle to encompass more and more regions of the world makes travel increasingly pointless. Wherever you go it’s always the same. The SWPL is like the Borg.
Its pretty sad and funny. I had the exact same thoughts before.
I forced the girl who became my wife to cut off all contact from her druggie friends, sorry for being abusive.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/eb/31/a2/eb31a23866d2a252afaf1da76d0fe019–arab-men-islam.jpg
Peace.
utu, I am not sure whether I made myself clear. Once again, because I am a machine, I cannot choose not to believe in morality. On a rational level I know morality is subjective, it is a creation of humans. However, it does not matter. The same would be also with other biological machines, they also have no choice. Therefore, the answer to your questions is quite obvious. Of course I would appeal to justice and morality. I’ve already stated that I am aware of this paradox and that I am unable to do anything about that. I like women with blue eyes. There is no rational reason for that, and it’s most likely the result of me being hardwired in a certain way. BUt I still like women with blue eyes and I won’t suddenly try to persuade myself that I should pursue Asian girls or whatever. You are what you are.
The answer is – of course – for Europe to import more blacks and browns.
You see, The Economist magazine has got it down pat.
If I recall, Iceland already bans the production of porn and is trying to make access to it illegal – I don’t know where it is at currently. You don’t need to be a Muslim to understand the devastating effects of pornography on the family, read Pamela Paul’s excellent book:
https://www.amazon.com/Pornified-Pornography-Damaging-Relationships-Families/dp/0805081321
Or listen to any of her online lectures on the subject.
Sounds like it the idea of banning porn bubbled up the legal system. My guess is that it will be an issue again in a few years as demographics change further. What can you say, the Orthodox have kids and other doesn’t…I guess you could pull the plug on their welfare…que sera, sera…
Peace.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, for sure. I agree, which is why many of us in traditional Muslim circles are fighting hard to hold the line. And trying to keep voices like this lady (author of “Headscarves and Hymens”) from infecting too many of our girls:
https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/703211977838108672
Can you guess if this fifty year-old has any kids or held down a family? Which self-respecting Muslim man with an ounce of dignity would marry and support her?
Definitely – it’s seriously gotta start somewhere. I would say religious Christian communities, but it seems even Evangelicals have been bit with the pre-marital sex bug (though I think the newer generations are having less sex due to being more sheltered – which is good as a starting point). But again, some generation among you guys has got to hold the line or the demographic collapse will continue…as I’ve said before, this is simple mathematics.
Peace.
I read the blog post but still don’t quite follow. As I understand it, for children to be Giffen goods, two wildly incompatible conditions must hold at once: (1) children are seen as an inferior good relative to everything consumerism has to offer, and (2) demand for children goes up as their relative cost goes up. The first condition is arguable, but it’s hard to make the case for the second in the presence of the first (in the absence of the first, sure — that would be a Veblen good). Or am I missing something?
If you believe government (ruling elite) can behave as if the ordinary adult population are feeble children, telling them what time to go to bed, or what they can watch on the internet.
Long term result, of not allowing population to manage themselves, and make their own decisions about even such trivial topics as how they will entertain themselves (whether listening to Mozart and doing calculus, or wasting time on online poker and pornography – which is an adult’s decision) – is enfeeblement of the population, and inability for people to manage themselves.
I believe the main problem with crude prohibitions and orders is that they cause the masses of people to become resentful and rebellious – the hold on the people lasts only as long as the power holds.
Rather, if one wishes to transform the spirit of a nation, then I believe a decades-long gradual carrot and stick educational method over all spheres of society to shift the metapolitical ground is most durable and long-lasting.
Beliefs sometimes have consequences. For example tests show that people exposed to no free will claptrap will more likely cheat on tests. Should I take you seriously? Frankly it is hard for me. It feels like you are pulling my leg. People say all kind of things for various reasons when they do not see any serious consequence for what they say. They like to impress other by being controversial. But in a critical situation they may recognize which convictions come from their hearts and which are half-hearted. If you are being faced with your plug being pulled off you may start singing a different tune.
When you replicate or perhaps you have already done so how your replicants will be programmed? You possibly still had benefits of being programmed in the environment where the machines were ignorant and still believed to be humans while your replicants will not have this benefit or perhaps impediment and will be subjected to programming by machines like yourself who already know they are merely machines. I wonder how your replicants will turn up and whether they will learn to play nicely with other machines.
One thing we can all agree on is that the overpopulation argument against life extension (really the only legitimate argument) is now comprehensively debunked.
Some of you want kids. I prefer to go the SENS route. There is no reason we cannot do both.
Then there’s Stave Sailer’s “World’s Most Important Graph”.
Porn is unpleasant, in my view – although this is subjective view. And so (unpleasant) are even some conversations on Karlin’s blog. And so are many other things you could immerse in.
Citizens should resist attempts of government (ruling elite) to ban activity that do not harm third-parties.
A large part of being an adult, is that you write rules (of what to allow and ban from your life) for yourself. You don’t want these rules, of how you manage your life, outsourced to government (ruling elite), who will re-write them primarily according to their own self-interest, or even at best, in a crude and patronizing way.
The ability to self-manage of yourself, as a sapient adult – is also, occurring like a muscle, that requires exercise, and learning from mistakes. In societies where management of individual life decisions were increasingly outsourced to authorities, the longterm effect on the population is often that adults are becoming more and more feeble, dependent and with weaker self-management and independent judgement.
Thanks.
That’s your decision. Listen, I was struggling with my beliefs and the paradoxes and the contradictions for a long time. Right now I am just accepting myself and I am accepting taht some my deep-rooted beliefs have no sense from the objective point of view. I could say that I choose to stick with particular morals, but the point is I do not think this is a matter of choice.
For starters, there is no objective point that I would want to live. I want to live because I was shaped by evolution to want to live. I know what. But I want to live. And I won’t commit suicide just because I know that the will to self-preserve has no objective sense.
Same with everything else. Maybe most, maybe all other people would start to cheat, steal and kill when they would stop believing in free will. But I don’t. Because I am unable to cheat, steal and kill.
You are what you are. There is no sense to try be someone else. You just must accept yourself.
Of course, because I am what I am, I would love to impose my sense of morality on others. Again, not because of logic, but because I am who I am and I am hardwired to think some things are moral and some are not. Yes, this is a paradox: if murderer would jsut try to accept himself and go on killing rampage, I would happily chop his head off. And I would impose my morality on those, who would not like it. But again, there is no rationality in this and no logic. I am what I am.
I think I still was quite unable to really convey my beliefs, because you continue to use absurd arguments: If you are being faced with your plug being pulled off you may start singing a different tune.. Of course! I am a biological machine which is hardwired to do anything to preserve myself.
My children, I hope, will be catholics. Once again, I know that my love for them has no objective sense. But it does not matter, because i DO love them. I am unable not to love them. And because I know that going consistently with atheism is really crushing experience (when I will die, there would be no me; I am not sure that many atheists really, really GOT what it does mean. When I was in high school and I tried to explain my sheer horror of that realisation to my friend, he understood only that “szopen is affraid to die!” which is completely missing the point). I do not preach atheism or materialism. There is no point, no gain for me. There was a time when I was militant atheist and if you would know my real name, I bet you could’ve google a lot of embarassing posts from me. But I was militant atheist only because at that time I still have not fully grasped what it means to be atheist.
Not to mention when I married one of the conditions the bishop would give his permission for the marriage would be that I would not disturb the religious upbringing of my children.
Damn, so many errors:
For starters, there is no objective point that I would want to live. I want to live because I was shaped by evolution to want to live. I know what.
should be:
For starters, from the rational point of view nothing dictates that I (or anyone) should want to live. I want to live because I was shaped by evolution to want to live. I know that.
Um…there was no German refugee baby boom, as you can plainly see by the German population pyramid.
If you guys are going to analyze demographic trends, it would be helpful to confine your speculations to ones that actually exist.
Dude, you are batting them out of the park!
Peace.
We’ve tried treating people as adults and allowing them to make their own decisions in these areas, and what we’ve got is an increasingly feeble population unable to manage themselves plus social collapse. The social experiment has been tried and it has clearly failed. What you’re arguing might sound good in theory but the evidence is in and it doesn’t work in practice.
People are feeble-minded children.
We are social animals. Everything we do affects third parties.
Libertarian claptrap about victimless crimes is based on the notion that there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals whose actions have no consequences for anyone else. It’s the kind of thinking that seems attractive and plausible at the age of sixteen.
Mr. dfordoom,
If you really believe what you just said here, then you should have no problem with making eugenics mandatory (both positive and negative). Only the most competent and capable should be allowed to reproduce.
After all, any society is only as good as the human capital that comprises it, an obvious tautology. Thus, efforts to increase human capital through both eugenics and genetic engineering of the human race for IQ individuals with high adaptability to varying situations as well as increased self-reliance should be the primary focus of anyone who subscribes to your world-view. Any problem you may have with this most certainly reflects an insincerity on your part.
Recent turns in the nature vs. nurture debate is convincing me that organized religion is increasingly irrelevant and meaningless. If what Greg Cochran is saying here is true
https://quillette.com/2018/09/25/forget-nature-versus-nurture-nature-has-won/
then it is reasonable to believe that bio-engineering is far more useful for improving human performance and behavior than organized religion. Indeed, is it not likely that the propensity to believe in religion and and of itself is genetically determinate?
Mr. dfordoom, I suggest that people who share your world-view should focus on pursuing careers in developing the bio-engineering to improve human performance in order to create the more optimized society that you believe in. Do not waste your time on stuff like religion and ideology.
In any case, we all know that neuroscience is going to make philosophy, religion, and ideology obsolete anyways as tools for understanding human personality, motivation, and future potential.
As someone who has been active in neuroscience, you aren’t going to be seeing miracles anytime soon. But yes, cognitive science is an exciting field and the more people get conversant in it, the less that they will cling to extremes one way or another.
As for organized religion, I wouldn’t dismiss it so freely, even its biological results. It serves as a form of social selection and all selection effects influence the frequency of traits in a population.
And no, neuroscience is not going to make everything else irrelevant 😛 It only provides some tools, it doesn’t tell you much about what you should use the tools for.
Unlimited free plastic bottles for Africa!
Yes, indeed. Move this project.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/dec/23/sunlight-bulbs-plastic-bottles-light
And if the government tries to force us to have more children (or whatever) it’s going to be for a selfish economic reason that benefits somebody at the top. Nobody in politics really works for the common good, which is one of the reasons I’m a libertarian. People, in general, are stupid and venal but not as stupid as the politicians nor as venal as the elites.
The latter is called intent, which is a matter of will and nothing else. Intent is goal specific, which means it is individual specific. Different people have different goals. The problem with religion, ideology, and philosophy is that they cannot serve as a guide is simply because we don’t all share the same goals and world-views. Thus the notion that any particular religion/ideology is useful to all humans is ridiculous. For example, a particular religion is relevant only for those who choose to believe in it. It does not apply and therefor will not work for those who choose not to believe in it. When it comes to personal long-term life decisions, there is no universal right or wrong other than 1) not to f**k with others and 2) not to engage in self-destructive behaviors. Any other concept of morality is utter delusion. Indeed, much of what is considered morality according to conventional religion could be considered a violation of the second principle 100 years from now. For example, refusal to undergo effective anti-aging medicine or to enter cryonic suspension in the event of “deanimation” is likely to be considered self-destructive behavior in 22nd century society in much the same way drug abuse is considered such in today’s society.
Thank you for sharing your religious beliefs.
We do it all the time, we tell people where they can on cannot drink alcohol – go to a local park in much of the US and see the sign telling people don’t bring alcohol here – we prohibit prostitution and limit gambling and a bunch of other stuff. The only question in a democracy is regarding public support for such things and as we’ve seen, the religious Jews are obviously winning that battle.
Pornography causes broken homes – this is real, this can easily be verified (read the book). Children from broken homes are often a liability to society. But a single guy like you who may or may not decide to settle down and have a family may not care about these things. Which is fine, but people who have put in the effort to keep raise children and keep their families together do.
Peace.
Except that we already suffer from an over-supply of high IQ types who are contributing significantly to the destruction of our society.
The trouble with high IQ is that it makes people susceptible to believing in complete nonsense like libertarianism.
And why would increased self-reliance be a good thing?
Agreed. That’s why I don’t believe in democracy.
Eugenics is already mandatory and always has been. The decision to mate and give birth to children has always been based on eugenics criteria in human societies.
Thank you for your frank and thoughtful response. I appreciate it.
I think you went further in your materialism (“My credo is materialism and logic.”) than most, even Richard Dawkins seems to avoid talking about the lack of free will, but you pushed it all the way to the inevitable conclusion: I am a machine w/o a free will and my consciousness is an epiphenomenon, which then you ‘consciously’ embraced – as much as machine can do anything consciously.
What I find strange is that this radical conclusion did not give you a pause that you did not decide to reevaluate your initial assumptions. There is a reason why Dawkins shies away from it. Wasn’t there a red warning light that perhaps you were entering the dead zone? Apparently you ignored it and instead embraced the conclusion so now you can announce to the world and you daughter that you are a machine.
You obeyed the laws of logic that lead you to conclude you are a zombie. What else you are if you have no free will and your consciousness is an epiphenomenon. Whatever you are experiencing in your head is a movie some unknown projectionist is showing to you. Your role is passive even though an illusion is created for you that you are an actor and have an agency but you know you do not have agency. You are a passive observer. You have proven it yourself, right?
Did you wonder how this movie can be related to reality? And whether can you find any truth in this movie? One of the movies the unknown projectionist showed you was titled: “Materialism is true.” You took it on its face value an run with it. Now you may say you had no choice because you have no free will. It was all prearranged for you. But I would say, try to step back in time before the movie was shown and see if you could run with something different. Apparently different movies are prearranged for other viewers. Who end up with different or even opposite beliefs to yours. But your belief must be more true, right? How do you know it? Did they they say in the movie you were shown that your movie is better than movies they are showing to others? Didn’t it make you suspicious that they made you believe that you were somehow special?
Did it ever occur to you that you do not know? Why do you even think that knowing is possible? You do not seem to be very prideful but yet you are immodest. When you took religious education didn’t they warn you about pride and hubris? I think you know something about the sin of pride since you distanced yourself from the militant atheism form the past of which you are ashamed now.
To know the world one needs a god’s eye view. Don’t you know that self-referential statement are always troublesome. Logic is powerless against them. Even quantum mechanics postulates an observer who does not obey the laws of quantum mechanics which means does not belong to this world. It is impossible to make an ultimate verdict about yourself. The “I” can’t pronounce what the “I” is.
I wish you well and I am somewhat hopeful because of what you said about your daughter.
Competent in what? Capable of what?
Here is the problem – in the age of bioscience and neuroscience, in the age of designed humans, you need ideology (or religion, same thing with different name) do decide what exactly is the target you will pursue, what exactly is the “superior standard”.
Biotechnology will not end ideology, it will accelerate it. Instead of forcing the irregular human peg into square, roud or hexagonal ideological hole, we could create man that perfectly adheres to our standards, whatever they are.
We could finally see the perfect Communist man, perfect Capitalist man, perfect Christian man, perfect Muslim man, whatever we want.
Let the hundreds flowers bloom!
First question: yes, second:…
Utu, I really thought a long time about that. About what is “I”, what it means “I exist”, and about how can I know anything. The answer is that you have to assume something, or else you would go insane. There is no way to prove or really know anything. I doubt even St. Agostine’s “dubito ergo sum”.
I have an impression that among physicists who after all are dealing with more fundamental description of universe there is less hard core materialists and atheists than among biologists and behavioral psychologists. Perhaps they are more playful about what they are doing which lets them keep some distance to what they are doing or they are more cognizant of the nature of the assumption being made in their theories and that these assumptions are tentative and ultimately human constructs like mathematical constructions. Evolutionists on the other hand take themselves much more seriously and are more militant as if they knew they were the enforcers of the atheistic paradigm that must be uphold against the forces of obscurantism. Perhaps it may have something to do with reportedly lower IQ among biologists than physicists so falling into the trap of literalness of interpretation is more likely among the evolutionists just like it is more likely among Evangelical Christians as apposed to Catholics. The latter are much more flexible in ability to incorporate science within their religious belief system.
I hope you will continue your search and expand your view without a fear of going insane. You haven’t arrived yet.
dfordoom, the only reason to limit individual liberty and self-indulgence is to get such individuals to focus on some long-term large-scale goal or objective. You see, there is productive accomplishment and there is having a good time. Only these two things exist in this universe. There is Work and there is Play.
Anyways, some years ago I thought about all of the possible long-term endeavors that are large scale enough to involve the efforts of hundreds of millions of people, and I could come up with only one possibility. That is the human settlement of the solar system on a grand scale (the O’neill “L5” scenario). That’s it! Literally all other human endeavors can be accomplished with a relatively small number of individuals. The two most complicated and sophisticated manufacturing endeavors in the world today, semiconductor chips and commercial airliners, require the combined efforts of maybe a few hundred thousand people. That’s includes the entire industrial supply chain, not just Boeing or Intel themselves. Only the large scale colonization of the solar system, and later the galaxy, could even come close to involving the efforts of hundreds of millions of people. If you are not interested in this kind of endeavor, restricting peoples’ personal liberties and preferences makes no point at all. There is nothing to be accomplished that we don’t already do. You guys seem to believe in restricting personal liberties and preferences even in the absence of any kind of productive accomplishment. I see no reason to believe this.
This is why like to say half seriously that if you are a non-libertarian conservative, that you ought to get involved in the space movement. It alone provides the kind of large scale endeavor that can convince people to stop being hedonists and instead direct their attentions and efforts to a suitably large enough scale endeavor that is worthy of such attention.
You know, Daniel, you probably think I’m some out of control hedonistic flake. I can assure you I am not. I am a successful system integrator and also work to maintain good physical condition. I do the standard “bodybuilding” weight training (2 day split, four days per week) and swim 40 minutes 2-3 times per week. I do lots of hiking and other outdoor activities. I also have a personal “life extension” regimen as well. So both career (financial and technical) as well as personal/physical, I have my s**t together.
So maybe, just maybe, my world-view might actually work for me better than anything you or any of the non-libertarian conservative types can come up with. I think your attitude needs a bit of adjustment.
Just my 2 cents.
Do you also have a strengthening program for modesty and theory of mind?
We do it all the time, we tell people where they can on cannot drink alcohol – go to a local park in much of the US and see the sign telling people don’t bring alcohol here – we prohibit prostitution and limit gambling and a bunch of other stuff. The only question in a democracy is regarding public support for such things and as we’ve seen, the religious Jews are obviously winning that battle.
We obviously can prohibit all sorts of things, the question is whether we should. I don’t think laws against prostitution are a good thing, so I don’t find them a convincing argument that we should ban pornography either. Certain kinds of porn, sure, I would be fine with banning the violent sorts, but I would want to make sure any such laws were very narrowly tailored. And I’m certainlty not on board with the kind of “family values”, sexual / social conservatism that Orthodox Jews in Israel tend to favour, so I’m suspicious about their agenda in trying to ban porn.
But again, some generation among you guys has got to hold the line or the demographic collapse will continue…as I’ve said before, this is simple mathematics.
I mean, yes, post-Sexual Revolution societies tend to have lower fertility rates than sexually conservative ones. We live in an overpopulated world, that’s becoming more overpopulated, so I think that’s a big benefit of the sexual revolution, not a cost. I’m not particularly a fan of Mona Eltahawy, but I do hope she succeeds in her efforts to promote the sexual revolution in Muslim societies.
Another freak in Karlin’s circus.
It is strange I get the feeling I can relate to sovoks better that to the products of American narcissistic libertarianism and transhumanism and whatever it is in the water that Karlin and others drink.
You’re one of us, too.
Daniel, you’re the one who insinuated that I was a flake, apparently on no other basis than the fact I do not share your personal world-view (e.g. religion/ideology/philosophy). The only reason I posted details of my personal life was to show that I was no such thing. I didn’t do it just to be a braggart or to stock my ego.
Anyways, this is a discussion about declining birth rates and how to reverse them. So, I will stick to it.
May I suggest the first place to start is to consider the cost disease. For those who don’t know, the cost disease is how the financial costs for things like education, health care, and housing in good school districts have gone up dramatically over the past 30 years. Costs for nearly everything else, everything from international travel to computers, have gone down relative to mean income. The former, which I like to call the “Big 3”, are much more strongly associated with having kids than the latter items, thus driving up the cost of having kids relative to other options. My suggestion for you pro-natel types is to come up with ideas for reducing the cost of the “Big 3” relative to mean income. Focus on this issue first. Because a failure to tackle this issue renders all other options menaingless.
BTW, did you know the cost of having and raising kids relative to mean income was actually lower in 1985 than it was, say, in 1965? The mid-1980’s was a sort of trough with regards to the cost disease. Well something else we had in the 1980’s was the Reagan economic boom. You guys might want to consider that to.
Might I suggest you consider these issues before going into rabid denunciation of “libertarianism” or “excessive individualism”.
This is why I suggested that you work on your theory of mind – I said no such thing. You indicated specific terminal values as ideal to foist worldwide in order to bring about utopia, such as maximization of individual whim and ever increasing atomization of the individual. I recognize and appreciate your religious/ideological beliefs.
Your particular accomplishments don’t have much specific bearing on my comment. Whether you are a billionaire or a pauper, it doesn’t necessary indicate much in regards to the value of your terminal beliefs: a billionaire may accept casual murder to maximize his wealth as appropriate, while a pauper may have given away his means of livelihood. They have different terminal values.
As for natalism, cost is only part of the equation as you might have discerned by the fact that natalism was higher in the past even when the cost of upbringing was relatively higher. Fundamentally, its status rather than cost. From a neuroscience perspective, understanding motivation is complex but at least a large part of it is dopamine availability(used to control motion/action) and long-term versus short-term orientation. In a world perceived as highly unstable, and saturated by quick dopamine boosts, it shouldn’t be surprising that natalism is difficult along with any other long-term dedicated goal.
The definition of a utopian is someone who thinks that they have the one perfect answer for all humans. Since I want nothing more than to live my own life on my own terms, the description of utopian cannot be applied to me.
I made previous comments about advocacy of eugenics for several reasons. First, you guys want to make changes in how people live their lives. Given how much of human personality traits (executive function) that underlie human behavior is genetically determined, it would make sense that bioengineering approaches would be more effective at doing such than memetic approaches (religion/ideology/philosophy). If what I have been reading over the past year or so is correct, memetic approaches to changing human personality and, thus, behavior will be very limited in effect.
I believe many of you in here are driven by the perception that the birth rate (for most societies) must be increased, since this is the purpose of this discussion thread. My suggestion is rather than obsessing over restrictions on personal private acts, particularly those between conscentin competent adults, you should instead focus on efforts to reduce the costs and increase the rewards of having kids. Such discussion is lacking in this thread.
Another strategy worth pursuing is to reduce the role of the nanny-state with regards to people having and raising kids. May I suggest the book “What To Expect When No One Is Expecting” by Jonathan Last. This is, by far, the best of the pro-natal books out there.
Why not just create individuals predisposed to intense religious beliefs and then create a social environment and religious beliefs that indicate that they should sacrifice all their current worldly desires in order to maximize the number of children?
That way, when we need them to stop having children and to destroy the “libertarians” of the world, we only need to alter the religious belief coming from the prophets. Less children, more stabbity-stabbity.
And then, we will have more resources to multiply.
Neuroscience might not be the boon you seek after all. But as a computer engineer, you should appreciate that I’ve created a flexible application programming interface to which we can easily hook social extensions into, yes?
I do see the logic in that. And I do think the Space Race of the 50s and 60s was a positive thing on the whole.
The problem is that since the 1970s space exploration has become something that nobody, apart from a handful of geeks, is interested in.
The real problem is that there’s just no reason for bothering with space exploration. In the 50s/60s it was necessary because otherwise the Evil Commies would get there first (or if you were on the other side it was necessary because otherwise the Decadent Capitalist West would get there first). The only way you could make space exploration/colonisation seem urgent enough to capture people’s imaginations would be by coming up with a convincing lie on the same scale as the Evil Commies Want To Control Space lie.
Which of course could be done. If you control the Megaphone you can convince people of anything. You could easily convince them that we need to colonise the solar system to prevent the Evil Space Aliens from doing it. But first you’d need to get control of the Megaphone.
In the case of education the problem is a very simple one. We are over-educating people and wasting billions of dollars in doing so. Very very few people need a college education. Women certainly don’t need a college education. Most of the money spent on education is money flushed down the toilet.
Since most of the education provided by the education system is unnecessary and even harmful there’s no need to worry about good school districts. The schools in those good school districts are infecting our children with the same poison as schools in bad school districts. In our society if you’re sending your kids to school you’re effectively practising child abuse.
Daniel Chieh,
I’m willing to live with the consequences of the neuroscience revolution. In any case, I stand by my point. If cognitive (intelligence) and behavioral (executive function) traits are mostly (90%) genetic, it is a logical corollary that memetic approaches (religion/philosophy/ideology) to improving behavioral performance will likely be very limited compared to bio-engineering approaches.
If human performance improvement is not desirable, then the only value found in religion/ideology/philosophy is that it is an expression of cultural uniqueness and identity. Religion is an expression of culture. I know that.
Having lived in various regions of the world, I have come to appreciate the various religions and cultures around the world. I’m actually much more worldly about this stuff than I let on to be in these blogs. You see, I’m really not the libertarian/transhumanist fanatic after all. It works for me. But, I have absolutely no desire to push it on to others who have no interest in it. I don’t even think it is appropriate for most other humans. But it is VERY appropriate for me, and as long as I can pursuit it, what other people do is none of my concern.
@ AK:
UK, FR, DE, NL, BG have a much bigger problem. The Eastern-Europeans/Japanese/Koreans/Taiwanese still have 85%+x native babies. (Most of the foreign babies in these countries come from well-integrated migrants, who often happen to be from similar cultural background.) The Western Europeans already only 60% native babies. In some major cities non-European babies are already nearly near the 50% mark.
Even with falling birthrates among migrants, Western Europe will be around 40% non-European. Enough to bring Muslim/African/Asian minority parties into the national/assemblies. This will be the death Western democracies and the beginning of tribal politics. The US will be there in 2024.
If we take IQ into account, it probably mean that the US/Western European countries will be in the around 87-93 range. Middling powers, who live off legacy strenght.
The Confucian countries will dominate through social-cohesion, technological edge and stable politics.
No. It was necessary because in the 50’s/60’s there were no good ICBM’s yet. Once we figured out that you don’t need to go to the Moon to destroy a city on the other half of the world with a push of a button, it was over for space exploration.
This is a good point, it is difficult to divorce the early motivation for space exploration from the arms race.
Peace.
Oh, no. Never.
Be wise. Drink the water.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58702/the-wise-king
I take it the consensus here is that we need to have more kids so that we can build a late 21st century and 22nd century civilization as described such:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/10/urban-21st-century-and-megaurban-22nd-century.html
not to mention all of the space stuff we might want to do:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/10/catalyzing-major-human-space-activities-by-2030.html
My question for you guys is: Do you believe the human race, as currently constituted in terms of cognitive ability and executive function, is capable of creating this kind of civilization? Shouldn’t we address this issue first before obsessing over birth rates themselves?
I don’t agree about the net benefit of a declining population in some cases, but the real point is this: the population will not be declining in England, Germany, France, Sweden, etc., because the nonEuropeans there continue to breed at above replacement level.
Given the differential fertility rates, Europeans reproducing at less than two and a half to three children per woman, leads inevitably to their subjugation and then disappearance.