Robin Hanson first proposed the idea of a “Great Filter” that has stopped any species from colonizing the galaxy. I’ve mostly heard it thought of as either something that prevents planets from reaching civilization levels close to ours (the leap to multicellular life is extremely improbable? too many planet-killer asteroids?), or disasters that destroy civilizations like ours before they’ve had a chance to expand past their home solar system (global nuclear war?).
1.) Humans have had population collapses before. In the short term they led to regression of quality of life (among those whose quality of life was above subsistence farming anyway). But they also led to the creation of work saving technologies and social/political technologies.
2.) There's no reason that we couldn't at some point develop a culture for whom human individuals are a cultivated product. For now Moloch seems to be in the way, but any culture that sufficiently subsidizes child production and increases overall child rearing efficiency will outcompete those whose population collapses. And in a capitalist system (also in other systems) there comes a point where investors (or other people with real power) will notice that there is money to be made (or personal agency and quality of life improved) by directly investing into the production of humans.
3.) Even if all else is true, each subsequent golden age would have more of a head start due to archeology. Tech would advance more slowly than expected, but it would advance.
4.) I feel like you need more close female friends. Not literally, since it never seemed like you are lacking those from things I've heard you say in your podcasts. Just that you mayhaps want to have more conversations with them about what they want and what they enjoy and what makes them unproductive. It's not really all that different from men. Maybe a bit less pr0n, but then that isn't a universal among childfree men either.
First, while the description of the process may be very true about Earth, and while some similar pattern may be possible for aliens, saying "this is the reason" is based on assuming the aliens are improbably similar to humans not only biology, but also sociology.
Second, while i believe the described cycle is possible, the cycle is not everything. The golden age is not in our past. Not even "perhaps". The social structure of society is very important, not only it's technology and supply chains. A world with the technology of the 90s, or maybe even worse technology, but an egalitarian society that actually works and not causes any pointless suffering would be far better than the 90s, or our current time. And that's without mentioning the fact different places in the world have both different technologies and different societies. "Children in Africa" and all that.
Hmm, I don't believe this trap is stable over the long term, though it might work through a few cycles.
It's true that in the short and maybe medium term cultural evolution effects like this would dominate.
Over the long term though regular evolution would intervene. It seems like in our past it was sufficient for evolution to encode
1) Desire for sex / sex being fun
2) Loving your children and fighting for their survival once they exist
Everything else took care of itself.
Now that we're intervening in that cycle we should expect new adaptions to develop. In the near future that might only manifest in things like more widespread allergic reactions to birth control or it being less effective than expected. That's probably not sufficient though as we could easily adjust the birth control faster than evolution can get around it.
In the far future I see different possibilities:
- strong inborn desires for having many children/descendants
- what we would now consider pregnancy fetishes - non procreative sex just not feeling that good in comparison
- pregnancy itself becoming easier and more pleasant
- the way children develop/grow up becoming less burdensome for parents
- basically any other change that leads to people having more children
(This all obviously assumes that we won't have massive technological advances that make all of this not matter.)
Something to keep in mind is that there are lots of species with more or less stable populations that have existed for a long long time. Crocodiles got "stuck" in their environment and never developed to spread out of their habitat or advance technologically/socially/culturally or have a population boom. So there is no reason to think that biological evolution alone would take care of the "problem" if we end up finding a plateau in both population and tech.
If society at large were more supportive of parents, families and children, I'd probably have some. But for all their talk, politicians don't seem interested in moving society in that direction. There seems to be a lack of political will to keep humanity growing. I'm not personally invested in the survival of humanity, so instead of going through the enormous hassles of having children, I'm also comfortable with living long and dying out.
A few things to note:
1.) Humans have had population collapses before. In the short term they led to regression of quality of life (among those whose quality of life was above subsistence farming anyway). But they also led to the creation of work saving technologies and social/political technologies.
2.) There's no reason that we couldn't at some point develop a culture for whom human individuals are a cultivated product. For now Moloch seems to be in the way, but any culture that sufficiently subsidizes child production and increases overall child rearing efficiency will outcompete those whose population collapses. And in a capitalist system (also in other systems) there comes a point where investors (or other people with real power) will notice that there is money to be made (or personal agency and quality of life improved) by directly investing into the production of humans.
3.) Even if all else is true, each subsequent golden age would have more of a head start due to archeology. Tech would advance more slowly than expected, but it would advance.
4.) I feel like you need more close female friends. Not literally, since it never seemed like you are lacking those from things I've heard you say in your podcasts. Just that you mayhaps want to have more conversations with them about what they want and what they enjoy and what makes them unproductive. It's not really all that different from men. Maybe a bit less pr0n, but then that isn't a universal among childfree men either.
Two things.
First, while the description of the process may be very true about Earth, and while some similar pattern may be possible for aliens, saying "this is the reason" is based on assuming the aliens are improbably similar to humans not only biology, but also sociology.
Second, while i believe the described cycle is possible, the cycle is not everything. The golden age is not in our past. Not even "perhaps". The social structure of society is very important, not only it's technology and supply chains. A world with the technology of the 90s, or maybe even worse technology, but an egalitarian society that actually works and not causes any pointless suffering would be far better than the 90s, or our current time. And that's without mentioning the fact different places in the world have both different technologies and different societies. "Children in Africa" and all that.
Hmm, I don't believe this trap is stable over the long term, though it might work through a few cycles.
It's true that in the short and maybe medium term cultural evolution effects like this would dominate.
Over the long term though regular evolution would intervene. It seems like in our past it was sufficient for evolution to encode
1) Desire for sex / sex being fun
2) Loving your children and fighting for their survival once they exist
Everything else took care of itself.
Now that we're intervening in that cycle we should expect new adaptions to develop. In the near future that might only manifest in things like more widespread allergic reactions to birth control or it being less effective than expected. That's probably not sufficient though as we could easily adjust the birth control faster than evolution can get around it.
In the far future I see different possibilities:
- strong inborn desires for having many children/descendants
- what we would now consider pregnancy fetishes - non procreative sex just not feeling that good in comparison
- pregnancy itself becoming easier and more pleasant
- the way children develop/grow up becoming less burdensome for parents
- basically any other change that leads to people having more children
(This all obviously assumes that we won't have massive technological advances that make all of this not matter.)
Something to keep in mind is that there are lots of species with more or less stable populations that have existed for a long long time. Crocodiles got "stuck" in their environment and never developed to spread out of their habitat or advance technologically/socially/culturally or have a population boom. So there is no reason to think that biological evolution alone would take care of the "problem" if we end up finding a plateau in both population and tech.
If society at large were more supportive of parents, families and children, I'd probably have some. But for all their talk, politicians don't seem interested in moving society in that direction. There seems to be a lack of political will to keep humanity growing. I'm not personally invested in the survival of humanity, so instead of going through the enormous hassles of having children, I'm also comfortable with living long and dying out.