[extropy-chat] darfur

[Martin Striz]

On 4/30/06, Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:

> You can blame the Pope or the memes for human reproduction to be jammed
> full on.
>
> The long version is here:
>
> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296
>
> The short version is that population builds up till people see a bleak
> future, that causes xenophobic memes to build up, and there is a massive
> population reduction from tribes fighting it out.  The traits evolved in
> the stone age.

It's an interesting essay.  While your model can account for some
wars, it certainly doesn't account for all of them.  Power grabs and
religious/cultural differences account for a lot of violence as well. 
Moreover, it seems to account for tribal warfare much more than the
wars have occurred in the last century.

You also write:

"Empowering women and other factors such as reliable birth control
methods that go with the globalized high-tech life style has the
effect of lowering the birth rate to near or even below replacement.
Why isn't entirely obvious. The usual response of a species finding
itself in a rich, well-fed environment is to have lots of offspring.
Sarah Hrdy (Hrdy 1999) has given this topic a lot of thought without
reaching a firm conclusion."

The standard explanation involves industrialization, not globalization
per se.  Children are an asset in agrarian societies, because they
provide extra hands for labor, and they produce more than they cost. 
Children are a liability in industrialized societies, where they
produce little until they are adults but cost a lot to rear.  In
short, in industrialized socities, parents lose money on their
children, which makes large families prohibitively expensive.

Martin