[ExI] tech influence

[BillK]

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> I started looking for evidence against that, but I found at least one paper
> supporting your view: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24223433 I could
> not get the paper, so no idea how big the effect is. However,
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291804/ points out that things
> may have changed over time and that social factors do mediate a lot of this
> - the image is slightly confusing. Generally, being overweight does seem to
> be a bit of a problem on the marriage market,
> http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199309303291406 (but see also
> http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199403033300920 ) In the end, my
> guess is that you are likely correct in our current culture, but the effect
> size might not be enormous.
>
> In the end, there are a lot of moving parts in our society. Making
> predictions about the joint socio-psychological-demographic system is
> surprisingly tricky.
>
>

I suspect all these are trivial factors compared to the first world
drop in birthrate.

Educate and empower women and they stop having children.

The reasons for this are probably multifactorial, though.


BillK