[ExI] How new AI economics might change our systems

[Keith Henson]

 On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 2:13 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 2026-09-21 13:05, Keith Henson via extropy-chat wrote:
>
snip

You have long espoused this hypothesis, and I can see the logic of it.
> Unfortunately, it does track with the recent evidence which has come to
> light regarding the The Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck. Between 7,000
> and 5,000 years ago, genetic analysis revealed a dramatic drop in male
> genetic diversity right about the time that humans took to agriculture.
>
>
> https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-decline-of-male-diversity-when-humans-took-to-agriculture-38725
>
> This runs counter to your claim because the advent of agriculture
> brought about an huge increase in resources instead of scarcity enabling
> the development of cities fed by farms, but nonetheless resulted in the
> killing of 95% of all male humans.


Agriculture, settled life instead of nomadic, hugely increased the birth
rate and the number of surviving children resulting in a fast growth of
population and resource crisis for farmable land in a few generations. They
were not exactly nomadic, but the bushmen had a lifestyle similar. They
were a decade or so back force into settlements. I have not looked it up,
but would not be surprised if the number of children per woman has gone up.
It was just at population replacement level.



> So maybe it is back to territorial
> tribalism even in the presence of abundant resources? Also consider John
> Calhoun's Universe 25 experiment where there was abundant food and
> water, but nonetheless the mice were very violent toward one another.
>

It is possible that mice sense a high population density as a sign that a
resource crisis is about to happen and react violently, driving some of
them to leave. The Calhoun situation is nothing you would expect in nature.
Humans seem to be very different from mice or you would see dense cities
being much more violent places.

Keith

>
> Stuart LaForge
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