[ExI] How new AI economics might change our systems

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Ben
Zaiboc via extropy-chat
...
> 
>>... I never would have predicted that China would suddenly stop 
> overgrowing its limits.  It's as if reproduction suddenly and 
> inexplicably went out of style.  It is happening here too.  We just don't
recognize it yet.


>...Murmurations of starlings are things I've been witnessing since I was a
hatchling (until recently. Are they going extinct or something?), but I
don't get your analogy. If humans were anywhere near as well-co-ordinated,
half our problems wouldn't even exist.

---
Ben

_______________________________________________


Ben I have noticed a very clear change in insect population in the states,
all species.  Starlings eat bugs (and anything else they can get their beaks
around.)  I too have noticed a drop in starling population.

I read Ehrlich's Population Bomb back in the 70s.  It was required reading
for the environmental science course, which was part of the mechanical
engineering degree.  I am going on very faded memory here.  Treat the
following accordingly.

As I recall, Ehrlich estimated future population dynamics in China.  The
book was already 10 years old at the time, but China was already starting to
recognize its demographics challenge by 1968.  China's one child policy had
just become official government doctrine in 1979 when I was taking the
course.  The professor of that course, who was Indian, explained that the
big problem was not solved entirely by China's one child policy, because so
many Chinese females were young: they had not yet borne their one child.  He
extrapolated out 50 years and predicted that China by about now would hit
2.4 billion people.

But it doesn't.  Why?  

Because...

My professor vastly underestimated the starling effect.  In this case, he
underestimated how many fertile Chinese women would choose zero children.
In China today, they no longer have the one child policy (ended in 2015) but
a big share of Chinese women now choose to have either one or zero children.
There are still multibreeders, but China's estimated fertility rate is now
about 0.93 children per female.

Now the starling effect isn't happening back the other way: the government
is encouraging bigger families, since it can foresee taking over vast
Africa.  But now the proles don't feel the need to breed.

spike