[ExI] tech influence

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Tue Feb 11 20:47:54 UTC 2014


"The birth dearth is a serious problem, especially in parts of Western
Europe and Japan (especially Japan, where fertile women are practically on
a childbearing national strike), for the obvious reason of too many old
retired folks, and not enough young workers to pay for them."

Yes, immediate problems.  Long run - I think we are overpopulated now.
China had the right idea but went about it wrongly.  Are we going to fuck
ourselves into starvation?  OK, so maybe technology can feed 50 billion
people, or 500 billion.  But were does it stop?  I think we will eventually
have to have licenses to get pregnant, as much as this libertarian hates
government interference with anything, much less sex.

If we just take birthing out of the 'hands' of the people and make all
babies in the lab, we can design them as we wish and control the population
as well.  The 'uterine replicator' is known to scifi fans via Lois McMaster
Bujold, and it's a great idea that will eventually save mankind from its
own urges.  Or, design babies to have far lower testosterone, and you get
rid of a lot of wars as well as a lot of babies.   bill


On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 8:34 PM, John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>wrote:

> BillK wrote:
>
> 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.
> >>>
>
>
> The birth dearth is a serious problem, especially in parts of Western
> Europe and Japan (especially Japan, where fertile women are practically on
> a childbearing national strike), for the obvious reason of too many old
> retired folks, and not enough young workers to pay for them.  Immigration
> has been seen as the solution (except in Japan, where they are betting on
> robotics and A.I.), but with the much higher birthrates of the immigrants,
> the face of Europe may be changing quite a bit over the next fifty years.
> The question is, regarding conservative/fundamentalist Muslim immigrants
> and other groups, will they do the "melting pot" thing?  Or as with many
> Muslims, will they prove to be memetically resistant?
>
> I wonder if some mid 21st century nations will decide to pay healthy
> people to donate sperm and eggs, so that facilities full of thousands upon
> thousands of artificial wombs, will produce the young citizens they will
> desperately need.  But then between that and the need for high tech and
> well-run "orphanages," the costs of playing "Brave New World" would be
> prohibitive.
>
> I suppose that with the rise of A.I. and advanced robotics, that the need
> for relatively robust human populations may shrink, as machines take up the
> slack, and excel in ways that humans may not.
>
>
> John
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 4:05 AM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ;-) ;-)
>> Let's settle on "I prefer to screw open-minded dates, eat well and smoke"
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 5:09 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> >... On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco
>>>
>>> >...These days, screw dates, I prefer eating well and smoking...
>>>
>>>
>>> You don't need to make a choice, you would merely change the wording
>>> just a
>>> bit as follows: I prefer to screw dates, eat well and smoke.
>>>
>>> {8^D
>>>
>>> spike
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20140211/86cde82d/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list