My Fertility Posts – by Robin Hanson – Beragampengetahuan

These are my blog posts on fertility, in reverse chronological order:

Jan 21: Are We A Tower of Babel? Amish-like who repopulate Earth my see our civ as like a Tower of Babel. This helps us see what they might retain from us.

Jan 17: Five Fertility Fails: 5 attitudes that keep us from solving fertility fall.

Jan 11: Stasis is Illiberal: As innovation halts, the world will likely become less liberal.

Jan 6: Crediting Conservatives: Historians could study how much to credit conservatives for resisting the cultural changes.

Jan 1: How Much More Innovation Before Pause?: We will see ~60-90 years worth of innovation at prior rates before innovation grinds to a halt.

Dec 10, 2023: We Can BUY New Culture Some say money can’t help, as fertility is cultural. But money can induce a big fast search in space of possible culture changes.

Dec 2: Recalibrating Respect: As winners deserve respect, let’s recalibrate to respect the Amish-like cultures on track to replace our civ.

Nov 25: After Eating It, Software Will Bite The World: Declining economy will end new hardware, and find it hard to support so many software systems.

Nov 17: Honing Fertility Fall Theories: I adjust my theories of why fertility fell in response to Hanania critiques.

Nov 15: Bow To Our Future Overlords: To influence the future, accept the Amish-like as likely new winners, and try to figure out what they will honestly value.

Nov 10: Fertility Fall From Selection Neglect: A habit of copying what high status folks do reinforces a selection effect: having fewer kids can make them higher status.

Nov 6: Ancient Fertility Quotes: The ancient world consistently had problems with low fertility, problems it never solved.

Oct 31: What If Culture Is Unstable?: What if cultures just do random walks, with most places bad compared to where they start? Might that explain fertility change?

Oct 13: Turn the Ship, or Abandon It: Our choice is to try to turn the huge slow ship that is world culture, or throw in with a deviant small insular fertile subculture.

Oct 2: A Fertility Reckoning: We should face the hard fact that treasured aspects of world culture conflict with fertility, threatening our longterm existence.

Oct 1: Four Uses For Personal Tax Assets: Transferable rights to individual tax payments have many uses, including paying parents to make productive kids.

Sep 22: Can Govt Debt Solve Fertility?: Governments could borrow money to pay parents large amounts per kid, much as one can borrow to pay for home additions.

Sep 15: The Return of “Commune-ism”: The Amish-like who will inherit the Earth live in small-scale autonomous communes.

Sep 10: Will Nations Fund Fertility?: Nations seem unlikely to fund fertility rises.

Sep 4: Escalating Signals Cut Fertility: I review the many strong and treasured social trends that promote fertility decline.

Aug 23: 16 Fertility Scenarios: I outline 16 scenarios by which fertility fall may reverse, and show poll results re which are more desirable or likely.

Aug 21: Shrinking Economies Don’t Innovate: In a declining economy due to falling population, innovation grinds to a halt.

That is when my recent burst of posts on fertility started. Some earlier posts:

May 3: Fertile Factions (See also AIs Will Be Our Mind Children): Evolution should make us wary of co-existing rivals, but indulgent of descendants, like AI.

Dec. 2021: On Evolved Values: Eventually our descendants will be selected for consciously and abstractly know their main value: reproduction.

Sep. 2021: The Insular Fertile Future. Insular fertile subcultures like the Amish will plausibly win the future over our falling-fertility world culture.

Nov. 2010: Fertility: The Big Problem. It was my guess for the world’s biggest problem.

Also earlier: Are Gardens Fertile?, Fertility Fall Myths, French Fertility Fall, Fertility Looks Bad, Elite Fertility Falls, Priceless Fertility, Forbidden Fertility, Future Fertility,