I don’t know where you get your figures from, but the global fertility rate is still above replacement level, and in sub-saharan Africa it is easily twice the global rate.
Also even at a slightly below replacement rate (where the global fertility rate is heading indeed) it will take centuries or even millennia before the global population will have shrunk significantly.
It is totally moot speculating what society will look like in a thousand years or so, and yes maybe people will decide to get more children again then.
I don’t know where you get your figures from, but the global fertility rate is still above replacement level,
Only when including several regions where fertility remains high (mostly Africa). If those are excluded, it’s extinction-level. But hey, you say “that’s how averages work”.
So let’s look at Africa. Their fertility rate is above replacement, but is dropping rapidly. We can measure how fast it is dropping. We know approximately when it will fall below replacement levels. And we don’t see any reason why it should remain above them, when it didn’t remain above replacement (or even just at) anywhere else in the world. It’s natural, and even smart, to assume that the same sociological forces that made it drop elsewhere are those making it drop in Africa, and that they will work the same as elsewhere (since Africans are human like everyone else). It’d actually be sort of racist to assume that it would work differently there wouldn’t it?
Once we have considered the places it’s below replacement, and the places that it’s above replacement but dropping, where else is left at all? Nowhere.
You don’t even understand the phenomenon. You don’t want to understand it. And you’re claiming that somehow it’s not even happening. It’s bizarre.
Also even at a slightly below replacement rate (where the global fertility rate is heading indeed) it will take centuries
No. The effect actually picks up speed the longer it occurs. Children internalize norms. If the 5 children who see everyone around them childless (excepting their own parents who have one), then don’t grow up to have one child also, they’ll have on average 0.2 children or something like that. Each generation shrinks faster than the last.
And if that somehow still translates into “it will be centuries before the last centenarian dies!”… how is that a counter-argument at all?
It’s bizarre that you are so stuck to your pet theory of human extinction that you try to ignore the facts that global fertility rate is above replacement rate, and will stay so for quite some years still. And even if you extrapolate the current trend it will not drop significantly below replacement rate anytime soon. There is literally zero data suggesting otherwise.
Oh and there is no evidence that people (on average) have decided to go totally childless. They usually only get one or two children, which does indeed drop the average fertility rate below replacement, but only slightly so. This means in turn that the population will at most shrink very slowly.
With 8 billion people world wide (and still growing above replacement rate right now!) it is simply absolute non-sense to talk about human extinction due to birth-rates dropping below replacement rate. Even assuming the trend will last for thousands of years (nothing in human history has ever lasted that long!) we will not go anywhere near extinct.
It’s bizarre that your theory is that we haven’t run out of gas when the speedometer still says we’re doing 100kph.
And even if you extrapolate the current trend it will not drop significantly below replacement rate anytime soon.
Soon for me is “anytime in the next 200 years”. Soon for you is “next 2 minutes”. We do not have the same “soon”.
Oh and there is no evidence that people (on average) have decided to go totally childless.
It wouldn’t have to be average. All it has to do is nudge things below replacement.
They usually only get one or two children, which does indeed drop the average fertility rate below replacement, but only slightly so.
And children who grow up in that world internalize it as a social norm. That becomes their ceiling for how many children to have someday. They then have the same number. Or fewer. The ones that go for “fewer” just nudged the rate down lower still. Iterate that through 30 generations, see what happens.
Even assuming the trend will last for thousands of years (nothing in human history has ever lasted that long!) we will not go anywhere near extinct.
Depends on the “we”. If by “we” you are excluding myself and my descendants, then you most certainly will.
If you are including me, then no. But the subset of humanity that is like yourself, you’re goners. Along with most of your ideology.
With 8 billion people world wide (and still growing above replacement rate right now!) it is simply absolute non-sense to talk about human extinction due to birth-rates dropping below replacement rate.
I forgot. Only climate science is allowed to think long term. The one true science. Measured in human generations, any one of which lasts no longer than about 100 years, each generation staggered with the next, and with a growing sentiment that having children is wrong, dangerous, and unfashionable that we impress upon youth… you people have less than a couple hundred years. Someday, when it becomes impossible to ignore, those of you still alive will look back to times like now, when something might still have been done about it.
Apparently you are absolutely fact resistant. But try to do the math at least once:
8 billion people and a fertility rate of 1.8… how long will that take to human extinction? or 1.5 or even 1.1… just calculate it. In each case it will take thousands of years.
Sure you can claim it will go even lower then that, but there is literally zero evidence that people will stop having children all together. Z-E-R-O.
And claiming to know what will happen with the fertility rate in the next thousands of years is just bullshit. It might as well go up again in a few hundred years, who knows…
Which fact am I resistant to? I’m resistant to your conclusions, which aren’t worthy of being called facts.
But try to do the math at least once: 8 billion people and a fertility rate of 1.8
I’ll wait 20 years until it’s 1.3. Or 40 years until it’s 0.3. The rate’s not constant. You get that right? It’s provably not constant. It’s provably not going up, or fluctuating back or forth, but continues to go downward. That’s not so hard to understand.
Maybe that’s the fact I’m resistant to. Maybe the fact that it’s currently 1.8, and that you imply there it will stay without anything to corroborate the idea. But also that you only imply it, because to assert such a thing sounds so absurd even you can’t possibly say it with a straight face.
Sure you can claim it will go even lower then that, but there is literally zero evidence that people will stop having children all together. Z-E-R-O.
There’s plenty of evidence that the downward trend continues to accelerate, as it has for a century. There’s plenty of evidence that children internalize such things as social norms, and not alot to suggest that this isn’t at least the cause, in part, for the downward trend.
They don’t have to stop having children. It just has to fall below replacement. At that point you are, as a species, effectively dead. It never recovers.
And claiming to know what will happen with the fertility rate in the next thousands of years is just bullshit.
I used to say the same thing about climate. But the difference there is that we’re supposed to believe such things about holy climate science, and disbelieve those things which contradict the dogma of our ideologies.
It might as well go up again in a few hundred years,
Magically? Like, your ideology already makes some assumptions about why it went down in the first place. And I’m not saying you are wrong… what makes you think those assumptions won’t continue to hold, when all the statistics say that they are doing just that?
Dead.
Your arguments are how soon-to-be dead people think. I’m not unhealthy, so what if I’ve put on a few pounds. Sure, it was a heart attack, but just a mild one and with medicine now days. And I’m too old to do the fitness thing anyway, the medications are a better bet. Maybe they’ll invent whizbang medical technology to make me immortal and I’ll vacation on Neptune! Just dead.
The current global fertility rate is 2.4. Well above replacement rate (fact).
There is no evidence that the rate will fall below 1 (fact). You just claim that this is a linear trend to the bottom, but it isn’t. People still get plenty of children and the “norms” you talk about are about getting less (i.e. one or two) not no children (fact). Claiming that getting less children automatically leads to getting no children is factually incorrect. All sociological data shows that people still want to get children, just not as many as before (fact).
And if you actually did the math you should know by now that it means next to nothing if the global fertility rate falls to something like 1.8 in the fear future.
And your climate analogy also does not hold up at all. All the models only forecast until 2100, because the uncertainty on a longer time frame is so high that is would be ludicrous to extrapolate anything from it. Which is exactly what I am saying about forecast on fertility rate hundreds of years into the future.
You can claim as much as you want that your pet theory is right, but the facts are clearly on my side of the argument.
I don’t know where you get your figures from, but the global fertility rate is still above replacement level, and in sub-saharan Africa it is easily twice the global rate.
Also even at a slightly below replacement rate (where the global fertility rate is heading indeed) it will take centuries or even millennia before the global population will have shrunk significantly.
It is totally moot speculating what society will look like in a thousand years or so, and yes maybe people will decide to get more children again then.
Only when including several regions where fertility remains high (mostly Africa). If those are excluded, it’s extinction-level. But hey, you say “that’s how averages work”.
So let’s look at Africa. Their fertility rate is above replacement, but is dropping rapidly. We can measure how fast it is dropping. We know approximately when it will fall below replacement levels. And we don’t see any reason why it should remain above them, when it didn’t remain above replacement (or even just at) anywhere else in the world. It’s natural, and even smart, to assume that the same sociological forces that made it drop elsewhere are those making it drop in Africa, and that they will work the same as elsewhere (since Africans are human like everyone else). It’d actually be sort of racist to assume that it would work differently there wouldn’t it?
Once we have considered the places it’s below replacement, and the places that it’s above replacement but dropping, where else is left at all? Nowhere.
You don’t even understand the phenomenon. You don’t want to understand it. And you’re claiming that somehow it’s not even happening. It’s bizarre.
No. The effect actually picks up speed the longer it occurs. Children internalize norms. If the 5 children who see everyone around them childless (excepting their own parents who have one), then don’t grow up to have one child also, they’ll have on average 0.2 children or something like that. Each generation shrinks faster than the last.
And if that somehow still translates into “it will be centuries before the last centenarian dies!”… how is that a counter-argument at all?
It’s bizarre that you are so stuck to your pet theory of human extinction that you try to ignore the facts that global fertility rate is above replacement rate, and will stay so for quite some years still. And even if you extrapolate the current trend it will not drop significantly below replacement rate anytime soon. There is literally zero data suggesting otherwise.
Oh and there is no evidence that people (on average) have decided to go totally childless. They usually only get one or two children, which does indeed drop the average fertility rate below replacement, but only slightly so. This means in turn that the population will at most shrink very slowly.
With 8 billion people world wide (and still growing above replacement rate right now!) it is simply absolute non-sense to talk about human extinction due to birth-rates dropping below replacement rate. Even assuming the trend will last for thousands of years (nothing in human history has ever lasted that long!) we will not go anywhere near extinct.
It’s bizarre that your theory is that we haven’t run out of gas when the speedometer still says we’re doing 100kph.
Soon for me is “anytime in the next 200 years”. Soon for you is “next 2 minutes”. We do not have the same “soon”.
It wouldn’t have to be average. All it has to do is nudge things below replacement.
And children who grow up in that world internalize it as a social norm. That becomes their ceiling for how many children to have someday. They then have the same number. Or fewer. The ones that go for “fewer” just nudged the rate down lower still. Iterate that through 30 generations, see what happens.
Depends on the “we”. If by “we” you are excluding myself and my descendants, then you most certainly will.
If you are including me, then no. But the subset of humanity that is like yourself, you’re goners. Along with most of your ideology.
I forgot. Only climate science is allowed to think long term. The one true science. Measured in human generations, any one of which lasts no longer than about 100 years, each generation staggered with the next, and with a growing sentiment that having children is wrong, dangerous, and unfashionable that we impress upon youth… you people have less than a couple hundred years. Someday, when it becomes impossible to ignore, those of you still alive will look back to times like now, when something might still have been done about it.
Apparently you are absolutely fact resistant. But try to do the math at least once: 8 billion people and a fertility rate of 1.8… how long will that take to human extinction? or 1.5 or even 1.1… just calculate it. In each case it will take thousands of years.
Sure you can claim it will go even lower then that, but there is literally zero evidence that people will stop having children all together. Z-E-R-O.
And claiming to know what will happen with the fertility rate in the next thousands of years is just bullshit. It might as well go up again in a few hundred years, who knows…
Which fact am I resistant to? I’m resistant to your conclusions, which aren’t worthy of being called facts.
I’ll wait 20 years until it’s 1.3. Or 40 years until it’s 0.3. The rate’s not constant. You get that right? It’s provably not constant. It’s provably not going up, or fluctuating back or forth, but continues to go downward. That’s not so hard to understand.
Maybe that’s the fact I’m resistant to. Maybe the fact that it’s currently 1.8, and that you imply there it will stay without anything to corroborate the idea. But also that you only imply it, because to assert such a thing sounds so absurd even you can’t possibly say it with a straight face.
There’s plenty of evidence that the downward trend continues to accelerate, as it has for a century. There’s plenty of evidence that children internalize such things as social norms, and not alot to suggest that this isn’t at least the cause, in part, for the downward trend.
They don’t have to stop having children. It just has to fall below replacement. At that point you are, as a species, effectively dead. It never recovers.
I used to say the same thing about climate. But the difference there is that we’re supposed to believe such things about holy climate science, and disbelieve those things which contradict the dogma of our ideologies.
Magically? Like, your ideology already makes some assumptions about why it went down in the first place. And I’m not saying you are wrong… what makes you think those assumptions won’t continue to hold, when all the statistics say that they are doing just that?
Dead.
Your arguments are how soon-to-be dead people think. I’m not unhealthy, so what if I’ve put on a few pounds. Sure, it was a heart attack, but just a mild one and with medicine now days. And I’m too old to do the fitness thing anyway, the medications are a better bet. Maybe they’ll invent whizbang medical technology to make me immortal and I’ll vacation on Neptune! Just dead.
The current global fertility rate is 2.4. Well above replacement rate (fact).
There is no evidence that the rate will fall below 1 (fact). You just claim that this is a linear trend to the bottom, but it isn’t. People still get plenty of children and the “norms” you talk about are about getting less (i.e. one or two) not no children (fact). Claiming that getting less children automatically leads to getting no children is factually incorrect. All sociological data shows that people still want to get children, just not as many as before (fact).
And if you actually did the math you should know by now that it means next to nothing if the global fertility rate falls to something like 1.8 in the fear future.
And your climate analogy also does not hold up at all. All the models only forecast until 2100, because the uncertainty on a longer time frame is so high that is would be ludicrous to extrapolate anything from it. Which is exactly what I am saying about forecast on fertility rate hundreds of years into the future.
You can claim as much as you want that your pet theory is right, but the facts are clearly on my side of the argument.