Because I don’t care about “humanity in general” nearly as much as I care about my society. Yes, sure, the descendants of the Amish and the Taliban will cover the earth. That’s not a future I strive for. I’d be willing to give up large chunks of the planet to an ASI to prevent that.
I don’t know how you would prevent that. Absent an AI catastrophe, fertility will recover, in the sense that “we” (rationalists etc) will mostly be replaced with people of low IQ and impulse control, exactly those populations that have the highest fertility now. And “banishing aging and death” would not prevent them from having high fertility and dominating the future. Moloch is relentless. The problem is more serious than you think.
will mostly be replaced with people of low IQ and impulse control, exactly those populations that have the highest fertility now.
Just as population fertility is nonuniform, the relationship between fertility and intelligence is also nonuniform. As I recall from a paper I read a while back, it stacks up as follows, ordered from most positive to most negative:
Right/traditionalist men have a substantial positive correlation between wordsum and fertility
Right/traditionalist women have a slight negative correlation
Left/liberal men have a moderate negative correlation
Left/liberal women have a significant negative correlation
Intuitively, it makes sense—intelligence is your ability to get what you want, and traditionalists want more children, whereas non-traditionalists want to preserve their options. For the first two groups, failure looks like not managing to find a mate or acquire enough resources to raise children. For the second two groups, failure looks like improper or insufficient use of contraception.
I don’t know how you would prevent that. Absent an AI catastrophe, fertility will recover, in the sense that “we” (rationalists etc) will mostly be replaced with people of low IQ and impulse control, exactly those populations that have the highest fertility now. And “banishing aging and death” would not prevent them from having high fertility and dominating the future. Moloch is relentless. The problem is more serious than you think.
Just as population fertility is nonuniform, the relationship between fertility and intelligence is also nonuniform. As I recall from a paper I read a while back, it stacks up as follows, ordered from most positive to most negative:
Right/traditionalist men have a substantial positive correlation between wordsum and fertility
Right/traditionalist women have a slight negative correlation
Left/liberal men have a moderate negative correlation
Left/liberal women have a significant negative correlation
Intuitively, it makes sense—intelligence is your ability to get what you want, and traditionalists want more children, whereas non-traditionalists want to preserve their options. For the first two groups, failure looks like not managing to find a mate or acquire enough resources to raise children. For the second two groups, failure looks like improper or insufficient use of contraception.