I’d have to imagine that, so long as humans remain mostly-human, the universal status multipliers like willingness to struggle, physical beauty/aptitude, and social grace will determine where people stand among others. Assortative mating will likely continue, too, though the recent trend of wealthy individuals buying eggs (and, less frequently, sperm) in lieu of courtship might affect evolutionary dynamics, there, especially as biotech removes the bottleneck on egg donation such that even one willing donor can clone her eggs as many times as needed. As always, ‘who mates with who’ seems likely to be something people still care about, and that’s likely to be determined by status.
I can imagine a world where the top echelon of humanity essentially live like the ancient Greeks in their most idealized form, the bottom echelon completely throw themselves into escapism, and the middle pick a zygote from willing members of the top echelon and become single parents.
One caveat is that I have no idea how groups that want lots of children will be handled. It takes fewer generations than humanity has already had for a relatively reasonable 5.0 birthrate to explode into more people than the universe has atoms. Modern socialization decreases birthrate on mean, but some portion of the drive to reproduce is due to genetic inclinations, and a world in which everyone is rich enough to have as many kids as they want doesn’t seem sustainable on those grounds. Maybe everyone gets a transferrable budget of one child.
I’d have to imagine that, so long as humans remain mostly-human, the universal status multipliers like willingness to struggle, physical beauty/aptitude, and social grace will determine where people stand among others. Assortative mating will likely continue, too, though the recent trend of wealthy individuals buying eggs (and, less frequently, sperm) in lieu of courtship might affect evolutionary dynamics, there, especially as biotech removes the bottleneck on egg donation such that even one willing donor can clone her eggs as many times as needed. As always, ‘who mates with who’ seems likely to be something people still care about, and that’s likely to be determined by status.
I can imagine a world where the top echelon of humanity essentially live like the ancient Greeks in their most idealized form, the bottom echelon completely throw themselves into escapism, and the middle pick a zygote from willing members of the top echelon and become single parents.
One caveat is that I have no idea how groups that want lots of children will be handled. It takes fewer generations than humanity has already had for a relatively reasonable 5.0 birthrate to explode into more people than the universe has atoms. Modern socialization decreases birthrate on mean, but some portion of the drive to reproduce is due to genetic inclinations, and a world in which everyone is rich enough to have as many kids as they want doesn’t seem sustainable on those grounds. Maybe everyone gets a transferrable budget of one child.