What has more elasticity—birth rates or institutional and educational quality of the sort that leads to innovation? Clearly both are fairly inelastic in the short run (the shorter the run, the closer to perfect inelasticity), but in the long run a lot might be possible along both axes.
Metascience should focus on the institutional and educational quality questions (including creating better idea discovery processes!). Insofar as metascience depends on fertility, it is a heavily intermediated causal pathway, both by time, by generational differences and culture, by immigration policy, and by educational opportunities. All of which probably have greater elasticity in the short run than fertility. So I disagree with the broad brush used here.
Immigration’s effect on metascience is moderated by types of skilled immigration in the short run, not immigration as such. This is not a nitpick and not merely important practical political reasons. Conceptually, immigration is a big broad concept that should be broken down into its constituent mechanical parts, which includes admission of people based upon some quality, whether it be genius, family ties, lottery, bribe, or “points.”
Natalist and Immigration public policy people should work on their issues without much regard for 3rd order or 4th order effects for metascience. I think keeping these separate is conceptually important, even if they do ultimately causally bear on one another. Everything correlates with everything else.
The best we might do on the public policy level is nudge toward subcultures that are both scientifically advanced, epistemologically healthy, technologically cutting edge, and reproducing themselves at some above replacement rate through both education and children. If we nudge each part of the causal chain a bit towards greater fertility, high skilled immigration, and better institutions it could entirely counteract the trends you describe.
We don’t want to Canticle for Leibowitz and Children of Men ourselves to death. But I think the world model being proposed around fertility and technology by, say, Robin Hanson, is missing a good causal diagram that includes the elasticity of countervailing forces. I’m not saying the issue is not a big one, perhaps the biggest one. But I am terribly unimpressed with most thinking on this topic so far.
What has more elasticity—birth rates or institutional and educational quality of the sort that leads to innovation? Clearly both are fairly inelastic in the short run (the shorter the run, the closer to perfect inelasticity), but in the long run a lot might be possible along both axes.
Metascience should focus on the institutional and educational quality questions (including creating better idea discovery processes!). Insofar as metascience depends on fertility, it is a heavily intermediated causal pathway, both by time, by generational differences and culture, by immigration policy, and by educational opportunities. All of which probably have greater elasticity in the short run than fertility. So I disagree with the broad brush used here.
Immigration’s effect on metascience is moderated by types of skilled immigration in the short run, not immigration as such. This is not a nitpick and not merely important practical political reasons. Conceptually, immigration is a big broad concept that should be broken down into its constituent mechanical parts, which includes admission of people based upon some quality, whether it be genius, family ties, lottery, bribe, or “points.”
Natalist and Immigration public policy people should work on their issues without much regard for 3rd order or 4th order effects for metascience. I think keeping these separate is conceptually important, even if they do ultimately causally bear on one another. Everything correlates with everything else.
The best we might do on the public policy level is nudge toward subcultures that are both scientifically advanced, epistemologically healthy, technologically cutting edge, and reproducing themselves at some above replacement rate through both education and children. If we nudge each part of the causal chain a bit towards greater fertility, high skilled immigration, and better institutions it could entirely counteract the trends you describe.
We don’t want to Canticle for Leibowitz and Children of Men ourselves to death. But I think the world model being proposed around fertility and technology by, say, Robin Hanson, is missing a good causal diagram that includes the elasticity of countervailing forces. I’m not saying the issue is not a big one, perhaps the biggest one. But I am terribly unimpressed with most thinking on this topic so far.