If we’re dealing with physical humans taking up physical space requiring physical resources, then I’m worried. Either we’re growing exponentially, or we’ve eliminated childbirth, or we have strict rules in place about people who have children being willing to die. (The latter might work but modifying central aspects of the human life cycle that we are hard-wired to value seems.… challenging, to say the least)
This is not true. As long as the average total number of children per person stays below 2 (and every child has at least 2 parents) population growth will be sub-linear and approach a finite limit. For example if the average is 1.99 population will never exceed 200 times the starting population, and may take quite a long time to reach that level if there is a strong social expectation of waiting with children until you have attained the necessary maturity to become parents, well after your tenth millennium. I don’t think limiting people to just two children is excessively draconian.
Can you explain the math here? I’m pretty confused about how a system in which people give birth but don’t die could ever have a natural population limit. (If that’s not the part that’s not true, can you clarify?)
As for social pressures not to give birth until your 10th millenium… how long do you think it’ll take for such a norm to become commonplace? (This is an honest question I don’t know the answer to, not an attempt at socratic communication)
In the past century or so, we’ve seen major drops in how often childbirth happens in developed countries, and how long people wait to have children. There seems to be a correlation between good healthcare and women’s equality and people choosing to have fewer children. So I have some hope that in a world of immortals, we’d see similar trends and a continuing drop in birthrates. But I also would never have predicted the drop that we’ve seen so far, and I’m wary of gambling our future on similar predictions.
Can you explain the math here? I’m pretty confused about how a system in which people give birth but don’t die could ever have a natural population limit. (If that’s not the part that’s not true, can you clarify?)
Start with 10 billion people in generation 1. They have 10 billion * 1.99/2= 9.95 billion children, spread out over however long generation 1 takes to exhaust its allocation. Generation 2 ( 9.95 billion people) has ~9.9 billion children, generation 3 ~9.85 billion children, generation 100 ~6 billion children, generation 500 ~0.82 billion children, generation 1000 ~66.5 million children, generation 2000 ~443 thousand children, and generation 4593 only one child.
As for social pressures not to give birth until your 10th millenium… how long do you think it’ll take for such a norm to become commonplace?
A few ten thousand years, at least. With child birth being delayed longer and longer in between.
Thank you. I was growing increasingly worried as I read this threadthat no one had bothered with math. Each personhaving 1 children with the small subtraction of those whohave none doesn’t seem a draconian price for immortality.
This is not true. As long as the average total number of children per person stays below 2 (and every child has at least 2 parents) population growth will be sub-linear and approach a finite limit. For example if the average is 1.99 population will never exceed 200 times the starting population, and may take quite a long time to reach that level if there is a strong social expectation of waiting with children until you have attained the necessary maturity to become parents, well after your tenth millennium. I don’t think limiting people to just two children is excessively draconian.
Can you explain the math here? I’m pretty confused about how a system in which people give birth but don’t die could ever have a natural population limit. (If that’s not the part that’s not true, can you clarify?)
As for social pressures not to give birth until your 10th millenium… how long do you think it’ll take for such a norm to become commonplace? (This is an honest question I don’t know the answer to, not an attempt at socratic communication)
In the past century or so, we’ve seen major drops in how often childbirth happens in developed countries, and how long people wait to have children. There seems to be a correlation between good healthcare and women’s equality and people choosing to have fewer children. So I have some hope that in a world of immortals, we’d see similar trends and a continuing drop in birthrates. But I also would never have predicted the drop that we’ve seen so far, and I’m wary of gambling our future on similar predictions.
Start with 10 billion people in generation 1. They have 10 billion * 1.99/2= 9.95 billion children, spread out over however long generation 1 takes to exhaust its allocation. Generation 2 ( 9.95 billion people) has ~9.9 billion children, generation 3 ~9.85 billion children, generation 100 ~6 billion children, generation 500 ~0.82 billion children, generation 1000 ~66.5 million children, generation 2000 ~443 thousand children, and generation 4593 only one child.
A few ten thousand years, at least. With child birth being delayed longer and longer in between.
This is pretty much the answer I was looking for. I’ve updated. Thanks.
Thank you. I was growing increasingly worried as I read this threadthat no one had bothered with math. Each personhaving 1 children with the small subtraction of those whohave none doesn’t seem a draconian price for immortality.