Fermi’s paradox answered? Any sufficiently advanced civilization will develop contraception, choose “self-fulfillment” over procreation, and fade into blackness musing at the irony of evolved motive-functions inadequate to ensure the survival of the species, once intelligence learns to short-circuit them and enjoy the endorphins without the anchor of unintended consequences crying in their cribs and pulling sometimes-begrudged but reliably generated obedience to duty.
An entertaining idea, but I don’t think we’re going to run out of people. Within even apparently-very-homogeneous populations, there are subpopulations that are, for a variety of reasons, more inclined to have more kids. The sorts of people that kids just “happen to” will become rarer as contraception precludes this, and the sorts of people who see children as a vital part of their lives will become more common[1].
A lot of people model the decline in birthrate as an iron law that will keep going forever, but it’s more that wanting kids wasn’t mercilessly selected for for most of our history and now it is.
Less happily, the sorts of people that don’t particularly want kids but struggle to properly operate contraception will also grow as a share of the total population.
Fermi’s paradox answered? Any sufficiently advanced civilization will develop contraception, choose “self-fulfillment” over procreation, and fade into blackness musing at the irony of evolved motive-functions inadequate to ensure the survival of the species, once intelligence learns to short-circuit them and enjoy the endorphins without the anchor of unintended consequences crying in their cribs and pulling sometimes-begrudged but reliably generated obedience to duty.
An entertaining idea, but I don’t think we’re going to run out of people. Within even apparently-very-homogeneous populations, there are subpopulations that are, for a variety of reasons, more inclined to have more kids. The sorts of people that kids just “happen to” will become rarer as contraception precludes this, and the sorts of people who see children as a vital part of their lives will become more common[1].
A lot of people model the decline in birthrate as an iron law that will keep going forever, but it’s more that wanting kids wasn’t mercilessly selected for for most of our history and now it is.
Less happily, the sorts of people that don’t particularly want kids but struggle to properly operate contraception will also grow as a share of the total population.