sim1collins

Exactly. Perhaps one of the biggest barriers slowing down solutions to problems caused by demographic collapse = people not being willing to discuss demographic collapse merely because some racist/religiously extreme groups refer to demographic shifts in some of their arguments.

Just because hitler self-identified as a vegetarian doesn't mean that other people who self-identify as vegetarians condone Hitler's views.

We do think that demographic collapse can be "an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale." There was, admittedly, internal debate about using alarmist language in the title, though, and we appreciate the criticism (everything in this document is subject to change based on feedback).

We care about what happens to humanity after we die. We acknowledge that not everyone does. No judgment there. This document is more relevant to people who care about what happens to humans beyond their own personal lifespans.

That's an entirely valid point. We'll seriously consider taking it out. It provides an interesting case study and allows for some interesting conjecture, but it certainly isn't core to the arguments we hope to make and its lack of credibility probably does more harm than good to our overall arguments.

This is NOT a view expressed in the document (nor is it a view held by its authors).

One of the key risks this document highlights is the risk that many populations, which contribute helpful diversity and different perspectives to the world, go extinct before people find a way to sustain them (e.g. Koreans, Japanese, Jains, Parsi, Emirates, Tanka, Macanese, Taiwanese, Italians, etc.).

This is not about "I want the 'good' people to reproduce and the 'bad' people to stop;" this is about raising awareness of various implications of population decline, which affect not just cultural/ethnic diversity, but also the viability of many major cities, stock markets, and governing formats.

While this argument makes intuitive/emotional sense, it's not the case that humans start having more kids once they can finally "chill t f out"—though I totally understand where you're coming from.

In practice, populations in actual hypercompetitive hellholes, where they're not just competing for a job/status/basic financial solvency, but literally for their food security, physical safety, etc., are those which are having more kids.

The pretty-much-universal trend appears to be that once people become more educated and comfortable, they stop having kids above repopulation rate.

All that said, we are not arguing in favor of making life more stressful for any group, be they in developed nations or nations facing severe hardship. We're simply pointing out that "make raising kids cheaper/easier" and "make life easier" are not interventions proven to boost birth rates.

When creating this document, our goal wasn't to give people the impression that our populations should expand in number indefinitely (especially not on Earth alone). You're right that expecting the planet to shoulder indefinite population growth is impractical.

We're just trying to highlight the hazards of population decline that hits humanity like a tidal wave and produces unnecessary suffering and damage. There are ways for populations to sustainably decline without wiping out entire cultures, for example.

We, personally, care a lot about memetic/cultural diversity and worry that a population collapse for which we don't prepare will eliminate loads of perspectives that would otherwise contribute great new innovations and technologies to humanity's future.

We also think it's important that people know that population decline will affect certain fundamentals upon which their lives are based (e.g. "I put all my retirement savings in the stock market because on average the stock market always goes up" isn't going to be a healthy thought when population decline accelerates).

This is one of the reasons why we put together this document. We (as authors) see there being many benefits to smaller human populations on earth, but we think that any transition made needs to be made very thoughtfully.

So far we we can see, there is very little (effective) proactive action being taken to ensure that as population levels decline, things we value (like technological progress, women's rights, diversity of cultures, etc.) are protected.

We address this somewhat in the document. It seems the effect affordable childcare has is more limited than one would hope, though it certainly helps!

That said, having kids above repopulation rate might not just be about making things affordable. If people don't have a strong reason to have more than two kids, and if kids don't have tactical value like they did when they contributed to the family business (e.g. did farm labor, helped around a household, provided old-age care), then it can be difficult to justify having more than two even if raising kids is totally cost neutral (simply because it's more complicated to have a larger family—more of a logistical and mental burden).

This is definitely one view—and it's totally valid. We put together this document for those who are concerned about the implications of some mass extinction (e.g. that populations that survive the mass extinction are far less likely to be gender egalitarian, so it may be that groups who want to protect women's rights over the long run will care more while groups optimizing for other things will care less).

Totally agreed that the implications of population shifts warrant investigation. Demographic changes have significant impacts on variety of factors—even if one ONLY cares about maximizing investment gains, it's an important subject.

The fact that "Declining birthrates alarmists are essentially sponsoring the great replacement theory" is one of the reasons we put together this document.

Demographic collapse as a risk (and related risks related to declining populations) deserves to be explored from a non-racially/religiously motivated angle. Just because some racially/religiously motivated groups care about a problem does not mean that everyone who cares about that problem is racially/religiously motivated.

We also don't argue in the document that people should NOT be having kids in certain countries, nor do we argue that certain groups should not have so many kids. We don't even argue that people in general should have more kids (having kids is not for everyone). We merely attempt to take a sober approach to issues around population decline and potential solutions.

"Unpredictably far away"—nice way of putting it.

Whether we "need" humans depends on where one's values are; for those who would like humans in some form to continue to exist, the idea of AGI making humans obsolete isn't terribly comforting. Even those who might really like the idea of humans sort of evolving into AI (and eventually ceasing to biologically exist) might not be keen to rush toward human obsolescence if they're not thrilled with initial versions of AGI (diversity and optionality is nice).

Thanks for the heads up.

We've been soliciting additional information, counter evidence, criticism, etc. from folks who read the Google Doc since we would like our understanding of the subject to be as clear-eyed as possible. That said, we've disabled comments/suggestions temporarily since a ton of people are reading it concurrently and we want to be able to properly review suggested additions before many other people start reading them; we'd like to vet the ideas in it as much as possible.

We appreciate the kind words! Ping us if you feel like there's an area that could use more thorough research, there is counter evidence we should be considering and featuring, etc.

Thanks! One of the authors here. We originally planned on having folks actively contribute edits and comments, though we've temporarily turned that on as there are quite a few people reading it now.

We're not sure either (I wrote this with the primary author), but we agree there's something interesting going on. The research is brought up in the deep dive more as an interesting reference point and less as any sort of primary argument.