Vladimir_Golovin comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong

53 [deleted] 14 March 2009 07:51AM

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Comment author: timtyler 14 March 2009 10:14:25PM 1 point [-]

Maybe I should not be surprised to encounter people that have had their biological goal systems hijacked by memes. History is full of such people.

My impression is that advanced, meme-rich countries - such as Japan - have naturally low birth rates due to such effects.

It appears to me that the smartest and best-educated people are the ones who are the most vulnerable to infection.

Comment author: Vladimir_Golovin 14 March 2009 10:35:51PM *  1 point [-]

In case of Japan, there might be another heuristic at work: "the place is overpopulated, high population means low resources, low resources means less healthy offspring, therefore it might be a good idea to hold off reproduction until I find a less populated place." -- I vaguely remember reading something along these lines about mice, but can't cite the source.

(Of course I'm not talking about restricting reproduction to conserve resources 'for the group').

Comment author: timtyler 14 March 2009 11:07:44PM 1 point [-]

If you are interested in the topic, there's a fairly detailed analysis of the origin of the "demographic transition" in the book "Not by Genes Alone". They mostly finger human culture.