lsparrish comments on What exactly IS the overpopulation argument (in regards to immortality)? - Less Wrong
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This is a big complex issue, which in my opinion mostly boils down to the fact that the hypothesis that immortality will cause overpopulation shouldn't be privileged over the hypothesis that it will lead to better population control. Some points to consider:
Wanting to eat (to the extent of being willing to cause environmental catastrophe by doing so) is plausibly in part related to the unfulfilled desire to extract free energy from the surroundings in order to remain far from equilibrium with them. Eating high-energy, body-compatible nutrients allows one to effect such an extraction. Receiving nutrients via IV fulfills this need without environmental cost.
Therefore, apes on nutrient feeds no longer wish to eat. (???)
I wonder how you imagine nutrients being produced without environmental cost? Of course, one would be distant from their production; but here in the West one is usually distant from the production of ordinary foodstuffs also. And I think your argument confuses adapting with executing adaptations.
The reasoning may be doubtful, but the conclusion is actually true. Anorexia is a recognised, if minor, side-effect of sustaining someone through an IV when they cannot eat. When they come off the IV, it can take a few days for the normal sensations of hunger and appetite to function properly again.
It may be relevant that on reading some of your more science-fictiony proposed replacements, my thoughts were along the lines of "geez, I hope these take long enough to implement that I get to be a real mother before anyone expects me to find these facsimiles satisfactory".
To be honest I feel the same way. But we're talking about a fairly long period of cultural (not to mention biological) evolution before this becomes a problem, which is part of my point. The people of thousands of years in the future may well consider things that we today find almost too weird to contemplate, to be simply common sense.
I find this highly implausible, from anything resembling an ev-psyc point of view. Note for example that even animals that don't have culture have an innate drive to reproduce.
Smart animals generally have a drive to have sex, not a drive to reproduce. Evolution didn't anticipate (because that blind idiot god never anticipates) that some species would be so so smart that they could easily fulfill the sex drive without reproducing. However, at this point, given the ease of birth control in much of the world, there should be direct selection pressure for wanting to reproduce, not just have sex.
As long as some people exist who tend to actually reproduce - whether or not they consciously want it - they will outbreed those who don't reproduce and dominate the population.
Any solution proposing to change people (biologically, culturally, etc) so that they can reproduce but usually don't, must make very sure there are absolutely no heritable exceptions.
JoshuaZ is basically correct- we evolved to pursue sex and to love kids once born, not to pursue reproduction in the abstract. Relevant LW article.