army1987 comments on Solved Problems Repository - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 27 March 2013 04:51AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 01 April 2013 09:19:12AM *  1 point [-]

IIRC it just said “no children”, not “no descendants alive today” (the 80% figure sounds way too large for the latter). Still not quite the same as “no sex”, but given that reliable birth control has only existed for a tiny fraction of human history, they must be quite close.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 April 2013 11:59:59AM 0 points [-]

I don't see how you could tell what proportion of people had ever had children. It might be possible to tell how many common ancestors people have.

This seems to be a source for the meme, but it doesn't have a citation. It does mention genetic research, though.

By the way, I'd have sworn I saw the thing debunked, which is probably as good evidence as your having seen it somewhere.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 April 2013 12:23:59PM *  1 point [-]

I've managed to find the page where I originally saw that claim, and it indeed cites Baumeister's 2007 talk.