LESSWRONG
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All of Steko's Comments + Replies

SIA won't doom you
Steko10

"Children have gone from being productive capital goods to consumption goods. I don't see any evidence that children are losing or will lose their value as consumption goods."

Wait -- the value of children recently changed fundamentally but we should expect no more change far in the future?

"I'm saying that the zero population growth faction will be a tiny minority by the time a civilization grows large and advanced."

This does not reconcile at all with current population trends of developed nations. The UN medium projection for 2050 has... (read more)

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1knb
No, there are expected changes. We should expect the transition of children from capital to consumption goods will continue as more places move away from subsistence farming and develop old-age pension systems. This will predictably shift selective advantage toward folks with active pro-natalist genes or memes. Perhaps the growth of the high-fertility subgroups (like Mormons, Muslims, Quiverfulls, Amish, Cossacks, ultra-orthodox jews, etc.) will not outmatch the declining fertility of other groups by the end of the 21st century, but they will eventually. Their growth is rapid, exponential, and unbounded. The decline of the sub-replacement groups is slow and bounded (they can't decline to less than zero).
SIA won't doom you
Steko-20

"We currently have the ability to turn reproduction off. Yet many people go to extraordinary lengths to turn reproduction on. "

This is true because there are still many good reasons to have children. I don't see any of these reasons being certain and compelling by the time intergalactic travel is possible. We haven't even scratched the surface on what technology is going to do to economics and already the maternity rate in prosperous countries is below replacement. We may well expand forever but I don't think it's at all obvious.

"If e... (read more)

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2knb
Children have gone from being productive capital goods to consumption goods. I don't see any evidence that children are losing or will lose their value as consumption goods. I'm saying that the zero population growth faction will be a tiny minority by the time a civilization grows large and advanced all the selection pressure works against the zero-population growth/non-expansion faction.
SIA won't doom you
Steko00

I find all of these propositions questionable. It's not clear at all that they will need to (1) reproduce (2) relocate or (3) capture an absurd amount of free energy. We can speculate they might want to do any of those but the arguments that they won't seem just as strong.

I highly doubt there will be any disagreement about the merits and needs of colonization within a civilization capable of intergalactic travel - it will either be a good idea and they will agree or it will be a bad idea and they will agree not to.

Seeing no evidence of colonization (... (read more)

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2knb
There are such disagreements in our civilization. Why would more advanced civilizations stop having value disagreements? Unless almost all civilizations end in singletons, such values disputes seem likely. This is hugely unlikely. We currently have the ability to turn reproduction off. Yet many people go to extraordinary lengths to turn reproduction on. There are population subgroups within almost every major country that exhibit strong pro-natalist tendencies, and have preferences for large-to-huge families. There are many such groups just in the United States (fundamentalist Mormons, "Quiverfull" folks, Amish, Hutterites, etc. If even a small minority opts to reproduce and expand, they will have huge selective advantages over those who opt out of reproduction and expansion. Non-expansion is not evolutionarily stable.
SIA won't doom you
Steko00

Colonies and expanding populations likely become irrelevant once you approach the level of technology necessary for intergalactic travel. Quite possibly communication as well.

Reply
1James_Miller
If only a tiny percent of an advanced civilization wants to colonize new worlds then the civilization will grow at an exponential rate. Also, unless the laws of physics are very different from what we think, most civilizations would try to capture free energy and either turn off stars or capture all the energy being radiated from the stars.