I mean, of course. I also worry about French Revolution and WWII less then people who had to live it.
Politicians in the 70s were selling us the 3 days work week and retiring at 50 thanks to "automation", I fail to see how the "robots will solve all our problems" logic is any different.
Both commit the fallacy of assuming present trends remain in place indefinitely and ignoring technology.
They also both tend to be racist. Overpopulation was always about too many of the “wrong” people while underpopulation is about not enough of the “right” people.
Well, there are people that think the idea of preserving cultures itself is racist (well, at least western ones), or that there is no detrimental effect to an existing culture by enabling mass migration.
South Korea's birth rate is indeed dangerously low and threatens their economy. If they cared they could do something about their extreme workaholism and cost of living.
As far as immigration destroying the culture: it depends on the rate. A healthy but limited rate of immigration revitalizes cultures, but it's pretty clear that sudden mass immigration is dangerous and causes a lot of problems and backlash.
Speaking of fixing problems... if our billionaire class who seem so worked up about birth rates wanted to do something about it they could also address the most frequently cited problems preventing young families from forming. Like housing prices.
If we really get into a situation where dangerously low birth rates are threatening the economy and social stability, the boring solution is to do what we do for other goods and services that the free market isn't adequately providing: directly subsidize it. Pay people to have kids. The easy way would be a payment or tax rebate to married couples with 0 children to have one child. But that's the boring solution that doesn't involve massive reactionary cultural transformations, so the right-wing "problemists" won't like it.
It seems likely we lend too much credence to experts ability to model complex systems over a long period of time.
It takes a long, long time for new ideas to diffuse through society. Most people are not paying close attention to the cutting edge.
Scott's conclusion (written in 2019, a year before GPT-3 was published) is perhaps more interesting today than it was then:
> In other words, the singularity got cancelled because we no longer have a surefire way to convert money into researchers. The old way was more money = more food = more population = more researchers. The new way is just more money = send more people to college, and screw all that.
> But AI potentially offers a way to convert money into researchers. Money = build more AIs = more research.
> If this were true, then once AI comes around – even if it isn’t much smarter than humans – then as long as the computational power you can invest into researching a given field increases with the amount of money you have, hyperbolic growth is back on. Faster growth rates means more money means more AIs researching new technology means even faster growth rates, and so on to infinity.
> Presumably you would eventually hit some other bottleneck, but things could get very strange before that happens.
>In the 1950s, an Austrian scientist discovered a series of equations that he claimed could model history. They matched past data with startling accuracy. But when extended into the future, they predicted the world would end on November 13, 2026.
Set your calendars!
When actually given the choice, many women are choosing not to have children, for good reasons. E.g. disruption of careers, physical effects on the body, being tied to a partner, financial drain.
Until we face up to both these issues, demographic collapse will continue - humanity will simply evaporate.
Der letzte macht das Licht aus.
Pretty sure that's the point of the comment you're replying to.
I've not heard anyone talk about an overpopulation problem in 30 years.
I suppose I would separate out some of the more extreme predictions about demographic collapse in Russia or China. I'm not sure what to make of those or if they're similarly credible to other kinds of population forecasts.
If you’re vague enough about it, you can never be wrong! And if you’re overly specific and have a modest following of rubes with more money than sense, you can take some of it! A lot of it!!
You say "complex systems" but are actually referring to human behavior.
Humans are unique in that they change their behavior in light of predictions. You can't make a prediction, and publicize that prediction, without changing the system.
From what I've heard, many people are declining to have children precisely because of the environmental effects of overpopulation. There are of course other factors, but that's one factor.
Now that I have a kid, there is doom over population shrinkage
Sadly this will be used by propagandaists to doubt scientists
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