You must log in or # to comment.
Does population decline worry you?
I mean, it’s super important. The population of all of the places we love is shrinking. In 50 years, 30 years, you’ll have half as many people in places that you love. Society will collapse. We have to solve it. It’s very critical.
Uhhh…what? There are a handful of countries with recent population decline, but most of the world is still growing even if growth rates are slowing. I’ve never seen any credible projections of catastrophic population decline.
Sure, but what if those countries are the only places I love tho?
This is sounding close to replacement theory.
Replacement theory has a kernel of truth - more brown people are being born than white people.
It’s just not in any way a problem. Let the brown people immigrate to white countries. Boom, population crisis solved.
Japan and South Korea have entered the chat.
You have independently arrived at the bigots’ internal musings. Only the bigots seems to think it’s a disaster.
Yeah it’s a bit of a hyperbole, but the rate is what’s important. By the time we hit worldwide negative growth rates (which is projected to happen this century), it’s going to be way too late to have a discussion about whether or not that’s a good thing.
A good thing for some, a bad thing for others. Good for the environment, most likely. But we’re going to have to extensively reorganize the workforce.
Experts have generally agreed that any reduction in population size will come far too late to help with the current climate crisis. We’re either going to hit sustainability with our current population or die in the process.
While the climate crisis is a significant part of what ails the environment, it’s far from the only thing. Lowering the human population should mean reduced destruction of surviving animal habitats and populations, for instance. And the greater the genetic diversity in an animal population, the better its chances of adapting to external events like climate change become.
Replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, and there are about 100 countries under that rate. Yes, their populations are still growing, but much of that is through extension of life expectancy and immigration (which requires a higher birth rate somewhere else, lest that other places start seeing shrinking population).
It’s not an immediate crisis, but it is turning into a problem that should be addressed soon.
In essence, when the growth rate slows to a certain point, people are dying faster than they’re being replaced, and the trend can only continue unless everyone starts having 10 kids.
It’s a matter of job replacement. Maybe AI will partly help, or maybe we’ll open our borders so immigrants can come end masse and do all the jobs we don’t have enough people for, but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
I’m by no means pro-forced birth. But birth rate decline is a serious issue.
The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it’s on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we have 2021 officially setting the all-time record.
U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 million people. In 2020, the U.S. grew by just 1.1 million. Last year, we added only 393,000 people.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/american-population-growth-rate-slow/629392/
In essence, when the growth rate slows to a certain point, people are dying faster than they’re being replaced, and the trend can only continue unless everyone starts having 10 kids.
Growth is growth. It’s not tracking only births, it’s tracking births against deaths. Population decline is people dying faster than they’re being replaced, but even “very slow growth” would still mean the population is increasing.
There are countries that decline in population even though they try to offset it with immigration, Japan is ahead of everyone in that.
But every time someone talks about the decline in population they usually aren’t afraid of people going extinct, they are afraid of working hands supply going low imo 🌚
Not anymore, Japan has one of the highest birthrates in Asia now.
You mean, the rest of the Asia has gone below even further? Also, birthrate isn’t the only factor, and birthrate of Japan is highest among developed Asian countries, it’s not highest overall
You’re right, I was thinking east Asia when I said “Asia” and should have been clearer, and it’s more that Japan’s has fallen the slowest
Uh what. Source on that please?
It’s less “Japan’s got higher” than “Japan’s fell the slowest compared to other Asian countries”
Yeah, mostly because they’ve got no more births to reduce lol. Keep in mind these are the worst countries in Asia, though. There’s still plenty that have decent birth rates (for now)
I’m by no means pro-forced birth. But birth rate decline is a serious issue.
Yeah, it matters to capitalists who need an inexhaustible supply of exploitable workers.
For regular folk, it’s not a problem.
As long as you either have many tens of millions, or you don’t care about electricity, water, food, and you’re extremely physically isolated and/or hidden very well and armed to the teeth, it shouldn’t affect you much.
For the rest of us it’s something to worry about. Infrastructure needs a lot of trained people to operate. Once the train gets going it doesn’t stop, and that means as time goes on it gets worse and worse until it reaches a point of stability some X years after collapse. And you won’t be able to freely and adaquetely hunt/pick your food if you’re anywhere near a city until point X, because everyone else will be doing the same. Also some idiots will be bathing in the only still good stream near you with whatever leftover chemicals they can find.
Your country can open the immigration floodgates and become a country without borders (i.e. become whatever country is currently your neighbor) but that comes with similar problems listed above.
So as you can see, it’s not an issue for a small privileged few. For the rest of us, its a big fucking deal. I would encourage you to look into it.
Not really, it’s a matter of replacement. Plus we need a lot more people if we’re going to become a multi-planet species for survival. Nothing to do really with capitalism.
If only there were people desperate for a better life here, alive now, perhaps in a neighboring country or even entire other continent bordering the states.
but unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
Population decline is a good thing. Raising a child requires more resources than caring for elderly. When the elderly die, that frees up even more land and resources for the next generation.
The Black Plague caused the Renaissance. WW2 killed almost exclusively all the healthiest and most productive workers at the prime of their working lives. The result was the survivors experienced unprecedented wealth for a generation.
When the population declines such that a person with a high school diploma can once again own a home and support a family of 4, the population will increase again.
I agree that a Phoenix will rise from the ashes, but make no mistake, there will be many ashes, you and I and most of us posting here likely included.
But we are long overdue for a reset. Maybe this time we can just skip the internet infrastructure during rebuild, and develop near-peer networks instead.
I don’t understand why you think there would be any ashes? Extreme population decline like the Black Plague or WW2 caused extreme wealth. Slow decline will cause a slow increase in wealth in the following generations. If we have half the people we only need half the goods manufactured which means half the people is fine. We had only 4 Billion people in 1980. It wasn’t a post apocalypse hellscape. So if we returned to 4 billion it would be fine.
The only people who suffer from population decline whether it was the Plague or great wars are the wealthy because their livelihood comes from skimming a little from all the workers.
ETA: The 4 billion people in the 80s was still growth. Infrastructure has been scaled up, and it will take a ton of work to scale down - work which we will be hard-pressed to find enough skilled laborers for. Also overpopulation isn’t the main driver behind climate change, overconsumption is. We are a society of consumers, we buy convenience, and evil corporations force planned obsolescence on us to make us buy more. Many of us will scoff at high-priced long-lasting items yet still buy a new iPhone every 3 years.
If you reduce the population as fast as its decreasing now, lower than replacement rates, all modern conveniences including infrastructure and faith in the economy are going to take a hit. That includes the internet and hospitals and all internet-dependant companies. Public utilities like trash, shipping - we already saw how many products were discontinued and companies went out if business because of the inability to get parts, over a 6 month (at first) brief shortage of truck drivers, which is still recovering 4 years later. If you think the economy is bad now, wait until faith in the market completely collapses and we have a full-on crash, not just a recession. It’s been showing signs for years now, and things aren’t improving.
Throw in experienced power plant operators, people that install and maintain pipes and lines, water treatment plants, public transit, the people that make parts for the machines that installs the infrastructure, the vehicles, etc. Everything you can think of will be affected, along with many things most people never think about.
Immigration is a way to slow it down, but almost every country on Earth has falling birth rates at the moment. Immigrants coming from, say, Mexico and Canada to US will only delay the problem, and cause a larger problem for those allied countries we rely so much on.
You can find pros and cons, and it’s been a while since I did heavy research into the subject, but my takeaway was that once we reach a certain point, mass deaths will start to occur, especially in population centers. Rural communities won’t be affected as much provided they have plenty of weapons and systems for defense, livestock, agriculture and close community. Knowledge will need to be retained - on disease, birth complications, fixing nuts and bolts technology, etc. Authoritarian countries who decide to force birth (whether by force or accommodations - see USSR support and metals for mothers with greater than X number of children) will become a serious threat.
There are many variables and moving parts, but one thing is for certain: there will not be mass population decline without major hurt for everyone.
It takes virtually nothing to scale down. Again see WW2. Millions of the best workers in Europe, Asia, and America were dead. No one needed to put in overtime to not grow wheat for the dead.
If you reduce the population as fast as its decreasing now, lower than replacement rates, all modern conveniences including infrastructure
I don’t want to keep saying it but WW2. The working population was decreased far faster than today. You don’t need extra factory workers to not produce iPhones.
That includes the internet and hospitals and all internet-dependant companies.
I ran a large internet company. You don’t need many people to serve millions of customers. If there were less people, there would be less equipment installed. Less customers means less employees needed. So service would not suffer. If anything it would improve. Because Internet servers/bandwidth is built with oversubscription built in. You don’t really have 100mbs service. It’s that peak usage for your local neighborhood is modeled such that as long as everyone isn’t using maximum bandwidth all the time, you have the illusion of 100mbs at any time. Reducing customers over time means that existing networks and servers could handle unusual loads without slowdowns.
It’s the same with hospitals. You don’t need more doctors when you have less patients.
business because of the inability to get parts,
You don’t need parts because you have less people that want to buy your product.
Throw in experienced power plant operators, people that install and maintain pipes and lines, water treatment plants, public transit
When German and Japanese factories were bombed and the experienced operators were killed, someone else was trained and took their place the next day.
As older people die, you get younger people to take their place. You don’t need population growth for that. If anything, population decline means the younger generation gets better training because there are more of experienced people giving the fewer younger people their knowledge. Instead of one teacher with 50 students it can be 1 teacher with 10 students.
Population decline doesn’t mean tomorrow 99.9% of the entire planet suddenly disappears tomorrow. We have had far more rapid population declines in history and the results have always been overwhelming positive.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the paywall click: https://archive.is/8WWq2
Link didn’t work for me but
sucksuch a nice wordingsuck a nice wording
I love to suck nice wordings
Weird, just checked and it still works for me.
I guess the server is crushed. I don’t understand modern webpage development and web servers at all. 25 years ago I hosted 10,000 simultaneous connections on 4 megabit line (part of a t3) and a Pentium 3 server. It was fast.
The link is text with a picture. It should be a couple dozen kilobytes. A 10 year old PC on a home 100mbs Internet service should handle hundreds of simultaneous connections.
The link is likely a few kiliobytes of text, 10 meg of uncompressed 4k jpegs that no one bothered to downscale and 50megs of javascript to track you and serve ads
It works for me now, guess it was just down.
I’m having trouble trusting anyone with no scientific background (i.e. no PhD), no published journal articles, and no ethical committee oversight to proceed with a complex problem such as this one.
Theranos : Evolution
Theranos: Genetic Boogaloo.
I would not blindly trust those people either, if they are human they are corruptible as well.
Looking at certain ‘scientific background’ people they act just like politicians, if you take the time to look into them and their activities.
I am just saying to be criticial and do not treat them like celebrity worship status, because I have done that mistake with politicians as well.
We must stay criticial of people in power and with money/influence.
Science IS political, at all levels. You can’t compete without funding and your institutions will pressure you to perform a certain way.
Sadly, I agree. Scientific background does not a good person make. It’s just mostly (not always) required to solve problems of this level of complexity.
I’m mostly concerned because of no independent ethical committee oversight which is standard in breaking ground on new research and procedures and is widely practiced in medicine and psychology that I know of. I can’t know if this is a fraud, it’s not my field, but the lack of any public information on their groundbreaking procedure based in science is also quite concerning.
This article is basically promotional material.
As long as you don’t use the word eugenics explicitly apparently you can sell anyone on anything.
No they acknowledge that the technology could be used that way. But there’s a lot of actual medical problems we can catch this way. Imagine you carry the Huntington’s gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don’t pass that down to your kids?
Imagine you carry the Huntington’s gene. How much would you pay to make sure you don’t pass that down to your kids?
Nothing. That’s what health insurance is for. Also practically noone has any issues with preimplantation diagnostics when it comes to things that are clearly genetic diseases, what rubs people the wrong way is a) selecting by bullshit criteria, e.g. sex, eye colour, curliness of hair, whatever, b) making designer babies the default at the expanse of erm wild ones, worst of all, c) the combination.
And ethics aside the arguments should be obvious it’s also a bad idea from the POV of the honest eugenicist: Humanity’s genetic diversity is already low as it is it would be fatal to allow things like fashions to narrow it down even more.
Humanity is already shaping its own selection criteria, we might need to start doing something extra to avoid evolving ourselves into a corner by non-PID means. Random example: C-Sections. No mother or baby should die in childbirth, yet, the selective pressure towards more uncomplicated births getting removed might, over many many many generations, leave us with very few women who would survive a natural birth which doesn’t sound like a good situation for a species to be in, to be reliant on technology to even reproduce. Thus is might become prudent to artificially select for e.g. wide-hip genes.
Yeah, but nobody here is suggesting racial criteria. This article is specifically about screening for health issues. Reading more into it, it seems like they’ve paired big data with genetic screening to lay odds on health problems that aren’t just a single gene going the wrong way.
Edit to add, there’s no such thing as an ethical Eugenicist. The theory was based on racism and sterilizing “undesirables”. This isn’t Eugenics.
This isn’t Eugenics.
There’s a debate about that ongoing, whether the word and basic idea can be divorced from its history with scientific racism. I don’t really have a skin in the game but would like to point out that psychiatry didn’t cease to be called psychiatry when we stopped physically abusing inmates, showing them off to gawkers, whatnot, got rid of phrenology, etc. You can make arguments both for “we must start from a clean slate” as well as “let’s own the bullshit of the past to have something to teach students to not do”.
That’s because phrenoloy and the other theories are under Psychiatry and Psychology. You don’t throw out Astronomy because of Heliocentrism. Eugenics was specifically developed to produce racial outcomes. It’s a theory, not a field of science.
It’s first and foremost a word meaning as much as “good stock”, or, more modern, “good genes”. Nazis didn’t actually use it, at least not prominently, they were all about “racial hygiene” – very different implications.
As to “specifically developed” I’m not so sure I don’t know enough about Galton. What I do know is that he first did e.g. twin studies to figure out the relative importance of nature vs. nurture and stuff. People motivated by hate don’t tend to be that thorough meaning if he had more information he might’ve ended up on the other side of the fence but as said I don’t know nearly enough about his work to actually draw conclusions, ask a literary critic or such.
His base assumption was something called genetic determinism. Which is exactly what it sounds like and exactly as debunked as you would think. He also tried to link body build and head measurements to genetic determinism.
And No. The Nazis absolutely loved Eugenics. The entire Western world did. The Nazis literally made it a required subject in grade school.
Eugenics needs to go die in a fire. There’s no need to resurrect the name or practices when we’re talking about actual genetic science.
It’s still eugenics, you just used more words to describe it.
Eugenics isn’t inherently bad, but humans suck and will make it bad.
No. Eugenics is race theory as much as it’s anything scientific. It was about making sure the “correct” races had children. I don’t know what the name for this is in science but Eugenics isn’t about making kids healthier, it’s about making them whiter.
No that’s literally what it means:
The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations’ genetic composition
Science that deals with the improvement of inherited qualities of a race or breed and especially of human beings
The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations’ genetic composition
But this isn’t selective breeding, unless you twist the definition to the point where it means something wholly different. If I understand right, this is just screening embryos for potential health problems.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Genetic screening has been around for awhile now. The scam here (if there is one) is them claiming this is new. Maybe they have a better screening, but this is not Theranos.
The theory of eugenics is specific to racist ideology. They sterilized minorities so they couldn’t have children because they wanted more white people. That’s why it says “inherited qualities of a race, especially of human beings” it is specifically calling race out as separate from the idea of all humans.
Closest, but the method used by eugenics is specifically selective breeding, and is specifically about races or breeds even when you twist the definition like you did here.
You specifically left out the “a science” part, which is also part of the “kids’” definition for eugenics in your source.
eugenics noun eu·gen·ics yu̇-ˈjen-iks : a science that deals with the improvement of inherited qualities of a race or breed and especially of human beings
Removing the “a” from the beginning completely changes the meaning of the word, which is why you did it.
Shame.
If this is indeed like GATTACA selecting specific embryos after fertilization is not really selective breeding. Selective breeding is picking the parents. This is picking the children. You could do both but it didn’t seem like that is what was happening. I could still see this likely leading to problems genetically not dissimilar to problems with inbreeding. Genetic diversity requires the randomness of life to be useful long term.
Did you miss where they do that by sterilization? And qualities of a race or breed?
Do you speak English? Is this a translation error?
Edit to add-
And you present it like there’s multiple definitions. There is not. This is Merriam’s entry-
the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations’ genetic composition
The second one is for kids. The follow on context under the actual definition also makes it very clear that this was selective breeding by sterilization, closely related to white supremacy ideology.
You specifically left out the “a science” part, which is also part of the “kids’” definition for eugenics.
eugenics noun eu·gen·ics yu̇-ˈjen-iks : a science that deals with the improvement of inherited qualities of a race or breed and especially of human beings
Removing the “a” from the beginning completely changes the meaning of the word, which is why you did it.
Shame.
I’m not native speaker so please excuse my stupid question. How does the “a” change the meaning? My language doesn’t even have articles so I have troubles with using them or understanding such nuances.
They literally say “Word beginning with ‘eu’ and ends with ‘genics’” inside the article pimping them out.
With a sprinkling of ‘Orchid doesn’t like us to use that word’ as if ‘Nazis do not like to be called Nazis’ is a valid complaint.
Gene filtering for IVF babies… gattaca
Glad I wasn’t the only one who thought of that
Wasn’t there a movie about this? Called Gattaca?
These people are saying “we finally created the utopia of Neuromancer.” And I look at them and I go, “I don’t think you read Neuromancer."
–Cory Doctorow
Do you want Khan Noonien Singh? Because that’s how you get Khan Noonien Singh.
Eugenics is overblown, they can’t even tell the difference between a pre ganglionic fiber and a post ganglionic nerve
They can be great at darts though.
Do you want Khan Noonien Singh?
YES!
How much does an Orchid screening cost?
It’s $2,500 per embryo.
And presumably you’d be screening several embryos. What about for families that can’t afford that?
We have a philanthropic program, so people can apply to that, and we’re excited to accept as many cases as we can.
I must now ask a question I’ve been dreading. I’m sorry in advance. Here goes. It’s the inevitable question about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
No, this is the worst question. This is so mean.
Tell me why it’s so mean.
I find it sad. It’s a sad state of affairs where—my friends who aren’t even in health, they say they get it too. It’s like, any female CEO with any tech-adjacent thing is constantly being questioned—by the way, are you like this other fraud? Do you want to comment on this other random fraud that occurred that has absolutely nothing to do with you besides the person being the same gender as you?
If you’re trying to charitably understand where this question is coming from, how do you do that?
What would be the charitable interpretation—besides that our society is incredibly misogynistic and men’s frauds and failings are passed aside and when one female does it she stands for every other female CEO ever?
So there’s no charitable interpretation.
I don’t think there is. Society treats men as, like, default credible. For a woman, the default is skeptical.
It’s like, any female CEO with any tech-adjacent thing is constantly being questioned—by the way, are you like this other fraud?
This really sounds like she is admitting that this is fraud, and that she doesn’t like being compared to other fraud.
Yeah, she didn’t really address fraud comparisons. Went straight to sexism. Both can be true, and if you are a CEO of a medical company you should be ready to prove your shit works.
If I (man) was being interviewed and the interviewer randomly said “hey, I read in the news a little while ago that a man committed fraud, and well, you’re a man too. Are you a fraud?”, I also wouldn’t dignify it with a response.
If the interviewer had said “This seems like a service a lot of people would want to partake in - how has the efficacy of this procedure has been confirmed, how can we verify that it works?”, he’d have got an answer.
Saying “hey, these people with no link to you other than your genitals are frauds, and it makes me feel like you could be, so are you?” doesn’t deserve to be treated like a question asked in good faith, because it isn’t.
E: spelling
If they were committing nearly identical fraud it would be a good comparison.
Did you read what she was claiming it could do with a minuscule sample and a fancy algorithm? That is exactly the same claim as Theranos.
Did you read what she was claiming it could do with a minuscule sample and a fancy algorithm? That is exactly the same claim as Theranos.
Comparing Theranos’ claims with the state of the art at the time should’ve revealed that they were implausible: some blood tests genuinely require a substantial amount of blood in order to properly process and separate and look for a statistically valid measurement of something about that blood, because blood isn’t homogenous and the act of drawing blood actually changes it.
Comparing this embryo screening claim with the state of the art is comparatively less of a leap. It’s just genetic sequencing, which has already advanced to the point where an entire genome can be sequenced with a tiny number of cells (including some single-cell sequencing techniques that are more complex and less reliable), plus actual correlative analysis of specific genes, plugging into existing research (the way 23 and me can do it for like $20).
I have some skepticism, but this business’s model really seems to be assembling steps that others have already established, and not inventing anything new.
Can I ask if you’ve raped any children? It’s just that I’ve heard of a few paedophiles of the same gender as you.
I know that you aren’t smart enough to understand since it has already been answered, so I’m just putting this here for future readers before blocking you.
Just because Noor claims that the reasons people are comparing her and Orchid to Theranos is sexist doesn’t mean that is the only reason. There is a grain of truth that women get more of a spotlight than men in the same situations, but this comparison is primarily about the business and science with a small sprinkling of sexism that gets it to the printed page. But people aren’t comparison apples and oranges, there are a ton of similarities about the business claims and how implausible both sounded from existing businesses that have credible reasons for their skepticism.
It isn’t only sexism or even primarily sexism.
Except there was zero reason to bring Theranos up other than them both having female CEOs.
Can you please answer? Have you raped any children? It’s just that I’ve heard of a few men who’ve done that, so I wanted to ask.
It’s not exactly the same claim as Theranos. They’re entirely different things.
One is an embryo screening service, and the other was the promise of a blood testing technology that used a ridiculously small amount of blood, carried out tests without any human interaction in a ridiculously short amount of time, and used an impossibly compact device to do so.
E: ok lol just downvote and refuse to answer. That’s fine by me, you’d probably be a waste of time anyway.
That “other” is the possible Freudian slip.
But she does have somewhat of a point. Though it’s female and tech and medical - a closer comparison - women in tech leadership roles do get more questioned on their competence than do men.
I think it’s that in the questioner’s mind, they have decided she is a fraud, and want to know if she’s like the other one.
They could just ask who has verified the outcomes… No need to do the ‘are you a fraud’ line
How to invoke tldr bot?
It automatically replies when it can read/summarize a site, but that isn’t always possible (maybe it has problems with some paywalls).
Elysium IRL
Is there a nonpaywall link?
Check comments, it has been posted.
You can also visit an archive website and paste url on search bar.
Another tick box on the Star Trek timeline! There is still hope!
She can have my babies, wow
bonk Off to horny jail
Never say that again.
This is so terribly inhuman. Makes me want to vomit.
People already do similar thing when they decide to not have babies with some bad conditions. The bar is lower now, that’s all.
Voluntarily preventing the birth of children that would suffer from horrible disorders due to genetic defects is not a “bar” that is “lower now”, it is the most ethical thing to do.
