[beaned]

I will admit that I was a bit off-the-cuff in terms of the Western aspect of my comment.

There are lots of factors, of course, and the trend isn't limited to only the west. Though it has certainly become a more normal trend in developed and developing countries than those with a higher level of poverty and poor.

I still contend however that it has never been easy. My grandparents had four children starting at age 20. My grandfather's first job was sweeping floors in a factory at age 13, making $0.30 an hour. When he asked for a raise, he was fired. He said he didn't have two nickels to rub between his fingers.

His father before him went into World War 1 at 15 years old. And his father (my great-great grandfather) falsely signed the documents affirming that he was 18 years old, to allow his own 15 year old son to go to war.

They struggled, but didn't complain. Some part of it is cultural expectation, and that has changed greatly over time. In spite of all odds my grandparents raised four fairly middle class children in these circumstances, but had a good few decades of strife. Whether or not they would create a family and procreate was taken for granted. It was assumed, at their own economic expense. But long-term family wise, today my grandfather has a tree of descendants who love him.

I think today we are more conscious of the economic equation. We ask whether or not we can afford to provide for children, rather than letting them exist and then asking how we can provide for them. There is an aspect of this that I appreciate, but I worry that it's mixed with some amount of narcissism. Though I am an atheist, there is some unreason to our existence in the first place, and there is hope in the continuance of ourselves that we should value beyond economics. There is a romance and some type of spiritual value in being able to put aside the cost-benefit analysis and simply bear new life that is part you, to have and to hold, to love, teach, and reciprocally learn from.

We have so much bounty today that the idea of "sacrificing" ourselves for something that only has potential value is an alien concept. As our material wealth has increased, and as our understanding of personal economy has evolved, I think we've lost a bit of our primal, but beautiful, nature that wants ourselves to persist at a biological, cosmic level.

You, here, right now reading this are the absolute last leaf, the most extended branch, the most outstretched and sun-bleached arm of a tree of life that has been proceeding for four billion years. You are the last link in a chain that has not been broken for four billion years. Can you believe that? Every time I consider that, I think of my parents. And I ask, who am I to be so conceited that all of that history, that fourth of a fraction of the universe, should end with me?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and, I will confess that I got a little tipsy for the super bowl. Don't judge me too harshly. But life is beautiful, and beauty is always difficult to sustain. We do it because beauty contains a truth and a promise for the future. And I think that's something we need to put effort into re-evaluating, and re-valuing, in our current world.

One line of inquiry might be why there is a correlation between bounty and the general wealth of an economy, and the fertility rate. Many parts of the world that are poorer are more fertile, and reproduce more unquestionably. Korea is rich and the rate is 0.84. In the Congo the rate is 6.21. It is not about economics. And if you counter that it is about poor education or care, I don't believe that's the reason either. It's culture, and values.

Paul Revere had 15 children. 5 of them died young, and he still had 10. He had a horse and a rifle and a small wooden house you can still tour in Boston. Today we have DINKs, and people who are in what is considered to be the low-income range with multiple rooms in big cities, an education, and combustion-engine vehicles who say it's too expensive to have children. Maybe your tastes are too expensive. Maybe you've been raised softly, and don't know how to set yourself aside to rear and participate in a family that is spiritually worth more than just yourself.

One of the other comments said I ranted so I thought I'd actually provide one. Sorry HN, I hope I made some sense here.

[the_gipsy]

> And I ask, who am I to be so conceited that all of that history, that fourth of a fraction of the universe, should end with me?

Nobody will remember us in just 100 years. Nobody.

> Maybe you've been raised softly, and don't know how to set yourself aside to rear and participate in a family that is spiritually worth more than just yourself.

Is it really worth more, though? I always wondered if having kids is just so that somebody finally listens to you at an age where your peers really only listen if they're deep friends, or if you have something actually exceptional to say. And to relive childhood, and then again when you have grandchildren. You don't get these two things if you don't have children. But they're not that deep, you can e.g. teach to actually intelligent peers, research deep topics, and relive childhood curiosity in different ways. For the benefit of all of society, not just your little gang.

[esafak]

The human population is expected to peak at ten billion, and that's in the latter half of his century. We have no reason to fear declining birth rates in an existential sense.

[beaned]

I think this is probably true. Historically children would provide for their elders, but that role is fulfilled now more by technology, so in practical terms, they are less needed. It's an emergent trend of humans+technology that acts as a natural limit to our growth, so that as a species we don't just eat all the carrots and die like the rabbits would.

I do fear that Idiocracy might be a little accurate though. The people reproducing currently are the ones who do not consider their future or economics, while the smart ones who do, have less children.

[nostrebored]

At what scale? There are definitely countries that will cease to exist on this path.

Immigration is zero sum and soon everyone will be competing for the same pool of people.

[defrost]

> You, here, right now reading this are the absolute last leaf, the most extended branch, the most outstretched and sun-bleached arm of a tree of life that has been proceeding for four billion years. You are the last link in a chain that has not been broken for four billion years.

It's 3.7 billion, not four.

More importantly it's a vast tree of life, not a chain and not a hierarchy with humans at an upper lever with only royalty, priests, and God above.

If the sapiens go the stromatolites will still remain, with a lineage far older than apes.

Humans aren't about to go extinct but it's high time their population numbers stabilised, perhaps even reduced a bit.

The case can certainly be made by those that care that should the human branch be pruned the remaining mass of the tree of life on earth might very well thrive and surge in breadth and depth after a rather large number of other prunings at the hands of humankind.

[beaned]

4 was rounding from 3.7, so I think that seems like a bit of a petty correction.

Humans will not go extinct (I hope), but HN is full of some of the smartest people and these are their trends, and I hope that of the people who do reproduce, the techno nerds are among them. The future will need them.

I worry that the Great Filter is not about technology at all, but that in every planet with a species that has evolved into a higher intelligence, that at the cusp of being able to seed their galaxy, they willingly do not pursue it, because the level of analytical thinking required to achieve it also leads them to disinterest and abstinence.

In regards to your last sentence, that is true. But I would ask, who would be around to appreciate that fact?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Humans aren't about to go extinct but it's high time their population numbers stabilised, perhaps even reduced a bit.

There's little evidence to support the theory that at some point in the future, little girls will all suddenly decide to buck the trend set by their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and all the adult women they see around them in the world, and have 2.1 children themselves.

But, if they do not all do this, if only some of them decide to buck the trend, they those girls would need to have 3 or 5 or 8 to make up for those who do not.

If neither of these things happen, population cannot stabilize. Mathematically, there has to be an average of 2.1.

Fertility rate declines are future extinction. They've run the experiments, and the results are always the same... despite having all the food and water and entertainment they might want, the mice either do not fuck or they just murder whatever offspring they do (rarely) have. And it happens more quickly than one might expect, because the rate of decline increases with each generation.

> the human branch be pruned the remaining mass of the tree of life on earth might very well thrive and surge in breadth and depth after a rather large number of other prunings at the hands of humankind.

And why should any human ever give a shit about whether these non-human organisms thrive, especially when hypothesizing a future where humans no longer exist? Sounds like some death cult nonsense. Will you be one of those lamenting how you think the most beautiful planets of all are those with no life whatsoever to "mar their beauty"?