What happens after ten generations of selection for the ones who reproduced?
(This is also a major reason I think the current right wing fertility panic is mostly bullshit with the exception of maybe a few places with unusually low rates of reproduction.)
You’re talking as though the only decision behind reproducing is an active rejection of contraception. Whilst this be practically happening during the fecund period, it is hardly the only influence and is certainly not responsible for the decrease in average fecundity women have seen across the world. The idea that this is a trait that is going to be selected for when every breeding pair are part of it is patently ridiculous to my perception, there is no population bottleneck or significant progeny advantage that you are gaining against every other reproducing couple that drives an evolutionary advantage; and we’re certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation or increased/earlier independence of the young
> we're certainly not going to be able to select for a shorter gestation period or increased/earlier independence of the young.
I've decided to not have kids until artificially sentient children are a thing - and I'm hoping to find like minded individuals. Hopefully our work will help pave the ground for artificially sentient humans, and establish hybrid families of biological and AI humans.
And my AI babies will probably have faster gestation and development times than normal human babies.
But they're still going to be my babies. l will consider them human offspring, assuming I can properly socialize and humanize them. And maybe many humans will make similar choices to have artificial children.
So the range of standard gestation and child rearing times could change a lot, perhaps over a very short period!
That said, I wanted to ask a question about your argument. OP argues that the cohort of contraceptive users will simply select itself out of existence by choosing to reproduce less. You seem to argue that this can't happen because all breeding pairs are part of the global drop in fecundity. If it was happening, the trend would be for higher fecundity, not less.
That makes a strong argument for the present. Does that dismiss their claim that the drop of fecundity will lead to a critical situation where fertility collapses, and it's up to reproductive rights deniers to save the day? The reason I want to dismiss that argument, in no unclear terms, is that I believe it may be a sort of indirect or wishful thinking eugenic argument. The moral failings of reproductive rights advocates are supposed to end up ironically being the mechanism for their own genetic culling. It sounds fishy.
What do you think will happen after ten generations, when population will start to grow exponentially? Will Dyson swarm, food, shelter and infinite resources immediately materialize ex nihilo?
