Imagining the End of the World - Robin Hanson | Maiden Mother Matriarch 64
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- Опубліковано 26 бер 2024
- Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. In this episode we spoke about... the future of humanity! In particular, the role of falling birth rates in stifling innovation, and what this means for a possible high tech future. In short, it looks like we are all more likely to become Amish than to become cyborgs. We discuss whether or not that's a good thing.
In the extended version of the episode, we also spoke about what we can learn about cultural evolution from the early history of Christianity, and what individuals can do to prepare themselves for a low fertility future.
02:34 Why have birthrates become so problematic?
07:50 Why does a shrinking population make us poorer?
13:20 How innovation is hit by birthrate decline
25:22 A more localised world?
33:32 High tech future vs Amish future
47:21 The decline in religion and birthrate collapse
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MMM is innovative in its own right- it feels like one of the only podcasts that covers fresh intellectual ground instead of beating lowest common denominator culture war issues to death.
This is also a culture war issue. All media has some propaganda that they're pushing. She's just good at what she does, so you don't notice it.
@@kaybrown7733The OP wasn't claiming that she wasn't covering culture issues per se but that she manages to go beyond the more typical staples ("lowest common denominator" issues).
Wow, I think you're right. Thanks! 🎉
Haha! The guest says "electricity and running water are likely to last a very long time.' HA! That was the first to go here in South Africa!!
Demographics in US are completely reversed to SA. For that reason he's correct.
The affect of socal decline on large scale projects is first to be affected. We dont realise electricity is a large scale industry. Make towns and citys look after the water supply and you will get better results. No water for three days will have the local rulers running from the mobs looking for them.
I've always wondered why people who could leave S. Africa mostly insist on staying. Do they really think things will improve? Or is it good enough to keep riding? Don't they worry things could suddenly get much worse (like Rwanda)? And that no outside force would come in to protect them?
@@kreek22 Very large numbers of people have left the country and continue to leave.
Working class families in America have not had economic stability since the 1990 recession. Your job is always at risk and around once a decade we have a recession and its often not possible to find a replacement job for several months or even a full year. But working class Americans are not paid enough to save up a sufficient rainy day fund to withstand these periods of unemployment. Lack of job security gives rise to lack of housing security since you are always at risk or eviction or foreclosure when these rough patches arise. The upper classes are always wagging their fingers in the faces of working class people arguing they just don’t have their priorities straight. The upper classes do not understand the facts on the ground. People aren’t stressed because they don’t have fancy clothes or the latest electronics. They are stressed because they live lives where they are constantly one or two bad runs of luck from losing their housing. Serfs during feudalism may have been substantially poorer but they had housing and job security. They knew what the social contract was. Get up and work the land and you get to stay in your cottage and have food to eat. We don’t have that social contract anymore in the post Industrialisation economies.
Serfs faced many things worse than job insecurity (which did not start in 1990). For example, they had famines, which continued to plague Europe through the end of the nineteenth century. By famines, I mean conditions in which a substantial (>5%) part of the population died. In the 1890s, Tolstoy traveled to a famine stricken part of Russia to render personal assistance. They also had very high infant mortality: 20-30% in the countryside, 50-60% in the cities. Then there were the epidemics, which did not start with the Black Death (plague), though that was probably the worst of them. The plague itself struck Europe regularly until the early eighteenth century--370 years of mass deaths, including multiple strikes in England during Shakespeare's lifetime. Malnutrition was yet another serious issue which is now rare. Even in 1917 Americans still suffered widespread iodine deficiency. This was discovered when WWI draftees were given IQ tests and the iodine deficient were discovered to also be mentally deficient. Iodized salt fixed this in the 1920s. I could go on at length.
Americans think they have it hard due to two related factors: historical ignorance and rising expectations.
Those are mass catastrophes impacting the community on a wide scale basis. That is materially different than facing the constant threat of individual catastrophe with no communit support.. The denialism that so many people engage in around this topic is disheartening. Not sure what country you live in, but in the US if a family is struggling and the electricity gets temporarily cut, the standard procedure is for CPS to remove the children from the home if it comes to their attention and put them into foster care rather than give the family the money to pay their electric bill. In law school a Republican family court judge came to speak to us and shared his incredible frustration that most of the families caught up in the CPS system are actually just poor. CPS agencies notoriously have a habit of ignoring real child abuse and instead are focused on removing kids from low income homes where they are usually loved to dump them into the foster care system. Its also sick to expect 6 and 7 year old kids to just “suck it up” and accept constant housing insecurity. Its not unreasonable for working class people in the wealthiest and most prosperous nation in human civilisation to expect to be paid a wage in exchange for full time work that enables them to reliably care for their family.
@@katiez688 I'm American. I'm aware of serious negligence by CPS. I can't say it surprises me. Bureaucracies are all the same: they lack proper incentives for their employees and they attract mediocre or worse talent. Though I know a few poor people and quite a few working class, I've never heard of CPS energetically swooping in to grab children due to temporary familial difficulties of the kind you mentioned. I've also never read about such a case. It must be rare. They strike me as doing more harm through inaction than through over-action. I knew a drug addicted woman with a dysfunctional social surround whose children should have been handled by CPS, but weren't for years. Eventually some of her relatives adopted her 4 children. In fairness, CPS does face some tough judgment calls and sometimes all the options are unfortunate for the children.
I see little evidence that the American ruling class cares about the middle class, much less anyone below that level. They've done nothing about the drug problem (110,000 overdoses just last year). They do nothing about the vast influx of illegal immigrants, whose presence increases housing demand, and therefore housing prices. I've seen a new trend in my city: ever more camping trailers parked on suburban properties, inhabited by people who can't afford any other dwelling. If this did not benefit the ruling class, they would not do it. Benefit: a larger underclass = cheaper labor.
I really can’t understand your disagreement then. You seem to accept we live in a society where the ruling class does not care about the middle class or working poor. As far ad CPS, this is what a family court judge in a large city who served for over a decade observed. The main things CPS is told to check is whether there is sufficient food in the home, the utilities are all on, and the home isn’t so unsanitary as to be a health hazard. They are instructed that you can’t leave the children in the home if all those boxes aren’t ticked. And rather than give the parents $100 to put the utility back on they take the kids into foster care. Its a real thing.
@@katiez688 CPS only checks in on those who somehow end up on their radar, generally those with a pattern of dysfunction, not just those who are poor. Look into how a given family came to the attention of CPS in the first place.
Our original disagreement was over whether children are affordable in America for the middle and working classes. You compared these Americans to serfs, with the mistaken claim that serfs found it easier to raise children than atomized Americans do. We agree that the elite mistreats most Americans--but I also claim that most Americans can still afford multiple children. These are not contradictory claims. Yes, it would be nice if the country were run by decent people. However, the mismanagement is not so bad as to force people into childlessness. They choose to have few or no children due to high expectations and high divorce rates. Divorce greatly magnifies familial financial instability and it is most common among the least affluent Americans--those who can least afford it. Many of these people think it *might* be difficult to raise children, then decide to avoid the risk. Mostly, I think they're wrong. One major piece of evidence for this is how few people regret having children, including poor people.
You do well at getting a variety of guests, using the power of agreeableness. Love your videos.
Hanson is a fierce, original thinker. I wish he could be more well-known and celebrated.
47:00 absolutely right, so the Christian heuristic was adaptive in that instance. But, remember WHY: because, more children born into a HIGH IQ population, increased the likelihood that a sufficient number of outlier high IQ individuals would be born (into a stable and functional society) to innovate and improve. Now, the reverse, wherein more children are born from LOW IQ populations (Darwinian selection pressures have now been long absent) the baby-maximizing heuristic is no longer adaptive, because in this case an increased number of low IQ individuals will drop the average more and more, and put increased strain on a fragile society.
Gotta have enough ppl to keep economy going, and population decline is a problem, but simply reenforcing the 'maximum babies' cultural norm/expectation in lower IQ populations, will introduce new problems. (Especially if it's absent from higher IQ populations).
Indeed, there isn't much of a benefit from the Idiocracy breeding like rabbits.
Well, I think about what it takes to get the non-Idiocracy to have some more kids.
@@skylinefever I mean, I guess yeah, if you want it to fit on a bumper sticker.
@@skylinefever This is also why tax breaks are the answer policy-wise. doesn't incentivise unwanted children and welfare queens.
Yes we are importing dysfunctional 3 rd world populations into the west
Do you by any chance listen to the Jolly Heretic?
So far, the direct correlation between population aging and declining innovation is not only not existing, but even the exact opposite. Top countries worldwide for patents density are precisely Japan and South Korea, the two lowest fertility rate worldwide.
Jewish people have lot of children only in Israel, not worldwide, and that’s also the only case worldwide where relatively high tfr coincide with high innovation level. I’ve never heard of any particular innovation coming in particular from Amish communities or Mormons, and btw Utah’s fertility rate has also fallen below 2 kids in late 2010s. Other than that we have only Afghanistan, Pakistan, petro-states subsidizing women at home with kids with oil revenues like Saudi Arabia - but failing to produce any kind of innovation, their oil industry rely on technology imported and mostly from the West and China- and then Africa, a continental black hole of innovation. So what is the point here? I call this speculation, Nothing more, also in historical retrospective: The start of Industrial Revolution occurred in Northern England, where population was scarce but coal abundant, not in the South and close to London where people were abundant and even overcrowded even before James Watt steam machine.
One You need pepole who can think about things and apply there ideas. Two You need money or pepole to apply your ideas. Three You need the resuarses. In Britain when asked why we were doing so well the rulers said we let pepole go to school and let them apply there ideas. We went from a highly controled econemy to more free trade. For example my ancestors 200 years ago went from farm hands to running lots of buiseness after going to school. The Lord of Warick opened schools for the farmers. (typos)
Hah, Louise started hearting comments:
Harrington and Holland are my fav ppl, Louise is a smart and pretty lady, and all her guests and convo's are super awesome (many of those things happen to be accurate).
🖤
'Convergence of cultures' worldwide? Prof. Hanson should visit central London on a Saturday morning (or my neighbourhood on any day of the week). No convergence of cultures there. And that's among people who are supposedly all living in the same country.
It frequently happens that the chat or comments on MMM broadcasts are every bit as interesting as the broadcast itself. This is the case here.
Always remember that the future of the human species is a source of worry only for those who reproduce.
We, the childfree, have chosen to leave the human species in due time. We are not suicidal, but we are content with being mortal. We do not care for any form of eternal life, especially not immortality through reproduction.
Therefore, all we have to worry about is how to maintain a situation that allows us to escape quietly. Or, if the worst comes to the worst, to escape not quietly, but escape nevertheless. It may be good that humans continue to exist, as Louise Perry puts it, but without us, not in our name.
Louise, Robin, and the rest of you: Please take this into account in future discussions, whether you choose to be parents or not.
Will the rest of the interview be released eventually or is it behind a paywall forever?
We will all be dead by the end of the year given current events anyway. Who honestly wants _more_ advancement in technology? Hasn't it gone far enough?
To call a halt now is to doom humans to massive accumulation of pollution and declining resources.
excess income and concentration of smart middle class in cities may boost innovation, but it is good to remember that the rate of innovation is also very responsive to culture. The amish population boost was mentioned, but another good example is the islamic civilisation which went from inviting scholars to Baghdad from across the world to "math is from the devil" and massive stagnation afterwards. It is not just changes between cultures but also within cultures that are a thrreat to a high tech future.
Problem is not just that there is less innovation if there is less population in cities, but also if technophilic population declines and technophobic sustains itself, then entire societies will operate on technophobic policies, regardless of technophilic pockets inside them. The amish may not want to conquer the world, but muslims do want to rule as an example. As well as other groups for whom at the very least tech is not a priority.
Louise, where are you getting your information on maternal and neonatal mortality? You have a very higher estimation of death likelihood than I’ve heard.
The lack of cultural selection pressures as life becomes global signifies our need to embrace the next stage of evolution; that is 'conscious evolution' - understanding evolution's trajectory and knowing where it wants us to go next. To this point, competitive selection pressures have driven humanity from families to tribes to Middle-age small-states to nation-states. This trajectory towards ever-larger scales of governance clearly suggests that the next stage is some form of cooperative global governance. NOT a world government but coordinated international cooperation. It is that - and only that - which can square the circle of maintaining a healthy environment while also encouraging policies that increase fertility.
This guy is an economist, not a historian, that seems clear. In what age of our civilization was there ever a total absence of innovation? What nonsense. He seems worried about a time akin to the Middle Ages, but even those gave us mechanical clocks, eyeglasses, the blast furnace and mechanized printing, eventually scaled up to mass printing. No Industrial Revolution without those blast furnaces. But yes, having enough human minds interacting and generating ideas will be key because a lot of innovation is incremental.
A lot of human intellect is now necessary merely to sustain the sci-tech already achieved. Since you think you're a better historian than Hanson, give me some historical examples of tech going backward, of actual forgetting of previously known tech. I know a few.
@@kreek22 I may not have been clear: I’m not denying that tech can be lost. It can and is. What I deny is that innovation ceases. In fact innovation itself may cause older, less efficient tech to be lost because it is supplanted. But Hanson seems worried about a lack of innovation. That seems unlikely to me.
@@jGeb-sx3kv In the limit cases tech is lost AND innovation ceases. An example is what happened in Tasmania after it was first settled by the Aborigines. The settlers forgot how to build boats and also forgot how to fish. They lived on an island and they still forgot these two technologies. Why would this happen? They simply did not have a large enough population to sustain much labor specialization.
Now we think about how such a limit case applies to global population decline. Clearly the lower the population, the less specialization of labor is possible. There is currently a vast amount of specialization. As this declines innovation declines and forgetting may even set in. We can debate the rate of such dynamics, but I don't see what prevents them from taking hold. By the way, Hanson is too polite to mention this, so I will: population decline is happening fastest among those demographics with the highest IQs.
@@kreek22 this is very interesting ! As a thought experiment , can you propose what such a limit case might look like in our high tech , high mobility society (i.e. a case that might be similar in terms of the factors of isolation, sufficient local natural resources, and small population)? I would value your thoughts!
I agree entirely, and I add that the Middle Ages saw massive advances in engineering in order to build bigger and better cathedrals, and this technology was also used to build bridges etc.
I remember an Econtalk episode in 2010 where Mr Hanson envisioned a brain emulator that can boost economic growth quite a lot. With the advances of AI I'm curious what Mr Hanson would say if he reviews this podcast episode from 14 years ago.
Economists can't tell us where the stock market will be next month but are able to predict where the world is likely to be in 50 to 80 years? Technology does not move in a straight line; it is exponential..
Yeah, only behavioral economics is real, and not for this, for other stuff. (My apologies to Tyler Cowen's boss posse of hyper-autistics).
If economist could tell us what the stock marker will do next month, that would change the stock market today. The stock market reacts to information. Also, Demographics is mostly predictable: the number of 50 year olds alive in 2074 will be the babies born this year (or fewer).
Tech is not exponential. One field of tech has been exponential for several decades. Capisce?
"this idiot thinks the housing market can actually crash" - some idiot in 2007
*needs reference to genetics/psychometrics
Wealthier countries with more resources, that are more socially stable, into which a small number of outlier high IQ individuals are born, (there will be more of them born from within a high average IQ population,) will be able to take advantage of the available tools and stable social structure, so that instead of focusing on survival they can experiment and innovate, this is how the Industrial Revolution happened, this is how innovation continues to happen.
This is exactly how real historical progress happened.
How many know this? Maybe 1-2%.
Is there a more important historical lesson? I doubt it.
@@kreek22 Marry me. ~Maeby Funke
Louise: 'I see both sides, I can't decide if I want technological society to collapse or not'.
Me: 'Yes you definitely can decide gurl' (meaning no, obviously not, wtf).
Second time around here...the major glitch I find it in the comment that separates us from the natural world. If we don't decline as a world our fertility nature will take things into it own hands take a toll on humanity and we won't like that either. This very century is critical...talking about subsequent centuries with business as usual to me does not make sense. Ecological overshoot to me is the main problem facing the world so consumption and excessive population does matter.
Aside from lacking historical knowledge of the Amish, they were the Jacobins of 16th cen Dutch who spread revolution and were mostly wiped out, the losers/survivors migrated to US and took the mantle of pacifism as their subculture of revolution went nearly extinct. They exist on the largesse of US military might and the US citizenry, without which they would be wiped.
They live on largesse? They will still be living the same way when the lights go out and the rioters loot your house.
Throughout he shows his ignorance of history
36:46 just describing the current prevalence of trait neuroticism. Sry y'alls, but this whole episode, we're just located in the wrong academic field for the subject matter.
I often joke that thanks to birth control, the Idiocracy will have enough children.
Let’s imagine the end of capitalism.
His assumptions and concerns that largely disregard environmental degradation in a world where civilization continues largely unbroken is myopic and insular in the extreme. I’m not surprised he was a futurist, those guys, by in large, are utopian salesmen for the tech industry. If there had been a constant civilization since Rome what would the planet we live on be like( assuming there would be any humanity even still living on it)? Say it puts the industrial revolution 1000 years earlier. Well, it’s well known that genghis Kahn’s mass slaughter 1000 years ago reforested Europe and actually cooled the planet - that’s without the pollution and technology of industrial revolution, imagine the degradation if it occurred of which global warming is just one. Now for the Europeans 1000 years ago it was cataclysmic horror, but for people today that cataclysm was a benefit. What good for the goose in the past might be good for th gander in the present or the future. Economics and technology are nothing in world that can’t support them - to say nothing of the species that creates it. I know, I know, technology is coming that will make all of this go away, from deforestation to depleted fish stocks to ocean acidity to global warming etc etc, and utopia is right around the corner with Elon Musk and AI leading the way to save us 🙄. I’m not saying his warnings aren’t valid or the loss of civilization isn’t a major concern, but his chuckling dismissal of the defining reality, namely, the environment which took billions of years to come into existence to allow us to ,and on which everything stands, leaves his preferred technologically advanced alternative reality a burnt pie in the sky
Africa did not get the memo!
Most of Africa is also experiencing a decline in birthrates.
Louise, can you interview Rabbi Manis Friedman on falling birthrates and relationships
Stephen Shaw would also be a great person to interview, his documentary Birthgap extensively covers the population collapse issue.
Why does he feel the need to smugly chuckle at the end of every sentence? hehe Annoying tic. hehe. He must have Bill Kristol disease: always grinning like a Cheshire Cat. hehe. Smiling and laughing are meaningless when ever-present. hehe.
His constant grin a laugher is distracting. Why is he even talking on this subject if he’s an economist - what does he know about innovation?
I noticed it, too. I know it’s mean to say, but my guess is a 70/30 arrogance to autism mix, much like Elon Musk.
He is just nervous and actively thinking of the things he CANNOT say les be get in trouble about actual causes of fertility decline. How can you not mention the first and most important factor, after all men cannot have kids ergo ....
@@eddie-ni5ox He does this in every interview, no matter the subject.
Aspergers
France has the healthiest demographics in Europe now, I gotta good idea as to why, Hanson gotta good explanation? Nah suhn, get woke.
Anybody who finds this fertility stuff interesting might like the UA-cam channel Based Camp.
PS. Screw you UA-cam for censoring a post of mine you know you can't refute.
I found Mr. Hanson’s constantly inappropriate smiling very weird, but the real issue was his ignoring of the “elephant in the room” - i.e. AI/AGI.
Even when you pointed it out Louise he just ignored it, we are more surveilled & controlled than ever before & AI is incrementally removing our freedoms under the nonsense of being “good for society & the climate”.
This is bad enough, but if AGI (i.e. consciousness) is ever cracked we will be reduced to the level of a pet Labrador or even expendable ants!
Given all this the idea of a developmental pause or even a regression seems pretty palatable to me - although I acknowledge that the removal of secular rights will be very grim.
Sorry if that sounds pessimistic, but I honestly think it’s realistic…
😴😴😴
💋💌🌹
Hansen presents a false choice between human extinction and endless growth. There's a happy medium where there are hundreds of millions of people, and they have affordable housing and clean air and water. Not zero people, just a smaller stable population, as opposed to a dog eat dog hell world of homelessness, astronomic rents, pollution, growing rates of cancer, and most young people knowing they will never, ever own a home or have any real stability. Nobody has to "throw away technologies" to do this, just let population fall a bit and level out where young people feel like they can afford the space to have kids. As with most things, the compromise path works best.
sorry 'good enough' isn't good enough for me. I've been inspired by the pro-natalist pro-tech vision of a future where we explore the stars and travel billions of miles to build homes on exotic worlds. Can't do that with a few hundred million, boring.
Your future isn't a dream worth sacrificing much in the present for, its just a shitty deal in the current market.
The problem is our governments replace the unborn kids with immigration. Until this stops nothing will change
US population is not gonna collapse tho, all tech and soon, manufacturing, will be here too. I can't just keep recommending Peter Zeihan 101, without getting paid for this.
Globally, population will decline regardless of geopolitical shifts. High IQ population is declining faster than other demographics. Zeihan never impressed me.
@@kreek22 Yeah but regionally, demographics are much healthier for certain countries, that have high-skilled immigration, tech and industry too. US, France. Over-generalizations never impressed me 😎
Zeihan is interesting, but he by no means holds the future's truth...listen to William Rees about human ecology.
@@MichaelWolfe1000 Everybody is invited to my Green Party, BYOB.
his views are irrational; this is what happens when you live in an "Ivory Tower."
Well called