Hacker News Reader

Silphium went extinct, which was a proverbial shame (no pun intended). Abortion, women's access to employment, and divorce, available in many but not all countries, helps to encourage causal sexual relations.

Sex negativity vs. sex positivity has been a battle forever, and Malaysia has dual systems for Muslims and non-Muslims that exacerbates this dichotomy.

The typically most taboo exchanges involves the scarcest and most desirable resources: sex, love, money, slaves, or power.

It seems like the sugarbaby/daddy phenomenon is merely an inducement for what others can get for free if they had more time, better seduction skills, self-confidence, and seized on more opportunities. I see that like the legalization of prostitution: what consenting adults can do shouldn't be regulated by the government. It is unfortunate that Malaysia banned Sugarbook and now drives such arrangements underground like prohibition, risking the enrichment of criminal enterprises.

> what consenting adults can do shouldn't be regulated by the government

Good things laws are decided democratically, and the vast majority of humanity rejects this conception of how government ought to function.

The vast majority of humanity rejected concepts like voting for and by women just 100 to 150 years ago.

I'm not saying I always agree with the results of democracy, merely that I am happy, in this case, that most people reject your line of thought.

> There is no “they” that considers this or enforces this - it’s just the human organism fighting for ways to keep itself alive.

There clearly is, aside from differing fertility rates these are all actions of authorities of one sort of another. They're different authorities but most are religious whether directly (Malaysia is a conservative Muslim country) or indirectly (Twitch isn't religious per se but it's following the puritanical values of the US)

That’s why it’s fun to watch. Step back from religion for a minute and see the giant forces at work that almost has nothing to do with governments or religions or social movements. It’s so powerful that those things are just instruments rather than reasons.

I can't prove it, but I suspect, that the human species superorganism contains evolutionary psych aspects that, rather than grossly-overpopulate leading to mass deaths like most animals, more softly curtails reproduction as population explodes and resources become scarcer. (People are happier, have more sex, and couple and "nest" more when "times are good.")

Such behavioral, preference, lifestyle, openness, and attitude changes include: Alternative gender/sexual identity expressions diverging from family focus, stress/anxiety, voluntary celibacy, perfectionist family planning (contraception, abortion, workaholism, and stricter goals), shallower human interactions, disillusionment of love, casualness of increased divorces, elongated adolescence, extended non-monogamy, "failure to launch," distractions like screens and video games, and, inadvertently, fertility reduction causes like obesity and plastics. I'm certain there are more factors I missed and some that are minor.

I love this line of thinking too.

It’s certainly bigger than any one human directed agent.

But yeah we can’t prove it.

Thanks. Yeah, It's too amorphous, ubiquitous, close-up, and squishy soft-"science" (philosophical-ish) sociological and psychological phenomena to really investigate, and conducting any sort of large-scale experiments would be extremely cruel and unethical.

I think we can only look at history, macro trends, and some imprecise civilizational differences to throw approximate qualitative hypotheses against the wall to make some guesstimates, and still be wrong most of the time due to unaccounted factors or even happenstance of maladaptive random behaviors like not dating people with green eyes, political revolutions that organize society differently, or inexperience/shyness denying the immense rewards of social/sexual/pairbonding opportunities.

Counter-evidence: people in poor societies have more kids.

Well, they have more famines too. There's no immunity from a currently prevailing population carrying capacity or lack of preparedness for wars and natural disasters. The hard limitations apply when there is lack of access to birth control but just enough resources to have more children.

Sorry, but I don't see how this comment rectifies what I see as a pretty big hole in this "human species superorganism" evo-psych argument.

People with scarcer resources have more kids.

Such superorganism traits arise only if they are evolutionarily advantageous, and only when evolutionarily pressure selects for those traits. However, overpopulation previously was never really an issue, high population density was the exception rather them the rule, and various nation states clamored for scarce resources through war. This means that such forces haven't been part of our species for long.

In such an environment, wouldn't evolutionary forces be less likely than, say, ubiquitous xenoesteogen exposure from new chemicals like plastics or a vastly different diet and lifestyle from our evolutionary origins?

How do we know this? Didn't most humans aggregate in tribes roughly 150 or so? And then civilizations arose roughly 5500 BP (300 generations). What's to say (cannot be proven) that nature (evolutional psych) and nurture (socialization and norms) optimized for larger communal living with higher intelligence, self-control, etiquette, less violence, etc.? Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature is a good read that doesn't exactly address nature/nurture but peers into the trends.

> In the end unrestricted sexual freedom leads to lower birth rates as people have more choice.

That doesn't seem very logical. (?)

Correlation or causation - you pick.

The point is look at the numbers and how society expresses sexual expression between men and women these days.

If they are so unrelated as you posit, what is the cause of the decline in birth rates then?

Women can get jobs.

I hypothesize that it is careers.

1. You probably want to establish your career before having kids. That takes time, especially with all the training required and needed mobility.

2. Kids need to have a good career to have a nice life, so you need to invest more in your children, which means fewer of them.

And that’s a sensible reason for sure.

Poor countries value more family, rich countries value more individualism.

My gut tells me this argument is too simplistic, but... this is it, basically.

I don't know whether it's a cause or an effect. Maybe it's a self-feeding dynamic?

Sexual freedom is largely predicated on birth control. There's a natural limit on how much sex you're going to want to have when it implies pregnancy.

> In the end unrestricted sexual freedom leads to lower birth rates as people have more choice.

I thought birth rates tended to decline due to increased prosperity, not freer sex.

:) The Chimp brain doesn't just sit around quietly gazing at the world with "open and neutral eyes". That's not in its nature.

Its nature is to meddle. And thats what changes the world.

And that there is why we are just a slightly higher order than chimps.

Some of us do sit back and observe and learn.