Comment by doggodaddo78 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doggodaddo78 | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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