On top of that, reverse osmosis can get drinking water from sea water. It seems that the feasibility of reverse osmosis is directly related to available energy, but wouldn't that be a great use of excess produced electricity vs. storing in batteries?
Of all the things humanity should be looking to make technological improvements in reverse osmosis, or even better solutions (electrolysis?, distilling?), should be pretty high up.
Not sure it'll ever happen, but it would be huge if it did.
The other problem with RO is that RO systems are incredibly wasteful, using at least an order of magnitude more water than they produce.
Yes, extinction of mankind might be. Bad for business, but not everyone agrees
When you're trying to have a baby, and it takes 10 times to get there, it's not that big of an issue. When one mistake ends in pregnancy vs. ten mistakes, it can make a considerable difference.
Just a thought.
It is well known that people don't have the same strong community bonds to those in the same physical space that they used to.
In an environmemt like this sex becomes rarer and riskier as partners are more unknown.
Giving birth and raising children also feels riskier as individuals don't have a community to rely on and absorb the added burden of child rearing.
A 0.2% difference in birthrate makes a massive difference on the timescale of civilization, so it is a very interesting question to me.
This is textbook "how to repackage an anecdote to be more palatable to HN readers."