Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore | Hacker News Reader

Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore

bloomberg.com

42 pointsmfiguiere78 comments

I was listening to The NY Times Sunday Read this morning which was about some of the isolation research NASA is doing on people in advance of a possible Mars mission. But what stood out to me was a bit of a throw-away line about the reasons people look to Mars; among them was the sense that the planet is dying. I also had a hair dresser casually throw the same idea out to me awhile ago as sort of run of the mill conversation.

I know that somewhere in the last decade or so, I lost any hope for the future myself, and I think that that is an essential aspect of the desire to have children. This article touched on it as well.

One simple counterargument to those who think that our planet dying is a rationale for driving their desire for going to mars is that the most habitable part of mars is incomparably worse/more dead than the worst possible place on earth, be it Antarctica, Death Valley, the Sahara, or next to an active volcano. One could argue that a post-nuclear-apocalypse earth would be more habitable than mars, but I think that all these arguments would get silly fast.

I think most of the appeal of going to Mars is a sense of "starting over" and or course not bringing "them" with, for your favorite definition of "them".

I don't think so. I think everyone who considers the idea seriously is aware that Mars is much harsher than Earth, that many people will die there working to colonize it, and that society on Earth won't be going away any time soon (hence, nothing will start over).

What makes Mars colonies (and moon colonies) interesting to me is a recognition that recorded civilization is only about 12,500 years old. That prior to that the entire planet was experiencing an ice age which lasted ~100,000 years, and prior to that people were already "behaviorally modern" in ways which left impressions in the archeological record.

This suggests that our home planet could have a meteor or ice age shaped surprise for us any moment, and that it might not be a bad idea to have remote backups.

I also think that working to live somewhere other than Earth will teach us much more about exactly why and how Earth is special.

Ok, valid. But I don't see why you disagree with the sentiment that exploring and colonizing elsewhere is because of a desire for a "fresh start". You mention work, but that's part of it.

Fresh starts are available right here on Earth to anyone willing to hike into the woods, build a cabin, and hunt for food. It's a tough life, and very few choose it.

Living on Mars, on the other hand, will require a much higher degree of dependence on others as there are no woods, no food to hunt or farm, and nothing but rock from which to make necessities. Colonizing Mars or a moon will require a great deal of interaction with all the social and technical constructs that anyone wanting to "start over" is seeking to distance themselves from.

This (you can just build a cabin) was true in colonial Europe, and yet we had a lot of settlers in USA. I think it's an illogical desire, but one core to our being and based on the perceived reward of having "everything the light touches" rather than whatever you are left with, plus gov, etc.

I only say this in case we weren't clear on each other's scale argument. Building a cabin and going for a hike is very different from building a new society from scratch. I do think both are desires but the second is the one I'm talking about.

I agree with you. The comparison to sailing across oceans in wooden ships to the 6mo journey to Mars is one I've made before. But also people were encountered in the Americas in every trip over that I'm aware of, and in both the sailing and spacing varieties feels more to me like a society extending it's reach than starting over. Maybe I'm wrong.

If you want to be Martian, live in the woods, build a cabin, and eat yeast. Not enough game and wild resources to sustain many people anymore in many places.

It's the last part I agree with more: if I wanted to advance, in a serious way, the cause of enviromental and ecological science, then the tasks of building and establishing off-world biospheres will do both those things in environments which (1) we can actually kind of afford to fail in and (2) which will drive home the absolute point that this biosphere is incredibly valuable.

Give those ideas a run, and then you've made a compelling case for subsidizing and bootstrapping the move of dirty heavy industry and mining off-world: metals from the asteroid belt, manufacturing in high orbit - the ecological science to make it more sustainable.

You then also get some economic benefits once you're up and running: off-world industry would find the products of the biosphere very valuable - more so then anything so simple as oil, metal or refined chemicals. Putting a distinct price on keeping the Earth's biodiversity alive and protected because people want to be able to buy "live soil" - to borrow from the expanse - would put us in a much better long term position as a species.

Most folks discount potential negative future outcomes - especially those which can't be controlled. It's called optimism bias. But something tells me that space rocks don't care and behave much more in line with natural distributions. Climactic history of Earth is nuts. WAY more extreme than our little 12,000 year slice of history would suggest. Which means we're in for surprises if we can avoid killing ourselves for long enough.

The pessimist in me thinks that the people going to Mars will end up bringing with them the same prejudices and the same ineffective laws anyway. It would be great if they could really "start over", as in build society from scratch, make it much more fluid the way David Graeber claimed it was way back in human history.

There is no way that it will be easier to turn a completely lifeless planet into an inhabitable one. The Marsers may as well purchase some barren land on Earth and live in Mars colony structures, at least they'll have breathable air. If humanity makes Earth uninhabitable, how would a Martian civilization make Mars inhabitable? Better caring for the environment? Why not care for it here?

The idea that "marsers" think mars is a liftraft to escape too from a dying earth is, as far as I can tell, an lie spread to discredit people interested in in mars colonization.

No one believes that mars is going to be a better/easier place to live than earth. It's idiotic, and only spouted by people that don't like the idea of Mars, and said to make "marsers" look like idiots in association.

This has been my experience. Nobody who has looked into Mars inhabitation at any depth considers it a “plan B”, at least not on any timescale relevant to those alive today — there’s maybe some value as insurance against a planet-killer asteroid or something similarly catastrophic, but that only comes into play once civilization has been thoroughly established on Mars, which is centuries into the future at soonest.

The chief value of Mars has two parts. First, it opens up the first true frontier we’ve had in over a century and could serve as a sort of societal pressure relief valve. Second, as soon as there’s people living on Mars the impetus for developing technology to make living there (and in space) more safe, sustainable, and comfortable increases dramatically, which is a critical step in achieving true mastery of human spaceflight and ensuring that the species is not forever stuck in the bottom of Earth’s gravity well.

Some may argue that the moon can serve these purposes as well and that may be true to a degree, but its proximity is a liability. Moon inhabitations are close enough to be well within the sphere of Earth’s political influence even if it achieves self-sustainability, which itself is unlikely because Earth is always there as a convenient source of supplies and escape hatch, just a week away. There’s a certain level of necessary commitment and autonomy that comes with building a civilization on Mars which I believe is key.

Can't just build Mars colony structures on barren land on Earh. Permits are needed. And then, insteand of being financed by some space agency, constrction materials and workers have to be paid by the "colonists". Let's say somehow the "colony" is built. You know what comes next: taxes!

It's about hope. There is no hope in sight that the Earth will get better in the next few generation's lifetimes. Life on Mars, if we choose to colonize it, will start bad but it will only get better and better.

People's desire to "go to mars" is more about hope than it is actually thinking it's possible. This planet is fucked. Life is fucked. All for those quarterlies.

> is more about hope

People need to believe that the future will be better than the present, especially when the present sucks. If you don't have that, what is there?

The ease with which people hold those views - that the Earth is dying, that the world is hopeless, the casual embrace of nihilism - has always struck me as odd, because the reasons they cite (climate change, war, the economy) are relatively speaking not bad. They're not great, but it's not 14th Century Europe bad. Half the population of Europe died in that century. And yet, civilization trotted on. So maybe the question is why in the modern era, with all our technology, so many just give up and believe obviously wrong but popularized phrases like "the planet is dying".

Relatively few people believe "the planet is dying", that's more an allegation thrown about by those against change from unregulated growth.

Considerable numbers of people accept that the resource draw of current population numbers at present and ever growing levels of consumption pose increasing risk to human habitation.

They're also bright enough to be opposed to entering a time in which half the human population dies.

All parents want their children to have better lives. 14th century parents were no different. 15th century was better than 14th. Far better. Renaissance started. Looking at the present, 22rd century will absolutely NOT be better than 21st.

Who would want children now? Only African countries. Looking at their present living conditions, their lives will probably get a lot better.

Yes, a typical NYT way of portraying the sense of adventure and exploration in a negative 'boohoo bad humans kill planets' way, as if people need more things to darken their future with.

People look for Mars because they're looking for a new frontier, not because of 'the planet dying'. They long for a revival of the days of exploration when maps were filled with 'here there be dragons'. They do not want to 'flee' earth, they want to expand beyond it.

This newly revived wanderlust is a positive thing, not a negative. It is far better for people to be looking forward to rockets to Mars than to rockets to their capital cities. Let's make it happen and let's ignore the doomsayers of the NYT who'd rather have us repent, all ye sinners for the end is nigh.

> the sense that the planet is dying.

Not dying by itself, but rather WE are killing it.

I look at our friends and peer aged family who have kids, and can’t help but see them just tired. Physically they are perpetually exhausted and visibly more aged. Financially, unless they were pretty well off before having a child, they’re struggling.

Do they look unhappy? I don’t know. All of our friends with children post pictures of their kids in mundane everyday settings nonstop on Instagram so I almost have too much information on how they live, at least outwardly.

But it’s probably taboo to openly say you’re unhappy about having a child. The closest I’ve come is seeing some cracks while talking to one of my best friends about how tired he is.

Who will be more happy when we’re 60 or 70? Even that I’m not sure. I know plenty of elderly people who have little to no contact with their adult kids. Some with kids who are estranged and hate them. Is that any better than not having kids at all?

Those who have children will never wonder what could have been.

Even a horrific outcome answers that question.

There is no other way to do do.

Anyone can wonder what might have been - those with 2 children could wonder how more would have changed their lives, or could wonder what might have been had they had none. Some changes we make to our lives forever close off other paths.

Have kids, partner and I occasionally talk about what life would’ve been like if we made different choices. We’re on rails now until they’re adults, but we try to help others make different choices when the topic comes up and we are asked for our opinion based on life experience.

Are you wealthy? Robust family support? Low volatility in your living and work situations? Strong relationship that will endure what children incur? Might be fine; without those components, you’re gonna have a bad time (statistically speaking and from a preponderance of the data).

> There is no other way to do do.

You can come to a conclusion you made a poor choice and still choose to do the best you can because it’s the right thing to do.

https://thehill.com/business/3608647-new-estimate-projects-c...

http://blog.dol.gov/2023/01/24/new-childcare-data-shows-pric...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3171291/

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062063/

(n=1, ymmv)

If one’s goal in life is to be “less tired” then for sure having young children does not contribute to that goal.

If one wants something more like the feeling of a life meaningfully lived - it will take energy no matter what form that meaning takes.

Fwiw I am definitely more tired as a parent then when I was single but it’s what I would call “good tired” - work you are choosing to do.

I agree with this. Also, the period of time where children are very tiring is relatively short, perhaps 2-3 years per child. Yes, this adds up when you have 2 or 3 children, but there is also a lot of joy to leaven the fatigue.

Then you have the period before they are 11 or so, when they are just pure magic to be around. You get to see the world through their eyes. You get to be around someone who is always eager to learn from you and who thinks you’re amazing.

And then you have a teenager and your relationship matures and deepens (hopefully anyway) and although there are often difficulties, there can also be a kind of friendship there with deep meaningfulness. And/or someone who will make fun of you and take your ego down a peg or two.

For me, finding meaning in life has long been a struggle. Is it the pursuit of pleasure? Is it the pursuit of knowledge? So much of all that is ephemeral. How about, instead, sacrifice? Putting others first? Investing in future generations?

One thing I do believe for sure: having a child makes most people wiser and less self-centered and selfish. That alone is worth the fatigue.

What is the goal of having kids though, from a personal perspective?

Sample size of 1, but even looking around my generally stable middle to upper middle class social circle, I feel like despite putting your best effort in, it’s a 50:50 coin toss that you’ll be in your later years with a wonderful relationship with your adult children versus having them be virtual strangers or even estranged. Is that considered meaningful, and worth the sacrifices?

I see a lot of elderly people who never see or hear from their kids other than a phone call during birthdays and maybe a visit during holidays, even if they live not too far away. I would hate to be in that kind of relationship with my future child.

My wife and I see our parents multiple times a month, frequently eat out together, and even air travel together at least once a year. I would love that kind of relationship with my child, but I feel this is a massive edge case, not the norm, especially in American society.

Nothing in life is guaranteed but some things are worth the fight and the risk.

And I suspect you have more control over your outcomes than you think. How you raise your kids matters. Them seeing you dedicate time to your parents sends a good message than other kids may not be seeing for example.

>But it’s probably taboo to openly say you’re unhappy about having a child.

Imagine (like I never have to) that the man who raised you says to you: "if I could go back in time I definitely wouldn't have children again."

Most honest thing he ever said. I agree with him.

If you look at the graph of different countries' birth rates, it looks like the US rate declined rapidly in the years following 2008 (it was a local maximum before that). US birth rate also had trouble during the 70s energy crisis. So maybe it's just as simple as affordability issues/economic turmoil. Right now, inflation's running very hot, especially when you focus on housing and services like childcare and education.

One interesting thing, Italy in the early 90s experienced a big dip and then recovered somewhat. Anyone have any ideas about what might've happened there?

South Korea, a big dip around 2015/2016.

I had to move to another city to find a place to rent that would accept me with a cat. And if I had children, it would be impossible. The landlords have destroyed the human habitat.

I don’t doubt your story but I’ve seen many apartments with “no pets” policy but never a “no kids” one.

But also, millions of people in the US have cats, kids, or both. So while I am sure your story is true it doesn’t sound representative.

Senior apartments don’t allow kids, but that’s not a majority.

It is illegal out right claim that, at least in my country. But 100% of landlords still silently do it.

I think they're implying that finding an affordable space to raise kids in their city would have been impossible

I guess I struggle to visualize that because that would imply that nobody (or only the very rich) have kids in his city, which is probably not true?

> societies progress up the hierarchy of needs from physical survival to emotional self-actualization, and as they do so, rearing children gets short shrift because people pursue other, more individualist aims. … People find other ways to find meaning in life

That's a nice standout for me. Taking into account the humans only aspect, it's good to see that those people are happier and finding more self fulfillment than in the alternative scenario.

Of course that is just in a vacuum, though it does show that a huge part of the perception of this "problem" is a system that unnaturally requires more of us.

People needing each other is what causes communities and strong families.

Lot of the article tries to be negative but reads to me as positive. And the entire premise doesn’t spell collapse either; collapse seems more likely to come from other factors; having more humans makes the misery greater at that point.

Let’s colonise planets; population will pick up on the New Worlds as people will feel it as their duty again. Here, not so much as breeding cannon fodder is not a great stimulus.

The dates on that graph track pretty closely to the availability / legalisation of effective birth control for those countries. Surely it isn’t that simple?

That is one factor and the article did touch on it a couple of times.

In the past, more people wanted to have children. Every year, that percentage seems to be decreasing [1]. Birth control mostly decreases chances of unwanted pregnancies, and that is good, in my opinion. How do we make people want to have children? Well, that's the hard problem that every developed country seems to be facing, and nobody has found substantial success so far.

To be fair, I am a part of the problem as well. The opportunity loss for people in their late 20s to have a child is huge. It's even bigger for women, so I really can't blame anyone. And that's all on top of the usual "gloom and doom" thoughts when you think what your child could be facing in today's world.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-s...

Birth control also coincided with a very deliberate push to get women in the work force at scale. In retrospect, it was obvious that doing this would cause fertility rates to decrease regardless of the popularity of birth control. My wife would absolutely love to quit her job and stay at home full time, but it's hard (note quite impossible, but very very hard) to actually do this today. All her friends with kids want to do it too. Obviously I wasn't around back in the mid-1900s, but I do wonder from time to time if people actually understood that this was the trade off we were all making in changing the culture like we did.

> Obviously I wasn't around back in the mid-1900s, but I do wonder from time to time if people actually understood that this was the trade off we were all making in changing the culture like we did.

If you're talking about the 1950s a non-trivial percentage of married American women at that time routinely took stimulants and barbiturates.

Not surprising I can't recall a time in america where life didn't feel like it wasn't balanced on a knifes edge

It takes so long to feel safety your near the end of the fertile window at least in the case of my wife and I for us it was the '08 recession for others something else I'm sure; we've built a pretty shitty world

my siblings who luckily missed that window had 2-3 kids each and still struggle financially even with "decent" jobs and education.. I can help them with that but that's not the case for others

> we've built a pretty shitty world

The world has always been harsh and unforgiving. When did humans create a better world, and how do you quantify that? I think we're still very well off.

I agree. However, there is a strong sentiment with a significant part of the population that "things suck" which leads to a dim view of the world... which is a horrible way to live. I would go so far as to say that it is self-reinforcing and leads people toward apathy toward the world in general.

Alternatively, if people collectively see the world as a place they are responsible for making better, and that it's better for each individual to do so, then the world becomes a better place. This is hard to get to because "better" at scale is really hard to define. People start worrying about things like human-induced climate change, other environmental pollution, social welfare, etc. Even if we can collectively agree on things that are globally "good," sometimes making things better in one arena causes problems in another arena of "global good."

> We used to worry about the planet getting too crowded, but there are plenty of downsides to a shrinking humanity as well.

Will write a negative article no matter what happens.

Worrying about the planet getting too crowded is no longer cool so it's time to worry about less population

The Sensation Industrial Complex demands sensationalism!

The future is always bleak. It is hard to foresee one that doesn't end with everyone dying. Maybe super-intelligent robots can push back on that (although even then, one day it ends).

Although it must be said, this fertility collapse is easily the best thing that could be happening in the world of demographics. Overpopulation is much less pleasant for more people. The problems with under-population are still concerning. The part that worries me it who looks after all the old people who can't care for themselves? It isn't much fun dying alone and incapacitated.

I find that a lot of future doomerism is rooted in not doing anything now:

“We have to build a world where human society retreats and tens of millions die alone unsupported, because [insert warning about centuries away based on dubious assumptions].”

We don’t have to, we’re celebrating failure because of nebulous future concerns that seem post hoc rationalizations.

I think at a societal level, abuses of psychology in marketing, PR, propaganda, and all its euphemisms have driven us collectively mad.

My mental model is that people look at a small amount of data we have about advanced civilizations (ours), fit lines to those few, noisy, highly clustered points, or worse, assume exponential when it's really logistic / S curve. Then you can predict any old doom you want.

The future is lots of things, but stable or predictable it ain't.

> The problems with under-population are still concerning.

Primarily the starvation.

Is it negative for humanity -- or negative for the finance world since things must go up and to the right?

I don’t totally get it but somehow in the last few decades the narrative crept in that it is not good for you and not good for the world if you chose to have children.

It’s the kind of thing where childless people will lecture you on the impossibility of having kids all day long and meanwhile there’s someone in exactly the same situation living next door who’s got 3-4 kids and is way happier and more fulfilled.

Recently I started to think of religion as a sort of Chesterton a fence. We thought all the focus on the family in religion is just quaint but perhaps it’s just codification of safeguards that allowed a wiser minority to escape the previous analogous collapse.

I don't doubt that religion has important social functions that propagated it and the societies that believed in them (memetic evolution in addition to genetic evolution). The problem is there's a lot of unbelievable stuff (as in I'm literally unable to believe in them) that seems required to tie the whole thing together. For instance, that I don't believe in L Ron Hubbard's idea of Thetans which seems like a core tenant of the Scientology religion.

Not re Scientology specifically but have you tried to go deep to understand, or is the inability to believe based on superficial secular knowledge?

I'd say it's based on a childhood of attempted indoctrination into a few Christian denominations, primarily by my Catholic parents. Comically enough, I told them I was an atheist when I was 7 years old, but either they think I forgot, or they forgot it themselves. Either way I went to the church and Sunday school for the required 18 years and did the rituals I was supposed to. Nowadays I just go with them once in awhile to keep them happy and I don't talk about it with them. I think mainly it was the science denial that other Christian denominations engage in that put me off the whole thing as a child, but as I learned more about the religion as I grew up, I also stopped believing that (almost) anyone really believes in them; few of the followers of Jesus seem to want to replicate his radical love and compassion.

Scientology just seems like one most people agree is unbelievable.

> who’s got 3-4 kids and is way happier and more fulfilled.

Or maybe different life goals are valid for different people, and there's no one true path to happiness and you need to make up your own mind? Just maybe?

For some reason this topic invariably includes a bunch of people lecturing everyone else about what they should do - or mistaking someone discussing their own preferences as judging there's.

Someone saying "I don't think I could cope with having children" isn't telling you that you couldn't cope - though you might do well to consider your own expectations.

I have a child, and I would never presume to tell anyone they definitely should or shouldn't have their own children. I will happily relate my feelings on the experience so far if asked.

I agree with what you are saying but that’s not what I am talking about on the comment you are replying to.

Discussing one’s choices is different than painting a topic with a broad brush and some of the anti kid voices are hysterical in their tone and persistence.

It’s the difference between “I chose not to have children because…” and “we are screwed nobody can afford to have a cat much less a kid and the world is going to end next month anyway”

>Or maybe different life goals are valid for different people, and there's no one true path to happiness and you need to make up your own mind? Just maybe?

You hit the nail on the head with a megaton hammer.

I am sick of dingbats who insist I marry and have children. Fuck off and mind your own business, I say to them.

I have many things I want to do in life and not enough time to do them all, let alone with time wasted to concentrated bullshit I quite literally don't give a fuck about. Life is way too short.

I suppose I am one of those dingbats :) But I have a quick question for you, I see from your comment history that you're Japanese and this matters to you at least to some extent. I see references to the desire for your culture to be understood and honored, for being able to relate to concepts like "<your country> first" etc.

// I have many things I want to do in life and not enough time to do them all, let alone with time wasted to concentrated bullshit I quite literally don't give a fuck about.

So, I've been to Japan a few times and as much as I love everything about it, seeing the obvious prevalence of old people doing stuff and maintaining the way of life raises the super obvious question - who is going to continue any of these? If Japan and its culture matter, then as someone who cares about it, are you totally fine into it fading away into obscurity in the next few decades?

The answer could be "yes, that's not what I care about" and that's fine I am just curious if that's your answer. But I am also curious on the flip side the sentiment of someone who on one hand cares about their country/culture but on the other side "literally doesn't give a fuck" about probably the only thing in your control to help it.

Again not trying to preach what is right here, asking the question of how you hold these two things in your head?

I have a relative that makes minimum wage and collects welfare (not in the US). Their situation is that neither husband or wife can work a full time career. However they’ve chosen to have three kids. They actually wanted five, but can’t have any more for medical reasons.

They seem overall happy? A lot of their happiness seems to be derived from their children. But they’ve also outright told my wife and I they are envious of our dink lifestyle.

On the other side, my wife and I kind of do want one kid. Definitely no more than one though.

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