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> Maybe it will actually be 2213 or 2313 instead. Our descendants (if one happens to have them) will find out.

Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period.

I agree that circumstances might mean that the global peak baby might be 200-300 years away, but the thing that makes the current round of peak-anything relevant is that we don't know how our social and economic systems will function when certain things are in long-term decline (even if they do pick up again in a few hundred years).

If we knew what a few centuries of low birth rates or low oil consumption looked like, we wouldn't be nearly as interested in what "peak-those-things" means, the same way we're not all that interested in specific market peaks because we understand the boom/bust cycles and long-term productivity increases, etc.

> Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period.

Humans are presumably always going to want babies. There's nothing to really replace them.

On the other hand, coal/oil/pollution all seem highly likely to be a transient phase of industrialization. There's no reason to think we should ever go back to burning coal or oil once we have renewables.

Oil is tricky in that we do like plastic and there's no obvious alternate material, but the amount of oil needed for plastic will be minuscule compared to the amount of oil burned as we bootstrap to renewable energy sources.

> the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population

It's so unhelpful to speculate about what the world will be like 100 years from now.

Think about what things were like in the 1920's and how unrecognizable the world is by comparison. Then, consider that technology is being developed significantly more quickly than it was in the 1920's.

True, I struggle to think 10 years ahead these days. The horizon for predictions is definitely shrinking.

> the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries,

I don't know if any realm of human sciences where extrapolating exponential growth yields trustworthy results, outside maybe of wealth accumulation, and even then not for 2 centuries.

I never claimed that it is inevitable that they'll sustain their current growth rate for the next 2-3 centuries, only that it is entirely possible. And I don't see why it wouldn't be. If you look at ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York/New Jersey, I don't see how they'd hit any natural barriers to their continued growth until they are many times larger than they are now, at which point they'd be a serious challenger for becoming the population majority.

The main ways it might not happen would be if either (1) they (gradually or suddenly) abandon their current culture for a less fertile one, (2) mainstream society persecutes them sufficiently. Both are entirely possible, but neither is anywhere near certain.

The situation for the (Old Order) Amish is more difficult, since – unlike ultra-Orthodox Jews – they'll run out of enough land to sustain their agrarian lifestyle, and will have to transition to a more urban one. While the more urban lifestyle of ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrates it is possible for insular high fertility religious minorities to exist in an urban setting, there is a real risk that they might lose their fertility and/or their insularity in the process.

Also, people often bring up the problem Israel has with many ultra-Orthodox Jews not working and relying on government subsidies to live. That is much less of a problem in the US than it is in Israel, so the sustainability of that lifestyle is less of a barrier to future growth in the US than it is in Israel. Furthermore, the fact they manage to grow so much in the US without doing that, means being forced to stop doing that isn't necessarily going to stop their growth in Israel either.

What are their historical and present population and growth numbers?

Consider a place like Kiryas Joel, New York: in the 2000 census it had a population of 13,138; by 2010 it had grown to 20,175 (a 53.6% increase over the decade); by 2020 it had grown to 32,954 (a 63.3% increase over the decade); the US Census Bureau’s 2022 estimate is 38,998 - 18.3% in only two years. The vast majority of that growth is due to births not migration. It is now the largest municipality in its county, and also its MSA - in 2023, the White House renamed the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown MSA to the Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh MSA, in recognition that it has overtaken Poughkeepsie proper as the MSA’s most populous municipality (although greater Poughkeepsie is still larger)

And Kiryas Joel is expanding in its de facto area: as its spiritual leader, Satmar Rebbe Aron Teitelbaum likes to say, its “holy borders” go further than its legal boundaries under New York state law, although very likely the legal boundaries will at some point grow too. And, there are similar ultra-Orthodox communities in other parts of New York state, and also in New Jersey (especially Lakewood)

Ultra-orthodox communities (like everyone else in the modern world, with vanishingly few exceptions) are entirely dependent on the broader society/economy. Under the implausible scenario where they approached a majority of the population, they'd inevitably (a) diffuse much more broadly into the rest of the population, and (b) make their current set of organizing practices unsustainable, without any persecution involved.

Of course they are going to have to change as they grow. The question is how big the changes will be.

We already see this in Israel - a big increase in Haredi women pursuing secular careers. In other communities worldwide, that development ended up significantly undermining the patriarchal culture and producing a demographic transition to lower fertility. But, will it necessarily have the same consequences for the Haredim? We will have to wait and see: maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Precedent would suggest the Haredim won’t be able to avoid that outcome, but the situation on the ground suggests that maybe they will

I’m not claiming any of this is inevitable, only possible, plausible. Nobody knows for certain what the future holds-we shall find out

Almost anything is "possible", but this seems entirely implausible, based on extrapolation that goes at least an order of magnitude beyond anything supportable by evidence or careful argument. Can you name any other examples of this happening throughout history, in the US or anywhere else, where a completely self-isolated tiny minority group took power and displaced everyone through "out-procreating" them?

To be honest I really dislike this kind of vague speculative fearmongering when targeted at specific minority groups, which seems extremely dangerous. It historically blends right into overt bigotry and sectarian oppression.

The US has a long, proud tradition of all sorts of unusual sects and cults trying to do their own thing, often in somewhat closed communities, sometimes to the dismay of their neighbors, sometimes failing pretty badly, but usually without really breaking fair laws or causing serious mischief to anyone else (but also occasionally breaking a lot of laws and hurting people; the police should go after such cults). We all owe quite a few of the rights we take for granted to the hard struggle of some of these groups to make their own choices.

>Can you name any other examples of this happening throughout history, in the US or anywhere else, where a completely self-isolated tiny minority group took power and displaced everyone through "out-procreating" them?

Kiryas Joel NY, Lakewood NJ, certain parts of Brooklyn. They basically have their own government, and they have far less state government oversight due to politicians not wanting to go against them.

They drive around NYC with vehicles that look like cop cars, acting like cops, which would get most other groups charged with impersonating a government official. They elect themselves to the school board and vote to prioritize funding for their group’s children, and deprioritize funding for any other group’s children. Etc etc.

Not that they are the only group to have done it, but these are your easy to google examples.

> To be honest I really dislike this kind of vague speculative fearmongering when targeted at specific minority groups, which seems extremely dangerous. It historically blends right into overt bigotry and sectarian oppression.

Basically, I'm repeating the contention of sociologist Eric Kaufmann's book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth–that in the long-run religious (ultra-)conservatives will dominate due to high birth and retention rates.

It isn't "fearmongering", because that assumes one is presenting a takeover by religious conservatives as negative. One might view it as positive. One might view it as neutral. I'm not presenting any value judgement of it here.

The contention isn't about any religious group in particular, it is about ultra-conservative religious groups in general. Ultra-Orthodox Jews happen to be the clearest example of the phenomenon, but there are other candidates – Old Order Amish, Latin Mass Roman Catholics, Salafist Muslims, etc.

Personally, I doubt ultra-Orthodox Jews will ever single-handedly takeover America, because in the scenario I am talking about, there will likely be other (non-Jewish) ultra-conservative religious groups, with which they'll share power. But I do think it plausible that in 2 or 3 centuries from now, North America will be a much more reliigious and much more conservative place than it is today. Not certain, of course, but plausible.

Putting aside the considerable statistical skepticism, the natural next question we all have at noticing these trends is - is there any way for secular society to get some of the "special sauce" these ultra-religious groups have, before the aggregate supply of everything starts to fall?

Secular pronatalism doesn't seem like it has a lot of staying power with most people as an ideology. But I've been on board for a long time, and so have a lot of my friends. So maybe the best answer is the common sense one: Wait a few generations for all those not susceptible to the secular pronatalism mind virus to select out of the gene pool, and hope society doesn't crumble under its own technical debt in the meanwhile.

> Wait a few generations ... and hope society doesn't crumble

We don't have a few generations until we are beyond the point where we can mathematically recover unless we develop economic mass adult-cloning technology and develop the psycho-social faculties to integrate that into a healthy (enough) society. The world won't end, but let's just say hyper-advanced visions of the future seem unlikely at this point.

Secular pronatalism as an ideology is new to me, but obviously the main limiting factor in fertility rates globally is just a mismatch in the lifestyle of the modern luxury-expecting freedom-enjoying individual vs the self sacrifice needed to do child raising. I would say a significant part of that is financial and time-related, both things which have obvious political, not ideological, solutions. Fighting the ideology of individualism with an ideology of self sacrifice did not work for climate change and will not work for pronatalism.

I often joke to my peers: it doesn't matter what I invest in, my best financial decision was buying a house, my worst financial decision was having kids, the rest is just screwing around in the margin.

I’m sceptical about how successful secular pronatalism can be. Large families, generation after generation, can come at a substantial personal cost, and it is a difficult sell for individuals if it is just a matter of principle, as opposed to something backed by promises and threats of post mortem reward and punishment. Furthermore, many religious pronatal groups reduce defections by socially ostracising and demonising defectors, making defection expensive. That kind of behaviour is much easier to justify given religious premises than secular ones. So I doubt secular pronatalism is ever going to be as successful as religious pronatalism. At its best, it might see some success under particularly favourable circumstances, but religious pronatalism will thrive in far less favourable conditions

To be successful, I think we need to bring back the "it takes a village to raise a child" mentality. We need to take some of the burden off of the parents.

This requires a cultural overhaul. Secular western culture is too individualistic and is incompatible with "village" behavior

Not going to happen to a large capacity under multicultural societies; no matter how hard you indoctrinate children, humans will retain their racial-tribal differences and will tend to segregate if not forced together by economics and state violence.

True, true. The evil vizier-economist's answer would be to notice that statisticians tend to estimate the value of a human life at around $10 million on average, and then notice that raising a child in the United States costs a paltry $250,000 or so over 18 years, and finally start to wonder how they can facilitate smoothing out that discrepancy across space and time to the parents' benefit. I"m not crazy enough to think far along those dimensions, but there is a big mismatch here that I think would be core to any secular solution to the problem.

I rarely run into a person that values their own life as high as 10 million dollars, unless they're quite wealthy.

Really? I would value my life much more than that.

I think how the question is phrased really matters.

How much do you value your life? Or how much would someone have to pay you to kill yourself?

Are these even different questions?

I was recently buying an older car and calculating out how much buying a newer car with more safety features was worse by assigning a value to my life/health and the risk of death and the risk of injury. I see used cars which generation over generation have major safety upgrades which, if you value your life at 10 million would probably save you 10 grand or so over the life of the car, having a gulf in price of a few thousand, and most of that value difference wasn't because of the safety features.

I guess it's possible people are just ignorant, but in general I see people especially men acting recklessly enough with their lives that they seem to not ascribe the highest values to them. They would rather have a shorter life where they have more money and other things.

On the other end of the spectrum, I probably give much more inherent value to my life than the average person (probably closer to 20m than 10m, if I were to spreadsheet it out) and it drives a lot of risk-averse action on my part.

Driving was one I decided on early: I didn't get a driver's license until 25, to get well out of the danger zone for auto accidents; and then less than a year after I got it, I moved to Finland (an uncommonly safe country in its own right) and I've been living off of public transit and bike paths that aren't thin painted lines next to motor traffic ever since.

Religion doesn't mean Ahura Mazda flapping about under the sun, getting all melty-winged.

Everybody who gets up in the morning and behaves in the ways they honestly believe are right has religion, including the non-spiritual.

In the context of this discussion and skissane’s comment, religion is the tapestry of traditions/“beliefs” that bind a tribal group together.

I write “beliefs” in quotes because there are beliefs (i.e. assumptions) that people might have philosophically on how they model the world, and there are “beliefs” that people espouse they have as a means to bond with other members of the tribe.

I don't see it as all that hard to imagine secular pronatalism. You just need the non-parents to subsidise the parents. We saw several examples of this under communism.

The special sauce seem to be forbidden contraceptives and limited opportunities.

Yes, there's also a kind of mandate in the bible to be fruitful and multiply, and the fact that if you grow up in a larger family you tend to have a larger family, but I would bet the other factors matter more.

Are you and your friends men? Unfortunately, the people who truly produce the next generation are largely absent from places like Hacker News, and history seems to show that, once they have any other options, spending 15-30 of their prime years doing the energetic equivalent of 40 consecutive Tour de Frances 9 months out of every 18, while being entirely dependent on a physically larger, stronger person who may or may not have legal and/or social sanction to beat you, is less appealing than living the way you and I live, as we please.

I'm guessing the only thing that will ever reverse this will be the invention of artificial wombs.

For what it's worth, I'm personally on board with having as many children as possible. Life is a cherished miracle. But I also can't bear children and take no risk in this endeavor.

I find it funny when men talk about having as many kids as possible when they take on 0% of the health risk, have no expectation of quitting their job, and statistically have a low chance of becoming a single parent.

Seeing it from the side of a Woman, it's no wonder birth rates are declining.

It definitely makes the policy predictions for how countries are going to deal with this much bleaker. Many countries have tried the carrot for years now. Get ready for them to start using the stick.

If we start forcing women to carry children against their will maybe our civilization doesn't deserve to survive.

>Unfortunately, the people who truly produce the next generation are largely absent from places like Hacker News, and history seems to show that, once they have any other options, spending 15-30 of their prime years doing the energetic equivalent of 40 consecutive Tour de Frances 9 months out of every 18, while being entirely dependent on a physically larger, stronger person who may or may not have legal and/or social sanction to beat you, is less appealing than living the way you and I live, as we please.

Whoa that reads almost as loaded as my reply:

I suspect collapse of nativity is why Feminism(tm) kills civilizations throughout antiquity.

Pronatalism doesn’t belong to religion especially. People didn’t used to have a lot of kids because God told them to, they had a lot of kids because they were free labor.

In that way, the pendulum is already starting to swing the other way in the US with the loosening of child labor laws.

Secularly, though, we’d have to do something to make it not hellishly expensive and inconvenient to have children. The US can’t even extend the child tax credit, much less fix healthcare, housing, education, food deserts, or childcare all at once.

I heard the retention of their offspring was 20%, so they have 5x more offspring, but only 20% of that stays 'in the group', net result 0.

Kiryas Joel, New York, is growing over 50% per decade. That is not consistent with “net result 0”.

If you look at the actual statistics on the growth of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the US and Israel, and Old Order Amish in the US, the actual figures are inconsistent with “net result 0”

>the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population, which could then result in a national baby boom.

Only if their reproductive habits do not change in that time. Hard to project out 3 centuries with a good deal of accuracy.

The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable.

> The fact that these are still very much niche interests after many generations indicates that the social indoctrination processes needed to maintain such cultures are not scalable.

In 2023, Israel contained over 1.28 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, 13.5% of Israel’s population. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, it will be over 16%. [0] By shortly after 2065, it is estimated that 50% of Israeli children will be Haredi. [1] I think this is counterevidence to your claim - the social indoctrination processes necessary to maintain Israeli ultra-Orthodox Judaism have already scaled to over 1 million people, and are projected to scale much further than that

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-po...

[1] https://archive.md/lYYgK

So in % terms not even a rounding error of the global population by 2085. These religious communities rely on both cult-like indoctrination and quasi-incestuous family networking in tandem to survive. We are not going to see Amish or ultraorthodox Jewish populations taking over the world.

Don't the Haredi refuse to enlist? Doesn't seem sustainable...

Refusal of enlistment is not essential to the Haredi lifestyle, and so it seems plausible their resistance to that might gradually weaken

There is already a minority of them, the Hardal (Nationalist Haredi), who are happy to enlist, but whose birth rates, retention rates, and general lifestyle, are similar to the Haredi mainstream

> mainstream Americans

What is a mainstream American?

I mean mainstream American society of secular to moderately religious people, as opposed to ultra-religious minorities such as ultra-Orthodox Jews or Old Order Amish

I mean the term quite broadly and inclusively, since many of the big divides within American society (ethnicity, race, politics, class) make a relatively modest difference to fertility rates, and those differences appear to be shrinking over time

Legally speaking? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

Any American who likes Tom Petty.

SWM

Just a friendly reminder to modern Progressives that (on average) you will not be in the future described by parent because you were tricked into an anti-natalist posture and will fail to reproduce adequately. It's a problem which kills itself in time so long as the problem doesn't ideologically metastasize into competiting populations.

Ahh, so conspiracies now. Interesting approach. "They" tricked us with the ever menacing "they".

Their theory also depends on the children of the "conservatives that have the most kids" remaining conservative, which I haven't observed among my own social group. My friends that had the most conservative parents (ex: Jehovah's Witnesses) went the furthest in the opposite direction, becoming progressives who don't want many (or any) kids.

Personally, I'd rather have fewer kids and be able to give them more attention and resources.

Some ultra-conservative groups have >80%, even >90% youth retention – such as Older Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Jehovah's Witnesses youth retention is a lot lower – I've heard claims it is less than 50%, that on average more leave than say.

Plausibly, being much closer to mainstream culture makes it much easier for people brought up JW to leave, whereas people raised in communities where English isn't even their first language, find that much harder.

friendly reminder to you: you won't be in the future either. because all humans have short lifespans. having children won't change that. enjoy the ride, whatever that means to you