I think you're missing the broader analogy here; Cheap LLMs == LLMs everywhere. Cheap food == People everywhere.
I'm no Malthusian, but the paradox holds here pretty well.
I'm no Malthusian, but the paradox holds here pretty well.
The very specific point I'm claiming is that the increased consumption isn't always unbounded.
I'd assume environmental, but there's also more subtle answers than will fit in a comment box — whatever the cause, it has to be near-global.
China's building loads more houses, still has a fertility decline.
It is really a good example of what natural dimension reducers we are, even when we know it makes no sense. It is like we can't but help ourselves to reduce things to one explanatory variable.
My favorite is the news headline "The market went up today because of X".
They say: Tesla shares up as revealations surface that the wind is blowing east.
* More women work more and invest in their own education and fewer spend time alone at home as they might in poorer countries which would facilitate giving birth and investing time on childcare that way.
* More men and women derive their primary income from work that children cannot easily participate in. EG: office work, work from home computer work, vs farming or working with one's hands. In many poorer countries it is common practice to have more children at least partially to bolster the labor force around the house.
* Wealthier nations have better access to family planning: contraception, abortion, pasttimes that can meaningfully compete against getting laid in the first place.
Sources: Colleran, H., Snopkowski, K. Variation in wealth and educational drivers of fertility decline across 45 countries. Popul Ecol 60, 155–169 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-018-0626-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10144-018-0626-5
More Work, Fewer Babies: What Does Workism Have to Do with Falling Fertility? - Laurie DeRose and Lyman Stone https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/reports/ifs-workis...