#1
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As Peter Schiff says, anything can happen. But there are some things that probably won't. We have good historical and statistical arguments as to why demographics aren't destiny.

Fertility is a very squirrely, path-dependent, autoregressive thing. Cross correlation between fertility and its determinants is a major factor. This is covered in a lot more depth elsewhere, but sources are a waste. Suffice it to say that there are long term cycles in human populations that last a few hundred years at a time.

At first, this makes it sound as if negative population growth will continue. But actually, this process allows changes in fertility rates to accumulate. For example, the argument against contraceptive aid is that only a tiny fraction of the population will use it. But the effect of any intervention builds over time. As 5% of people reduce their fertility and invest in sending kids to school, the other 95% raise their educational investments as well. This lowers fertility further, and the minor initial change snowballs into a transition.

This process works just as well in reverse. The most obvious check on population decline is population density. As population falls, more land is available, lowering the cost of living and incentivizing larger families. This is turn repeatedly ratchets up the socially normative family size so long as population density remains low enough.

Globally, going by simple correlations, every halving of population density raises fertility 3%. But this is just the annual effect. Because present fertility is affected by past fertility, some of that 3% change is "locked in", perhaps causing a permanent 1% rise in the desired family size. The following year, fertility rises another 3%. Some of this increase sticks, and the process continues until fertility rises above replacement and the population grows past its starting point.

Eventually of course population density will rise, cost of living will go up, and fertility will begin to decrease. Population will continue to go up and down, overshooting its initial point while gradually steadying toward equilibrium, like a plucked string.

Here's a simple theoretical model. The fertility rate keeps 20% of any change accumulated in the previous period. Fertility also gets a +3% nudge every period in which population density is half its initial value, and -3% every period in which it is twice that value. We start out with below replacement fertility, 1.5, with a 2.1 replacement rate, and a population density of 1.



And as you can see, below replacement fertility is not sustained. Although population falls a lot initially, this barely lasts a few generations, after which population has a dramatic uptick and stabilizes.

It's similar to the Lotka Volterra model or whatever, where population grows and dies off according to predators and environmental carrying capacity. But the changes in this model are driven by personal fertility decisions, land prices and too many annoying neighbors rather than anything scary.

The huge upward swing in this model wouldn't necessarily be as drastic in real life because there are numerous factors buffeting the fertility rate in both directions. Incidentally, though, this is a bit of paradox for the voluntary human extinction crowd. Volatility in either direction has the net effect of increasing long-run average population. Unless population control policies are consistent and and prolonged, they will cause an upsurge in population once relaxed. And if they're implemented too consistently, counteracting factors will build up over time causing a massive fertility surge anyway. The optimal strategy once fertility is already falling is to just leave it alone.

But let's look at real data.

Historical demographics is an example of this all. The world population in the stone age was determined by many factors, such as population density, disease, desired family size, immigration, and social and economic conditions.

Some argue that desired family size was not a factor because the fertility rate in most places was five to eight, or as much as possible. But that is not the maximum. Catholics in Germany were averaging eleven children. It's just that most of them never reached adulthood, so the replacement fertility rate was high also. Any periods of below replacement fertility, if sustained, should have endlessly pummeled population levels down to nothing just like they would now.

But that never came to be. Periods of below replacement fertility ended as various counteracting factors kicked in, like immunity to disease and more food availability. The fact that disease and starvation don't exist in modern Europe is irrelevant. Modern populations are under the same paradigm, just with cost of living being a more important consequence of population density.



As you can see, the world has had its own periods of below replacement fertility before. Did they spiral out of control into Mormon fundamentalist caliphate? No. Counteracting factors built up over time and the population sprang back.

But even if density isn't the main equilibrating factor, there are others that prevent population from falling to zero. Changes in government policies, economic conditions, culture, and immigration take population on a random walk over time. There is historical precedent for population decline but something always gets in the way at the last minute.

At some point, what are now low population density areas, like the Middle East or the Americas, will become high population density areas, like Europe or India. And vice versa. Population density will continue to oscillate back and forth, but will never fall to zero and will probably not result in anything interesting.

And to respond to the forecasts of some religious minority taking over the world- as already well said, cults always burn out. Islam, for example, has not remained unchanged over the years. It's gone through alternating periods of loosening up and orthodox revival, generally more of the former. The world religions are very watered down versions of what they originally were. There has never been a tiny orthodox group which won back all the rest. The opposite always happens given enough time.

Hopefully this helps someone, I think a few were genuinely worried for a second there.

Edited by mustang ()

#2
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not one word
#3
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wasted posted:

not one word



It's not for you, it's for the people who actually believed me when I said that mormon takeover was inevitable (rather than just probable).

#4
nuMbA B1tcH
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my reactiom

#5
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mustang posted:

wasted posted:

not one word

It's not for you, it's for the people who actually believed me when I said that mormon takeover was inevitable (rather than just probable).


Nobody here gives a shit about anything you have to say

#6
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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#7
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Nobody here gives a shit about anything you have to say



This is true, however, my opening post probably wasn't outspoken or frank enough to generate a five page thread.

#8
tardy on these heaters
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gababhgahgbagjagbagafbagbabfagjafba
#9
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ughhhhh go away
#10
tardy on these heaters
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can we talk about that thing you said about how you dont like sex

have yuo ever had it
#11
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that was directed at "the OP" but you should go away too
#12
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ughhhhh go away



I'd like to but I can't help myself, and whoever runs this site hasn't put up a proxy scan.

So since we've agreed that it's a bad idea to extrapolate fertility, did you know that there was a sequel to 1984?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_%28Gy%C3%B6rgy_Dalos_novel%29

#13
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i dont care
#14
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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mustang posted:

So since we've agreed that it's a bad idea to extrapolate fertility, did you know that there was a sequel to 1984?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_%28Gy%C3%B6rgy_Dalos_novel%29



yeh its called Diamond Dawgz and it fuckng owns

#15
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The braindead scientophobic liberal arts majors always squirm when confronted with material scientific analysis.

Mustang, what do you think will be the result of overwhelming women's enrollment in universities, female control/selection of reproduction and family and so on, which is happening in all communities including the fundamentalist ones? Recently in China the government took steps in taking women's ascension down a peg or two by restricting their education as it would seriously damage the patriarchal structure in the long term.

Will reaction scale up in similar fashion to China in the West or will we see the withering away of male professional majority, with men confined to backbreaking labor and other structural inversions and disruptions? Obviously female political majority wouldn't result in any meaningful change from decaying finance capitalism and third world exploitation, much less result in "motherly socialism" as some radical feminists hope and neoreactionaries fear – after all First World women benefit just as much from the status quo and we have seen our fair share of tyrannical, individualistic, shrewd and/or obsessively dominant stateswomen with Indira Gandhi, Thatcher, Jiang Qing, Golda Meir etc, just like scientific research on female objectification shows women are also complicit. Maybe some widespread Sweden-type lawmaking but that's about it.

Cheers.
#16
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extrapolate the ppulation to zero
#17
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can we ban cointelbro too he's really goony
#18
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i had sex with david lynch in my dream last night
#19
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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Dusz posted:

extrapolate the ppulation to zero



extrapolate my balls