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Fertility has fallen hugely, which is bad IMO. In addition to hundreds of millions of lives not lived, there are surely many discoveries and artistic products that were never made, because their creators were never born. I don't buy Malthusian logic, we could've used our resources more efficiently to sustain higher populations. Labour and brainpower is the most important economic input, more is better.
The advanced world is now below replacement rate, our civilization is literally unsustainable. A lot of people seem quite depressed and need powerful drugs to cope - I recall a statistic showing unmarried women in the 40-50 age group were hardest hit. Having children is probably good for you. At least it ought to be a default setting for wellness, like sunlight and sea-level air pressure. Our brains and bodies evolved to have children.
Anyway, the massive fall in fertility came just as the sexual revolution showed up, it's not like there was a massive plague or war at the same time. What other cause could there be?
Fertility has been dropping steadily since the early 19th century across the developed world. The sexual revolution at worst accelerated an ongoing trend, but if you look at the graph even that doesn't seem to be true, since the rate of decline since the 60s is actually lower than it was prior to the 40s - 50s baby boom.
Were people less depressed in 1932? 1832? Obviously most people would have said 'no' because 'I have depression' was not something that would have even crossed most people's minds, even if they displayed the same symptoms as someone who was 'diagnosed' with depression today, but would they have been popping SSRIs if they were available and socially acceptable? Does the question even make sense? Like I said in another comment, I don't really put a lot of stock into downward trends of positive answers to questions like "are you happy?" over time, because I doubt the invariance of the measurement. People were different in the past, even in very basic psychological ways. Someone then saying "I'm happy" and someone now saying "I'm not" doesn't imply the modern would be happier with the life of the premodern. Even if people are significantly more miserable today than the historical average, the sexual revolution is hardly the only thing that's changed in the past few decades. There's a huge inflection point in rates of self-reported anxiety and depression right at 2012 when social media exploded.
We evolved to have children not to enjoy children. It's not like the vast majority of people, at least not women, for the past million years had much of a choice in reproducing or not. The fact that rich people in every society in history offload as much of the hard work of child-rearing as possible onto servants strikes me as a very strong indicator that most people don't actually enjoy raising kids that much.
On a purely personal and selfish level having to marry a girl and raise seven kids sounds nightmarish and I am endlessly thankful that the technological and social change of the past century means I don't have to do that.
On the other hand we still have subgroups that maintain above replacement fertility, and they tend to not be the ones that leaned into the sexual revolution.
I don't like self-reports either. If they're dropped from all of sociology, we can dismiss them when discussing the sexual revolution as well, but not before.
Falling fertility seems to go hand in hand with both technological development and political/social liberalization. It's possible that only one is responsible for the effect, but since they almost never occur independently, it's hard to tell. If we all collectively decided to adopt the material and social circumstances of 19th century Russian peasants maybe we could get fertility rates back up, but this is exactly my problem with the "modernity is terrible because fertility rates are falling" argument. It is apparently the case that pre-modern society was able to reproduce itself, but I and a lot of people think pre-modern society was horrible in just about every respect and not worth reproducing. As far as I'm concerned, we either have to figure out some secret third thing that will solve falling fertility (whether it be artificial wombs or whatever) or resign ourselves to extinction. Either of those are preferable in my eyes to a return to pre-modern existence, though obviously the first would be better.
I don't want to defend all or even most of sociology.
I feel like you've dodged my argument. I have mentioned neither Russians nor peasants, the trend of more religious / conservative people having more children than secular / progressive ones is clear as day. We don't have to go full Amish (although - yes, they do have even higher birth rates).
Revealed preferences show that many people think modern society is not worth reproducing.
Thankfully we also have the option of just not listening to you, rejecting your worldview and your values, and reproducing the way we used to.
No one's forcing you to return to anything, you're free to believe that and act accordingly, but I don't see what gives you the right to speak in the name of all of humanity. For me, I'll happily embrace a pre-modern existence if that's the only option, and will wholeheartedly oppose any Frankensteinian invention like artificial wombs. Technology is there to serve us, not to reshape us according to the wants of those who own it.
Even among conservatives and the religious, fertility rates have been falling for decades and are barely at replacement. Even Utah is now below replacement. Only full on parallel societies like the Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews seem to be robustly reproducing and likely to keep it up for the foreseeable future.
I didn't claim to speak in the name of all humanity.
Technology serves us precisely by extending the production possibilities frontier and allowing us to get away with stuff that we couldn't in prior generations. Like hypothetically, allowing for the fertility rates of the 18th century without having to readopt any of the social mores or taboos.
Is that based on entire states like Utah, or levels of religiously / conservatism of specific groups. There's been increasing apostasy, and it's not news to me, but it only proves my point.
Well, if you want us all to go extinct, if we fail to endorse your Brave New World utopia, you kinda are.
My point is there is no "us" here, or if there is, it's a group vehemently opposed to my interests. In theory the Internet enables "us" to talk, organize, share, on a never before heard of scale. In practice, these conversations, organizing, and sharing is shaped by "them", while "we" are hounded on every step. At least when it comes to the Internet, it's impacts are limited to the black box in my room / pocket, with artificial wombs you are giving "them" total control over who will have how many of what kind children. From there, the assumption that humanity will even remain recognizably human for very long strikes me as extremely naive.
I'm pretty sure conservative/religious fertility is at almost exactly 2.0/replacement, while self identified liberal/secular is at 1.75 or so. Maybe it will maintain there, but considering how much higher it was a century or two ago, it strikes me as unlikely.
I state my preferences. Many people, including you, disagree.
Obviously we have totally incompatible views on what human society should look like in the future.
Burned out progressives like me might be screwing up the statistics. In any case it seems like conservatism is at least a protection factor, if not a cure.
I wasn't even referring to different visions for the future of humanity. There's the question of whether people controlling these technologies will see you as one of them, or as a tool at best, and an obstacle at worst. Personally I don't rate your chances well.
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