Birthrates only matter because of mass immigration. If you don't have mass immigration they're irrelevant, especially with the pace at which automation via LLM (including in the material world with PaLM-E and other multimodal models for robotics) is advancing.
It doesn't really matter if South Korea's population falls from 50m to 10m provided two things are true:
Firstly, that total productivity can be maintained (this seems likely with LLMs able to take over a large percentage of white collar labor over the next few years, and robotics + multimodal LLMs likely to take over a large percentage of blue collar labor over the next decade or two). In this case, no economic collapse is likely, and while fiscal policy might need to adjust to redistribute generated wealth, that's not an existential issue.
Secondly, that those very same advances mean that military preparedness isn't damaged by falling number of young men, which again, advances in drone warfare suggest is likely. Plus, North Korea's birthrate is also collapsing (see Kim's recent comments) and it has half SK's population, so any disadvantage is unlikely to be large.
The main reason to be worried about birthrates is demographic competition as in Lebanon, in Israel, in India and so on. If a minority group has much higher birthrates than the native population, the long-term balance of power in a nation is almost guaranteed to shift.
If you don't have mass immigration they're irrelevant
Go back and look at that part about "every family". Only one out of the four of us, my siblings and me, have children and they're going to carry on their father's line (such as it is). So my parents heritage is pretty much at a dead stop. It's only as you get older you realise "this is why we have rituals, this is why we have customs" in order to carry forward memory (I think this is why Sam Bankman-Fried's parents did him such a disservice with, if I believe Lewis' book, no celebrations of Jewish festivals or secular festivals or even his damn birthday).
It's easy to say "It doesn't matter if my family has no descendants, look at the millions of other people living in this country" but as you get older and the older generations die off, it becomes very clear how fragile the chain of knowledge is. Things changed in my father's lifetime, and he told me of those changes; things have also changed in my lifetime. But there's no-one for me to hand that knowledge on to, and in future if any one is researching such-and-such a place and the changes there, they won't know the information I could have told them.
It's very easy to lose knowledge, to have things forgotten, lost, not handed on. If you're pinning your hopes on automation and robots to replace humanity, you may not care. But look at history and archaeology and other sciences which would love to have that exact information to fill in the gaps of the past, but the chain of transmission was broken.
Falling birthrates matter when it comes to individual families, because the last person ever to remember an event/speak a language/practice an art dies, and that information is lost, and no amount of AI will ever get it back.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Birthrates only matter because of mass immigration. If you don't have mass immigration they're irrelevant, especially with the pace at which automation via LLM (including in the material world with PaLM-E and other multimodal models for robotics) is advancing.
It doesn't really matter if South Korea's population falls from 50m to 10m provided two things are true:
Firstly, that total productivity can be maintained (this seems likely with LLMs able to take over a large percentage of white collar labor over the next few years, and robotics + multimodal LLMs likely to take over a large percentage of blue collar labor over the next decade or two). In this case, no economic collapse is likely, and while fiscal policy might need to adjust to redistribute generated wealth, that's not an existential issue.
Secondly, that those very same advances mean that military preparedness isn't damaged by falling number of young men, which again, advances in drone warfare suggest is likely. Plus, North Korea's birthrate is also collapsing (see Kim's recent comments) and it has half SK's population, so any disadvantage is unlikely to be large.
The main reason to be worried about birthrates is demographic competition as in Lebanon, in Israel, in India and so on. If a minority group has much higher birthrates than the native population, the long-term balance of power in a nation is almost guaranteed to shift.
Go back and look at that part about "every family". Only one out of the four of us, my siblings and me, have children and they're going to carry on their father's line (such as it is). So my parents heritage is pretty much at a dead stop. It's only as you get older you realise "this is why we have rituals, this is why we have customs" in order to carry forward memory (I think this is why Sam Bankman-Fried's parents did him such a disservice with, if I believe Lewis' book, no celebrations of Jewish festivals or secular festivals or even his damn birthday).
It's easy to say "It doesn't matter if my family has no descendants, look at the millions of other people living in this country" but as you get older and the older generations die off, it becomes very clear how fragile the chain of knowledge is. Things changed in my father's lifetime, and he told me of those changes; things have also changed in my lifetime. But there's no-one for me to hand that knowledge on to, and in future if any one is researching such-and-such a place and the changes there, they won't know the information I could have told them.
It's very easy to lose knowledge, to have things forgotten, lost, not handed on. If you're pinning your hopes on automation and robots to replace humanity, you may not care. But look at history and archaeology and other sciences which would love to have that exact information to fill in the gaps of the past, but the chain of transmission was broken.
Falling birthrates matter when it comes to individual families, because the last person ever to remember an event/speak a language/practice an art dies, and that information is lost, and no amount of AI will ever get it back.
I was just wondering this morning if anyone even knows when the last native speaker of Hittite (or Etruscan, or Pelasgian) died.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link