Matt wrote: "The more intelligent someone is, the less likely they are to have children."

Oohhhh, that would put Jim Bob Duggar into the remedial classes, BIG TIME. :)

who is this cyborg matt really?

i am going to ask him a question on bass fishing and try to stump him

Well also if you expect half your kids to die before they reach adulthood you will have more of them just to end up with a few survivors. Then if there are major advances in food availablity and medical care, it might take a few years for the customs to alter in response to the new conditions.

Exactly. Primitive customs = more children. A constant supply of workers, really.

The more intelligent someone is, the less likely they are to have children. Now, there are many different reasons for this... It's quite fascinating, really. The idea of looking for an "equal" spouse becomes progressively more difficult as you move up the curve.

Fair enough.

One of the things that quite delights me is that among the more reliable methods for reducing the birthrate in a country is increasing the social and economic position of women in that country. Because, turns out that given the choice, most women don't actually want to have fourteen children.

No, I wasn't blaming the birthrate (as I mentioned before, the marked decline in birthrate is directly proportional to wealth/education); I was talking about the issue of overpopulation in third world countries leading to unpleasant scenarios.

According to YSM, my generation is poised to be the first truly 'childless' generation; that is, the notion of getting married/starting a family is becoming less and less important.

Because, really, the idea of starting a family is to adhere to societal norms...

The life span is gradually increasing, however, this causes women to delay having children until the point when it's no longer physically possible. This reduces the birthrate.

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publica...

Unsurprisingly the country with the highest fertility rate is the Republic of the Congo. The lowest, it turns out, is Macao at .91. Macao also has the highest life expectancy - 84 years.

The problem is a lot more complicated than people need to stop having so many children. Because they are stopping.
I agree with BunWat.

I said the birthrate is not the problem because the world's birthrate is not rising. From 1950-55 the number of children per woman world wide (fertility rate) was 5.1, from 1970-75 it was 4.5, from 2000-05 it was 2.6, and it is projected to continue falling. Although the fertility rate is the highest in the least developed nations, it is still falling, even in those nations. Also the rate of death is highest in those nations.

The population of the world is not growing because people are having more and more children. It is growing because people are living longer. Global life expectancy at birth was 46 years in 1950-55 and 65 in years 2000-2005. We are riding a bubble, because although the birthrate is falling it is not falling faster than longevity is rising.

But that isn't going to continue indefinitely. At some point in the next fifty years, if current trends continue, the fertility rate and the replacement rate (number of people that need to be replaced to hold the population level) are going to meet. At which point the world's population no longer be growing.

That is what I meant by the birthrate isn't the problem. If you define the problem as a rising birthrate, you've defined the problem incorrectly. You can of course argue that the birthrate should fall faster, and there is a reasonable argument to be made along those lines. Because leveling out at 9 or 11 billion is probably not where we need to be.

My point still stands. The problem is a lot more complicated than people need to stop having so many children. Because they are stopping.

No, I'm just a curious young man. Heh.

When she said that birthrate isn't the problem. Poor countries have large, uneducated populations. As such, raw materials are rapidly consumed--the consumption is disproportionate to the stock.

Less materials = less consumption = starvation = disease = death = thriving microbes = mutagenic adaptation = new, more virulent pathogens = everyone's fucked.

how can matt know so much about DNA, world population, the chemical make up of Certs, ethnological quandaries, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory AND baseball????

kinda spooky really. is he really a cyborg?

Matt knows his stuff in this area, no doubt. Spit it out, sir. Buns is always cool about this sort of thing.

That is, if JSTOR wasn't undergoing maintenance...

Funny you mention that, I was just complaining JSTOR was slow last week...

yeah matt, what is she wrong about? i get following these posts and then bam! she is wrong but no one knows what about?

i do know that #24 made me laugh whether it was supposed to or not

BunWat wrote: "Yep.

Also genetic regression suggests that it may have been a really really small group that succeded in getting out of Africa. Like less than 300. "

Mind boggling.

Matt, about what am I wrong?

I'm sorry, Bun, but you're wrong.

This is certainly a major problem that we're going to be facing.

This growth is coming from third world countries. That's to be expected, as wealth/education increases, the birth rate markedly declines.

Fortunately, there has been a marked increase in childless marriages in this country; quite similar to how my (1984-2000) generation is poised to be the childless generation. Granted, there are always exceptions (teen pregnancies, accidents, etc); however the idea of adhering to societal norms (such as getting married/starting a family) are rapidly being pushed aside. This is, perhaps, due to the growing awareness of the scarcity of consumables.

I'll try and post the YMS study. That is, if JSTOR wasn't undergoing maintenance...

Microbes can always outsmart human preventatives/treatments. Should something akin to Sin Nombre (Hanta) becoming easily transmissible, even western countries would be decimated.

Look at XDR TB, for example. These things adapt. Quickly.

I'm exceptionally well-versed in this area. Fun stuff.

Yep.

Also genetic regression suggests that it may have been a really really small group that succeded in getting out of Africa. Like less than 300.

That's what I'm talking about.

Yes, analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggests that the population of homo sapiens fell to somewhere in the region of 5,000 individuals somewhere between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago. Shortly before our ancestors left Africa and headed into Asia.

hee!

*wiping some of that residue off*

Ewww!

"Extinction" is a misnomer, I think. There's almost always a residue. I recall reading somewhere that our ancestors at one point were down to a very small group of survivors, on the very brink of the extinction that was the fate of other hominid species.

The plague(s) didn't extinct us.

I guess not so much disease, unless you count the plague.

From disease, though, Larry? Or just from massive climate change, or meteor strikes like the one they think did in the dinosaurs...

Mass extinctions have happened with some regularity over the history of the planet.

I read The Coming Plague years ago, and it does seem like it's only a matter of time before increasing populations, incursions into wilderness, and the speed of international travel lead to some microbe getting loose and decimating humanity.

I know the medical community is on the lookout for it, watching bird flu and SARS very closely.
And now there's the H1N1 virus, which is predicted to hit hard in a couple of months.

On the other hand, humans seem pretty darn hardy, and just as adaptable as viruses. I would expect that any epidemic would be much, much more devastating in the poorer regions of the world, as AIDS has been, but it would take something extremely lethal to wipe out the western countries.

Agreed. The way to deal with this is careful planning, not poor conditions in cities that could easily lead to epidemics.
I'm still being influenced in my thinking by The Ghost Map The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, I can tell.

I know that some of the city governments have actually tried to discourage people from moving to the city by just not providing services. Since it is well and thoroughly established that that doesn't work, time and past time to stop it, and start working seriously on how to deal with the influx.

exactly. i have seen enough shanty towns

Also on city planning since most of those people are going to move to cities. So we can either have mega slums, or we can get serious about putting in the infrastructure.

the money needs to be spent on new and innovative ways to grow food crops as well as potable water to accommodate these swelling populations.

Oh I completely agree that there is a crisis with current populations, and global warming is going to make it worse as the areas where crops will grow shift, and droughts increase in frequency. But since the birth rate isn't the problem; its important not to put a bunch of money and effort in the wrong place.

Even if we have some effective solutions, you still have to get past the corruption in some countries to feed the starving.

good points bun. i just know from my recent experiences in some of these places that there is a crisis now with the current population in regards to feeding, water and such.

That article, while technically correct, seems a bit misleading to me. It leaves out some fairly important information, like - fertility rates have been declining since the sixties, most of the current population growth is from people living longer, that the rate of growth is dropping and has been for about 20 years, that population is expected to peak around 2050 and thereafter decline.

Of course that does not mean there aren't significant challenges in feeding the people of the world, or that those challenges aren't going to get worse, but after reading that article a person could easily come away with the wrong impression about what's going on. And if you don't know what's going on how are you going to support effective solutions?

yep. so do like most of the world and quit thinking about it and think about what new cell phone you want or if brad and jen are on or off and it will all go away

It's kind of overwhelming.

(this is a hot topic for me)

hey, i know heidi. i am seriously concerned about it. and clean drinking water too. because of my projects in some of these areas i know the dire situation they are in now. cities will become massive as the people from rural areas continue to flock to these places looking for work. look at the mega-cities now? the sheer population is astounding. look at the population increases since like 1970 or even 1980. then you have more infectious disease spread as people are right on top of each other. we need to spend more money on figuring out how to care for this world population and less on finding out if mars can support life in the unimaginable future

::hands Heidi a kleenex::

:'(

better quit making ethanol with our corn and start making corn muffins. lots of people to feed in places where they can barely do it now

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/...

Could you move your arm over a bit? You're taking up too much of the armrest.