Re: “fear that falling birth rates [...] collapse of civilization.”
No, this is not one of the things that scares me. Also, birth rates decline predictably once a nation is developed, so if this were a significant concern, it would end up hitting China and India just as hard as it is currently hitting the US and Europe.
Re: “worry that the overlap [...] could ultimately disappear.”
No. Adoption of Progressive ideology is a memetic phenomenon, with mild to no genetic influence. (Update, 2023-04-03: I don’t endorse this claim, actually. I also don’t endorse the quoted “worry”.)
Do you think focusing on birth rates in “Western Civilization” is a good way of creating ‘intergenerationally, durable cultures that will lead to our species being a diverse, thriving, innovative interplanetary empire one day that isn’t at risk from, you know, a single asteroid strike or a single huge disease?’, and do you think it’s something that longtermists should focus on?
I guess this intervention would be better than nothing, strictly speaking. The mechanism of action here is “people have kids” → {”people feel like they have a stake in the future”, “people want to protect their descendants”} → “people become more aligned with longtermism”. I don’t think this is a particularly effective intervention.
Then it sounds like your idea of pronatalism and the Collinses idea of pronatalism looks quite different-if the article was written about the set of views you’ve expressed, I probably wouldn’t be sharing it.
No, this is not one of the things that scares me. Also, birth rates decline predictably once a nation is developed, so if this were a significant concern, it would end up hitting China and India just as hard as it is currently hitting the US and Europe.
No. Adoption of Progressive ideology is a memetic phenomenon, with mild to no genetic influence. (Update, 2023-04-03: I don’t endorse this claim, actually. I also don’t endorse the quoted “worry”.)
I guess this intervention would be better than nothing, strictly speaking. The mechanism of action here is “people have kids” → {”people feel like they have a stake in the future”, “people want to protect their descendants”} → “people become more aligned with longtermism”. I don’t think this is a particularly effective intervention.
Yes.
Eh, maybe.
Then it sounds like your idea of pronatalism and the Collinses idea of pronatalism looks quite different-if the article was written about the set of views you’ve expressed, I probably wouldn’t be sharing it.
Your claim that political ideology is not heritable is false
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/#:~:text=Almost forty years ago%2C evidence,be explained by genetic influences.