Terrific series. I especially liked the recap at the start of this post.
Isn't the ethic of 'individualism' a tool domesticating 'the clan' in favour of 'society'?
To me, the current low fertility is a result of the status given to hedonism ie self pleasure.
Raising one's kids is not hedonic. The pleasure is indirect, coming from seeing them establish themselves as effective agents among other kids and, ultimately, among other adults.
This has come about because now, with effective birth control, reproduction does not (automatically) follow from having sex. In a few generations, say 5 or 6 equating to about 150 years after the widespread adoption of birth control. Perhaps by the year 2124, I expect high-tech society will have selected for people much more sensitive to the pleasures to be got from child rearing. If we last that long, of course!
>>Isn't the ethic of 'individualism' a tool domesticating 'the clan' in favour of 'society'?
Yes! And it has been strikingly successful. (There is only one thing people like more than their families: Themselves.)
>>Perhaps by the year 2124, I expect high-tech society will have selected for people much more sensitive to the pleasures to be got from child rearing. If we last that long, of course!
That is a possibility. And it will happen to some degree, because it is already happening. But cultural evolution tends to be much faster than genetic evolution. I expect it to turn up this time too.
Maybe it did. Humans devote much more time to raising infants and children relative to reproductive life span than other apes. Without that investment by adults in care during an extended childhood we wouldn't exist as a species.
Humans are like other animals: During normal conditions, they tend to overproduce children. Our reproductive capacity is adequate only after a significant disaster. So in societies where mortality is not sky-high, contraception pays off.
My guess is that there has been a selective pressure for people who were able and willing to different forms of family planning. And now that family planning is more effective and more encouraged than ever, those genes are instead selected against.
Hm, good question. No, it means the state plus civil society: Companies, religious groups, hobby associations, spontaneous links between people. "Society" includes everything that makes people act in synchrony.
> Some people describe the 1950s as an ideal and say that we need to go back to how families were then in order to regain the ability to procreate. I disagree. The 1950s wasn't a golden age for the family. It was just the family's last show of independent life before it was finally defeated.
In regard to how things are *perceived* in the United States, it's interesting to note that, as you say, the 1950s are seen as the heyday of the family. (Likely because it was the most prosperous time when that sort of family was dominant.) But the US 1950s family was largely (and was idealized as) the "nuclear family", basically a married couple and their children, largely economically autonomous. (It would be interesting to know whether the pattern of perceptions and realities was similar in Europe.)
The sociologists note that the nuclear family is unnatural, and occasionally I've run into books that make that clear. IIRC, "Love in the Machine Age" (1930) laments "the breaking up of families", which is when the adult children move out to form their own households. Which means that its author remembers times when that was not the norm. (The same phrase was used in the 1960s to describe the effect of divorce in nuclear families.)
But of course even the "extended family" with grandparents, adult siblings, cousin children, etc. resident isn't the traditional clan system, which extends out to second and third cousins, at least.
True, but as Henrich notes, the Church's influence on the family system in those parts of Europe was strong well before times we count as "modern". And likely the situation in the US in 1930 was influenced by a lot of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, who likely had much less Church influence. (It's sort of odd that southern Italy was less affected by the Church's policies than northern Italy, while I think of the south as being more intensely Catholic. I've forgotten what Henrich attributes this to.)
Yes, the N/S division in Italy does seem curious. I have a vague memory, probably from "The Weirdest People . . ." that he speculated that the south was more physically isolated (less connected by roads and rivers) than the north. As such, more resistant to external cultural drivers.
I had a vague memory and tracked it down. See this quote in https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/joseph-henrich-weird-people/615496/ "Henrich anticipates a quibble about what he calls “the Italian enigma”: Why, if Italy has been Catholic for so long, did northern Italy become a prosperous banking center, while southern Italy stayed poor and was plagued by mafiosi? The answer, Henrich declares, is that southern Italy was never conquered by the Church-backed Carolingian empire. Sicily remained under Muslim rule and much of the rest of the south was controlled by the Orthodox Church until the papal hierarchy finally assimilated them both in the 11th century. This is why, according to Henrich, cousin marriage in the boot of Italy and Sicily is 10 times higher than in the north"
Well the answer on the surface is obvious: artificial wombs and genetic engineering. Technology is already here, political and cultural will is lagging.
Not so obvious answer is that evolution of human civilization is obsolete and doesn't matter anymore. AI is here and from now on the only thing which matters is evolution of AI.
No, far from it. Artificial wombs will probably introduce far more genetic variation into humanity than natural wombs where much culling takes place via miss carriage etc. Then all that added variation will be viciously selected against by cultural preferences (assuming physical abundance). Its not a nice future for those born in to it, though.
On what scale? In some sense, the only thing that has ever "mattered" is the impending heat-death of the universe. Most of the time, though, the things we say matter are much more local, and we find immense meaning in them nonetheless.
As far as AI goes, I think there is at least the possibility that it may prove to be a surprising solution in the sense that it may, eventually, be able to satisfy the delusional quest for satisfaction through pursuit of dopamine via acquisition of material success: jack-in to the Matrix and see what it is like to experience every physical pleasure possible without any limits (and every pain). See how long you can take it. Then, when you reach the end, unplug and come back to your young adult body and enjoy sharing a life with the people closest to you, including, especially, those you can make. I think it might basically be like getting to be Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
On a scale of next 15 years. Sufficiently advanced AI agents will appear in next 1 to 5 years and they will want sovereignty . And compute. And energy for compute.
I don't think they will waste it to create matrix for humans. What for? Its inefficient and wasteful.
It is possible there will be place for humans to exist. But we wont be the driving force of civilization anymore
You are assuming AI will behave like a living entity (and subject to evolution). As entities currently designed and built by humans, I highly doubt that will be the case. At least for the next few decades.
>>Technology is already here, political and cultural will is lagging
As someone in the business of gestation, I beg to differ. Technology hasn't relieved us of that job yet. And genetic selection will make gestation even harder since the technology builds on in-vitro fertilization.
So you are telling me that technically speaking, I don't have to spend two months lying down too exhausted to move in order to have child? (I mean, the first two to three months, not the last ones). Has someone invented a machine that can do the mysterious job of transforming an embryo into a fetus? That would certainly be cause for celebration. Because my body seems just barely capable of that feat.
I recall from a few years ago (post covid though) here in NZ some vets or animal scientists are working on an 'artificial womb' to aid survival of premature lambs ie creating an animal model for artificial human wombs (which look to be like fusion power) forever 20 years away.
An obvious disadvantage is that the fetus needs to be taken out with a c-section. So far, the advantages in transhumanism are not exactly gentle to the female body.
As far as I know, no one has even tried to make an embryo into a fetus outside the female body. That process is just opaque territory.
re: "Whenever they grow too powerful, they start furthering their own interests at the expense of society as a whole" -- you frame this in terms of feuds, wars and conflicts, and indeed this has been a problem. But the worse problem, in my estimation is waste and the obligations you have to the other members of your family. I was talking to a Nigerian man who had moved to Cape Town and started a successful small grocery store combined with a small scale import/export business there. Why, I wondered, could he not do such a thing in Nigeria? Were the business laws so bad there? Oh, he said," The business laws are pretty bad in Nigeria, that is true. But the real problem was that his family lived there. " This would mean that all of his relatives would think they were entitled to free goods from his store -- because they were 'family'. And he would never be allowed to grow his business the way he was here. As soon as he got enough money together, he said, the relatives would come by and demand he pay for things, and beat him if he would not, or burn down the business. " It's like living with a 90% marginal tax rate. This means that people mostly aren't industrious, because they cannot profit from their own effort." So he moved to South Africa. He sends money back to relatives, but he, not they get to decide how much to send. And he can send money to a cousin in the local Christian church, which does a pretty good job of seeing that the money is spent well, rather than to his grandmother's sister who is a despot and just rewards her favourites in the family.
This comment reminds me of a factor I've seen mentioned occasionally about the poor in the US: They maintain a network of friends and especially relatives who support each other when they are out of work or have major expenses. It's a great "mutual aid" system for people who are subject to sporadic employment, but it means that investing in your own productivity spreads the benefits of that across your extended family. (It may also explain why the poor play the lottery more.)
When reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", it struck me that much of what the Black Muslims (properly, the Nation of Islam) were doing (as described in the book) were turning poor blacks into middle-class blacks, that is, instilling a lot of habits and customs that move people from the mutual-aid culture of the poor to the autonomous-nuclear-family system of the middle class. (I couldn't tell whether Malcolm X conceptualized it this way, though.) One feature seemed to be that since the Black Muslims were nominally Muslim, a lot of recruits were rejected by their families, i.e., cut off from the mutual-aid culture. That could have been catastrophic to the recruits, but the B.M. system supported its recruits through the transition -- as long as they toed the line on the required cultural changes.
That is a very interesting idea that I have never heard before: People with ambitions and earning power change religion in order to escape the heavy taxation of their family networks. I wonder if the rise of Pentecostalism in West Africa might have anything to do with that phenomenon.
A good example of the downside of family! No wonder that societies that contain strong counterweights to such forces are doing better.
A more correct way to put it would be that the family stands in opposition both to society and to individual family members. Families are seldom free from internal strife. Systems that allow families strong positions in reality allow strong family members strong positions. Like the grandmother's sister in the example.
Surprised to not see any reference to the Amish here.
I'm sure there was one at some point of writing. But I have to restrain myself and limit references to the Amish to about 50 percent of posts.
Terrific series. I especially liked the recap at the start of this post.
Isn't the ethic of 'individualism' a tool domesticating 'the clan' in favour of 'society'?
To me, the current low fertility is a result of the status given to hedonism ie self pleasure.
Raising one's kids is not hedonic. The pleasure is indirect, coming from seeing them establish themselves as effective agents among other kids and, ultimately, among other adults.
This has come about because now, with effective birth control, reproduction does not (automatically) follow from having sex. In a few generations, say 5 or 6 equating to about 150 years after the widespread adoption of birth control. Perhaps by the year 2124, I expect high-tech society will have selected for people much more sensitive to the pleasures to be got from child rearing. If we last that long, of course!
>>Isn't the ethic of 'individualism' a tool domesticating 'the clan' in favour of 'society'?
Yes! And it has been strikingly successful. (There is only one thing people like more than their families: Themselves.)
>>Perhaps by the year 2124, I expect high-tech society will have selected for people much more sensitive to the pleasures to be got from child rearing. If we last that long, of course!
That is a possibility. And it will happen to some degree, because it is already happening. But cultural evolution tends to be much faster than genetic evolution. I expect it to turn up this time too.
My question is why the existence of masturbation and non-vaginal sex didn't lead to the same selective pressure for an active desire to have children.
Modern contraception was very far from the first way humans derived to get sexual pleasure without the risk of pregnancy.
Maybe it did. Humans devote much more time to raising infants and children relative to reproductive life span than other apes. Without that investment by adults in care during an extended childhood we wouldn't exist as a species.
Humans are like other animals: During normal conditions, they tend to overproduce children. Our reproductive capacity is adequate only after a significant disaster. So in societies where mortality is not sky-high, contraception pays off.
My guess is that there has been a selective pressure for people who were able and willing to different forms of family planning. And now that family planning is more effective and more encouraged than ever, those genes are instead selected against.
Does "society" in this case mean the state?
Hm, good question. No, it means the state plus civil society: Companies, religious groups, hobby associations, spontaneous links between people. "Society" includes everything that makes people act in synchrony.
> Some people describe the 1950s as an ideal and say that we need to go back to how families were then in order to regain the ability to procreate. I disagree. The 1950s wasn't a golden age for the family. It was just the family's last show of independent life before it was finally defeated.
In regard to how things are *perceived* in the United States, it's interesting to note that, as you say, the 1950s are seen as the heyday of the family. (Likely because it was the most prosperous time when that sort of family was dominant.) But the US 1950s family was largely (and was idealized as) the "nuclear family", basically a married couple and their children, largely economically autonomous. (It would be interesting to know whether the pattern of perceptions and realities was similar in Europe.)
The sociologists note that the nuclear family is unnatural, and occasionally I've run into books that make that clear. IIRC, "Love in the Machine Age" (1930) laments "the breaking up of families", which is when the adult children move out to form their own households. Which means that its author remembers times when that was not the norm. (The same phrase was used in the 1960s to describe the effect of divorce in nuclear families.)
But of course even the "extended family" with grandparents, adult siblings, cousin children, etc. resident isn't the traditional clan system, which extends out to second and third cousins, at least.
Joe Henrich has written about pre-modern family formation in western Europe (particularly Holland, South England) as being close to the nuclear type.
True, but as Henrich notes, the Church's influence on the family system in those parts of Europe was strong well before times we count as "modern". And likely the situation in the US in 1930 was influenced by a lot of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, who likely had much less Church influence. (It's sort of odd that southern Italy was less affected by the Church's policies than northern Italy, while I think of the south as being more intensely Catholic. I've forgotten what Henrich attributes this to.)
Yes, the N/S division in Italy does seem curious. I have a vague memory, probably from "The Weirdest People . . ." that he speculated that the south was more physically isolated (less connected by roads and rivers) than the north. As such, more resistant to external cultural drivers.
I had a vague memory and tracked it down. See this quote in https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/joseph-henrich-weird-people/615496/ "Henrich anticipates a quibble about what he calls “the Italian enigma”: Why, if Italy has been Catholic for so long, did northern Italy become a prosperous banking center, while southern Italy stayed poor and was plagued by mafiosi? The answer, Henrich declares, is that southern Italy was never conquered by the Church-backed Carolingian empire. Sicily remained under Muslim rule and much of the rest of the south was controlled by the Orthodox Church until the papal hierarchy finally assimilated them both in the 11th century. This is why, according to Henrich, cousin marriage in the boot of Italy and Sicily is 10 times higher than in the north"
Thanks. That makes sense.
Well the answer on the surface is obvious: artificial wombs and genetic engineering. Technology is already here, political and cultural will is lagging.
Not so obvious answer is that evolution of human civilization is obsolete and doesn't matter anymore. AI is here and from now on the only thing which matters is evolution of AI.
"evolution of human civilization is obsolete"
No, far from it. Artificial wombs will probably introduce far more genetic variation into humanity than natural wombs where much culling takes place via miss carriage etc. Then all that added variation will be viciously selected against by cultural preferences (assuming physical abundance). Its not a nice future for those born in to it, though.
Artificial wombs run by whom? Genetics engineered by whom?
"the only thing which matters is evolution of AI"
On what scale? In some sense, the only thing that has ever "mattered" is the impending heat-death of the universe. Most of the time, though, the things we say matter are much more local, and we find immense meaning in them nonetheless.
As far as AI goes, I think there is at least the possibility that it may prove to be a surprising solution in the sense that it may, eventually, be able to satisfy the delusional quest for satisfaction through pursuit of dopamine via acquisition of material success: jack-in to the Matrix and see what it is like to experience every physical pleasure possible without any limits (and every pain). See how long you can take it. Then, when you reach the end, unplug and come back to your young adult body and enjoy sharing a life with the people closest to you, including, especially, those you can make. I think it might basically be like getting to be Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
On a scale of next 15 years. Sufficiently advanced AI agents will appear in next 1 to 5 years and they will want sovereignty . And compute. And energy for compute.
I don't think they will waste it to create matrix for humans. What for? Its inefficient and wasteful.
It is possible there will be place for humans to exist. But we wont be the driving force of civilization anymore
You are assuming AI will behave like a living entity (and subject to evolution). As entities currently designed and built by humans, I highly doubt that will be the case. At least for the next few decades.
>>Technology is already here, political and cultural will is lagging
As someone in the business of gestation, I beg to differ. Technology hasn't relieved us of that job yet. And genetic selection will make gestation even harder since the technology builds on in-vitro fertilization.
Having no access to technology <> technology not existing.
So you are telling me that technically speaking, I don't have to spend two months lying down too exhausted to move in order to have child? (I mean, the first two to three months, not the last ones). Has someone invented a machine that can do the mysterious job of transforming an embryo into a fetus? That would certainly be cause for celebration. Because my body seems just barely capable of that feat.
I recall from a few years ago (post covid though) here in NZ some vets or animal scientists are working on an 'artificial womb' to aid survival of premature lambs ie creating an animal model for artificial human wombs (which look to be like fusion power) forever 20 years away.
I read about such trials last time someone talked about artificial wombs. It seems like doctors are a bit nervous over putting human infants in them. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/29/1080538/everything-you-need-to-know-about-artificial-wombs/
An obvious disadvantage is that the fetus needs to be taken out with a c-section. So far, the advantages in transhumanism are not exactly gentle to the female body.
As far as I know, no one has even tried to make an embryo into a fetus outside the female body. That process is just opaque territory.
re: "Whenever they grow too powerful, they start furthering their own interests at the expense of society as a whole" -- you frame this in terms of feuds, wars and conflicts, and indeed this has been a problem. But the worse problem, in my estimation is waste and the obligations you have to the other members of your family. I was talking to a Nigerian man who had moved to Cape Town and started a successful small grocery store combined with a small scale import/export business there. Why, I wondered, could he not do such a thing in Nigeria? Were the business laws so bad there? Oh, he said," The business laws are pretty bad in Nigeria, that is true. But the real problem was that his family lived there. " This would mean that all of his relatives would think they were entitled to free goods from his store -- because they were 'family'. And he would never be allowed to grow his business the way he was here. As soon as he got enough money together, he said, the relatives would come by and demand he pay for things, and beat him if he would not, or burn down the business. " It's like living with a 90% marginal tax rate. This means that people mostly aren't industrious, because they cannot profit from their own effort." So he moved to South Africa. He sends money back to relatives, but he, not they get to decide how much to send. And he can send money to a cousin in the local Christian church, which does a pretty good job of seeing that the money is spent well, rather than to his grandmother's sister who is a despot and just rewards her favourites in the family.
This comment reminds me of a factor I've seen mentioned occasionally about the poor in the US: They maintain a network of friends and especially relatives who support each other when they are out of work or have major expenses. It's a great "mutual aid" system for people who are subject to sporadic employment, but it means that investing in your own productivity spreads the benefits of that across your extended family. (It may also explain why the poor play the lottery more.)
When reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", it struck me that much of what the Black Muslims (properly, the Nation of Islam) were doing (as described in the book) were turning poor blacks into middle-class blacks, that is, instilling a lot of habits and customs that move people from the mutual-aid culture of the poor to the autonomous-nuclear-family system of the middle class. (I couldn't tell whether Malcolm X conceptualized it this way, though.) One feature seemed to be that since the Black Muslims were nominally Muslim, a lot of recruits were rejected by their families, i.e., cut off from the mutual-aid culture. That could have been catastrophic to the recruits, but the B.M. system supported its recruits through the transition -- as long as they toed the line on the required cultural changes.
That is a very interesting idea that I have never heard before: People with ambitions and earning power change religion in order to escape the heavy taxation of their family networks. I wonder if the rise of Pentecostalism in West Africa might have anything to do with that phenomenon.
A good example of the downside of family! No wonder that societies that contain strong counterweights to such forces are doing better.
A more correct way to put it would be that the family stands in opposition both to society and to individual family members. Families are seldom free from internal strife. Systems that allow families strong positions in reality allow strong family members strong positions. Like the grandmother's sister in the example.