Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

Re:Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist by eridius on Thursday April 28, 2016 @04:50PM (#11591801)

I did not suggest that they have little agency around population control. What I suggested was that aliens will continue to want to have children, and so space will be needed for those children given that the parents won't be dying any time soon.

Beyond that, if you have effectively infinite space and resources, there's no need at all to have even the slightest bit of population control. Population control is only necessary to ensure adequate resources (including space to live) for everybody. But when there's no constraint on resources, there's no reason why anybody shouldn't have as many children as they desire.

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Re:Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist by stcredzero on Thursday April 28, 2016 @06:02PM (#11592235)

I did not suggest that they have little agency around population control. What I suggested was that aliens will continue to want to have children

So you suggested that their civilization as a whole had little agency around population control.

Beyond that, if you have effectively infinite space and resources, there's no need at all to have even the slightest bit of population control.

You're forgetting simple geometry. Space empires can only expand proportional to n^3, while their population could potentially expand proportional to k^n. Also, in a situation where there are multiple star-faring "species," a hegemonic, exponentially expanding entity might well be viewed by others as worse than obnoxious.

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Re:Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist by eridius on Thursday April 28, 2016 @07:28PM (#11592662)

You're ignoring constant factors. Space empires will likely expand much faster than dictated by population needs, to the degree that, as it spreads out, it will presumably experience a reduction in population density. Sure, with multiple star-faring empires, there may be a limit to how far in space a given empire can expand, but a Type III society is capable of building all sorts of gigastructures, including ringworlds and dyson spheres, so even a moderate expansion out of a single solar system will provide plenty of room for population expansion. It's also likely that immortal or long-lived species will end up having a relatively low number of children (given effective immortality and complete control over reproductive capability, it seems likely that aliens will choose to have a low number of children over their lifetime and will likely wait much longer before having their first child, which means even a simple doubling in population will take place over a relatively long time).

Given these reasonable assumptions, it seems likely to me that most space-faring civilizations of this level of technology will never experience any kind of pressure on living space. If you've ever read the Culture series (by Iain M. Banks) then you might reasonably expect such a civilization to "Sublime" before running out of space. Or to eventually alter themselves so as to remove the desire to procreate in a deliberate move to "retire" from the galactic stage.

I said "most" because there is of course the possibility that some species comes along that has the urge not just to procreate but to have as many children as possible as fast as possible, and manages to achieve this level of technology without ever altering this behavior. Such a species that is driven to expand its population as fast as possible may then experience restrictions on living space, but such a species would eventually have to enact population control, which could take the form of altering themselves to remove this urge to procreate as fast as possible and therefore will become just like "most space-faring civilizations".

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Re:Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist by stcredzero on Thursday April 28, 2016 @07:51PM (#11592773)

I am a big fan of The Culture. Also, it sounds like you just posited that advanced civilizations would effectively exercise population control, otherwise avoid shortages and avoid the necessity of rapid spatial expansion though technological means.

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Re:Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist by eridius on Thursday April 28, 2016 @09:06PM (#11593114)

My belief is that advanced civilizations would naturally end up with what is effectively population control, without any actual active work towards that goal. As birth control becomes easy and prevalent, unwanted pregnancies stop happening. And it seems reasonable to me that, given greatly extended life span / effective immortality, people will naturally choose to wait longer before having children (if they have any at all) and will have relatively few children and/or will have a long duration between children. So this does pretty much amount to population control, without having any actual restriction on any given individual's ability to have children.

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Re:Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist by stcredzero on Friday April 29, 2016 @02:58PM (#11597937)

So this does pretty much amount to population control

From the POV of an outsider or a different species, would any entity care about the difference between "effectively/pretty much" and what you deem to be "actual" population control?

I doubt it.

So basically, you haven't been disagreeing with me, just splitting hairs on what the words "population control" means. I'm using a more generic criteria: Is the population controlled?

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Re:Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist by eridius on Friday April 29, 2016 @06:05PM (#11599069)

I think I'm drawing the distinction between "active population control" and "passive population control". I define "active population control" as anything where the goal is to control population and active steps are taken in that direction, typically with the effect of reducing freedom of individuals (e.g. a simple control would be "no more than 2 children per couple", which means an individual cannot decide to have 3 children). Whereas "passive population control" is basically where population growth ends up controlled as a side-effect of other changes, generally without any limits on the freedoms of individuals (for example, eliminating unwanted pregnancies would be a form of passive population control; the goal isn't to control the population but rather to eliminate an undesired situation, and no individual's freedom is curtailed, but the overall effect would be fewer children across the entire population).

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