Apart from that, if you speak of group A going extinct and group B not, you are implicitly defining them as separate species. I don't think that's an accurate description of the present nor a plausible description of the future.
I don't see how this follows. I've definitely been in biology classes where we discussed different groups of rats in this way and we never considered them separate species just because they were different groups.
In the long run, all nations are developed nations, and then what will we use to draw distinctions between human beings? I’m sure folks will think of something.
It just goes to show.
I prefer to just shorthand this as "OECD" versus "non-OECD" which manages to just about cover all the states everyone actually means when they use "Western" (including tons of countries that aren't Western at all) or "developed", though the latter's a decent enough term IMO. "Western" is especially silly, of course, for a bunch of reasons, including that pretty much all the "original" Western states were themselves at some point "Westernized"—rolled over by Generic European-ish Capitalist "Culture", erasing most of what was there before, and absorbing and exporting those elements that could be sold to others (those parts becoming "Western")
This is just a nitpick as I agree with your overall point, but South Korea isn't agreed by everyone to be a developed country. In fact, they are right on the cusp as evidenced by the fact that some investment funds consider them developing and some consider them developed.
I almost think there should be a classification for the US, Japan, and the UK, and another for "everyone else". If you look at the number of medium to smallish companies that have access to public stock markets, there is a huge difference between those three countries and everywhere else. Something is fundamentally different about their economies. And I've never read where someone declares this a mystery worthy of investigation and tries to explain it.
That is, in fact, exactly how it’s defined within that religion. Also, using Egypt as an example is deeply ironic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZIqdrFeFBk
Why should someone not in a religion care how that religion defines things? I'm not quite clear what you're trying to say here.
In Egypt, the rate of wearing some form of veil went from almost zero in the middle of the 20th century to 90% today. For the most part, that trend is enforced through various degrees of social coercion.
It's not just apostasy that's considered punishable by death though, "encouraging it" is too, AIUI. So what proportion of those people are just scared that their objection to death penalties will be considered to be support for apostasy and so they'll die. I mean who would answer "no" if there's any possibility that it might lead to your death or even just the persecution of you and your family?
"There's no compulsion in Islam" every Islam supporter online tells me.
So what? Why should I care? What point are you trying to make?
>You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment indefinitely.
> fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply 'going extinct'.
We have around 7 billion people now. At the current growth rate of about 1%/yr the biomass of human beings will exceed the current weight of the planet Earth around the year 7200.
Not long after that this hypothetical growing humanity would collapse into a black hole under its own weight.
It'll already be quite cramped in the year 5400 with 1% growth. We'll have 5 people for every square meter of the surface of Earth (we have 510.1 trillion m^2). That's about the density near the front-row of a standing concert.
An ageing population has negative consequences, sure, we'll just have to manage them. Allowing the population to increase indefinitely isn't a solution though, it's just kicking the can down the road until you do hit a hard limit, and then you're in _real_ trouble.
It turns out the oceans are the opposite of robust, for how large they are.
The economy of N. America depends on building cheap housing, to attract more immigrants, so they can work building housing, to sell to new immigrants. I have nothing against immigrants. Just pointing out how the economy really works, despite what a small handful of people in a booming (but slowing) tech sector feel about what drives the economy - it's the housing market.
>The economy of N. America depends on building cheap housing, to attract more immigrants, so they can work building housing, to sell to new immigrants.
As described, that would fall into the 4%.
Yes there most certainly is a hard limit on how many people this plant can support. We have increased it, and continue to increase that limit with technology at a faster rate than reproduction but there are social trends that are seeing that progress rolled back.
Anti-GMO, Organic, and several other social trends in food production means the amount of land, water, and other supplied needed to a feed a person is growing not reducing. With out Advanced Farming, pesticides, GMO Crops and other advancements we would have exceeded the planets ability to provide long ago.
Take for example the Semi-dwarf wheat that has been claimed to save billions of people and makes up pretty much all wheat grown today.
This adversion of GMO is not based in science but rather F.U.D. I find it amusing that many people that are Anti-GMO are also very very concerned with Climate Change, and laugh a people that question climate change for being "anti-science" then then spread all kinds of lies and misinformation about GMO...
Humans through our metabolic process generate waste heat and Earth can only radiate so much so that does put a hard cap, albeit one much higher than people generally image, but a cap nonetheless. If we assume only the heat generated by our metabolic process that puts the limit over 250 trillion[0] but if we account for energy for food and industrial purposes that puts the limit closer to 10 trillion[1].
[0] https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/19441/what...
A fertility rate of 1.7 isn't the same as 'not reproducing' and doesn't imply 'going extinct'. You can't just extrapolate a trend at any given moment indefinitely. Otherwise if you pick a moment of rising population you'll extrapolate up to infinity or if you pick a moment of falling population you'll extrapolate to zero. Reality doesn't work like that. Arguably it's just a trend towards right-sizing the population.
Globally fertility rates have been falling for many decades. It's hardly surprising that the poorest countries are among the last to see fertility rates decline the most, but as income and education rates in those regions rise, their fertility rates will also fall.
As a for secularization, which you seem to conflate with social progress, counting 'Muslims' and 'Christians' isn't a simple exercise. Counting everyone born to Muslim parents as Muslim doesn't make any more sense than counting everyone who gives presents at Christmas as Christian. In fact attendances at Mosques and actual participation in religious activities is in decline across most of the Muslim world. In Europe most 'Muslims' do not pray every day. Egypt is a good proxy for trends in the Muslim world due to it's cultural influence. There are steep declines in religious practice and support for imposing Sharia Law has more than halved over the last decade.