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A comment on Don't worry about global population collapse. Parent comment

Re:Don't worry about global population collapse by stephc_int13 on Saturday September 30, 2023 @08:13PM (#37721245)
To be clear, I don't think this is the business of governments and nobody should be coerced to have or not to have children.

I believe that in case of population collapse, the solution will naturally appear to large enough number of people, evolution shaped us to reproduce, I don't think this instinct is likely to disappear, even if we might not fully understand it and why girls and women tend to have less children in some conditions (it happened before, in antiquity, and was considered to be a problem by Roman politicians, many of the current traditions around marriages were first created as laws...)

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Re:Don't worry about global population collapse by mensetmanusman on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:09PM (#37721554)
Evolution wasn’t aware of birth control.
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Re:Don't worry about global population collapse by Qem on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:30PM (#37721991)
> the solution will naturally appear to large enough number of people, evolution shaped us to reproduce.

The solution evolution found was to make us really like having sex. But then we invented hormonal birth control, and sex became uncoupled from reproduction. Evolution can't help us here, it works slowly over thousands of years, and can't uninvent birth control.

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Re:Don't worry about global population collapse by foob on Saturday September 30, 2023 @10:51PM (#37722096)
> it works slowly over thousands of years

This isn't always the case; evolution can happen relatively quickly in response to rapid changes in the environment [1]. There are plenty of people alive today who have particularly strong urges to have children, and the widespread introduction of birth control creates a major selective pressure towards any heritable genes that produce or enhance those urges. The effects of this could be very significant over even a relatively small number of generations.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

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Re:Don't worry about global population collapse by testval123 on Sunday October 01, 2023 @01:01AM (#37722737)
People will just start really like the idea of having children and will consciously do so
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Re:Don't worry about global population collapse by tuatoru on Sunday October 01, 2023 @12:12AM (#37722468)
It absolutely is the business of governments. Unavoidably so.

Housing policy, tax policy, education policy, healthcare policy, family law - governments are influencing population massively.

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