You say 'Eugenics' like it's a bad thing (it is)
November 17, 2022 10:36 AM Subscribe
Inside the 'secular pronatalist' eugenics movement (Julia Black @ Business Insider, archive.org version)
Along with his 3-year-old brother, Octavian, and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus, Torsten has unwittingly joined an audacious experiment. According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations, the Collins bloodline will eventually outnumber the current human population.
The logic behind the Collins Institute reflects their thinking at large: "If you want to make the future better for everyone and you could choose to dramatically increase the educational outcomes of the bottom 10% of people or the top 0.1% of people," the Collinses say to choose the 0.1%.
Genetic screening, and the underlying assumption that some humans are born better than others, often invites comparisons to Nazi eugenic experiments. [...] The Collinses, who call themselves "ruthless pragmatists," consider the inevitable backlash a small price to pay.
The logic behind the Collins Institute reflects their thinking at large: "If you want to make the future better for everyone and you could choose to dramatically increase the educational outcomes of the bottom 10% of people or the top 0.1% of people," the Collinses say to choose the 0.1%.
Genetic screening, and the underlying assumption that some humans are born better than others, often invites comparisons to Nazi eugenic experiments. [...] The Collinses, who call themselves "ruthless pragmatists," consider the inevitable backlash a small price to pay.
I'm glad to see the secular version of this is just as sensible and forward-thinking as the religious version! This is a great plan, very respectful of women's labor and time, with a keen insight into mathematics, ecology, and human behavior over the generations, and I'm happy to hear that nothing could ever, ever go wrong with it!
posted by mittens at 10:40 AM on November 17, 2022 [84 favorites]
posted by mittens at 10:40 AM on November 17, 2022 [84 favorites]
Fascists always think they're in the top, not the bottom. I'd be more impressed if these idiots were like "Now, obviously we suck, and therefore we should be at the bottom in the Utility Servitor Class, so we're giving away everything. Please chain me to a piece of plumbing and hand me my plunger."
posted by aramaic at 10:41 AM on November 17, 2022 [52 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 10:41 AM on November 17, 2022 [52 favorites]
What really bugs me about this is that they named their firstborn Octavian. Sure, maybe he was born in the eighth month, but just call him Augustus. What are they gonna name their eighth kid?
posted by charismatic megafauna at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2022 [54 favorites]
posted by charismatic megafauna at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2022 [54 favorites]
"You got your narcissism in my racism!" "You got your racism in my narcissism". Together, they make eugenics.
Those poor children.
posted by Nelson at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2022 [82 favorites]
Those poor children.
posted by Nelson at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2022 [82 favorites]
According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations, the Collins bloodline will eventually outnumber the current human population.
I have a feeling his parents have not accounted for things like infertility or infant/childhood mortality happening during those 11 generations.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2022 [22 favorites]
I have a feeling his parents have not accounted for things like infertility or infant/childhood mortality happening during those 11 generations.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:46 AM on November 17, 2022 [22 favorites]
"Titan Invictus" is a great name. For a spaceship.
posted by allegedly at 10:47 AM on November 17, 2022 [47 favorites]
posted by allegedly at 10:47 AM on November 17, 2022 [47 favorites]
Along with his 3-year-old brother, Octavian
uh oh
and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus
oh no
these are not names that are as obvious as the poor boy named "Adolf Hitler" and his little sister that got named something equally disgusting, a news story that spiraled out of control after Wal-Mart refused to decorate him a birthday cake and eventually got the kids removed by CPS, but it's the upper-class consequence-free version of that
the thing about Genghis Khan was that he was busy. he wasn't obsessed with his own sperm, he just did what he did, which involved forming dynastic bonds and having sons. incidentally, nobody talks about how tough and important the women in his family were, but there you are
posted by Countess Elena at 10:49 AM on November 17, 2022 [40 favorites]
uh oh
and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus
oh no
these are not names that are as obvious as the poor boy named "Adolf Hitler" and his little sister that got named something equally disgusting, a news story that spiraled out of control after Wal-Mart refused to decorate him a birthday cake and eventually got the kids removed by CPS, but it's the upper-class consequence-free version of that
the thing about Genghis Khan was that he was busy. he wasn't obsessed with his own sperm, he just did what he did, which involved forming dynastic bonds and having sons. incidentally, nobody talks about how tough and important the women in his family were, but there you are
posted by Countess Elena at 10:49 AM on November 17, 2022 [40 favorites]
I have a feeling his parents have not accounted for things like infertility or infant/childhood mortality happening during those 11 generations.
Also cousins marrying cousins in thereǃ Note this is not meant to be a "haha inbreeding" joke. It's just...sort of a fact that, no, you likely don't have 128 distinct great-great-great-great-great grandparents or what not (I might be off on the number of "greats" there) because eventually, you'll have a fifth cousin marrying a fifth cousin because who can keep track at that point?
posted by damayanti at 10:49 AM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
Also cousins marrying cousins in thereǃ Note this is not meant to be a "haha inbreeding" joke. It's just...sort of a fact that, no, you likely don't have 128 distinct great-great-great-great-great grandparents or what not (I might be off on the number of "greats" there) because eventually, you'll have a fifth cousin marrying a fifth cousin because who can keep track at that point?
posted by damayanti at 10:49 AM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
There were so many quotes I wanted to pull from this. It's a weird feeling seeing so many topics weave together like this. Musk! Effective Altruism! Population anxieties! Cryptocurrency! You name it, we've got it!
posted by CrystalDave at 10:49 AM on November 17, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by CrystalDave at 10:49 AM on November 17, 2022 [14 favorites]
I have a feeling his parents have not accounted for things like infertility or infant/childhood mortality happening during those 11 generations.
And they definitely are assuming that they all marry outside their (ever growing, in this plan) set of cousins. By generation 10 the number of non-Collinses would be thin on the ground.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:50 AM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
And they definitely are assuming that they all marry outside their (ever growing, in this plan) set of cousins. By generation 10 the number of non-Collinses would be thin on the ground.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:50 AM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
no sentence beginning "Along with his 3-year-old brother, Octavian, and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus, Torsten has" could possibly end well
posted by BungaDunga at 10:51 AM on November 17, 2022 [41 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 10:51 AM on November 17, 2022 [41 favorites]
My first thought was this is like a funhouse mirror version of the beginning of Idiocracy and just as stupi--
Elon Musk himself has tweeted about the movie "Idiocracy," in which the intelligent elite stop procreating, allowing the unintelligent to populate the earth.
omg
posted by gwint at 10:56 AM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
Elon Musk himself has tweeted about the movie "Idiocracy," in which the intelligent elite stop procreating, allowing the unintelligent to populate the earth.
omg
posted by gwint at 10:56 AM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations
i think I've found the flaw in the plan... do i win a NoPrize?
posted by kokaku at 10:56 AM on November 17, 2022 [21 favorites]
i think I've found the flaw in the plan... do i win a NoPrize?
posted by kokaku at 10:56 AM on November 17, 2022 [21 favorites]
Along with his 3-year-old brother, Octavian, and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus
(snort) Here's to future baby Caligula after the seemingly inevitable Tiberius.
Anyone who believes having bespoke rich parent DNA automatically means repopulating the world with only thoughtful, high performing, high achieving children has never had the extremely dubious pleasure of dealing with the scions of aristocrats and extreme generational wealth in the wild.
posted by thivaia at 10:57 AM on November 17, 2022 [119 favorites]
(snort) Here's to future baby Caligula after the seemingly inevitable Tiberius.
Anyone who believes having bespoke rich parent DNA automatically means repopulating the world with only thoughtful, high performing, high achieving children has never had the extremely dubious pleasure of dealing with the scions of aristocrats and extreme generational wealth in the wild.
posted by thivaia at 10:57 AM on November 17, 2022 [119 favorites]
I wonder if they've also calculated in the possibility that a nonzero number of their direct descendants in the first few generations would tell mom and pop / gramma and grampa to go fuck themselves with a sandpapered vibrator and head off to the far side of the world for whatever reason (gay, trans, think the idea is stupider than Matt Walsh).
Chaos factors will smack you hard.
On Preview, Kokaku and I are thinking the same way.
posted by mephron at 10:58 AM on November 17, 2022 [22 favorites]
Chaos factors will smack you hard.
On Preview, Kokaku and I are thinking the same way.
posted by mephron at 10:58 AM on November 17, 2022 [22 favorites]
According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations, the Collins bloodline will eventually outnumber the current human population.
I can barely get my 13yo kid to wash dishes. Not sure how confident I'd be that I could guarantee that all 4,096 of my great-great-grandkids would each have 8 more kids.
posted by nushustu at 10:58 AM on November 17, 2022 [28 favorites]
I can barely get my 13yo kid to wash dishes. Not sure how confident I'd be that I could guarantee that all 4,096 of my great-great-grandkids would each have 8 more kids.
posted by nushustu at 10:58 AM on November 17, 2022 [28 favorites]
The Collinses, who identify as secular Calvinists
... what?
posted by BungaDunga at 10:59 AM on November 17, 2022 [83 favorites]
... what?
posted by BungaDunga at 10:59 AM on November 17, 2022 [83 favorites]
I, personally, cannot imagine being concerned about the opinion of anyone 2 or more generations behind me regarding how many children I should have.
The only groups of people who have managed somewhat to do so are royalty (who have marriages arranged for them) and cults (same, but they usually don't last that long).
Oh and I guess those fertility doctor dudes who sneak their own sperm in have an outsize impact.
posted by emjaybee at 11:01 AM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
The only groups of people who have managed somewhat to do so are royalty (who have marriages arranged for them) and cults (same, but they usually don't last that long).
Oh and I guess those fertility doctor dudes who sneak their own sperm in have an outsize impact.
posted by emjaybee at 11:01 AM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
"Titan Invictus" is a great name. For a spaceship.
To launch into the sun. With all these assholes onboard.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:02 AM on November 17, 2022 [50 favorites]
To launch into the sun. With all these assholes onboard.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:02 AM on November 17, 2022 [50 favorites]
All pronatalist policies and ideologies deserve to be tagged eugenics, as does simply the behavior of having many kids.
It's bleak, "more than a quarter of the world's countries now have pronatalist policies, including infertility-treatment benefits and "baby bonus" cash incentives."
Ain't worried about genetic testing services like PGT-P though, in vitro fertilization winds up being a pretty shitty experience, not likely to take over.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:02 AM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
It's bleak, "more than a quarter of the world's countries now have pronatalist policies, including infertility-treatment benefits and "baby bonus" cash incentives."
Ain't worried about genetic testing services like PGT-P though, in vitro fertilization winds up being a pretty shitty experience, not likely to take over.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:02 AM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
These worries tend to focus on one class of people in particular, which pronatalists use various euphemisms to express. In August, Elon's father, Errol Musk, told me that he was worried about low birth rates in what he called "productive nations."
Not a coincidence. If you know anything about reproductive control policies under apartheid in South Africa, this sounds strikingly familiar.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:03 AM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
Not a coincidence. If you know anything about reproductive control policies under apartheid in South Africa, this sounds strikingly familiar.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:03 AM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
Apartheid is seemingly behind Musk's hatred of public transport too: Hyperloop was purely distraction designed to slow rail adoption. Tesla is trying to prolong the unsustainable automobile.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:07 AM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 11:07 AM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
Pronatalist
So they want all their kids to be pigeon-toed? 😉
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:08 AM on November 17, 2022 [30 favorites]
So they want all their kids to be pigeon-toed? 😉
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:08 AM on November 17, 2022 [30 favorites]
He did, however, devote a chapter of his best-selling book, "What We Owe the Future," to his fear that dwindling birth rates would lead to "technological stagnation," which would increase the likelihood of extinction or civilizational collapse. One solution he offered was cloning or genetically optimizing a small subset of the population to have "Einstein-level research abilities" to "compensate for having fewer people overall."
Very cool and fun that explicit eugenics is being mainstreamed like this. No wonder the Musks of the world like this guy. Charming. "Simply engineer a race of Übermenschen!"- easy.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:08 AM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
Very cool and fun that explicit eugenics is being mainstreamed like this. No wonder the Musks of the world like this guy. Charming. "Simply engineer a race of Übermenschen!"- easy.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:08 AM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
This dastardly plan will be foiled as soon as we figure out how to put condoms on the blockchain.
posted by mittens at 11:09 AM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by mittens at 11:09 AM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus
oh no
How can I trust the intelligence of people with such a poor understanding of Latin? Titan Invicta or GTFO.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:09 AM on November 17, 2022 [96 favorites]
oh no
How can I trust the intelligence of people with such a poor understanding of Latin? Titan Invicta or GTFO.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:09 AM on November 17, 2022 [96 favorites]
Okay, okay, he was hardly the first person to look into, or actually proceed with cryogenic neurosuspension, in which only the head is preserved. But Epstein... you know, for him, it makes sense.
Jeffrey Epstein reached out to scientists about freezing his head and penis to be revitalized hundreds of years later
posted by Naberius at 11:10 AM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Jeffrey Epstein reached out to scientists about freezing his head and penis to be revitalized hundreds of years later
posted by Naberius at 11:10 AM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Secular Calvinists - We have selected ourselves to be the truly elite, destined to rule the world.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:10 AM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 11:10 AM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
We are the Underground Railroad of 'Gattaca' babies and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids," Malcolm told
Once again, science fiction dystopian warnings get used as blueprints by the worst people. We need to stop giving them ideas.
(Also, 10 extra asshole points for comparison to the Underground fucking Railroad)
posted by emjaybee at 11:12 AM on November 17, 2022 [41 favorites]
Once again, science fiction dystopian warnings get used as blueprints by the worst people. We need to stop giving them ideas.
(Also, 10 extra asshole points for comparison to the Underground fucking Railroad)
posted by emjaybee at 11:12 AM on November 17, 2022 [41 favorites]
I'd actually have respected him for trying to freeze just his penis. You know, commit to the bit.
posted by phooky at 11:13 AM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by phooky at 11:13 AM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
A year and a half later, Malcolm proposed to her via a viral campaign that landed on the front page of Reddit. naturally
In 2018, which they now call "The Year of the Harvest," oh do they now
The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account. Simone compared her autism to a "fine-tuned race car" oh fuck me, she's cool with selecting against every other characteristic except her own diagnosed neurodiversity. of course
posted by BungaDunga at 11:13 AM on November 17, 2022 [49 favorites]
In 2018, which they now call "The Year of the Harvest," oh do they now
The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account. Simone compared her autism to a "fine-tuned race car" oh fuck me, she's cool with selecting against every other characteristic except her own diagnosed neurodiversity. of course
posted by BungaDunga at 11:13 AM on November 17, 2022 [49 favorites]
Forget the ecological implications, what about the magical ones? You only have to get a few generations into this madness before there's a 50/50 chance of an eighth son of an eighth son, and we all know how that ends.
posted by automatronic at 11:14 AM on November 17, 2022 [25 favorites]
posted by automatronic at 11:14 AM on November 17, 2022 [25 favorites]
"For just 11 generations". A mere ~220 years. Good luck getting (eventually) billions of people to cooperate in lockstep for almost as long as the US has been a country.
Makes me wish I had a spare few grand lying around to make a Long Bet that this fails within two generations.
posted by jedicus at 11:15 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
Makes me wish I had a spare few grand lying around to make a Long Bet that this fails within two generations.
posted by jedicus at 11:15 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
(Regarding What We Owe To The Future, twitter has been talking about this review which looks very juicy.)
posted by mittens at 11:19 AM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 11:19 AM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think if I were a descendant who carried the genes of one of these assholes I might get sterilized and adopt just out of spite. Also the fear that a biological child of mine might also be an asshole.
posted by emjaybee at 11:19 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 11:19 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
If you think that these people are actively propagating something pretty evil -- which you probably should...
And you also think that there is a moral imperative to take pragmatic actions today that minimize human suffering in the future -- which most of these people do...
All I'm saying is it sure seems like there are a few obvious courses of action.
posted by voiceofreason at 11:20 AM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
And you also think that there is a moral imperative to take pragmatic actions today that minimize human suffering in the future -- which most of these people do...
All I'm saying is it sure seems like there are a few obvious courses of action.
posted by voiceofreason at 11:20 AM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
The danger of fuckwits like this (and all fascists) isn't that there's even a slightest chance that they'll succeed in their ultimate goals. The best they can hope for is a temporary seizure of power followed by the abject failure of their stupid policies. That's the main flaw with Orwell's 1984 -- the idea that a totalitarian government (or 3) could establish itself so completely and permanently. The real danger is how much damage they do while they play out their narcissistic fantasies of control and the rest of us who have even an ounce of empathy for other human beings try to figure out how to oust the sociopaths and rebuild.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:27 AM on November 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:27 AM on November 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
Idiocracy remake ideas: "The fraction of carbon dioxide [we breathe] just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating current trends suggest 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration .. human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.”
Also CO2 winds up 2x to 3x higher indoors, but we'll mostly be indoors since climate change causes ozone depletion too aka nuclear summer.
We reduced intelligence dramatically by using leaded gasoline, but we breath such a diverse cocktail now that harms heath in diverse ways, including reduced intelligence.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:27 AM on November 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
Also CO2 winds up 2x to 3x higher indoors, but we'll mostly be indoors since climate change causes ozone depletion too aka nuclear summer.
We reduced intelligence dramatically by using leaded gasoline, but we breath such a diverse cocktail now that harms heath in diverse ways, including reduced intelligence.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:27 AM on November 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
Sci-fi author: In my book I described a stratified society based on biometric eugenics as a cautionary tale
VC: At long last we have created the tech from the book "Don't Create the Stratified Society Based on Biometric Eugenics"
posted by credulous at 11:28 AM on November 17, 2022 [69 favorites]
VC: At long last we have created the tech from the book "Don't Create the Stratified Society Based on Biometric Eugenics"
posted by credulous at 11:28 AM on November 17, 2022 [69 favorites]
According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations...
I haven't read the article yet, but just based on the pull quote, the Satmar and Bobover chassidim are way ahead of these guys.
posted by Mchelly at 11:29 AM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
I haven't read the article yet, but just based on the pull quote, the Satmar and Bobover chassidim are way ahead of these guys.
posted by Mchelly at 11:29 AM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
I don't see this mentioned up-thread, but the moral and ethical grotesqueries of longtermism have been discussed on Mefi before: 1, 2.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:31 AM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:31 AM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Anyone who believes having bespoke rich parent DNA automatically means repopulating the world with only thoughtful, high performing, high achieving children has never had the extremely dubious pleasure of dealing with the scions of aristocrats and extreme generational wealth in the wild.
Worked along-side one of the DeVos larvae for a while. Can confirm.
posted by JohnFromGR at 11:33 AM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
Worked along-side one of the DeVos larvae for a while. Can confirm.
posted by JohnFromGR at 11:33 AM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
Pardon me, my son is also named Titan Invictus?
/simpsons
Also: Ha ha. If they think they can fully brainwash all of their children, I have 3 home-schooled, former Christian, gay cousins that they should speak with. Reiterating from upthread: shit's fucked and those poor children.
posted by zerobyproxy at 11:41 AM on November 17, 2022 [26 favorites]
/simpsons
Also: Ha ha. If they think they can fully brainwash all of their children, I have 3 home-schooled, former Christian, gay cousins that they should speak with. Reiterating from upthread: shit's fucked and those poor children.
posted by zerobyproxy at 11:41 AM on November 17, 2022 [26 favorites]
"We are the Underground Railroad of 'Gattaca' babies and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids," Malcolm told me.
Misappropriating a term about people fleeing from racist oppression and being unaware of the meaning of the word "dystopia".
Eugenics creep bingo.
posted by signal at 11:44 AM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
Misappropriating a term about people fleeing from racist oppression and being unaware of the meaning of the word "dystopia".
Eugenics creep bingo.
posted by signal at 11:44 AM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
I asked what set their vision apart from Gilead, the totalitarian regime depicted in "The Handmaid's Tale" that designates certain women as breeders.
"Gilead is what happens without a soft landing for demographic collapse!" Simone replied eagerly.
Uh, no.
As Atwood puts it in the introduction to The Handmaid's Tale:
"One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the 'nightmare' of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:44 AM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
"Gilead is what happens without a soft landing for demographic collapse!" Simone replied eagerly.
Uh, no.
As Atwood puts it in the introduction to The Handmaid's Tale:
"One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the 'nightmare' of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:44 AM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
Yeah, their kids are going to tell them to fuck off, forget about their great-great-great-great-great grandchildren.
(See also, Derek Black.)
posted by Naberius at 11:45 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
(See also, Derek Black.)
posted by Naberius at 11:45 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
(snort) Here's to future baby Caligula after the seemingly inevitable Tiberius.
It's probably be James Tiberius.
posted by Spike Glee at 11:51 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's probably be James Tiberius.
posted by Spike Glee at 11:51 AM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
If I had to pick one thing to note about the top .01% of minds in a population, aside from the fact that that's a totally meaningful, measurable concept, it's how devoted that .01% is to seeing out the orders set by their ancestors.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:55 AM on November 17, 2022 [20 favorites]
posted by Navelgazer at 11:55 AM on November 17, 2022 [20 favorites]
What are the odds that one or all of the children won't want to have any kids themselves?
Also, I feel extra sorry for any of the kids if they develop medical issues that cause infertility and their parents give them a hard time about it.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:55 AM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also, I feel extra sorry for any of the kids if they develop medical issues that cause infertility and their parents give them a hard time about it.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:55 AM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
multi-level-marketing the genepool
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 12:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [15 favorites]
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 12:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [15 favorites]
BungaDunga: oh fuck me, she's cool with selecting against every other characteristic except her own diagnosed neurodiversity. of course
Kinda reminds me of that time Helen Keller got into eugenics.
posted by clawsoon at 12:05 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
Kinda reminds me of that time Helen Keller got into eugenics.
posted by clawsoon at 12:05 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
allegedly: “‘Titan Invictus’ is a great name. For a spaceship.”
Saxon Kane: “To launch into the sun. With all these assholes onboard.”That is extremely wasteful!
It's much more fuel-efficient to launch them into interstellar space.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:09 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations, the Collins bloodline will eventually outnumber the current human population.
This is really a failure of ambition. If they can hold out for 18 generations, his family will outweigh the moon. At 35 generations, the mass of the planet will consist entirely of his family's offspring. By generation 55, his family will pass the singularity threshold and collapse into a black hold.
For the record my proposal is the more sane and reasonable of the two.
posted by mhoye at 12:12 PM on November 17, 2022 [79 favorites]
This is really a failure of ambition. If they can hold out for 18 generations, his family will outweigh the moon. At 35 generations, the mass of the planet will consist entirely of his family's offspring. By generation 55, his family will pass the singularity threshold and collapse into a black hold.
For the record my proposal is the more sane and reasonable of the two.
posted by mhoye at 12:12 PM on November 17, 2022 [79 favorites]
What's the name for Engineer's Disease when you actually don't understand the mechanics or math that you're supposed to be good at in the first place?
posted by signal at 12:13 PM on November 17, 2022 [24 favorites]
posted by signal at 12:13 PM on November 17, 2022 [24 favorites]
So it's a fucking MLM
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:14 PM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:14 PM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
My grandparents had 18 kids. Despite some intense Catholicism, not a single one of them had more than three themselves. They all love each other, but they all know how hard and expensive raising kids is.
I don't think this plan is going to work.
posted by Alison at 12:14 PM on November 17, 2022 [22 favorites]
I don't think this plan is going to work.
posted by Alison at 12:14 PM on November 17, 2022 [22 favorites]
Also, I feel extra sorry for any of the kids if they develop medical issues that cause infertility and their parents give them a hard time about it.
I feel extra sorry for any of those kids if they end up being disabled, chariot pulled by cassowaries. I mean, infertility too.
posted by In Your Shell Like at 12:17 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
I feel extra sorry for any of those kids if they end up being disabled, chariot pulled by cassowaries. I mean, infertility too.
posted by In Your Shell Like at 12:17 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
The embryo which became the third child has been screened for specific risk factors, including mood swings and fatigue, but the oldest two were not? I can see many ways in which that could become a sibling minefield.
posted by paduasoy at 12:25 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by paduasoy at 12:25 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
Their wardrobes, Simone told me later, are meticulously curated to project the kind of gravitas their work requires. Beneath their thick, black-rimmed glasses — hers round, his rectangular — the couple look, as they would put it, "biologically young."
It's like a racism LARP.
Honestly a lot of this bullshit (costumes, obviously cultish fish-suffering and Roko's Basilisk stuff, etc) seems like it's designed to help people persuade themselves that what they are doing is serious and important. They have to keep themselves from admitting to themselves that they're a bunch of racist, greedy, entitled freaks with a really stupid plan, so they wear special costumes and invent a lingo, etc.
"Titan Invictus" is a stupid name in a lot of ways, but mostly it's the Trump's hair of names - you have something really ugly, unsuitable and stupid as a flex, because you assume that you'll be able to bully everyone around you into telling you that it's terrific.
posted by Frowner at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [31 favorites]
It's like a racism LARP.
Honestly a lot of this bullshit (costumes, obviously cultish fish-suffering and Roko's Basilisk stuff, etc) seems like it's designed to help people persuade themselves that what they are doing is serious and important. They have to keep themselves from admitting to themselves that they're a bunch of racist, greedy, entitled freaks with a really stupid plan, so they wear special costumes and invent a lingo, etc.
"Titan Invictus" is a stupid name in a lot of ways, but mostly it's the Trump's hair of names - you have something really ugly, unsuitable and stupid as a flex, because you assume that you'll be able to bully everyone around you into telling you that it's terrific.
posted by Frowner at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [31 favorites]
Elon Musk himself has tweeted about the movie "Idiocracy," in which the intelligent elite stop procreating
The irony of that guy spending $44 billion to more effectively banter with someone named @Doge69Penis420 online
(This is really too ridiculous for Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, which is really the inverse thesis of Idiocracy)
posted by credulous at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
The irony of that guy spending $44 billion to more effectively banter with someone named @Doge69Penis420 online
(This is really too ridiculous for Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, which is really the inverse thesis of Idiocracy)
posted by credulous at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
@jeffburdges: Pronatalist policies may also keep the population stable. Right now, much of Asia, North America, and Europe has below replacement birth rates and North America and Europe are only growing through outsourcing their reproduction to other countries. I welcome some population loss over the course of a few millenia as it would allow home prices and pollution to come down, but decreased population also means specialist communities have issues functioning. There has to be enough specialists to encourage training in neurosurgery and heart surgery and if communities shrink, they lose the jobs that made modern life wonderful. We can see this somewhat where urban population centers are growing, but rural areas shrink and they end up having issues finding qualified people to run for office or understand the decisions they make when building bridges and they lose the customer base necessary to support rural health care centres.
Secular liberal societies can all give themselves applause on how great they are, but if they can't sustain their population so that they can outlast illiberal societies, they're not truly effective. Something is flawed with North American society when its domestic population keeps trying to extinguish itself through below replacement birth rates.
I don't think the answer is to activate pronatalist policies now, but they should be considered valid policies in a few thousand years, to at least keep the population stable. There's no evidence that inaction will lead to population stability and equilibrium birth rates in the long term, all else being equal.
posted by DetriusXii at 12:41 PM on November 17, 2022
Secular liberal societies can all give themselves applause on how great they are, but if they can't sustain their population so that they can outlast illiberal societies, they're not truly effective. Something is flawed with North American society when its domestic population keeps trying to extinguish itself through below replacement birth rates.
I don't think the answer is to activate pronatalist policies now, but they should be considered valid policies in a few thousand years, to at least keep the population stable. There's no evidence that inaction will lead to population stability and equilibrium birth rates in the long term, all else being equal.
posted by DetriusXii at 12:41 PM on November 17, 2022
Now, obviously we suck... Please chain me to a piece of plumbing and hand me my plunger.
Not you, presumptuous scum. You get to detail: here's a turkey baster and you do have a toothbrush, I assume?
"Titan Invictus" is a great name. For a spaceship."
Or a wolfhound.
posted by y2karl at 12:43 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
Not you, presumptuous scum. You get to detail: here's a turkey baster and you do have a toothbrush, I assume?
"Titan Invictus" is a great name. For a spaceship."
Or a wolfhound.
posted by y2karl at 12:43 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
There are lots and lots of ways to deal with 'we need more specialists" that aren't "have more babies" and also, we have 8 billion people on this planet. We are not short of babies.
The way that people raising this alarm immediately refuse to consider increasing immigration is always their tell.
posted by emjaybee at 12:50 PM on November 17, 2022 [64 favorites]
The way that people raising this alarm immediately refuse to consider increasing immigration is always their tell.
posted by emjaybee at 12:50 PM on November 17, 2022 [64 favorites]
I didn’t know that Dunning and Krueger were married.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 12:52 PM on November 17, 2022 [39 favorites]
posted by doubtfulpalace at 12:52 PM on November 17, 2022 [39 favorites]
Smirking over the fact that Collins was also the name of the weird, inbred, literally-monster-ridden family on Dark Shadows.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:54 PM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:54 PM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
These poor kids. I wish I could contribute to their future therapy fund.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:55 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 12:55 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
@emjaybee: By 2080, the global population enters into below replacement territory. So immigration as a solution begins having problems as the supply of immigrants becomes stretched across all countries trying to compete for an immigrant workforce. It's not simply possible to assume that immigrants are some magical creatures that will continue to reproduce forever for the benefit of the first world, when many immigrant countries are also trending downwards to below replacement too.
posted by DetriusXii at 12:55 PM on November 17, 2022
posted by DetriusXii at 12:55 PM on November 17, 2022
I have a feeling his parents have not accounted for things like infertility or infant/childhood mortality happening during those 11 generations.
Or, you know, inconvenient possibilities like any of those kids not wanting to have kids at all, let alone eight freakin' kids. That could throw off the whole production schedule. Imagine the pressure on the eighth kid born. "You're 33 and you haven't had any babies yet! By your age, people in our family are supposed to have at least six or seven kids!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:55 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Or, you know, inconvenient possibilities like any of those kids not wanting to have kids at all, let alone eight freakin' kids. That could throw off the whole production schedule. Imagine the pressure on the eighth kid born. "You're 33 and you haven't had any babies yet! By your age, people in our family are supposed to have at least six or seven kids!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:55 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
As for Simone and Malcolm Collins, Malcolm said, "We're trying to give our kids the best shot in life."
Not with those names, as has been pointed out above.
posted by TedW at 1:00 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
Not with those names, as has been pointed out above.
posted by TedW at 1:00 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
Teegeeack AV Club Secretary: If restrictive churches can't keep their young ones, these tech bros & tech girls don't have a chance to realize their multi-generational goals.
The dangling threat of being cut off from a massive trust fund/inheritance would probably convince most of these offspring to give their distant relative’s weird fuck plan some serious thought.
posted by dr_dank at 1:01 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
The dangling threat of being cut off from a massive trust fund/inheritance would probably convince most of these offspring to give their distant relative’s weird fuck plan some serious thought.
posted by dr_dank at 1:01 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
> Or a wolfhound.
> Malcolm read aloud a text message from his mother. She wanted to know how he and Simone planned to monetize their pronatalism "hobby." "Remember: Everything is transactional," she texted.
Now there's a Metafilter flashback I didn't think I'd have come up again so soon.
posted by CrystalDave at 1:08 PM on November 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
> Malcolm read aloud a text message from his mother. She wanted to know how he and Simone planned to monetize their pronatalism "hobby." "Remember: Everything is transactional," she texted.
Now there's a Metafilter flashback I didn't think I'd have come up again so soon.
posted by CrystalDave at 1:08 PM on November 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
Secular Calvinists
PREDESTINED FOR AWESOME JUST BECAUSE
posted by thivaia at 1:08 PM on November 17, 2022 [21 favorites]
PREDESTINED FOR AWESOME JUST BECAUSE
posted by thivaia at 1:08 PM on November 17, 2022 [21 favorites]
Niall Ferguson, British Empire apologist and Eurarabia-pushing Islamophobe, is such an example- both of his parents left the Church of Scotland, but raised him with a "Calvinist ethical framework." The same article also mentions British anti-social justice neocon writer Douglas Murray as another self-described "Christian atheist", so there you go.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:18 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Apocryphon at 1:18 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
shit's fucked
But they aren't. All their kids came from a petri dish
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:20 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
But they aren't. All their kids came from a petri dish
posted by fluttering hellfire at 1:20 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
Secular Calvinism is I guess Belief in a Just World - if bad things happen to you, that proves you are bad, being rich proves you are good - plus predestined elect - nothing I can do is evil (by definition) if I'm one of the selected "good people", and by believing in this I am one of the "good people". So the complete "FYIGM" package, without any religious baggage. Seems legit.
posted by NotAYakk at 1:28 PM on November 17, 2022 [27 favorites]
posted by NotAYakk at 1:28 PM on November 17, 2022 [27 favorites]
Detritus, understood, however, my point remains that we could manage a lowering of population (which surely has SOME benefits?) in a rational way beyond "have more babies or else!" Most of the doomsaying I've seen on this topic makes massive assumptions about future needs and possibilities. We can take it seriously without giving a hearing to people who want to make reproduction a matter of government control and deny half of humanity their rights to self determination.
posted by emjaybee at 1:36 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 1:36 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
This article has to be on the sickest things I've ever read on the blue. It even somehow squeezes in Bari Weiss!
posted by flamk at 1:47 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by flamk at 1:47 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
If any of my ancestors more than one generation back would have objected to anything I chose to do with my life, tough luck for them. The Collinses are delusional on top of all the other things.
Good luck trying to get descendants down to the eleventh generation to do your bidding. Want immortality? Create a legacy that can't disown you.
posted by tclark at 1:59 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Good luck trying to get descendants down to the eleventh generation to do your bidding. Want immortality? Create a legacy that can't disown you.
posted by tclark at 1:59 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
OK, that's insane. I'm always impressed when people are that far removed from reality.
The global population needs to shrink dramatically, and it will be difficult times in some ways, though I bet global warming and the biodiversity crisis will be far worse challenges. We'll have to use all of our amazing power of imagination to deal with it all. So it's good we have that imagination, isn't it?
I wonder, when the article says a third of the world's country has pronatalist policies if mine is one of those countries? Because support for young families here is part of a general welfare program in a normal social democratic country, where the ideal is that everyone can have a good life. At one point there was a very short-lived campaign to make young people reproduce more, but it was a total embarrassment. No one wants to have children for the state. We have support for young families because young parents vote and it's hard to make ends meet during that time of your life.
posted by mumimor at 2:11 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
The global population needs to shrink dramatically, and it will be difficult times in some ways, though I bet global warming and the biodiversity crisis will be far worse challenges. We'll have to use all of our amazing power of imagination to deal with it all. So it's good we have that imagination, isn't it?
I wonder, when the article says a third of the world's country has pronatalist policies if mine is one of those countries? Because support for young families here is part of a general welfare program in a normal social democratic country, where the ideal is that everyone can have a good life. At one point there was a very short-lived campaign to make young people reproduce more, but it was a total embarrassment. No one wants to have children for the state. We have support for young families because young parents vote and it's hard to make ends meet during that time of your life.
posted by mumimor at 2:11 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
So many tech people are susceptible to this bullshit, though. When I was in my 20s and married to a NASA guy, people our age (him, late Boomer; me upper end Gen X) spent a fair amount of time dogwhistling about how my ex and I, who were white, well-educated, and had good jobs, ought to produce kids for the good of society (as opposed to other people, whose kids were not good for society).
On the other hand, people from the same sort of crowd have consistently been sympathetic but understanding when I talk about being childfree because I have a chronic illness with genetic indicators. It's the one thing that consistently got those lightly white supremacist folks to shut up about my duty to breed.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 2:12 PM on November 17, 2022 [23 favorites]
On the other hand, people from the same sort of crowd have consistently been sympathetic but understanding when I talk about being childfree because I have a chronic illness with genetic indicators. It's the one thing that consistently got those lightly white supremacist folks to shut up about my duty to breed.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 2:12 PM on November 17, 2022 [23 favorites]
“Inside, Simone, statuesque even one month shy of her delivery date, wore her pregnancy uniform of a crisp white oxford shirt, a long black skirt, Doc Martens, and red lipstick (ignoring, she would later tell me, her mother-in-law's plea not to "dress like a fucking pilgrim" in front of the press).”
posted by Hypatia at 2:12 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Hypatia at 2:12 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
Looks like the actual article about this is paywalled, (Nitter link) but the title of it is apparently "Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids..."
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:13 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:13 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
As a sterile idiot with no mate, no childreen, I stand before you, a human mule, a leaf on the branches of the tree of life, an only descendant never an ancestor meme-ified into existence, unbreederly-abled, and bray:
Good luck with all this shit.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 2:15 PM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
Good luck with all this shit.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 2:15 PM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
Great how every single named person in this is someone you wouldn’t trust to have kids.
posted by Artw at 2:21 PM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by Artw at 2:21 PM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
I know maybe half a dozen people who come from large (8+ kids) families. To a one, they each have either zero or one kids of their own, and strained relationships with their parents, because growing up with 7+ siblings is a great way of (a) showing-by-example what a nightmare large numbers of kids is, and (b) guaranteeing a shitty relationship with the parents who had zero time to dedicate to any one kid.
So, uh, good luck with the chain-letter theory of generational dominance, oh ye brave secular Calvinists.
posted by Mayor West at 2:23 PM on November 17, 2022 [18 favorites]
So, uh, good luck with the chain-letter theory of generational dominance, oh ye brave secular Calvinists.
posted by Mayor West at 2:23 PM on November 17, 2022 [18 favorites]
We largely work "bullshit jobs" in first world countries, DetriusXii. We lack useful specialists like doctors by choice. We've excess "bullshit specialists" like finance and legal also by choice, never-mind non-specialist fields like advertising. We cannot realistically grow our material economy further, which shall wreak havoc, but also creates an opportunity to reallocate people from "bullshit jobs" into say elder care, and thus makes a declining population easier.
We'll have major global food shortages by 2050 due purely to climate change. We've food and fertilizer export bans already. It's clear enforced vegetarianism could push the worst back by decades, but our planet's carrying capacity winds up below one billion. Also, we've less than 50 years of oil and gas left, so realistically fertilizer ends within several decades too.
We've no idea what 1000 years brings, but we're currently peaking right before a massive necessary population crash.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [23 favorites]
We'll have major global food shortages by 2050 due purely to climate change. We've food and fertilizer export bans already. It's clear enforced vegetarianism could push the worst back by decades, but our planet's carrying capacity winds up below one billion. Also, we've less than 50 years of oil and gas left, so realistically fertilizer ends within several decades too.
We've no idea what 1000 years brings, but we're currently peaking right before a massive necessary population crash.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [23 favorites]
Even in the best case scenario where the parents are great and there's enough money to keep all 8 kids happy & comfortable, at least some of the 8 will look at the stress and chaos of growing up in that house and decide a big family is not for them. I predict it'll be a majority of the 8.
And over eleven generations, we are talking somewhere north of ten billion descendants in total. Imagine wagering that a group of ten billion unborn strangers, all of whom will have grown up in a different society than this one today, will have zero dissenters to the plan set out centuries earlier (as well as zero gay people, zero infertile people, zero who die before they reproduce...). This sounds like a plot point which Asimov would have rejected from the Foundation books after ten seconds’ consideration as being absurd.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
And over eleven generations, we are talking somewhere north of ten billion descendants in total. Imagine wagering that a group of ten billion unborn strangers, all of whom will have grown up in a different society than this one today, will have zero dissenters to the plan set out centuries earlier (as well as zero gay people, zero infertile people, zero who die before they reproduce...). This sounds like a plot point which Asimov would have rejected from the Foundation books after ten seconds’ consideration as being absurd.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
One more flaw in the plan-- are they assuming no one else will try this?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:28 PM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:28 PM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
I welcome some population loss over the course of a few millenia as it would allow home prices and pollution to come down.... I don't think the answer is to activate pronatalist policies now, but they should be considered valid policies in a few thousand years, to at least keep the population stable.
Uh, home prices? Pretty ambitious of you to assume that there's still going to be a real estate market or even functional human governments (apparently with the same borders as modern day ones) thousands of years from now.
There are so many things wrong with "longtermist" thinking, even beyond its quasi-religious anthropocentrism ("humans have a glorious destiny we must protect and fulfill!"). But I think fundamentally it comes down to just a basic lack of imagination or even an understanding that, you know, things change? It seems rooted in some sort of "End of History" assumption (we've achieved final form), as well as a naive belief in unlimited growth (we just keep doing what we're doing, but MORE!).
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:31 PM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
Uh, home prices? Pretty ambitious of you to assume that there's still going to be a real estate market or even functional human governments (apparently with the same borders as modern day ones) thousands of years from now.
There are so many things wrong with "longtermist" thinking, even beyond its quasi-religious anthropocentrism ("humans have a glorious destiny we must protect and fulfill!"). But I think fundamentally it comes down to just a basic lack of imagination or even an understanding that, you know, things change? It seems rooted in some sort of "End of History" assumption (we've achieved final form), as well as a naive belief in unlimited growth (we just keep doing what we're doing, but MORE!).
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:31 PM on November 17, 2022 [12 favorites]
Uh, home prices? Pretty ambitious of you to assume that there's still going to be a real estate market or even functional human governments (apparently with the same borders as modern day ones) thousands of years from now.
Why wouldn't there be? There's been a real estate market for thousands of years into the past. Functional governments too.
I don't think assuming those are going to exist is any great feat.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:44 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
Why wouldn't there be? There's been a real estate market for thousands of years into the past. Functional governments too.
I don't think assuming those are going to exist is any great feat.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:44 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
Great how every single named person in this is someone you wouldn’t trust to have kids.
Or bébés.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:47 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Or bébés.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:47 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
At some point one of these evil weirdos is going to try and put a gene drive into their children. Gene drives are a (very experimental) piece of genetic machinery that can be used to direct which genes end up being expressed in an organism's descendants, and hack around Mendelian inheritance. In theory, you could put in a gene drive for blue eyes and blond hair and have it dominate other traits, for your little Targaryen dynasty. And other nasties you could potentially enforce on your descendants.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:51 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by BungaDunga at 2:51 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
Fascists always think they're in the top, not the bottom.
The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account.
Yep. All fun and games until you're the one getting removed from the gene pool.
(in the spirit of the post title, abusing the edit function to clarify that it is NOT all fun and games)
posted by babelfish at 2:52 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account.
Yep. All fun and games until you're the one getting removed from the gene pool.
(in the spirit of the post title, abusing the edit function to clarify that it is NOT all fun and games)
posted by babelfish at 2:52 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
Nancy Lebovitz: One more flaw in the plan-- are they assuming no one else will try this?
Amish and Hutterite communities have had high numbers of children per woman for a while now. Russian serfs also had very high fertility rates - apparently the highest of any group in history, according to a book I read recently. I'm guessing some insights into the dynamics of this sort of thing over the long term might be gleaned from studying those groups.
posted by clawsoon at 2:52 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
Amish and Hutterite communities have had high numbers of children per woman for a while now. Russian serfs also had very high fertility rates - apparently the highest of any group in history, according to a book I read recently. I'm guessing some insights into the dynamics of this sort of thing over the long term might be gleaned from studying those groups.
posted by clawsoon at 2:52 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is just a front for re-establishing aristocracy. Bring out the guillotines.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:01 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:01 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
What's the name for Engineer's Disease when you actually don't understand the mechanics or math that you're supposed to be good at in the first place?
It's easier to count than to think.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
It's easier to count than to think.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
I'm fairly sure nations, borders, and militaries shall still exist, like how else do you keep out all the starving people?
It won't necessarily be the same boarders however, like maybe eventually the US stops free interstate travel, so they can write off southern and desert places. Among these, one real doomsday scenario would be the US and China occupying Russia, because they'd cut down its forests and turn Asia into a desert much faster.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:03 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
It won't necessarily be the same boarders however, like maybe eventually the US stops free interstate travel, so they can write off southern and desert places. Among these, one real doomsday scenario would be the US and China occupying Russia, because they'd cut down its forests and turn Asia into a desert much faster.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:03 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
What are they gonna name their eighth kid?
Gordo.
posted by dobbs at 3:20 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
Gordo.
posted by dobbs at 3:20 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
"Any smart person with a certain cultural aesthetics of their life is looking at this world and saying, 'How do we create 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?'"
I call bullshit. In this case, “certain cultural aesthetics” means wealthy white people with massive arrogance who do not value diversity. At all. It’s like these people don’t know anything about history. Like they think everything valuable and important developed in the West.
I used to sometimes interview people like this. At a dinner party in Palo Alto years ago some tech company founder to my right told me how modern Silicon Valley was the equivalent to Florence in its heyday, the pinnacle of all that was yadda yadda yadda. Just the knowledge that these people exist is exhausting. That said, great post!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:29 PM on November 17, 2022 [14 favorites]
I call bullshit. In this case, “certain cultural aesthetics” means wealthy white people with massive arrogance who do not value diversity. At all. It’s like these people don’t know anything about history. Like they think everything valuable and important developed in the West.
I used to sometimes interview people like this. At a dinner party in Palo Alto years ago some tech company founder to my right told me how modern Silicon Valley was the equivalent to Florence in its heyday, the pinnacle of all that was yadda yadda yadda. Just the knowledge that these people exist is exhausting. That said, great post!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:29 PM on November 17, 2022 [14 favorites]
I'm trying to remember that sci-fi thing from Heinlein that was eugenics, or eugenics-adjacent: the Howard Families?
In the late 1800s Ezra Howard(?) takes his interest in longevity and his whale-oil fortune and endows a Nobel-like foundation.
If your grandparents live past 100, you get on a list. If you have a child with someone else on the list, the foundation gives $50k to each parent and puts $100k in a trust fund to the child. When the child reaches maturity, a foundation representative shows up with a copy of the updated list and the same deal.
This 'let's give financial incentives to people whose grandmas got hit by a bus at 105 years old to interbreed with each other' program, by the 2200s(?), ends up with a secret society of couples doing a "Hey honey? Marge from next door has noticed that we've both looked 35 for the last twenty years. Time to move and change our names again." routine.
Or that thing from Ringworld, where aliens do a similar thing, but using colony worlds so overcrowded that people have to win a lottery to get a reproduction license. Interbreeding lottery winners with lottery winners, on and on, trying to get to the Luckiest Person Alive.
posted by bartleby at 3:29 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
In the late 1800s Ezra Howard(?) takes his interest in longevity and his whale-oil fortune and endows a Nobel-like foundation.
If your grandparents live past 100, you get on a list. If you have a child with someone else on the list, the foundation gives $50k to each parent and puts $100k in a trust fund to the child. When the child reaches maturity, a foundation representative shows up with a copy of the updated list and the same deal.
This 'let's give financial incentives to people whose grandmas got hit by a bus at 105 years old to interbreed with each other' program, by the 2200s(?), ends up with a secret society of couples doing a "Hey honey? Marge from next door has noticed that we've both looked 35 for the last twenty years. Time to move and change our names again." routine.
Or that thing from Ringworld, where aliens do a similar thing, but using colony worlds so overcrowded that people have to win a lottery to get a reproduction license. Interbreeding lottery winners with lottery winners, on and on, trying to get to the Luckiest Person Alive.
posted by bartleby at 3:29 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
At a dinner party in Palo Alto years ago some tech company founder to my right told me how modern Silicon Valley was the equivalent to Florence
Should've taken him to East Palo Alto.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:36 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
Should've taken him to East Palo Alto.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:36 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
I've only made it to paragraph two but...... Eight kids?
I admire anyone who at 35 and 36 thinks they will have, forget the money, jut the stamina to raise eight kids.
Good luck!
posted by freakazoid at 3:38 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
I admire anyone who at 35 and 36 thinks they will have, forget the money, jut the stamina to raise eight kids.
Good luck!
posted by freakazoid at 3:38 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
Weird article to read coming out of a convo about how being in academia as a "top of my class" first-gen student from a poor, anti-science family makes interacting with most of my colleagues... interesting.
For so-called smart people, I don't think they understand how IQ or heritability work. Or the nurture part and how having eight kids will impact that.
Re: Simone's autism diagnosis, a hundred bucks says she's an Aspie supremacist. I've had similar suspicions about Musk, which this article only further bolsters.
posted by brook horse at 3:40 PM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
For so-called smart people, I don't think they understand how IQ or heritability work. Or the nurture part and how having eight kids will impact that.
Re: Simone's autism diagnosis, a hundred bucks says she's an Aspie supremacist. I've had similar suspicions about Musk, which this article only further bolsters.
posted by brook horse at 3:40 PM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
Eight kids? Good Luck!
The first few children do the work of raising the last few children, is how it usually works out.
Similar to all those posh manor marriage stories where the oldest daughter is the Clever One, the youngest is the Pretty One, and the middle child is dull and horse-faced and will take care of the parents as they age.
posted by bartleby at 3:44 PM on November 17, 2022 [10 favorites]
The first few children do the work of raising the last few children, is how it usually works out.
Similar to all those posh manor marriage stories where the oldest daughter is the Clever One, the youngest is the Pretty One, and the middle child is dull and horse-faced and will take care of the parents as they age.
posted by bartleby at 3:44 PM on November 17, 2022 [10 favorites]
I admire anyone who at 35 and 36 thinks they will have, forget the money, jut the stamina to raise eight kids.
I asked the couple whether they really believed their seemingly boundless energy was feasible for high-birth-rate parents on a wide scale. "I think it's a mindset thing," answered Simone, who has no plans to stop working as she grows her family, though she does intend to outsource a significant amount of childcare to both paid professionals and communal child-rearing strategies.posted by BungaDunga at 3:45 PM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
Should've taken him to East Palo Alto
I was there on sufferance as a journalist. People like that guy take the rest of us for a ride. I wasn’t in a position to be taking him anywhere. Besides, the guy probably knew that east Palo Alto existed. It just didn’t count. In the same way that most other people don’t count to the birthing hobbyists.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
I was there on sufferance as a journalist. People like that guy take the rest of us for a ride. I wasn’t in a position to be taking him anywhere. Besides, the guy probably knew that east Palo Alto existed. It just didn’t count. In the same way that most other people don’t count to the birthing hobbyists.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is just asinine. I was going to make a more complete comment, but in the end... this is just asinine.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:03 PM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 4:03 PM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
I admire anyone who at 35 and 36 thinks they will have, forget the money, jut the stamina to raise eight kids.
If you have the money, you don't need the stamina.
I'm not at all worried about people that think they can plan their family out over 11 generations. In the end, chaos will overide all the careful planning and manipulation in the world. Even the harm they do by producing offspring with a superiority complex won't amount to a hill of beans in the end. I guess they'll get their 15 minutes of fame and that will be that.
posted by dg at 4:07 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
If you have the money, you don't need the stamina.
I'm not at all worried about people that think they can plan their family out over 11 generations. In the end, chaos will overide all the careful planning and manipulation in the world. Even the harm they do by producing offspring with a superiority complex won't amount to a hill of beans in the end. I guess they'll get their 15 minutes of fame and that will be that.
posted by dg at 4:07 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
Secular Calvinists, I think that's for when you like the predestination and sense of entitlement, but the whole God thing is annoying because YOU and YOURS is the center of the Universe, not some other guy.
posted by chaz at 4:07 PM on November 17, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by chaz at 4:07 PM on November 17, 2022 [18 favorites]
MetaFilter: dull and horse-faced and will take care of the parents as they age
posted by elkevelvet at 4:09 PM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by elkevelvet at 4:09 PM on November 17, 2022 [11 favorites]
Given the gender politics of the people who are likely to fall for this nonsense, they might experience considerable consternation in the context of a free society as they try to raise successive sons:
posted by jamjam at 4:22 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
The fraternal birth order effect (FBOE) is the finding that older brothers increase the probability of homosexuality in later-born males,My link does not include this, but I’ve read elsewhere that the odds of a homosexual next son approach ~50-50 surprisingly fast in families with lots of sons.
[…]
The effect estimate for the FBOE showed that an increase from zero older brothers to one older brother is associated with a 38% increase in the odds of homosexuality.
posted by jamjam at 4:22 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
communal child-rearing strategies
"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the unschooling and intentional parenting facebook groups of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."
posted by mittens at 4:24 PM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the unschooling and intentional parenting facebook groups of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."
posted by mittens at 4:24 PM on November 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
We can't even get people to agree on the degree of average global temperature increase over the next 50-100 years (or trends in the cost of housing into the next millennium?? Jesus take the wheel). So the idea of engineering this one unremarkable couple's bloodline to dominate world population in less than three centuries is some of the most laughably whack-ass hubristic shit I've read since... well, maybe the latest Elon thread.
posted by hangashore at 4:39 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by hangashore at 4:39 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
Metafilter, horse-faced? Neigh, I say!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:42 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:42 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
> as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations
What are they gonna do if they don't? Haunt them? Anyway, this stupid plan is doomed, like our civilization in general.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:48 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
What are they gonna do if they don't? Haunt them? Anyway, this stupid plan is doomed, like our civilization in general.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:48 PM on November 17, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is just a front for re-establishing aristocracy.
All eight can't inherit the same manor. This is just a front for bringing back primogeniture.
posted by thivaia at 5:03 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
I still think my ant-like dystopia, where a dictator couple has all of her millions of eggs fertilized with his sperm and then forcibly implanted in all the women of the nation, is a more likely way to get this many offspring in a short period of time.
posted by clawsoon at 5:09 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 5:09 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
One thing that gets easily lost on these discussions that I think is worth highlighting: world-changing innovation does not happen because there is a very smart person, on the whole. In the 20th century, the only real innovation that could be tracked down to a lone genius working for profit was Richard Carrier's air conditioner; most everything else, from the transistor to the birth control pill, was either publicly funded, creates in a collaborative back-and-forth process amongst a community of peers, or both.
These people aren't saving the world, because their solution for saving the world is what a solution backed by venture capital has to look like. Many of our problems are caused by this approach!
posted by Merus at 5:15 PM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
These people aren't saving the world, because their solution for saving the world is what a solution backed by venture capital has to look like. Many of our problems are caused by this approach!
posted by Merus at 5:15 PM on November 17, 2022 [16 favorites]
When I read this, from the linked article:
People like the Collinses fear that falling birth rates in certain developed countries like the United States and most of Europe will lead to the extinction of cultures, the breakdown of economies, and, ultimately, the collapse of civilization.
I am somehow very much reminded of THIS, from The Great Gatsby:
‘Civilization's going to pieces,’ broke out Tom violently. ‘I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this man Goddard? … Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved … This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or those other races will have control of things … The idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are, and … And we've produced all the things that go to make civilization – oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 5:23 PM on November 17, 2022 [15 favorites]
People like the Collinses fear that falling birth rates in certain developed countries like the United States and most of Europe will lead to the extinction of cultures, the breakdown of economies, and, ultimately, the collapse of civilization.
I am somehow very much reminded of THIS, from The Great Gatsby:
‘Civilization's going to pieces,’ broke out Tom violently. ‘I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this man Goddard? … Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved … This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or those other races will have control of things … The idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are, and … And we've produced all the things that go to make civilization – oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 5:23 PM on November 17, 2022 [15 favorites]
"You have to create cultures that reward" and have structures for large families, Simone explained. Pronatalist pet issues include everything from increasing housing development to changing laws around car-seat regulation (one study found that people would stop having children when they couldn't fit any more car seats in their vehicle).
I'm not a parent, but I can't imagine anyone's "should we have another kid" calculus has ever rested on "I'd really like to have more children so they can be catastrophically ejected from a motor vehicle but the goddamned government won't let me!"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
I'm not a parent, but I can't imagine anyone's "should we have another kid" calculus has ever rested on "I'd really like to have more children so they can be catastrophically ejected from a motor vehicle but the goddamned government won't let me!"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
Unfortunately for them, "White" culture is already dead, at least if you look at it from the Anglo-centric perspective of earlier centuries:
Benjamin Franklin even regarded the "swarthy" Germans as insufficiently pale when he dreamed of the United States as a land of "White People..."posted by clawsoon at 5:38 PM on November 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
"...a school board member visiting the little Swedish-Canadian settlement of Silverdale turned to the teacher at the front of the class and in the full hearing of the students asked, 'Have you no white children in your school, only Swedes?'"
These sorts of folks also want to make a “network state” and I promise you they can’t as there’s no way they can get along with a moiety of their peers for even a year, let alone a lifetime.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 5:40 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 5:40 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is a small family, relative to some I know of, back in Utah.
posted by Oyéah at 6:25 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 6:25 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Given the gender politics of the people who are likely to fall for this nonsense, they might experience considerable consternation in the context of a free society as they try to raise successive sons:
The fraternal birth order effect (FBOE) is the finding that older brothers increase the probability of homosexuality in later-born males,
[…]
The effect estimate for the FBOE showed that an increase from zero older brothers to one older brother is associated with a 38% increase in the odds of homosexuality.
My link does not include this, but I’ve read elsewhere that the odds of a homosexual next son approach ~50-50 surprisingly fast in families with lots of sons.
Not to mention that the most common reason for surnames disappearing is because of family lines "daughtering out", where you get to a generation with no male children.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 6:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
The fraternal birth order effect (FBOE) is the finding that older brothers increase the probability of homosexuality in later-born males,
[…]
The effect estimate for the FBOE showed that an increase from zero older brothers to one older brother is associated with a 38% increase in the odds of homosexuality.
My link does not include this, but I’ve read elsewhere that the odds of a homosexual next son approach ~50-50 surprisingly fast in families with lots of sons.
Not to mention that the most common reason for surnames disappearing is because of family lines "daughtering out", where you get to a generation with no male children.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 6:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
P.S. I once met up with a very old friend who said' "YOU had CHILDREN?" I did not pursue what he meant by that comment.
posted by Oyéah at 6:39 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 6:39 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Alas, as I grow older, and only replaced my ex and myself, I have had to give up on my apparently subliminal plan to outweigh the moon, I have only recently learned of it, only to realize, it just isn't feasible.
posted by Oyéah at 6:51 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 6:51 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Ahahhahahahahahhaha eight children ahahahahhahahaha
I have five and it is exhausting. I know people with eight and either everyone is involved and struggling or you have a lot of paid resources and are still struggling.
The single biggest factor for population is women’s education and wealth. Women go through pregnancy which literally drains your bones and energy and the physical cost alone - it’s like climbing a mountain, only a few people want to do that repeatedly.
And the resources! Eight rich American children are going to be the resource equivalent of eight hundred children in rural Kenya. If you want to be pragmatic, make sure those 400 Kenyan girls get to stay in school and have legal access to employment and credit etc. You’ll end up overall with way better odds on useful humans out of 800 than 8.
But then they won’t have special white genes…
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:56 PM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
I have five and it is exhausting. I know people with eight and either everyone is involved and struggling or you have a lot of paid resources and are still struggling.
The single biggest factor for population is women’s education and wealth. Women go through pregnancy which literally drains your bones and energy and the physical cost alone - it’s like climbing a mountain, only a few people want to do that repeatedly.
And the resources! Eight rich American children are going to be the resource equivalent of eight hundred children in rural Kenya. If you want to be pragmatic, make sure those 400 Kenyan girls get to stay in school and have legal access to employment and credit etc. You’ll end up overall with way better odds on useful humans out of 800 than 8.
But then they won’t have special white genes…
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:56 PM on November 17, 2022 [17 favorites]
What's the name for Engineer's Disease when you actually don't understand the mechanics or math
MBA's disease.
posted by Rat Spatula at 7:33 PM on November 17, 2022 [26 favorites]
MBA's disease.
posted by Rat Spatula at 7:33 PM on November 17, 2022 [26 favorites]
It took me a while to notice that the word was 'pronatalist' and not, as I initally read, 'protoenailist'. Which, for the record, I am, except for the holes you get in your socks."
posted by Sparx at 7:34 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Sparx at 7:34 PM on November 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
My cat is a confirmed protoenailist.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:36 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:36 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
I got the cat claws out of the hi-fi
I've learned a lot since you've been gone
posted by bartleby at 9:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've learned a lot since you've been gone
posted by bartleby at 9:02 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
SET THE CONTROLS
FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN
the heart of the sun
posted by clavdivs at 9:29 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN
the heart of the sun
posted by clavdivs at 9:29 PM on November 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
Phalene, there is next to 0% chance that they are also into life-extension by replacing their blood, micro-dosing random chemicals and whatever the current buzz-grift is. They probably believe they will be around to see their grand-10th children born in outer space.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:45 PM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:45 PM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]
IDK man. Big talk. Call me when they actually have all 8 kids
posted by potrzebie at 11:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 11:26 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
"Titan Invictus" is a great name. For a spaceship.
I suspect I'm virtually alone in thinking it's a superb name for a small dog, perhaps a Jack Russell or a Chihuahua, but there are still more of us than think it's a good name for a small girl.
(It's a boy's name, for a start - Latin is fairly gendered like that, isn't it? If you're going to go all Latin for your names, you should probably not give away that you don't know the first thing about it right off the bat. The girl version would be Titania Invicta, I think, but I don't know if that's better.)
posted by Grangousier at 1:19 AM on November 18, 2022 [9 favorites]
I suspect I'm virtually alone in thinking it's a superb name for a small dog, perhaps a Jack Russell or a Chihuahua, but there are still more of us than think it's a good name for a small girl.
(It's a boy's name, for a start - Latin is fairly gendered like that, isn't it? If you're going to go all Latin for your names, you should probably not give away that you don't know the first thing about it right off the bat. The girl version would be Titania Invicta, I think, but I don't know if that's better.)
posted by Grangousier at 1:19 AM on November 18, 2022 [9 favorites]
Yeah, but you could be more precise: Invidus Invictus describes a Chihuahua well. Lascivibundus Invictus describes a Jack Russell well.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:02 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:02 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Bartleby, thanks for the summary of Methuselah's Children, but I'm pretty sure it was four living grandparents, not four grandparents who'd lived past 100. Waiting until the grandparents lived past 100 would have meant the women were way past being fertile.
Good lord, four living grandparents probably just meant they lived past fifty. Maybe forty.
That family plan is an example of what I call bad rationality, which is picking one number to plan around and ignoring everything else.
As for the birth rate dropping, I think it's a matter for concern, since I'm inclined to think that old people will be more likely to die of neglect-- the hands and minds to help them simply won't exist.
Good organization can help, but it's limited by resources. There *may* be technological solutions, but I don't think they're coming really fast. We don't even have robots that can help with lifting people.
It looks to me like the future population will include a higher proportion will include a higher proportion of people will be sub-Saharan Africans, which I don't think is a problem, just a fact. Admittedly, prediction about demographics is a fool's game.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:18 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Good lord, four living grandparents probably just meant they lived past fifty. Maybe forty.
That family plan is an example of what I call bad rationality, which is picking one number to plan around and ignoring everything else.
As for the birth rate dropping, I think it's a matter for concern, since I'm inclined to think that old people will be more likely to die of neglect-- the hands and minds to help them simply won't exist.
Good organization can help, but it's limited by resources. There *may* be technological solutions, but I don't think they're coming really fast. We don't even have robots that can help with lifting people.
It looks to me like the future population will include a higher proportion will include a higher proportion of people will be sub-Saharan Africans, which I don't think is a problem, just a fact. Admittedly, prediction about demographics is a fool's game.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:18 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
I feel so sorry for their children. It will harm them for life.
My greatgrandfather (1867-1943) was one of the originators of "racial hygiene". He and his wife attempted the experiment. Of his 9 sons and daughters, born between 1906 and 1925, five had between 6 and 8 children each, three had 2 each, all born between 1935 and 1950s. Of that generation (my parents), each had roughly between 0 and 4 children, notably already in this generation most rejected their grandparents ideology. which brings us to my generation, born from 1963 until mid2000s (this would include elderly uncles fathering children in second marriages to younger women). So in my generation there are roughly 150 people, most have one to two children, but many none at all. And my generation includes the whole spectrum: the majority of my cousins totally rejects our greatgreatparents ideology, and has children or not just as they pleased, only a handful are outright nazis, procreating on purpose.
One of my cousins published the family history both online and in book form, and while i do not agree with his methodology (turning it into a public art project and in the process causing massive family feuds by using children's photos of living people without their permission, etc), i link to it here as an example of a child of the fourth generation of such an experiment.
posted by 15L06 at 4:01 AM on November 18, 2022 [31 favorites]
My greatgrandfather (1867-1943) was one of the originators of "racial hygiene". He and his wife attempted the experiment. Of his 9 sons and daughters, born between 1906 and 1925, five had between 6 and 8 children each, three had 2 each, all born between 1935 and 1950s. Of that generation (my parents), each had roughly between 0 and 4 children, notably already in this generation most rejected their grandparents ideology. which brings us to my generation, born from 1963 until mid2000s (this would include elderly uncles fathering children in second marriages to younger women). So in my generation there are roughly 150 people, most have one to two children, but many none at all. And my generation includes the whole spectrum: the majority of my cousins totally rejects our greatgreatparents ideology, and has children or not just as they pleased, only a handful are outright nazis, procreating on purpose.
One of my cousins published the family history both online and in book form, and while i do not agree with his methodology (turning it into a public art project and in the process causing massive family feuds by using children's photos of living people without their permission, etc), i link to it here as an example of a child of the fourth generation of such an experiment.
posted by 15L06 at 4:01 AM on November 18, 2022 [31 favorites]
It looks to me like the future population will include a higher proportion will include a higher proportion of people will be sub-Saharan Africans, which I don't think is a problem, just a fact. Admittedly, prediction about demographics is a fool's game.
Because of the milestone recently of 8 billion humans, there's been a lot of talk about demographics recently, and I heard that when/if we reach the peak of 10,4 billion humans, 40% of these people will be most likely born on the African continent. There are a lot of ifs in that prediction, because in the same period, we have predictions of catastrophic consequences of global heating, biodiversity loss and human encroachment in wildlife habitats.
I really wonder how those racist libertarians are dealing with actually reality when they meet it, but I guess they rarely need to go out of their bubble. The few libertarians I know are not racist, but they are somehow blunted in their perception of the world around us. It's as if unwanted information just doesn't get processed in their brains.
posted by mumimor at 4:11 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
Because of the milestone recently of 8 billion humans, there's been a lot of talk about demographics recently, and I heard that when/if we reach the peak of 10,4 billion humans, 40% of these people will be most likely born on the African continent. There are a lot of ifs in that prediction, because in the same period, we have predictions of catastrophic consequences of global heating, biodiversity loss and human encroachment in wildlife habitats.
I really wonder how those racist libertarians are dealing with actually reality when they meet it, but I guess they rarely need to go out of their bubble. The few libertarians I know are not racist, but they are somehow blunted in their perception of the world around us. It's as if unwanted information just doesn't get processed in their brains.
posted by mumimor at 4:11 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
The thing is: the original eugenics movement and indeed Nazism were already secular and they though they were ruthless pragmatists as well. Ok there were a few mystics in the Nazi party but really the core believers would have described themselves this way as well. It was in fact religious Catholics who were most completely opposed to this agenda from the beginning.
So really, they're adding "we're not Nazi" adjectives that don't even superficially separate them from Nazis.
The only person I ever met who expressed what I might think of as a sort of non reprehensible version of eugenics (although I still think it's scientific nonsense and makes way too much of our ability to forecast the deep future and what genetics would be beneficial) didn't believe that they themselves were the template of the future super-person which is surely the starting point of any remotely honest approach.
(n.b. I think the whole is so toxic that I'm not really interested in anyone developing such an approach but if they were going to, not starting from themselves as template would be a good test of bona fides.)
posted by atrazine at 4:34 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
So really, they're adding "we're not Nazi" adjectives that don't even superficially separate them from Nazis.
The only person I ever met who expressed what I might think of as a sort of non reprehensible version of eugenics (although I still think it's scientific nonsense and makes way too much of our ability to forecast the deep future and what genetics would be beneficial) didn't believe that they themselves were the template of the future super-person which is surely the starting point of any remotely honest approach.
(n.b. I think the whole is so toxic that I'm not really interested in anyone developing such an approach but if they were going to, not starting from themselves as template would be a good test of bona fides.)
posted by atrazine at 4:34 AM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
atrazine: The thing is: the original eugenics movement and indeed Nazism were already secular and they though they were ruthless pragmatists as well. Ok there were a few mystics in the Nazi party but really the core believers would have described themselves this way as well. It was in fact religious Catholics who were most completely opposed to this agenda from the beginning.
There was heavy socialist flirtation with eugenics in the decade or so around ~1910, when Herbert Spencer's ideas took off with self-taught socialists. That's when, for example, Helen Keller got into it.
I'm guessing that's part of where the "Socialist" in "National Socialist" came from. Most socialists seem to have moved on from eugenics by the 1920s, going into labour-rights socialism or what-would-jesus-do socialism or Bolshevik revolutionary socialism, but the National Socialists held on.
posted by clawsoon at 5:04 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
There was heavy socialist flirtation with eugenics in the decade or so around ~1910, when Herbert Spencer's ideas took off with self-taught socialists. That's when, for example, Helen Keller got into it.
I'm guessing that's part of where the "Socialist" in "National Socialist" came from. Most socialists seem to have moved on from eugenics by the 1920s, going into labour-rights socialism or what-would-jesus-do socialism or Bolshevik revolutionary socialism, but the National Socialists held on.
posted by clawsoon at 5:04 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
jamjam: Given the gender politics of the people who are likely to fall for this nonsense, they might experience considerable consternation in the context of a free society as they try to raise successive sons:
The fraternal birth order effect (FBOE) is the finding that older brothers increase the probability of homosexuality in later-born males
Wait, this is real? "...the odds of having a gay son increase from approximately 2% for the first born son, to 3% for the second, 5% for the third and so on. Two studies have estimated between 15% and 29% of gay men owe their sexual orientation to this effect..."
So all the groups who have lots of kids and hate "the gays" are producing the most gay sons? Mormons, Amish, Hutterites, ultra-Orthodox Jews?
posted by clawsoon at 5:21 AM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
The fraternal birth order effect (FBOE) is the finding that older brothers increase the probability of homosexuality in later-born males
Wait, this is real? "...the odds of having a gay son increase from approximately 2% for the first born son, to 3% for the second, 5% for the third and so on. Two studies have estimated between 15% and 29% of gay men owe their sexual orientation to this effect..."
So all the groups who have lots of kids and hate "the gays" are producing the most gay sons? Mormons, Amish, Hutterites, ultra-Orthodox Jews?
posted by clawsoon at 5:21 AM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
I think almost everyone except the catholics were into eugenics in the first decades of the 20th century.
posted by mumimor at 5:35 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mumimor at 5:35 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
signal: “What's the name for Engineer's Disease when you actually don't understand the mechanics or math that you're supposed to be good at in the first place?”
Rat Spatula: “MBA's disease.”“Oh, you have an MBA? In that case I'll have to show you how to do it.”
posted by ob1quixote at 5:47 AM on November 18, 2022 [10 favorites]
See for example of what I mean for optimising against a set of criteria that you don't just not understand but CANNOT understand for the future:
The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account. Simone compared her autism to a "fine-tuned race car" oh fuck me, she's cool with selecting against every other characteristic except her own diagnosed neurodiversity. of course
Until a few years ago, let's get real for many people *today*, selecting against that trait would be considered normal if it were possible. We have no idea, no idea at all what the world of 100 years looks like, let alone 1000 years. Hey, here's an idea, let's engineer out all our famine survival genes so we don't get fat to deal with the very new problem of simultaneously having tons of food, no physical labour, and really caring about a particular aesthetic. Guess what? When the space-famine of 2500 comes around it's "Oops, all skeletons" for you bucko.
I'm not usually a fan of overly conservative "let's not mess with that" handwringing but oh man, does it require a lack of imagination to think this is something you can do without completely unpredictable consequences.
It's bleak, "more than a quarter of the world's countries now have pronatalist policies, including infertility-treatment benefits and "baby bonus" cash incentives."
Infertility treatment is health care. Are incubators part this bleak world or "pro-natalist" policies as well?
Apartheid is seemingly behind Musk's hatred of public transport too: Hyperloop was purely distraction designed to slow rail adoption. Tesla is trying to prolong the unsustainable automobile.
Isn't it a little funny to blame car obsession of an American citizen by choice and American resident for his entire adult life on... Apartheid? I mean, chief, y'all invented the car culture. The guy lives in LA? Does everyone in the city of angels have a secret portrait of Hendrik Verwoerd or what. Almost the only non-irritating thing about Musk is his hatred of the repulsively violent, hierarchical, and bullying (in every direction) culture of Afrikaans speaking white South Africa and it is admirable that he left as soon as he could.
(Regarding What We Owe To The Future, twitter has been talking about this review which looks very juicy.)
Despite the damning with faint praise that this is something that The Damned at twitter are talking about, I have been reading this book which is very interesting, so thank you for sharing this review.
I haven't finished the book but my own criticism comes from the work of economists like Simon Caney who take to task the moral underpinnings of economic tools like discounting and making trade-offs in the aggregate and make it clear that just because a tool is mathematically tractable doesn't mean you can reasonably use it way outside of its originally theorised context. I.e. just because you can make the math of Utility of all future people vs Utility of some people alive today work, doesn't mean that you should use this as a decision making tool because the logic that supported the math only works in a limited domain where an individual or genuinely coherent pool of people is making tradeoffs for themselves.
There is also an opposite approach (which Caney would condemn!) of applying very high and increasing hyperbolic discount rates to the future in order to prevent the uncountable future trillions from completely dominating our decision making.
That review, correctly points out MacAskill’s own position is "weak" longtermism and that the really freakish proponents of the idea are to be found elsewhere.
Ultimately I think Regina Regi's criticism ("there's no way you know enough about the future") is most persuasive.
And on demographic collapses - you don't really need aggressive pro-natalist policies. Just don't have what are effectively anti-natalist economic structures and most couples will end up having two-ish children.
I.e. maternity and paternity leave in many countries: awful. Childcare costs: awful to crippling. Career penalty for taking time out to raise children: substantial. Social safety net: frayed. Housing costs relative to incomes: way up.
So yeah nobody is going to have an extra kid for the theoretical reason that they want the national pension system to keep working 40 years from now, come on. If you just made childcare free you'd probably get an extra 0.1 on the birthrate in the UK, I'd bet.
I used to sometimes interview people like this. At a dinner party in Palo Alto years ago some tech company founder to my right told me how modern Silicon Valley was the equivalent to Florence in its heyday, the pinnacle of all that was yadda yadda yadda. Just the knowledge that these people exist is exhausting. That said, great post!
You should have duelled him. Florence in its heyday was possibly the most violent society we have ever known.
posted by atrazine at 5:58 AM on November 18, 2022 [7 favorites]
The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account. Simone compared her autism to a "fine-tuned race car" oh fuck me, she's cool with selecting against every other characteristic except her own diagnosed neurodiversity. of course
Until a few years ago, let's get real for many people *today*, selecting against that trait would be considered normal if it were possible. We have no idea, no idea at all what the world of 100 years looks like, let alone 1000 years. Hey, here's an idea, let's engineer out all our famine survival genes so we don't get fat to deal with the very new problem of simultaneously having tons of food, no physical labour, and really caring about a particular aesthetic. Guess what? When the space-famine of 2500 comes around it's "Oops, all skeletons" for you bucko.
I'm not usually a fan of overly conservative "let's not mess with that" handwringing but oh man, does it require a lack of imagination to think this is something you can do without completely unpredictable consequences.
It's bleak, "more than a quarter of the world's countries now have pronatalist policies, including infertility-treatment benefits and "baby bonus" cash incentives."
Infertility treatment is health care. Are incubators part this bleak world or "pro-natalist" policies as well?
Apartheid is seemingly behind Musk's hatred of public transport too: Hyperloop was purely distraction designed to slow rail adoption. Tesla is trying to prolong the unsustainable automobile.
Isn't it a little funny to blame car obsession of an American citizen by choice and American resident for his entire adult life on... Apartheid? I mean, chief, y'all invented the car culture. The guy lives in LA? Does everyone in the city of angels have a secret portrait of Hendrik Verwoerd or what. Almost the only non-irritating thing about Musk is his hatred of the repulsively violent, hierarchical, and bullying (in every direction) culture of Afrikaans speaking white South Africa and it is admirable that he left as soon as he could.
(Regarding What We Owe To The Future, twitter has been talking about this review which looks very juicy.)
Despite the damning with faint praise that this is something that The Damned at twitter are talking about, I have been reading this book which is very interesting, so thank you for sharing this review.
I haven't finished the book but my own criticism comes from the work of economists like Simon Caney who take to task the moral underpinnings of economic tools like discounting and making trade-offs in the aggregate and make it clear that just because a tool is mathematically tractable doesn't mean you can reasonably use it way outside of its originally theorised context. I.e. just because you can make the math of Utility of all future people vs Utility of some people alive today work, doesn't mean that you should use this as a decision making tool because the logic that supported the math only works in a limited domain where an individual or genuinely coherent pool of people is making tradeoffs for themselves.
There is also an opposite approach (which Caney would condemn!) of applying very high and increasing hyperbolic discount rates to the future in order to prevent the uncountable future trillions from completely dominating our decision making.
That review, correctly points out MacAskill’s own position is "weak" longtermism and that the really freakish proponents of the idea are to be found elsewhere.
Ultimately I think Regina Regi's criticism ("there's no way you know enough about the future") is most persuasive.
And on demographic collapses - you don't really need aggressive pro-natalist policies. Just don't have what are effectively anti-natalist economic structures and most couples will end up having two-ish children.
I.e. maternity and paternity leave in many countries: awful. Childcare costs: awful to crippling. Career penalty for taking time out to raise children: substantial. Social safety net: frayed. Housing costs relative to incomes: way up.
So yeah nobody is going to have an extra kid for the theoretical reason that they want the national pension system to keep working 40 years from now, come on. If you just made childcare free you'd probably get an extra 0.1 on the birthrate in the UK, I'd bet.
I used to sometimes interview people like this. At a dinner party in Palo Alto years ago some tech company founder to my right told me how modern Silicon Valley was the equivalent to Florence in its heyday, the pinnacle of all that was yadda yadda yadda. Just the knowledge that these people exist is exhausting. That said, great post!
You should have duelled him. Florence in its heyday was possibly the most violent society we have ever known.
posted by atrazine at 5:58 AM on November 18, 2022 [7 favorites]
You should have duelled him.
Fuck that. He was into faux historical comparisons, not me. Simply kneecapping him would have been delicious but I needed to keep my job.
15L06, I have flagged your brave and revealing comment as fantastic. What a thing to discover about your family. As far as the family profiled in the fucking article, why are the offspring of this particular couple so worthy? They are white, educated, and have money. Like, that's it. That's not special.
Following his parents' divorce, Malcolm was shipped off to a "troubled teen" facility, an experience he compares to that depicted in the movie "Holes," in which children are sent to work at labor camps in the desert. Malcolm says his father managed to squander the family fortune throughout his five marriages. "He at one point had bought the most expensive thing at Christies," Malcolm said. "He has nothing now. No money."
His dad totally sounds like a piece of work (5 marriages? That dude maybe needed a lesson from Simone's polyamorous, hippie parents). But the idea that his dad is worthless now because he has no money? That kind of judgment, implied or actual, makes me sad for the couple's children, who will inevitably be found wanting.
I wonder what it would it take for white Americans like this couple to become aware of and genuinely wrestle with the racism that drives this kind of baby boom. There are lots of other isms these folks should wrestle with, but that's an excellent place to start.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:14 AM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
Fuck that. He was into faux historical comparisons, not me. Simply kneecapping him would have been delicious but I needed to keep my job.
15L06, I have flagged your brave and revealing comment as fantastic. What a thing to discover about your family. As far as the family profiled in the fucking article, why are the offspring of this particular couple so worthy? They are white, educated, and have money. Like, that's it. That's not special.
Following his parents' divorce, Malcolm was shipped off to a "troubled teen" facility, an experience he compares to that depicted in the movie "Holes," in which children are sent to work at labor camps in the desert. Malcolm says his father managed to squander the family fortune throughout his five marriages. "He at one point had bought the most expensive thing at Christies," Malcolm said. "He has nothing now. No money."
His dad totally sounds like a piece of work (5 marriages? That dude maybe needed a lesson from Simone's polyamorous, hippie parents). But the idea that his dad is worthless now because he has no money? That kind of judgment, implied or actual, makes me sad for the couple's children, who will inevitably be found wanting.
I wonder what it would it take for white Americans like this couple to become aware of and genuinely wrestle with the racism that drives this kind of baby boom. There are lots of other isms these folks should wrestle with, but that's an excellent place to start.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:14 AM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
One part of my family is quite catholic. My boomer Dad is one of 12, and has something like 70 first cousins. On that side of the family, I have 28 first cousins, getting over replacement rate with my one uncle who had six. My generation? Most of us are having one or maaaybe two kids.
posted by rockindata at 6:22 AM on November 18, 2022
posted by rockindata at 6:22 AM on November 18, 2022
15L06, I would like to read the article, but it stalls after a few paragraphs about the site having trouble.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:24 AM on November 18, 2022
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:24 AM on November 18, 2022
I wonder if they are separating themselves not from Nazis but from Quiverfull.
posted by Artw at 6:39 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Artw at 6:39 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
I would like to 0ffer my sincere apologies for my Collins kinfolk.
posted by triage_lazarus at 6:46 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by triage_lazarus at 6:46 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Nancy, i am not sure what happened and it works for me when i click on it now, but here the link, https://www.twofamilyarchives.com/reichel-komplex-friedemann-derschmidt/
Maybe it works better if you copy it into your browser?
I know that the site is not well maintained but when i googled Reichel komplex earlier today to insert the link it worked. Not sure what else to suggest, i don't really want to copy and paste it into here.
Send me memail if you want me to send the text via memail.
posted by 15L06 at 8:49 AM on November 18, 2022
Maybe it works better if you copy it into your browser?
I know that the site is not well maintained but when i googled Reichel komplex earlier today to insert the link it worked. Not sure what else to suggest, i don't really want to copy and paste it into here.
Send me memail if you want me to send the text via memail.
posted by 15L06 at 8:49 AM on November 18, 2022
I'm a geneticist. Specifically, I'm an expert in genetic improvement of livestock populations using selective breeding. I have many thoughts about this, but the biggest issues here are that 1) there's no way that their "eight kids" policy will ever work generationally (already discussed very well by others), 2) their breeding program is too small to generate the kinds of outliers you need to produce appreciable selection intensity (I assume they're not going to allow parent-offspring or sibling-sibling matings, but maybe if they go all-in on an in vitro breeding scheme and pretend that's less squicky then they could potentially sort-of make it work), and 3) they want to select for traits with low heritabilities (such as cognitive ability) because they believe that they can provide optimal environments and that genes are destiny (neither is true, of course). As a professional, I'd also like to point out that they might have enough money to manipulate the first generation with promises of trust funds, but the number of descendants will quickly outstrip the financial resources available, and they'll lose all their leverage. These folks might be clever at some things, but they're real dumb at others.
I'm available to design competent breeding programs for rich people, MeMail me for my very reasonable [sic] rate sheet.
posted by wintermind at 9:11 AM on November 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
I'm available to design competent breeding programs for rich people, MeMail me for my very reasonable [sic] rate sheet.
posted by wintermind at 9:11 AM on November 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
15L06, thanks. I'm beginning to think it's a fairly short article and I somehow had an impression there was supposed to be more of it.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:38 AM on November 18, 2022
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:38 AM on November 18, 2022
15L06, thanks. I'm beginning to think it's a fairly short article and I somehow had an impression there was supposed to be more of it.
I do see a note on the bottom saying that they're rebuilding after being hacked, so maybe there used to be more across the website?
posted by clawsoon at 10:01 AM on November 18, 2022
I do see a note on the bottom saying that they're rebuilding after being hacked, so maybe there used to be more across the website?
posted by clawsoon at 10:01 AM on November 18, 2022
I am reminded of a humorous parody of syllogism I read years ago. To paraphrase:
Society should be ruled by the best class
I am part of the .01%
Therefore, society should be ruled by the .01%
Whole lot of folks in the .01% too dumb too realize they're not smart, but just smart enough to try to impose their brand of dumb.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:32 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
Society should be ruled by the best class
I am part of the .01%
Therefore, society should be ruled by the .01%
Whole lot of folks in the .01% too dumb too realize they're not smart, but just smart enough to try to impose their brand of dumb.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:32 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
Lots of people say "it takes all kinds" sarcastically.
My Dad always said it sincerely.
And it's true. It takes all kinds. And that's yet another reason that eugenics is not only morally bad but also practically bad.
posted by clawsoon at 10:35 AM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
My Dad always said it sincerely.
And it's true. It takes all kinds. And that's yet another reason that eugenics is not only morally bad but also practically bad.
posted by clawsoon at 10:35 AM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
Nancy and clawsoon, yes the English version is rather short. There is actually a whole book, but only in German.
posted by 15L06 at 11:03 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by 15L06 at 11:03 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Or that thing from Ringworld, where aliens do a similar thing, but using colony worlds so overcrowded that people have to win a lottery to get a reproduction license. Interbreeding lottery winners with lottery winners, on and on, trying to get to the Luckiest Person Alive.
It was an overcrowded Earth. The aliens (Pierson's Puppeteers) worked to ensure the birthright lotto was kept around for generations and was a significant percentage of the humans born.
They did the same to another species, making it less violent by tricking it into wars and making them lose horribly, so the most aggressive got wiped out each war (in particular, wars against humans).
Note that Niven is known as a right-wing SF author, if not as bad as his friend Jerry (which he co-wrote a bunch of books with).
posted by NotAYakk at 11:08 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
It was an overcrowded Earth. The aliens (Pierson's Puppeteers) worked to ensure the birthright lotto was kept around for generations and was a significant percentage of the humans born.
They did the same to another species, making it less violent by tricking it into wars and making them lose horribly, so the most aggressive got wiped out each war (in particular, wars against humans).
Note that Niven is known as a right-wing SF author, if not as bad as his friend Jerry (which he co-wrote a bunch of books with).
posted by NotAYakk at 11:08 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
i'm so weary of exterminationist/eugenicist wackos getting articles written about them. it almost feels gauche to bring up but why do we so rarely get articles about left-wing fringe lifestyle people? i keep vacillating between "journalists and news organizations are lazy and maintain a less intense sense of responsibility for what they're platforming than i personally think is wise" and "news organizations, if not journalists, are sufficiently captured by the fringe right such that they willingly promulgate fringe right-wing ideas". either way it sucks ass, i wish they stopped pretending that maniacs with bad politics were worth taking seriously. and if you must write about maniacs with bad politics there are ways of framing it that don't allow them to go on about their maniac bullshit.
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 11:13 AM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 11:13 AM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
Good, I say. The more Collinses the better. After the collapse, my descendants shall feast.
posted by Devoidoid at 11:47 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Devoidoid at 11:47 AM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
But seriously, if I ever get another male parrotlet, I will very likely name him Titan Invictus.
posted by Devoidoid at 11:49 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Devoidoid at 11:49 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm a geneticist. Specifically, I'm an expert in genetic improvement of livestock populations using selective breeding. I have many thoughts about this, but the biggest issues here are....
Since you opened that can of worms, I am now ready to admit that the first thing I thought of was an experience from my gran's horse farm, where I assisted with both the theory and practice. When you were breeding back then, you spent a lot of time studying stud books, and figuring out the exact balance of inbreeding and outside influx. A tiny bit of inbreeding can be a good thing, but it has to be dosed. This was forty years ago, and genetics weren't as advanced as today. When gran closed shop, everything at the top level was done by sequencing in professional labs.
I'd studied a bit of genetics and could run some probability calculations, to make myself useful, but obviously had no practical experience.
My gran had a mare which was only awarded second degree at the fairs, but she had an intuition it was way better (and she was right about this in the long run, because she had grown up with a dad who was really good at this). But she paired the mare with the same lovely stallion three times in a row. The first time, the result was the best mare ever recorded in the nation to this day, with scores of gold medals. She was absolutely gorgeous in every way, except she was a bad breeder. She made a career in dressage which was good for the business as a branding thing. Her first little sister was less magnificent (though not bad), and an amazing breed mare. She was also angry and only liked me. The third was a beautiful dwarf, and so angry that my gran had her put down when I was away (I won't say she liked me, but she tolerated me, so I kept up the hope she could be tamed). After that, gran turned to other stallions, the risk with the pretty guy was too high. After some years, she figured out what worked and the quality of her herd became more consistently excellent, but even then, there would always be infertile or angry or just weird outcomes.
The bottom line is, unless you are doing clones*, you really don't know what will happen, and the methods you use in animal breeding are just not applicable for humans. Not even psychopath libertarian humans. I mean, if psycho billionaire dad was a bull and his offspring didn't perform, dad would be put down tout suite. I don't think that would be a good idea, I'm just saying that what eugenicists imagine isn't how it works irl.
*and even clones aren't reliable, for reasons science is only beginning to figure out.
posted by mumimor at 12:15 PM on November 18, 2022 [10 favorites]
Since you opened that can of worms, I am now ready to admit that the first thing I thought of was an experience from my gran's horse farm, where I assisted with both the theory and practice. When you were breeding back then, you spent a lot of time studying stud books, and figuring out the exact balance of inbreeding and outside influx. A tiny bit of inbreeding can be a good thing, but it has to be dosed. This was forty years ago, and genetics weren't as advanced as today. When gran closed shop, everything at the top level was done by sequencing in professional labs.
I'd studied a bit of genetics and could run some probability calculations, to make myself useful, but obviously had no practical experience.
My gran had a mare which was only awarded second degree at the fairs, but she had an intuition it was way better (and she was right about this in the long run, because she had grown up with a dad who was really good at this). But she paired the mare with the same lovely stallion three times in a row. The first time, the result was the best mare ever recorded in the nation to this day, with scores of gold medals. She was absolutely gorgeous in every way, except she was a bad breeder. She made a career in dressage which was good for the business as a branding thing. Her first little sister was less magnificent (though not bad), and an amazing breed mare. She was also angry and only liked me. The third was a beautiful dwarf, and so angry that my gran had her put down when I was away (I won't say she liked me, but she tolerated me, so I kept up the hope she could be tamed). After that, gran turned to other stallions, the risk with the pretty guy was too high. After some years, she figured out what worked and the quality of her herd became more consistently excellent, but even then, there would always be infertile or angry or just weird outcomes.
The bottom line is, unless you are doing clones*, you really don't know what will happen, and the methods you use in animal breeding are just not applicable for humans. Not even psychopath libertarian humans. I mean, if psycho billionaire dad was a bull and his offspring didn't perform, dad would be put down tout suite. I don't think that would be a good idea, I'm just saying that what eugenicists imagine isn't how it works irl.
*and even clones aren't reliable, for reasons science is only beginning to figure out.
posted by mumimor at 12:15 PM on November 18, 2022 [10 favorites]
why do we so rarely get articles about left-wing fringe lifestyle people
Antivax used to be a left-wing fringe lifestyle thing that got way too much press, but the Right wing stole it because their platform didn't quite have a monopoly on home-spun dumb ideas, so they had to steal that one too. Environmental causes too, which the Right Wing has changed to mostly apply to land inside existing city borders rather than having end goals of preserving as much undeveloped land outside city borders as possible.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
Antivax used to be a left-wing fringe lifestyle thing that got way too much press, but the Right wing stole it because their platform didn't quite have a monopoly on home-spun dumb ideas, so they had to steal that one too. Environmental causes too, which the Right Wing has changed to mostly apply to land inside existing city borders rather than having end goals of preserving as much undeveloped land outside city borders as possible.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
My dog wanted to go out, so I didn't get an important note into the above. When you are breeding livestock or dressage horses, you are breeding for some very specific traits and damn everything else. A broiler chicken doesn't need to live more than a year, and that is at most. A dressage horse is bred for size and stride and a bit of temper.
The healthiest animals are very often the mutts, and luckily, most humans are mutts, maybe excluding the aristocracy, and of course very secluded communities.
posted by mumimor at 12:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [10 favorites]
The healthiest animals are very often the mutts, and luckily, most humans are mutts, maybe excluding the aristocracy, and of course very secluded communities.
posted by mumimor at 12:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [10 favorites]
why do we so rarely get articles about left-wing fringe lifestyle people?
Check out coverage of the FTX polycule.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:46 PM on November 18, 2022
Check out coverage of the FTX polycule.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:46 PM on November 18, 2022
nixon's meatloaf, on one hand, there is this idea that the right wing is closer to the pulse of the nation and our collective id than the left. OTOH, do you trust voyeuristic coverage of the fringe left to be done by the mainstream media in a way that's not "look at all of these terrorists that want to light your car dealership on fire/break into this animal testing facility/loot the Target/pose an existential threat to our advertisers?"
posted by Selena777 at 12:48 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Selena777 at 12:48 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
The people in tfa make my skin crawl, but that’s not my point. This thread is pretty glorious. I’ve learned. I’ve laughed. (The “idk man . . . good luck” comment just cracked me up!) I’ve like mentally pumped my fist, like “Hell, yeah!” (The “Take out the eugenist freaks” [paraphrase] comment.)
I love you mutts.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 12:50 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
I love you mutts.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 12:50 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
It occurs to me that perhaps the only people truly bred for purpose were the Ptolemies, or perhaps King Tutankhamun and his sister-queen. They ... didn't work out so well. Most of the Ptolemies didn't, either, although Cleopatra managed about as well as anyone could.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:51 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Countess Elena at 12:51 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Selena777 that's the thing though, isn't it? the framing of voyeuristic news articles about fringey left stuff tends toward "let's examine the harm potentially/actually done by this person/lifestyle/group/philosophy" instead of just straight up "look at these weirdos, lol/no lol". that blows my mind.
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 1:56 PM on November 18, 2022
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 1:56 PM on November 18, 2022
Personally I'd love to introduce these people to the Port Townsend Victorian couple and just kind of see what happens
posted by BungaDunga at 2:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by BungaDunga at 2:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Check out coverage of the FTX polycule.
Crypto so automatically alt-right aligned.
posted by Artw at 2:38 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Crypto so automatically alt-right aligned.
posted by Artw at 2:38 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Why wouldn't there be?
Uh, the devastating effects of climate change that threaten to destroy human civilization within the next couple hundred years? The increasing likelihood of the use of nuclear, chemical, and germ warfare to defend dwindling resources and that will likely hasten the demise of the human race?
Might there be "human governments" and "a real estate market" in some way 2000 years from now. Sure. But to talk about "well, I hope home prices go down" as if you're planning a fucking investment portfolio is beyond short-sighted and blinkered, verging on delusion. As is the idea that we have millennia to deal with pollution.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:25 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Uh, the devastating effects of climate change that threaten to destroy human civilization within the next couple hundred years? The increasing likelihood of the use of nuclear, chemical, and germ warfare to defend dwindling resources and that will likely hasten the demise of the human race?
Might there be "human governments" and "a real estate market" in some way 2000 years from now. Sure. But to talk about "well, I hope home prices go down" as if you're planning a fucking investment portfolio is beyond short-sighted and blinkered, verging on delusion. As is the idea that we have millennia to deal with pollution.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:25 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
@atrazine had posted my thoughts too.
I agree that it's very hard to predict the demographic future, but I think the invention of birth control did change the game on demographic projections. I am fully supportive of the availability of birth control, but I feel that as most liberal countries accepted it, it caused the domestic birth rates to trend towards below replacement. It's very weird for a nation to be reliant on other countries only to grow its population.
I do feel that the free market aspect of liberal economies has created a tragedy of the commons with respect to population as the benefits of raising an adult goes to the nation and employers, but the costs are attached to individuals. So now, rational actors are being rational and noticing that they're incentivised to avoid children.
posted by DetriusXii at 5:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
I agree that it's very hard to predict the demographic future, but I think the invention of birth control did change the game on demographic projections. I am fully supportive of the availability of birth control, but I feel that as most liberal countries accepted it, it caused the domestic birth rates to trend towards below replacement. It's very weird for a nation to be reliant on other countries only to grow its population.
I do feel that the free market aspect of liberal economies has created a tragedy of the commons with respect to population as the benefits of raising an adult goes to the nation and employers, but the costs are attached to individuals. So now, rational actors are being rational and noticing that they're incentivised to avoid children.
posted by DetriusXii at 5:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
or perhaps King Tutankhamun and his sister-queen
Interesting. Ankhesenamun, daughter of Akhenaten and Neferti. They had six daughters. Tutankhamun' mother is one of Ankhenaten consorts, "The younger lady"and Amenhotep III daughter. Ankhesenamun married Ay. Ay had a daughter, Mutnedjmet, whose mother was wet nurse to Nefertiti, she married Horemheb, the last Pharoah of the 18th Dynasty who picked a non-royal successor, Ramesses I and it goes on a little past the Ptolomies.
posted by clavdivs at 5:56 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Interesting. Ankhesenamun, daughter of Akhenaten and Neferti. They had six daughters. Tutankhamun' mother is one of Ankhenaten consorts, "The younger lady"and Amenhotep III daughter. Ankhesenamun married Ay. Ay had a daughter, Mutnedjmet, whose mother was wet nurse to Nefertiti, she married Horemheb, the last Pharoah of the 18th Dynasty who picked a non-royal successor, Ramesses I and it goes on a little past the Ptolomies.
posted by clavdivs at 5:56 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's very weird for a nation to be reliant on other countries only to grow its population.
not really
posted by klaniaphage at 6:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
not really
posted by klaniaphage at 6:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
It's very weird that we've created an economy which requires unending population growth.
There's something wrong with that. Like... mathematically wrong. There's no such thing as unending growth.
And it's set up by this weird dynamic where our economy needs to have a permanent underclass to do all the essential work, but also needs to demonstrate that the underclass can move up if they just work hard enough and smart enough. When the system works as intended (which, to be fair, isn't often), it is constantly draining its pool of essential workers by sucking them upward, leaving not enough people to do essential work. And so the system needs to constantly push people back down by making work precarious, or by importing workers and immediately putting them in a precarious position, or by encouraging high birth rates.
It's like we organized the world economy around a constantly expanding frontier in the New World and Russia which required high numbers of agricultural-civilization people to replace horticultural and hunter-gatherer people, and then we forgot to reorganize the world economy when the frontiers reached the Pacific.
posted by clawsoon at 7:05 PM on November 18, 2022 [16 favorites]
There's something wrong with that. Like... mathematically wrong. There's no such thing as unending growth.
And it's set up by this weird dynamic where our economy needs to have a permanent underclass to do all the essential work, but also needs to demonstrate that the underclass can move up if they just work hard enough and smart enough. When the system works as intended (which, to be fair, isn't often), it is constantly draining its pool of essential workers by sucking them upward, leaving not enough people to do essential work. And so the system needs to constantly push people back down by making work precarious, or by importing workers and immediately putting them in a precarious position, or by encouraging high birth rates.
It's like we organized the world economy around a constantly expanding frontier in the New World and Russia which required high numbers of agricultural-civilization people to replace horticultural and hunter-gatherer people, and then we forgot to reorganize the world economy when the frontiers reached the Pacific.
posted by clawsoon at 7:05 PM on November 18, 2022 [16 favorites]
It's very weird that we've created an economy which requires unending population growth.
QFT
Until the mid 19th, population growth was slow, and no threat to the planet. People had lots of children, but lots of the children died. In all the thousands of years before that, with all the different types of societies and economies, there was never a similar assumption of constant growth.
The economists and politicians need to build some new models, but it is as if they can't even begin to imagine things differently. I don't know why.
posted by mumimor at 12:42 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
QFT
Until the mid 19th, population growth was slow, and no threat to the planet. People had lots of children, but lots of the children died. In all the thousands of years before that, with all the different types of societies and economies, there was never a similar assumption of constant growth.
The economists and politicians need to build some new models, but it is as if they can't even begin to imagine things differently. I don't know why.
posted by mumimor at 12:42 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
clawsoon> It's very weird that we've created an economy which requires unending population growth.
It's kinda geological determinism in that we figured out how to eat oil and gas in the form of fertilizer.
We've only 50 years or oil and gas left though, and crazy high prices long before then, so maybe it'll all sort its self out soonish, unless we start making fertilizer from coal or something equally horrific.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:13 AM on November 19, 2022
It's kinda geological determinism in that we figured out how to eat oil and gas in the form of fertilizer.
We've only 50 years or oil and gas left though, and crazy high prices long before then, so maybe it'll all sort its self out soonish, unless we start making fertilizer from coal or something equally horrific.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:13 AM on November 19, 2022
Environmental causes too, which the Right Wing has changed to mostly apply to land inside existing city borders rather than having end goals of preserving as much undeveloped land outside city borders as possible.
This probably differs from country to country. In Germany for example there's been an entire conservative environmentalism movement since the 1920s or so, all about the land and the countryside. It's quite active today as well. Today, their claim is that the health (wink) of ecosystems is dependent on them having been coevolving at the same place for generations, giving rise to traditional (wink) local ecosystems, and so every foreign (wink) species is detrimental to those environments and thus should be treated as an intrusive parasite to be removed (wink wink wink dogwhistle turns into klaxon).
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:33 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
This probably differs from country to country. In Germany for example there's been an entire conservative environmentalism movement since the 1920s or so, all about the land and the countryside. It's quite active today as well. Today, their claim is that the health (wink) of ecosystems is dependent on them having been coevolving at the same place for generations, giving rise to traditional (wink) local ecosystems, and so every foreign (wink) species is detrimental to those environments and thus should be treated as an intrusive parasite to be removed (wink wink wink dogwhistle turns into klaxon).
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:33 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
These dorks don't understand the first thing about Darwinism. All they're doing is encouraging the natural evolution of cool-ass bullies, who will prey on their dweeby fuckin' kids and make religious swirlie offerings to their new faith's toilet shrine.
Have they learned nothing from Elon Musk? Not even "most of the world's money" can keep the youths of today from roasting you. Zoomers are already breaking unprecedented ground when it comes to being mean and cool... eleven generation of loser eugenics will spawn levels of vicious coolkid unimaginable by people in our day and time. They're preoccupied with whether they can that—
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 4:22 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Have they learned nothing from Elon Musk? Not even "most of the world's money" can keep the youths of today from roasting you. Zoomers are already breaking unprecedented ground when it comes to being mean and cool... eleven generation of loser eugenics will spawn levels of vicious coolkid unimaginable by people in our day and time. They're preoccupied with whether they can that—
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 4:22 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
...(one study found that people would stop having children when they couldn't fit any more car seats in their vehicle).
I'm not a parent, but I can't imagine anyone's "should we have another kid" calculus has ever rested on "I'd really like to have more children so they can be catastrophically ejected from a motor vehicle but the goddamned government won't let me!"
I can't vouch for the validity of it, and it is by economists, but here is the study, I believe.
posted by TedW at 8:14 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm not a parent, but I can't imagine anyone's "should we have another kid" calculus has ever rested on "I'd really like to have more children so they can be catastrophically ejected from a motor vehicle but the goddamned government won't let me!"
I can't vouch for the validity of it, and it is by economists, but here is the study, I believe.
posted by TedW at 8:14 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Born into a storied and monied family in Dallas, Malcolm said his ancestors included prominent members of the jayhawkers, antislavery activists who rebelled against the Confederate Army. {citation needed}
Where are they going to find acceptable spouses for all these Übermenschendescendants? exponential growth means they would run out of acceptable breeding stock pretty quickly, and then have to resort to (gasp!) reproducing with inferiors. Or do they plan on a lot of inbreeding, since that worked out so well for the Habsburgs?
posted by TedW at 8:24 AM on November 19, 2022
Where are they going to find acceptable spouses for all these Über
posted by TedW at 8:24 AM on November 19, 2022
It's very weird for a nation to be reliant on other countries only to grow its population.
not really
Historically, major cities all over (at least) the entire Old World were population sinks and were constantly replenished from surrounding areas.
Certainly in thinly-settled Russia it was quite normal to grow your population by bringing in new serfs. That's why serfdom existed there and not in Western Europe. There was no reason a Western European baron would want to own the non-limiting factor of production (people) which could be sourced at will and voluntarily to work vacant land.
Many New World colonial projects imported entire populations quite deliberately.
Now, is it weird for a nation-state to have a population which is shrinking and to use immigration to keep its population stable and maintain demographics which don't cripple its ability to fund retirements?
Every single one of those ideas or the conditions that make them possible are basically brand new in human history.
First, we have data going back to the 1300s in England and the low countries that shows that in periods of low land availability, people put off marriage for longer and families where therefore smaller. That eventually led to cycles with more land and the trend reversed. What is very new to history is a demographic skew across such wide areas and so drastically within one generation. Consequences? Who knows because it's never happened before.
Second, the nation-state as primary boundary across which a move is meaningful is only a few hundred years old. Moving villages in 18th century Germany was an enormous emigration/immigration challenge even within the same statelet. It was literally easier to move across the Atlantic than to the next village. Today, we only think of one of those as immigration. So nation-state immigration is new as well but really because nation states are newish.
Third, until the enormous energy unlocked by fossil fuels, an excess of people who were too old to work was not an issue for obvious but dark reasons - and to anyone until just-about-living memory, retirement was about protecting people too old to work, not funding a decades long post-work vacation (also a new concept) for people who were still able to work. So the idea that societies "have to" maintain demographic ratios to fund generous retirements is sitting on a cluster of relatively new ideas.
Fourth, the demographic transition driven by an end to child mortality is completely new. Populations were stable because child mortality was high and agricultural production was stable and low. Populations would rise during successive good years until they were well above the average carrying capacity and then a bad year would trigger mass mortality.
So yeah it's weird in the sense that every thing which makes the question possible is weird, it's not that weird in the context of population scarcity historically, and we really don't know what the consequences will be in countries with no history of inward mass-migration to try and compensate with migration. If you work out the numbers for a country like Italy it would proportionately require greater inward flows than any country has ever sustained to keep average age of the population from rising substantially so who knows what that will be like.
Finally - I think people get demographic stability and never ending growth mixed together. One doesn't require the other but the nature of this equilibrium is that any growth rate that isn't > replacement leads to ageing, if it is > replacement you get a younger population (with short term costs, followed by medium term benefits, followed by long term costs like the baby boomers, and it is exactly equal you get a steady population pyramid... eventually.
Obviously maintaining that rate at or near a replacement rate for decades at a time across a whole society would require massive coercive control.
posted by atrazine at 12:10 PM on November 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
not really
Historically, major cities all over (at least) the entire Old World were population sinks and were constantly replenished from surrounding areas.
Certainly in thinly-settled Russia it was quite normal to grow your population by bringing in new serfs. That's why serfdom existed there and not in Western Europe. There was no reason a Western European baron would want to own the non-limiting factor of production (people) which could be sourced at will and voluntarily to work vacant land.
Many New World colonial projects imported entire populations quite deliberately.
Now, is it weird for a nation-state to have a population which is shrinking and to use immigration to keep its population stable and maintain demographics which don't cripple its ability to fund retirements?
Every single one of those ideas or the conditions that make them possible are basically brand new in human history.
First, we have data going back to the 1300s in England and the low countries that shows that in periods of low land availability, people put off marriage for longer and families where therefore smaller. That eventually led to cycles with more land and the trend reversed. What is very new to history is a demographic skew across such wide areas and so drastically within one generation. Consequences? Who knows because it's never happened before.
Second, the nation-state as primary boundary across which a move is meaningful is only a few hundred years old. Moving villages in 18th century Germany was an enormous emigration/immigration challenge even within the same statelet. It was literally easier to move across the Atlantic than to the next village. Today, we only think of one of those as immigration. So nation-state immigration is new as well but really because nation states are newish.
Third, until the enormous energy unlocked by fossil fuels, an excess of people who were too old to work was not an issue for obvious but dark reasons - and to anyone until just-about-living memory, retirement was about protecting people too old to work, not funding a decades long post-work vacation (also a new concept) for people who were still able to work. So the idea that societies "have to" maintain demographic ratios to fund generous retirements is sitting on a cluster of relatively new ideas.
Fourth, the demographic transition driven by an end to child mortality is completely new. Populations were stable because child mortality was high and agricultural production was stable and low. Populations would rise during successive good years until they were well above the average carrying capacity and then a bad year would trigger mass mortality.
So yeah it's weird in the sense that every thing which makes the question possible is weird, it's not that weird in the context of population scarcity historically, and we really don't know what the consequences will be in countries with no history of inward mass-migration to try and compensate with migration. If you work out the numbers for a country like Italy it would proportionately require greater inward flows than any country has ever sustained to keep average age of the population from rising substantially so who knows what that will be like.
Finally - I think people get demographic stability and never ending growth mixed together. One doesn't require the other but the nature of this equilibrium is that any growth rate that isn't > replacement leads to ageing, if it is > replacement you get a younger population (with short term costs, followed by medium term benefits, followed by long term costs like the baby boomers, and it is exactly equal you get a steady population pyramid... eventually.
Obviously maintaining that rate at or near a replacement rate for decades at a time across a whole society would require massive coercive control.
posted by atrazine at 12:10 PM on November 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
That's why serfdom existed there and not in Western Europe.
FWIW, during the period of second serfdom (much less pleasant than second breakfast), Denmark and western Germany had serfdom. Denmark was actually the last country to introduce serfdom in Europe, having waited until 1733 to do it.
posted by clawsoon at 1:07 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
FWIW, during the period of second serfdom (much less pleasant than second breakfast), Denmark and western Germany had serfdom. Denmark was actually the last country to introduce serfdom in Europe, having waited until 1733 to do it.
posted by clawsoon at 1:07 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Leopold and Loeb seems to belong here.
These people are not considering the need for compassion, empathy, and other traits. Evolution has been great at populating the planet with creatures that use resources effectively, reproduce well, etc. Now we need people who can move us away from nuclear war, towards a Livable Climate. I can't bear to RTFA carefully; do they consider the need for genetic variety?
posted by theora55 at 8:49 PM on November 20, 2022
These people are not considering the need for compassion, empathy, and other traits. Evolution has been great at populating the planet with creatures that use resources effectively, reproduce well, etc. Now we need people who can move us away from nuclear war, towards a Livable Climate. I can't bear to RTFA carefully; do they consider the need for genetic variety?
posted by theora55 at 8:49 PM on November 20, 2022
unless we start making fertilizer from coal or something equally horrific.
MiracleGro Green is PEOPLE!
And so the system needs to constantly push people back down by making work precarious, or by importing workers and immediately putting them in a precarious position, or by encouraging high birth rates.
Often called 'internal colonialism' although I don't know if I like that phrase.
then we forgot to reorganize the world economy when the frontiers reached the Pacific.
We didn't really; we built the factories, there was the great migration, etc.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:25 AM on November 22, 2022
Miracle
And so the system needs to constantly push people back down by making work precarious, or by importing workers and immediately putting them in a precarious position, or by encouraging high birth rates.
Often called 'internal colonialism' although I don't know if I like that phrase.
then we forgot to reorganize the world economy when the frontiers reached the Pacific.
We didn't really; we built the factories, there was the great migration, etc.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:25 AM on November 22, 2022
Miracle Gro Green is PEOPLE!
"Human Composting" is now legal in several U.S. states.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:07 AM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
"Human Composting" is now legal in several U.S. states.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:07 AM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
Counterpoint to this article: the voluntary human extinction movement (NYTimes link).
posted by nobody at 5:11 AM on November 23, 2022
posted by nobody at 5:11 AM on November 23, 2022
Archive link to the above article.
It's an interesting perspective and hard to disagree that humans are a blight on the planet. I don't know that I can get behind the idea of voluntary extinction, but the planet would definitely be far better off with way fewer of us around.
posted by dg at 2:44 PM on November 23, 2022
It's an interesting perspective and hard to disagree that humans are a blight on the planet. I don't know that I can get behind the idea of voluntary extinction, but the planet would definitely be far better off with way fewer of us around.
posted by dg at 2:44 PM on November 23, 2022
We're like the ants of mammals, a terror to everything we interact with.
posted by clawsoon at 6:55 PM on November 23, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 6:55 PM on November 23, 2022
« Older Shedding a Light on Gaslighting | Pogueless? Help is at hand. Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by saturday_morning at 10:37 AM on November 17, 2022 [36 favorites]