Unless something big changes, world population will start to fall in a few decades, after which it will most likely rise again due to insular fertile subcultures like the Amish.
I don't think industrial society can exist without further innovation. Supplies chains are too complex, and things are always shifting, production without innovation is not possible. In order to keep our society going at even a reduced scale just requires too many engineers. If you have to train so many engineers you can't expect innovation not to happen. So I think society is more likely to colapse rapidly, or stay competent than to slowly decay or to hang on in a steady state.
I doubt current Amish culture would maintain a stigma on innovation for centuries. People will expand to fulfill niches. If only Amish are left, there'd be too much easy money in being the world's only big innovator, and people would inevitably defect from Amish culture to fill that niche.
As an Haredi myself, I'd like to think Haredim as a society are pretty supportive of innovation, as opposed to the Amish. Although I'll agree that the cultural aspect is lacking, yet not unfixable.
First, Lakewood is also the youngest city in NJ (and the second youngest town in the U.S., after Kiryas Joel). If close to 75% of your population is under 35 you will be relatively poor, especially if you are home to the largest institution in the world for married men studying Talmud. The median income for the 45-59 age bracket is above the national median income.
Second, almost all the non-Jews in Lakewood live in affordable housing, senior developments (there is a disproportionate number of seniors in Lakewood) or something similar, for the simple reason that for anything else the Jews will pay top money.
Third, most private school employees (of which there are obviously many) in Lakewood benefit from the tax loophole of having their employer provide them with the side benefit of free tuition for their children (not necessarily in the same institution). This is a large financial benefit which is probably not counted for.
Fourth, just looking at household income is always unfair to Orthodox Jews, as they generally establish a household of their own at a younger age than their secular counterparts.
I believe there are more points to consider, but that's it for now. If you want to understand things a bit better, you will need to do more than a quick google search.
Additionally, I didn't say that they are there yet, but merely that the shift is has clearly begun.
Seems like a really bad sci-fi novel. Extremely unlikely future. So many questionable points. First you’re only referring to the “West” while the rest of humanity is steadily increasing. But even in The “West” it’s being Islamized. The Amish and Haredim are insignificant. But I do agree as Europe becomes Eurabia innovation along with free speech, free markets , etc will be abolished. Lots of other issues such as assuming a direct link between population and innovation but I’ll stop here.
The Amish will be a few hundred million people if present trends continue to 2300 or so. This is what Robin is doing here - assuming present trends continue. You are also doing that with the Eurabria claim.
I wonder if any country will feel desperate enough to attempt forcing fertility rate increase (such as cloning, requiring having children to vote, etc) and doing some kind of centralized child rearing for scale. Sounds like a disaster to me, but humanity has done worse in desperation.
Robin Hanson, the fact that AI is arising just as global population is beginning to fall seems is the greatest evidence I can muster that we live in some kind of simulation.
I think it’s unlikely the Amish or Haredi inherit the earth because they don’t really proselytize, which would limit their success in a future more competitive religious marketplace. Conditions aren’t right currently for a religious revival, but that would change with some kind of societal calamity, which is increasingly likely in a decline scenario. A calamity could easily destabilize the maladaptive culture of today and cause people to look to God again. Then, revival of religion in the West (religion X within sub-society Y, both TBD though my guess is Christian and/or LDS) spurs increasing birth rate and more proselytizing success, which eventually resets the culture. In that scenario, the newly dominant religious culture would be less insular than your predictions (proselytizing fosters inter-cultural connections), while the Haredi and Amish remain insular subcultures. That’s my best guess.
The Amish population growth slowed down after 2012. Based on the population numbers, growth should have been higher if the trend from 1901 to 2010 had continued.
If the growth trend from 1901 to 2010 had continued, the estimated Amish population in 2023 would be 599,567 individuals (vs 378,190 in 2023).
Although not openly discussed, family planning and birth control might be part of why the Amish population growth slowed down after 2012.
Interesting consideration but as a MD and a university researcher, it seems several significant factors are absent in your model :
1. Life extension (by epigenetic modification for instance) that will lead to an increase in life expectancy, slow down aging and at some point stop it. I am starting to see healthy patient asking me for specific drugs to increase their life expectancy.
2. The role of AI in research and innovation, new neurosymbolic model may very well help us to accelerate research and exploit results for innovation.
Consequently, it seems plausible to take into account these factors for a more accurate predictive model, don't you think ?
Assuming this problem is real, the appropriate long term solution is what one blogger calls "islands of competence". Those of us who seek the future (are into life extension, lean libertarian, and can generally be called "Heinleinian" people) should network with the long term objective of forming a parallel society that will ultimately lead to an independent polity in the form of seasteads and space colonization. Our focus should be to develop anti-aging life extension as well as the various manufacturing technologies that are sometimes referred to as the "mundane singularity". Examples of the former are SENS, cellular reprogramming, and the like. Examples of the latter are industrial scale 3-D printers, industrial scale robotic assembly, and cheap methods to develop fullerenes as a construction materials. I believe all of these capabilities can be achieved in the next 2-3 decades.
What these technologies will do is to 1) allow us to live youthful healthy lives of indefinite length and, 2) enable the construction of seasteads at a cost low enough such as to be self-financing. Self-financing and autonomy are the key to everything because it will enable us to pursue our long term aspirations free from the impedance from those who do not share them. Longer term objectives is the development of synthetic biology regeneration to reanimate people from cryonic suspension as well as AI-like computing technology. These latter two are likely achievable by the end of the century.
Our objective should also be the development of the manufacturing/fabrication technology to produce O'neill style space colonies.
Unlike most of you, I am skeptical of the potential of AI, particularly human equivalent AI. Moore's Law is approaching the end and will probably get there by the end of this decade. This means further developments in computation will occur at a much slower rate, given that semiconductor scaling has been most of the driver of past improvements in computing technology.
I believe we can create the open, free society into the indefinite future and that we do NOT need to reverse population decline to accomplish such.
Personally I think this kind of extrapolation is incorrect and there’s too much pessimism about cultural reasons for low birth rates, which are primarily driven by economic factors. Most couples who want kids want more than 1 kid, but feel they can’t afford it. Fix that and the problem is fixed.
Also people who don’t have a propensity for children are being selected against right now, and we are probably genetically selecting for women who are fertile later. Before we get to an Em or AI driven society it would be easier to freeze eggs and other interventions to boost the fertility rate.
All the planet nat resources usage to life worth by productive possibilities from geographic locale birth is calculated. All of it.
Innovation requires inspiration, curiosity both of which are exponentially declining with handheld 'monkey watch ants' control.
Maintained Live Fire testing sites to facilitate self optimizing generative weapons development combined with 0 education and a new virus gives only population decline.
Brain Computer Interface is now accepted by 30yrs and under as the norm.
Robin, there is no longer an 'economy'. There is controlled, through emotion, resource usage algorithms. Period.
I think we’ve inadvertently stumbled onto the answer to Fermi’s Paradox. When groups like the Amish and Haredim inherit the Earth I don’t foresee them investing much in interstellar exploration.
It's a fun thought experiment and like any possible long term future it's on the spectrum of possible. Thank you for sharing your musings.
The one dimension that felt missing to me - I'd value your thoughts - is the "value" triggers from an economics / tradeoffs standpoint. For example, as innovation becomes increasingly uncommon, the value of innovation will become increasingly large to the point where even in a highly repressive place, innovation will be worth trying. (For a moment ignoring the wide variety of innovation possible and making a generic, generalized statement).
And the world remains highly fragmented. Even as one country follows the path you describe, other countries will face increasing incentives to behave differently. If the USA stops dominating innovation in a certain area, the incentive for other countries to fill that niche will increase dramatically. It won't be easy or fast as many countries lack the infrastructure but incentives will more than make up for that - seen through the rapid development cycles of places like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan that captured such a niche. Ruling governments even highly repressive ones are subject to similar dynamics.
Good point. A decline in the innovation 'output' provided by dominate economies like the USA will be a big gap to fill. In the abstract its a fascinating problem to consider. Eg: how much would another country/s need to innovate to make up for a 10% reduction in USA innovation output? Given size and the compounding effects of innovation, it is likely a large multiple. And there are so many barriers.
My view is that this is too human-centered as a plausible future. Technology controls us all now, and technology is consistently (a) driving more direct competition within, and between, cultures, (b) enabling ever-larger portions of humanity to become educated and plugged into the broader innovation culture, and (c) tearing down walls of privilege that enabled many in the past to be undeservedly successful.
The common theme in all of the above is that technology always acts to create the conditions of its own flourishing. And it doesn't seem to care about the absolute number of humans; it cares about the number of humans who can serve to advance technology. So we know the Amish cannot win out as-is, because that is not what technology wants. What technology seems to want now is smaller families, more educational investment per child, and a level competitive playing field across the globe. And of course what technology really wants – and is investing heavily in – is to free itself from the biological substrate. What becomes of flesh-and-blood humans when that happens will be truly fascinating.
Robin, but don't you think once the artificial womb is here, it'd be possible (likely?) for the state/private entities to unilaterally scale up the fertility? Or the law will be strong enough to prevent this?
The majority of effort in raising humans that can themselves meaningfully contribute to the world is performed by parents (and siblings) in the ~18 years after birth.
Artificial wombs would be a supplement in combatting falling fertility rates, but they still must be paired with dedicated caregivers to achieve the intended outcome.
If the primary cause of falling birth rates is cultural and not biological, then Artificial Wombs will only have a limited impact.
I agree there would be some benefit, IF the stigma also went away. Surrogates are already an option, and I think stigma is at least as big an issue as cost.
But the problem with arguing that this effect would be huge is that you can compare male and female desired fertility, and usually the gap is very small, like around 0.2 child HIGHER for women, even though women bear nearly all the costs of pregnancy. IIRC there was some evidence that among Gen Z, women might be starting to desire fewer children than men, which probably is at least partly a product of the fact that for cultural reasons, younger generations of women place a higher expected cost on pregnancy.
My prediction would be that if artificial wombs were stigma-free and cost around as much or less than IVF, you'd be looking at a TFR bump on the order of 0.1-0.3, as you pick up a child in some fraction of the minority of situations where a husband desires more than his wife. Real, but not enough to turn the ship around.
I don't think industrial society can exist without further innovation. Supplies chains are too complex, and things are always shifting, production without innovation is not possible. In order to keep our society going at even a reduced scale just requires too many engineers. If you have to train so many engineers you can't expect innovation not to happen. So I think society is more likely to colapse rapidly, or stay competent than to slowly decay or to hang on in a steady state.
The innovation required to maintain capacity might not increase capacity.
I doubt current Amish culture would maintain a stigma on innovation for centuries. People will expand to fulfill niches. If only Amish are left, there'd be too much easy money in being the world's only big innovator, and people would inevitably defect from Amish culture to fill that niche.
As an Haredi myself, I'd like to think Haredim as a society are pretty supportive of innovation, as opposed to the Amish. Although I'll agree that the cultural aspect is lacking, yet not unfixable.
They are also high IQ and closely related to the Ashkenazi culture which is the wealthiest and most successful culture in the world.
They spent the last 75 years rebuilding from the Holocaust, but they are now shifting to greater participation in the economy.
Just look at Lakewood, NJ and many other Haredi communities in the U.S.
A quick google confirms that lake wood is one of the poorest municipalities in NJ.
Fair question.
First, Lakewood is also the youngest city in NJ (and the second youngest town in the U.S., after Kiryas Joel). If close to 75% of your population is under 35 you will be relatively poor, especially if you are home to the largest institution in the world for married men studying Talmud. The median income for the 45-59 age bracket is above the national median income.
Second, almost all the non-Jews in Lakewood live in affordable housing, senior developments (there is a disproportionate number of seniors in Lakewood) or something similar, for the simple reason that for anything else the Jews will pay top money.
Third, most private school employees (of which there are obviously many) in Lakewood benefit from the tax loophole of having their employer provide them with the side benefit of free tuition for their children (not necessarily in the same institution). This is a large financial benefit which is probably not counted for.
Fourth, just looking at household income is always unfair to Orthodox Jews, as they generally establish a household of their own at a younger age than their secular counterparts.
I believe there are more points to consider, but that's it for now. If you want to understand things a bit better, you will need to do more than a quick google search.
Additionally, I didn't say that they are there yet, but merely that the shift is has clearly begun.
forgive me, what are "ems"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em?wprov=sfti1
Seems like a really bad sci-fi novel. Extremely unlikely future. So many questionable points. First you’re only referring to the “West” while the rest of humanity is steadily increasing. But even in The “West” it’s being Islamized. The Amish and Haredim are insignificant. But I do agree as Europe becomes Eurabia innovation along with free speech, free markets , etc will be abolished. Lots of other issues such as assuming a direct link between population and innovation but I’ll stop here.
The Amish will be a few hundred million people if present trends continue to 2300 or so. This is what Robin is doing here - assuming present trends continue. You are also doing that with the Eurabria claim.
typos: iAfrica
lost the tasted and habit
q: do u think mpreg would save us
Fixed; thanks. No, like artificial wombs, male pregnancy doesn't help much. Most parenting effort is done after birth.
I wonder if any country will feel desperate enough to attempt forcing fertility rate increase (such as cloning, requiring having children to vote, etc) and doing some kind of centralized child rearing for scale. Sounds like a disaster to me, but humanity has done worse in desperation.
Robin Hanson, the fact that AI is arising just as global population is beginning to fall seems is the greatest evidence I can muster that we live in some kind of simulation.
I think it’s unlikely the Amish or Haredi inherit the earth because they don’t really proselytize, which would limit their success in a future more competitive religious marketplace. Conditions aren’t right currently for a religious revival, but that would change with some kind of societal calamity, which is increasingly likely in a decline scenario. A calamity could easily destabilize the maladaptive culture of today and cause people to look to God again. Then, revival of religion in the West (religion X within sub-society Y, both TBD though my guess is Christian and/or LDS) spurs increasing birth rate and more proselytizing success, which eventually resets the culture. In that scenario, the newly dominant religious culture would be less insular than your predictions (proselytizing fosters inter-cultural connections), while the Haredi and Amish remain insular subcultures. That’s my best guess.
Doubling every twenty years is a VERY successful track record.
True, but the larger they get, the harder it will be to stay untouched by the world and maintain exponential growth. (https://amishpedia.com/how-fast-amish-population-grows/)
Amish Population Growth Slowed Down After 2012
The Amish population growth slowed down after 2012. Based on the population numbers, growth should have been higher if the trend from 1901 to 2010 had continued.
If the growth trend from 1901 to 2010 had continued, the estimated Amish population in 2023 would be 599,567 individuals (vs 378,190 in 2023).
Although not openly discussed, family planning and birth control might be part of why the Amish population growth slowed down after 2012.
Interesting consideration but as a MD and a university researcher, it seems several significant factors are absent in your model :
1. Life extension (by epigenetic modification for instance) that will lead to an increase in life expectancy, slow down aging and at some point stop it. I am starting to see healthy patient asking me for specific drugs to increase their life expectancy.
2. The role of AI in research and innovation, new neurosymbolic model may very well help us to accelerate research and exploit results for innovation.
Consequently, it seems plausible to take into account these factors for a more accurate predictive model, don't you think ?
Assuming this problem is real, the appropriate long term solution is what one blogger calls "islands of competence". Those of us who seek the future (are into life extension, lean libertarian, and can generally be called "Heinleinian" people) should network with the long term objective of forming a parallel society that will ultimately lead to an independent polity in the form of seasteads and space colonization. Our focus should be to develop anti-aging life extension as well as the various manufacturing technologies that are sometimes referred to as the "mundane singularity". Examples of the former are SENS, cellular reprogramming, and the like. Examples of the latter are industrial scale 3-D printers, industrial scale robotic assembly, and cheap methods to develop fullerenes as a construction materials. I believe all of these capabilities can be achieved in the next 2-3 decades.
What these technologies will do is to 1) allow us to live youthful healthy lives of indefinite length and, 2) enable the construction of seasteads at a cost low enough such as to be self-financing. Self-financing and autonomy are the key to everything because it will enable us to pursue our long term aspirations free from the impedance from those who do not share them. Longer term objectives is the development of synthetic biology regeneration to reanimate people from cryonic suspension as well as AI-like computing technology. These latter two are likely achievable by the end of the century.
Our objective should also be the development of the manufacturing/fabrication technology to produce O'neill style space colonies.
Unlike most of you, I am skeptical of the potential of AI, particularly human equivalent AI. Moore's Law is approaching the end and will probably get there by the end of this decade. This means further developments in computation will occur at a much slower rate, given that semiconductor scaling has been most of the driver of past improvements in computing technology.
I believe we can create the open, free society into the indefinite future and that we do NOT need to reverse population decline to accomplish such.
Personally I think this kind of extrapolation is incorrect and there’s too much pessimism about cultural reasons for low birth rates, which are primarily driven by economic factors. Most couples who want kids want more than 1 kid, but feel they can’t afford it. Fix that and the problem is fixed.
Also people who don’t have a propensity for children are being selected against right now, and we are probably genetically selecting for women who are fertile later. Before we get to an Em or AI driven society it would be easier to freeze eggs and other interventions to boost the fertility rate.
You are good guy. Why are you thinking 1940-70's.
All the planet nat resources usage to life worth by productive possibilities from geographic locale birth is calculated. All of it.
Innovation requires inspiration, curiosity both of which are exponentially declining with handheld 'monkey watch ants' control.
Maintained Live Fire testing sites to facilitate self optimizing generative weapons development combined with 0 education and a new virus gives only population decline.
Brain Computer Interface is now accepted by 30yrs and under as the norm.
Robin, there is no longer an 'economy'. There is controlled, through emotion, resource usage algorithms. Period.
I think we’ve inadvertently stumbled onto the answer to Fermi’s Paradox. When groups like the Amish and Haredim inherit the Earth I don’t foresee them investing much in interstellar exploration.
It's a fun thought experiment and like any possible long term future it's on the spectrum of possible. Thank you for sharing your musings.
The one dimension that felt missing to me - I'd value your thoughts - is the "value" triggers from an economics / tradeoffs standpoint. For example, as innovation becomes increasingly uncommon, the value of innovation will become increasingly large to the point where even in a highly repressive place, innovation will be worth trying. (For a moment ignoring the wide variety of innovation possible and making a generic, generalized statement).
And the world remains highly fragmented. Even as one country follows the path you describe, other countries will face increasing incentives to behave differently. If the USA stops dominating innovation in a certain area, the incentive for other countries to fill that niche will increase dramatically. It won't be easy or fast as many countries lack the infrastructure but incentives will more than make up for that - seen through the rapid development cycles of places like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan that captured such a niche. Ruling governments even highly repressive ones are subject to similar dynamics.
I can't see the value of marginal innovation increasing that fast as quantity falls.
Good point. A decline in the innovation 'output' provided by dominate economies like the USA will be a big gap to fill. In the abstract its a fascinating problem to consider. Eg: how much would another country/s need to innovate to make up for a 10% reduction in USA innovation output? Given size and the compounding effects of innovation, it is likely a large multiple. And there are so many barriers.
My view is that this is too human-centered as a plausible future. Technology controls us all now, and technology is consistently (a) driving more direct competition within, and between, cultures, (b) enabling ever-larger portions of humanity to become educated and plugged into the broader innovation culture, and (c) tearing down walls of privilege that enabled many in the past to be undeservedly successful.
The common theme in all of the above is that technology always acts to create the conditions of its own flourishing. And it doesn't seem to care about the absolute number of humans; it cares about the number of humans who can serve to advance technology. So we know the Amish cannot win out as-is, because that is not what technology wants. What technology seems to want now is smaller families, more educational investment per child, and a level competitive playing field across the globe. And of course what technology really wants – and is investing heavily in – is to free itself from the biological substrate. What becomes of flesh-and-blood humans when that happens will be truly fascinating.
Robin, but don't you think once the artificial womb is here, it'd be possible (likely?) for the state/private entities to unilaterally scale up the fertility? Or the law will be strong enough to prevent this?
The majority of effort in raising humans that can themselves meaningfully contribute to the world is performed by parents (and siblings) in the ~18 years after birth.
Artificial wombs would be a supplement in combatting falling fertility rates, but they still must be paired with dedicated caregivers to achieve the intended outcome.
If the primary cause of falling birth rates is cultural and not biological, then Artificial Wombs will only have a limited impact.
If a primary cause of falling birth rates is the physical suffering and inconvenience of gestation, then Artificial Wombs could have a huge impact.
I agree there would be some benefit, IF the stigma also went away. Surrogates are already an option, and I think stigma is at least as big an issue as cost.
But the problem with arguing that this effect would be huge is that you can compare male and female desired fertility, and usually the gap is very small, like around 0.2 child HIGHER for women, even though women bear nearly all the costs of pregnancy. IIRC there was some evidence that among Gen Z, women might be starting to desire fewer children than men, which probably is at least partly a product of the fact that for cultural reasons, younger generations of women place a higher expected cost on pregnancy.
My prediction would be that if artificial wombs were stigma-free and cost around as much or less than IVF, you'd be looking at a TFR bump on the order of 0.1-0.3, as you pick up a child in some fraction of the minority of situations where a husband desires more than his wife. Real, but not enough to turn the ship around.