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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Humans have been domesticated to support organizations. Modern organizations in western civilization no longer value human reproduction.The conundrum of human behavior not maximizing reproduction might be solved by considering human organizations. During prehistoric times, the primary human organization was the village or tribe. Each village or tribe needed to maximize reproduction in order not to be conquered by the tribe next door. Throughout most of the history of civilization, the major political and religious organizations needed to maximize human reproduction to maximize economic output and provide soldiers to prevent being conquered (or to conquer) the political or religious organization next door. The organizational goals aligned with the Darwinian goal of reproduction. Meanwhile, these organizations were also putting selective pressure on humans to evolve into organisms that better support the organization. This means humans that are obedient to the organization. So we now have humans that have been domesticated by organizations to expend energy and resources to support the organization. Similar to how we now have domesticated cattle that put more energy into producing milk and beef than reproducing. More recently, many human organizations in western civilization have begun ignoring the potential future impacts on the organization of a population that does not reproduce. They favor short-term gains to the organization, regardless of any impact on human reproduction. The reduction in reproduction is being partially offset by recruiting new organization members from outside western civilization. This might not be sustainable, and could present some significant long-term dangers to the survival of these organizations. It seems likely that the future will be dominated by some combination of:1. Transplanted organizations from outside western civilization that encourage human reproduction.2. New organizations that encourage human reproduction.3. Currently existing organizations that have realigned their goals to encourage human reproduction.Those organization currently ignoring or discouraging human reproduction seem likely to go extinct.

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RobinHanson's avatar

Sure, not a crazy description.

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