I think the main point of the essay might be wrong. It’s not necessarily true that evolution will lead to a resurgence of high fertility. Yes, evolution is real, but it’s also slow: it works on the scale of human lifetimes. Culture today evolves faster than that. It’s possible that culture can keep adapting its fertility-lowering methods faster than humans can evolve defenses against them.
The point of the essay is that fertility will eventually increase again, if enough time passes, even if that takes several generations.
It may be true that culture can evolve faster than genes, but culture is not homogenous, so I don’t think we can predict that all subcultures will evolve to adopt low fertility memetics. Eventually, the low fertility memetics and the people who practice them will slowly die out. The essay also gave examples of how the fundamentalist Muslims, the Amish, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews have some of the highest fertility rates in the world. Even if most people adopt low fertility, the most likely prediction is that the factions that have higher fertility rates will gradually replace them until they become the new majority of people.
I think the main point of the essay might be wrong. It’s not necessarily true that evolution will lead to a resurgence of high fertility. Yes, evolution is real, but it’s also slow: it works on the scale of human lifetimes. Culture today evolves faster than that. It’s possible that culture can keep adapting its fertility-lowering methods faster than humans can evolve defenses against them.
The point of the essay is that fertility will eventually increase again, if enough time passes, even if that takes several generations.
It may be true that culture can evolve faster than genes, but culture is not homogenous, so I don’t think we can predict that all subcultures will evolve to adopt low fertility memetics. Eventually, the low fertility memetics and the people who practice them will slowly die out. The essay also gave examples of how the fundamentalist Muslims, the Amish, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews have some of the highest fertility rates in the world. Even if most people adopt low fertility, the most likely prediction is that the factions that have higher fertility rates will gradually replace them until they become the new majority of people.