Memetic instability, aka Hanson’s assumptions are just wrong.
It’s quite easy for an armchair evolutionary psychologist to say, “X group reproduces more than not-X. Therefore, by 2150, everyone will be Mormon because they’ll be selected for!” Yes, I’m exaggerating a bit, but the actual argument is about as absurd. There aren’t any large population subgroups with extremely high fertility as a subcultural norm. Given the substantial hedonistic sacrifice involved in high fertility, this is not surprising. It seems unlikely, barring kids being a lot easier to raise, that large subgroups of the population will maintain a high-fertility norm. This is even more true if people measure social status in material terms—high fertility inhibits material acquisition, and people tend to be pretty serious about pursuing status.
The fact that group X, which is 1.7% of the population, has high fertility, does not mean that their great-grandchildren will when they are a larger subset of the population. In fact, mere changes in geography could corrode the memes of such subgroups. The fact that, if every subgroup kept their current fertility for 1000 years, most of us would be Mormon/Muslim/what-have-you does not mean that this will actually happen. Assuming the future will be exactly like the present but more so has been systematically wrong for at least the last few centuries. Memes can change very, very rapidly, and their change is not directed by a meme-designer trying to beat all the other meme-designers; it’s directed by human desires and cultures.
This also ignores the fact that most of the growth that occurs is in the third world, and most indicators show that their fertility falls as child mortality and women’s education improves. Because women’s rights are, generally, rather ratchet-like (they rarely get massively scaled back once they advance), these gains are likely to be sustained. As people no longer think they need 8 kids to support them, they’ll start realizing they don’t want 8 kids, and the old cultural standards will decay in a few generations. It seems like this is already starting to happen. Rather than actually refuting this apparent demographic reality, we get, “People who have more kids and teach them to have more kids will take over in several dozen/hundred generations.” That’s assuming some incredible memetic stability. I do not think that memes have shown that much stability historically, and they are particularly unstable these days.
Granted, it’s entirely possible that technology will make child-rearing all play and no work, in which case Western demographic trends may reverse. The argument doesn’t only cut one way; it does require that people be generally hedonistic and that kids cramp their style. However, there really isn’t good reason to take Hanson’s theory as the default position.
The big one:
Memetic instability, aka Hanson’s assumptions are just wrong.
It’s quite easy for an armchair evolutionary psychologist to say, “X group reproduces more than not-X. Therefore, by 2150, everyone will be Mormon because they’ll be selected for!” Yes, I’m exaggerating a bit, but the actual argument is about as absurd. There aren’t any large population subgroups with extremely high fertility as a subcultural norm. Given the substantial hedonistic sacrifice involved in high fertility, this is not surprising. It seems unlikely, barring kids being a lot easier to raise, that large subgroups of the population will maintain a high-fertility norm. This is even more true if people measure social status in material terms—high fertility inhibits material acquisition, and people tend to be pretty serious about pursuing status.
The fact that group X, which is 1.7% of the population, has high fertility, does not mean that their great-grandchildren will when they are a larger subset of the population. In fact, mere changes in geography could corrode the memes of such subgroups. The fact that, if every subgroup kept their current fertility for 1000 years, most of us would be Mormon/Muslim/what-have-you does not mean that this will actually happen. Assuming the future will be exactly like the present but more so has been systematically wrong for at least the last few centuries. Memes can change very, very rapidly, and their change is not directed by a meme-designer trying to beat all the other meme-designers; it’s directed by human desires and cultures.
This also ignores the fact that most of the growth that occurs is in the third world, and most indicators show that their fertility falls as child mortality and women’s education improves. Because women’s rights are, generally, rather ratchet-like (they rarely get massively scaled back once they advance), these gains are likely to be sustained. As people no longer think they need 8 kids to support them, they’ll start realizing they don’t want 8 kids, and the old cultural standards will decay in a few generations. It seems like this is already starting to happen. Rather than actually refuting this apparent demographic reality, we get, “People who have more kids and teach them to have more kids will take over in several dozen/hundred generations.” That’s assuming some incredible memetic stability. I do not think that memes have shown that much stability historically, and they are particularly unstable these days.
Granted, it’s entirely possible that technology will make child-rearing all play and no work, in which case Western demographic trends may reverse. The argument doesn’t only cut one way; it does require that people be generally hedonistic and that kids cramp their style. However, there really isn’t good reason to take Hanson’s theory as the default position.