Dave5

The emergence of this population panic has set off my BS alert. It smell like the “AIs will end us” crap – and it’s spouted by the same dimwits. Very glad to see the evolution of thinking about *why* this argument is shaped the way it is.

If that is the argument, it brings us close the position of prominent longtermists (though the author does not make the link). Some longtermists have wondered, after all, whether most animals might not be better off dead anyway. By contrast the more human beings there are, the greater the chance that we eventually colonise the stars and become Ultra-High-Well-being Cyborgs™. Perhaps today’s twenty-something in a rented flat and a precarious job – and wondering whether she could ever afford to raise children – just needs to think of that cyborg composing twenty symphonies before its synthetic lunch, and get breeding.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s likely to cut the mustard. But I am curious about the emergence of this trope, which bemoans the declining population long before it happens.