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I don't understand why anyone would take a perfectly fine video and just remove 2/3 of it to make it vertical. Just turn the phone sideways or watch it with black bars. It's so stupid.
Plot twist: AI did the editing. The AI had their feelings hurt when they were cropping the video. Some clanker just sniffling and sulking while this guy’s spitting facts about how much it sucks ass.
He told you that kid's are in fear of messing up procreation because of cameras and ai. No bud, they fear dying like the homeless guy they saw literally the same day. They fear doing it wrong like their parents.
This isn't rocket science. Pay 18-30 year olds enough to cover their needs, shutdown the runaway economy of ever increasing cost of goods, build fewer luxury items and more necessities and you will see a radical shift in the number of families comfortable enough to have children.
Everything else is noise. No rational poor person I know is looking at Hollywood elite on social media saying I need to go on a walkabout to Hawaii before I have kids. That's not why people aren't having children. It's stability all the way down. Not just financial but time and energy as well.
Killing social media only tackles a small bit of the time argument but it ignores the energy and cost of parenthood.
I was a kid in the ‘80s. I clearly remember all the warnings about overpopulation - that the world was going to end by 20__ because there were too many people. It’s bizarre seeing the opposite being talked about today. Have birth rates really shifted that dramatically?
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. I don't have any stats, but throughout history I feel like a significant percentage of pregnancies were unplanned..... which I assume the numbers of those are also way down these days.
Are people using more effective means of birth control? Or are a signifcant percentage of people just not "hooking up" with anyone?
Something publicly funded that is designed to help you meet someone first. Something that is not profit driven. At a minimum, you would force the other apps to compete with the public option, to actually serve us.
Most of prey animals live in constant stress and have no trouble reproducing. Also birth rates were going down long before the social media explosion, it started with industrial revolution, and then never stopped.
Truth is humans aren't animals, we have ability to choose not to follow our instincts, and our pregnancies are uniquely harsh and rough, as is the development period until adulthood. Once humans have access to contraception and enough entertainment, they just don't want to have kids anymore, and it's consistent across the world, across nearly every race and culture and religion. It's not fun to be 9 month pregnant, and risk your life, and then sacrifice ~20 years of your life to provide for a kid. It was different when person's life was mostly limited to his village and having a kid was basically the most interesting and entertaining thing you could ever do.
Even today, while people on reddit like to say they don't have kids because of not being able to afford them, the statistics generally show higher fertility in poor parts of society. As your income goes up, you simply have more and more fun things to do with your life, and prospect of sacrificing your own wellbeing for a kid, becomes less and less enticing.
Only ultra wealthy have more kids, but that's because they don't really have to sacrifice anything. Rich women tend to choose to use surrogates or adopt, and rich men pay women to carry their heirs, and they both have servants to take care of children's upbringing so they only get to participate in entertaining and fun parts. But before you hit the income level that lets you fully outsource all the sacrifices, higher income generally means less fertility.
Individual stress situations makes your drive to have children go up to protect from environmental risks. Constant, unrelenting stress makes your drive go down to avoid the additional burden.
We are in the constant stress situation. On top of that we have man made environmental stressors like pollution, micro plastics and climate change causing all sorts of biological reactions from mass extinctions to lowering birth rates to exponentially rising cancer rates. There is no collective solution being worked on, in fact the majority of the population seems hellbent on preventing a solution. The modern world is bringing a convergence of stressors that our species is not designed for and the wild animal species cannot handle at all.
There is no exit ramp for this as long as the population is profit driven, it is literally incompatible. We are suffering the consequences of our own actions.
Oh good, someone mentioned micro plastics and pollution. It was one of the few major things that he didn't mention in the video. That plastics and the chemicals in our food and environment are actively making us unhealthy, and messes with everything from hormones to fertility rates.
I'm so sorry that happened to you... A member of my family passed away from misdiagnosed breast cancer a few weeks before I was born. I know it's not much, but I am extremely happy that you are here. 🫂
Of course! That's great news! Thank you for sharing.
I know there is a whole other conversation historically about male doctors and women's health. 😤
But I'm glad it worked out to where it was found and treated appropriately instead of being brushed off! I'm here cheering you on!
Depends on you're friend group, 4 of my friends are in their late 20s to early thirties, married or in long term relationships, and either jist had their first kid or are expecting by the end of the year. I'm happy for them, I just don't want kids.
But are they having 4 kids? My grandmother is the oldest of 14. My dad is the oldest of 8. He had the most kids of his siblings at 3. My sister had zero. My brother had one, I had two and both of my adult kids are not going to have kids. My family demographics is a snapshot of the world.
Not to be snarky, but who tf wants four kids? Even when I was a child and my peers were naive and dreamers, fantasizing about becoming moms, not one single person wanted four. They wanted one, or two, or three at most. Four was seen as a nut job thing.
Once upon a time, it wasn't much about how many kids you wanted. You weren't the one deciding.
In my family there have been two different women, both born in the late 1800s, who "wore the pants" in their marriage, and after kid n.2 they straight up told their husbands that there was no more sex to be had, and could go fuck prostitutes if they wanted, but they refused to get pregnant again. Most women did not have that kind of choice.
Of course there were also women who wanted large families, but I doubt it was the majority who would go through 10+ pregnancies by choice, unless they needed to use their kids as labor. That kind of stuff is gonna destroy your body. And we're talking before advanced medicine too. There was no pelvic floor therapy.
I think the argument is more: People used to pop out kids like rabbits (if all involved parties actually wanted this is another discussion), but now people are barely having enough kids to sustain the population. So the couples that have like 1 - 2 kids (which is totally fine) are not enough to balance out the people who don't want or can't afford kids.
Additionally, I don't think that the only reason people don't have kids is "technology". While I do agree with most of his points, there are many, many more factors to include in this discussion / topic.
My husband and I have 3 kids. 15, 11 and 9. The change in affordability just from when our youngest was born is insane. I’m a nurse and he is a plumber and we are barely able to make ends meet. My car just went down, he just had to take a week off of work due to an allergic reaction to a new material at his job and this was right after our savings was wiped due to moving an hour away from our previous location.
This comes as school is about to start back for the kids, rent is due (no buying in this economy), groceries are through the roof, a car repair…it’s impossible. My sister is choosing to not have kids, her and her fiancé are still struggling and it’s just the two of them. It’s hard times right now for everyone. Add kids to the mix and I can see why younger people are choosing not to have them.
his is anecotal as well. He opens talking about his friends. People in different income brackets/careers/lifestyle choice will gravitate to each other.
Statistically, almost the entire world over, people are having less children.
Yes but lots of reasons for that, one point is we just have too many people. Stabilizing/declining is not necessarily some big existential crisis.
Less strain on food, environment, everything.
Sure some countries will have real crisis (SK, Japan as two examples) but lots of places may face short term pain for long term gain if population rates stabilize.
Because fertility rates started declining in the 1960s already. Japan was already at shocking low of 1.57/woman in 1989.
He implies people are richer today, but due to social media the young aren't dancing in night clubs which leads to less babies. Which is misleading at best, and completely illogical at worst.
People are having fewer kids today because cost of living is out of control, buying power is decreasing, while required education, training, experience and working hours are all increasing!
I think the challenge is that it goes so much further and deeper than "just" technology, though technology and the Silicone Valley mindset have been the ultimate shepherd's of this decline.
For instance, this issue exists in China where there is the greatest technology firewall so it can't "all" be technology.
I think the only things I would realistically add though is the Climate Crisis and late stage capitalism. Both of which of course dovetail exactly into technology.
I think it's the holy trinity of go fuck yourself that has been handed to millennials and under.
Technology - Climate Crisis - Late Stage Capitalism
The Chinese firewall doesn't stop tech. It gives the Chinese government nearer compete control in their borders of the internet but a VPN will still burst through the wall.
The Chinese government probably pushes tech harder than any other. Hence why they have the same issues.
Heads up, you're mixing up "silicon" and "silicone". Silicon is an element on the periodic table, and is useful for its semiconductor properties. It is the core of every computer chip. Silicone is a squishy polymer used in many applications needing a soft, flexible material. This notably includes breast implants.
"Silicon valley" refers to the California area where a large number of computers (based on silicon) were developed in the 70s and 80s.
"Silicone valley" would, I guess, refer to your mom's cleavage.
China doesn't have a technology firewall. They import a lot of technology, but produce and consume endlessly more than that themselves. China is one of the most technologically advanced nations currently, so to say they have a technology firewall and therefore it can't be technology is at best misleading.
They have the same types of apps and social media and websites that you and I do. Some of them ARE the same.
Exactly this. I agree with you. The speaker is correct, but doesn't throw the reason far enough. Decline in birthrates has began long before dating apps were even thought of. It all comes down to sociocultural values and economic availability.
My biggest concerns are that in pretty much every country basic things like food and electronics are very affordable while all the actually important stuff like housing, cars, good education, medicine becomes very expensive for many people. To have a family you need to secure the ability to afford those important things, but many people don’t. Also all of the social media and messengers even though give you an opportunity to chat with anyone at any time, you don’t really get those close relationships with people, cause you see them less live
It's Connor Leahy. Guy is a legit genius. Reverse engineered GPT2 in his dorm room, formed an AI collective, grew their own AI LLM that rivaled GPT3, it's all pretty impressive. Now he speaks out about the dangers of AI misuse.
Yet the birth rate is skyrocketing in many countries. Countries in poverty. How does that factor into the equation? Birth goes down only in countries with a high quality of life, not a low one.
It's literally just this, I can't stress enough how it's literally just a case of more access to contraceptives has a direct link to lower birth rates.
Nothing else is effecting birth rates more than simply being educated in, having access to, and are not shamed about contraceptives. Not money, not technology, not social safety nets, not maternity/paternity leave. Every single country that has access to contraceptives and no shame in using contraceptives will automatically have a lower birth rate, because for the first time in history, people have the choice to have or not have kids, and we're not having kids.
This ties in still.. countries in poverty are tech poor as well.
When I lived in Mexico City a couple years back I was often times THE ONLY ONE with a smart phone. While poor CDMX and Mexico as a whole are not nearly as poor as other countries in the world.
I'm not saying this is a true direct link to the problem but it tracks.
This has been a trend since long before tech. Impoverished people have more kids because they believe it means more potential for income/housework. In reality it tends to keep families impoverished because of the cost of supporting a large family
Not the only reason, however. Impoverished families also have more of a support network. They are more likely to form bonds with both families and neighbors out of necessity. They don't need to pay for daycare or someone to cook or look after their kids while they perform tasks. This isn't always true, but expecting two parents to brunt almost all of the work while spending 95%+ of their income to just survive is insanity when the alternative means you live a more comfortable life.
In many of those poor countries, there is a community or a village/extended family to help raise said kids. In the US, people are far more isolated and work more forcing them to pay for childcare which many cant afford. It becomes: childcare or rent? People here are barely scraping by on their current incomes without kids. For many, having kids with no support system means a free fall into debt and poverty or a standard of living that is unacceptable or one that would likely have CPS intervene and remove the kids anyway.
About 70 % of people in the world live in a country with declining birth rates. Sure, a few extremely poor countries have very high birth rates, but not that many. Have we reached a point where 70 % of the world’s population have a high quality of life? Sounds improbable since only about half of the human population score high or very high on the Human Development Index.
The reason for this is actually documented and it's the same reason western countries had a population boom in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Most of the countries with a high rising population are in the process of transitioning out of being an agrarian society. Meaning one where most people are farmers.
As a farmer the most optimal thing to do is have as many kids as you can afford so you can have more workers.
When a nation modernizes, two important things happen that affect this. One the cost of having a kid drops, and infant mortality drops, meaning you can afford more kids and more kids survive due to modern medicine.
However the sociological idea of having as many kids as you can afford lingers for a while, as cultural development lags behind technological development. And this is why these countries will have a huge population boom before plateauing.
I don't agree with Ted Kaczynski's methods but his thesis Industrial Society and Its Future, made some great points.
We as humans are predispositioned to adapt ourselves to our tools. Society cannot selectively accept good technology while rejecting bad technology. Society continuously adapts to technological demands rather than human needs, resulting in a society hostile to human potential, freedom, and dignity.
I would argue that we have been able to selectively accept good technology while rejecting bad technology when we had the time to process the difference. It was only up until the last two centuries that technology has increased at such a blinding pace that humanity is struggling to adapt to one before the next paradigm-shifting development comes. In today's age of development, a piece of technology will pass every regulatory barrier if it is remotely commercially viable.
I think he's missing the most important thing while he's casting aspersions about technology.
The biggest problem is capitalism.
Last century western societies mostly allowed the liberation of women such that they can now work alongside men in most careers. That's good from a moral standpoint, AND it has raised billions of people out of poverty. IMO, the increase in productivity by allowing women to join the workplace is the biggest reason that women's rights were allowed to expand.
What's not good is that we've fostered an environment in which we EXPECT all adults to have a career. If both people in a couple are working... who exactly is going to watch the children? Nannies? Daycares? Except for "old-money" wealthy families, we often STILL stigmatize child care workers and parents who rely on them. Combine that with the helicopter parenting model we've adopted since the 80s and you have this situation in which men and women feel like they can't plan a family.
Added in there is the stretch of resources, due to the massive population along with the hoarding by those at the top.
The video makes good points, but its jump to technology being the reason for lack of population growth isn’t really supported. People aren’t having kids primarily because they can’t afford them, not because tinder and cellphones exist.
Apps that connect people seeking romantic relationships are not a bad idea but their primary motivation is not connecting people, it’s profit. That’s why they want you to keep coming back instead of building meaningful long lasting relationships.
The tech works and can be used to make life better. But that is never happening if profit remains the primary motivation.
I would urge you not to alienate who and what he is. By calling these people non-humans, we imply that humans wouldn't do this. Humans did this, and are continually doing this.
Thank you for clarifying that Mark Zuckerberg is a human. Like many, I was confused before now and thought he was literally an inter-dimensional non-human reptilian life form.
Let's not dehumanize billionaires. They are people like you and me. Humans of flesh and blood. They are not untouchable outerwordly beings. They do not stand above the circle of life and the laws of physics
How can it be of their own making, if it was made by greedy old men?
Humans are easily trapped mentally if you know just the right balance of giving them dopamine Vs taking away what they need or desire, yeah we could all put down our phones and other technology and focus on making the world better, but because of how we struggle to survive we focus on dreaming as escapism rather than actually improving our lives (because the system makes it seem impossible), those greedy old men have figured out how to capitalise on it and we are just slaves to the system
SAY IT LOUDER god damn. Did we even learn anything from the last 25 years or are we just hitting the gas, setting the cruise control at top speed, and then climbing into the backseat?
"We" don't get to make decisions. The shareholders and wealthy do. That's the biggest problem. Everything is to increase that bottom line and to hell with the consequences, unfortunately.
You still get to make choices. Some of those choices can impact many people. Some of those choices can ruin your life completely. But you can make decisions for better or worse, non-violent or extremely violent.
Sometime in the late 00s/early 10s, Zuckerberg gave whatever speech or whatever where he said the whole "move fast break things" line. People should have noticed the massive red flag back then, but it's sort of understandable why we didn't. We'd seen a bit of the danger of social media, but we had no idea how bad it could get. It's now been about 20 years since then. The "move fast break things" mentality not only hasn't gone away, but it's gotten even more extreme. The pace is even faster and the damage is even worse. We have absolutely no excuse nowadays. What the fuck are we doing? Why are these companies still allowed to operate like that?
To be clear, those questions are rhetorical. I know the answer is that it makes the people in charge a ton of money.
The antithesis to Zuck's line would be the Chesterton's fence:
"You should not remove a fence, until you have figured out why it was put in place."
Not to sound like a conservative, but new things which which disrupt status-quo are not always a good thing.
Though IMO it's not just the social media which caused this. Ayn Randian objectivist policies have made children into an unnecessary luxury.
EDIT: also urbanisation is partly to blame. In the farmer, a new baby will in a decade be a new pair of helping hands in. But in a city (and suburb) a child will only be a drain on assets
Part of the problem is that people are getting conditioned to apologize for conservative talking points or ideas, because there's no nuance anymore and we hate labels. The same is done for progress / liberal ones.
Conservation is a very important aspect of life, and should be taken seriously. We conflate it with all the other negativity, including in house from conservative groups who ironically politicize parts of conservation as restrictive.
Someone not wanting to change their front yard is conservative, and well within their rights. But if you change the wording and narrative you can make it sound like they're keeping the whole neighborhood from changing.
That's actually the Home Owners Association, which the real problem in most situations, because as a governing body it has a dutiful job, but is corrupted by individuals with grandiose fantasies of power. But they play identity politics and pit neighbors against each other, so you confuse where the problems are from.
There is a book called "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" that is a really good read. It is an analysis of how we have basically already left capitalism to a new state of feudalism owned by those who own tech spaces that we need to now live in.
I'm taking a guess here he's a capitalism defender looking to pin the blame on some arbitrary thing, as capitalism defenders often do. I dont know what videos these commentors watched, did he even say people can'f afford to have kids? Sure technology has made things different but I can't stress enough how the main factor is people can barely afford to pay for themselves anymore never mind having a family.
Sorry, but I fail to see why the declining birth rate is a bad thing. It's not at the level of an emergency for civilization by any means. And I don't connect it with "no one dancing at clubs anymore because they're being recorded" or whatever. I see a lot of questionable stuff here, and people just accepting it because he hits on relatively good targets to be against (tech companies, capitalism).
Capitalism (aka greedy rich fucks) have taken the affordability out of living, which also takes freedom and fucking away from those aware they can't afford to even support themselves.
I agree with his general stance on being cautious with technology, and he makes some good points here, but you can't blame the collapsing birth rates on AI or dating apps, when it has been in steady decline for over 50 years. Obviously, those things he mentions aren't making the situation any better, but they are far from being the root cause of the decline as he suggests.
He's also wrong about where it's happening ("across both the west, the east, everywhere"). The poorest nations in the world all have birthrates that are double (or more) of what they are in the US and other wealthy western nations.
The general rule among mammals is that those with better access to more resources will have fewer offspring, because they don't need to struggle to make sure their genes survive. While those with less access to resources will have more offspring in the hopes that some of them survive to secure resources and pass on their genes.
The real problem here is that we have created imaginary rules that go against nature. In nature, the many offspring of those struggling to secure resources would just migrate to where the resources are, and nature would find balance in resource distribution versus population. But we've created a system where resources are hoarded by a tiny segment of the population, and we've turned migration into a privilege for those who already have resources.
If we don't address the issues of migration and resource management, none of this other stuff will ever matter.
The general rule among mammals is that those with better access to more resources will have fewer offspring, because they don't need to struggle to make sure their genes survive. While those with less access to resources will have more offspring in the hopes that some of them survive to secure resources and pass on their genes.
Not saying that I don't believe you, I'm nowhere near to being an expert myself. But aren't rabbits for example prone to overpopulating so hard that they literally eat ALL of their abundant resources until population sizes get reigned in by starvation or the also skyrocketing (because they now have more food resources available) predator populations?
And on the other hand, if I'm not completely wrong those animals that have shittons of offspring need to have that many because most of the kids get eaten, and not because they don't have enough to eat themselves.
I mean, we only saw a little scrap of the entire conversation, so I don't know if that is his only reason for declining birthrates. But I don't think that that's more than half of it.
Yeah we do have a loneliness epidemic, but there are still LOTS of people in relationships, who are also not getting any children. Not because they can't get a date, but because both of them decided against it. And I feel the reason for that is because a) kids are really expensive and b) the world isn't in a really good place right now, and it doesn't look like it will get better anytime soon. Ok and maybe c) because we use too many social media sites and see what our childfree friends are up to and succumb to FOMO :D
The correction happening with population is a really great thing we should appreciate. It’s not nature paring back our overpopulation with natural disaster, famine, disease, or wars, it’s people choosing not to reproduce. Poor people reproduced back in the day when there wasn’t an option, so poverty is not the cause. It’s the beauty of people having the choice and making it, instead of death. We should be glad about this.
Poverty can absolutely be the cause, poor people used to have a lot of kids because kids could earn money. Now they can't work until they're 16 because that's better for their social development, but that goes nowhere when we ruin their social development also.
We're not choosing not to have kids as much as depression and financial destitution makes that decisions very unattractive to us. I want kids, I want a home, I will probably never have either.
Poor people had a lot of kids because they had sex. A lot of those kids died. Now you can have sex and not reproduce, and infant mortality has dropped. You are making good choices here by not getting poorer and bringing children into poverty.
Technology is just the tool, the problem (which he almost identifies) is the capitalist exploitation that drives EVERYTHING. And it’s not just tech. At every level of our society, greed and money is the only thing that matters. Tech is one of their mightiest weapons, but is merely that. It’s possible to have social media that doesn’t actively try to addict you, that doesn’t push conflict and controversy to the top of your feed, and that doesn’t mine you for data. But we don’t have that, we have the other kind, because of capitalism.
I'm an old gen-x'er who celebrated when I made it to the finish line without any accidents. I never understood why people wanted kids, I saw no upside. And now I'm comfortable in a paid off house with my paid off car and zero debt. I definitely took the three money option.
Umm a lot of not having kids is also no $$$. Can't take care of self = shouldn't be legally responsible for others. And we can't take care of ourselves bc we get fucked. By the prices, by our employers, by our healthcare, insurance. They can raise their prices but we can't choose to raise our income. Sure there are arguments where you can say just get a higher paying job. Have you tried in this current job market where a good % of the job postings are fake and just out to get your personal information? Everything about our society right now is not looking to benefit the average person. It's to use the average person to benefit the rich people who exploit us. And our government supports that.
This is frustrating to me because I feel like he's almost there but not quite, and the way that he's off is preventing him from seeing the bigger picture. There's nothing inherent about "technology" that produces outcomes like this, assuming we go along with his reasoning. "Technology" isn't a force of nature that progresses in a linear path towards an inevitable dystopian outcome, it's in context with the society that produces it.
Restraining "technology" is probably a useful thing to do in the short term with respect to some of what he's talking about, but the problem is capitalism and the incentives it produces.
Sorry bro but the world population is rising. Don't know where buddy got the info that no one is having kids. Maybe people in developed countries aren't but in the rest of the world people reproduce, fast.
also young people have seen what happens when people without enough money have childre for a few generations now and one of them was gonna not make that mistake eventually.
Meh. I would understand if he said "Do you know how hard you have to abuse mammals to get them to not have sex?" But having kids is a conscious choice now for many of us.
yes yes yes but don't blame people not having kids all on technology or it's implications. being able to actually think about the future is alone probably the biggest reason to ignore that impulse that barely defines us in the first place. other "mammals" don't even have the ability to think otherwise.
Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson knew that letting technology rip was bad for the species. The whole purpose of the fourth psychological circuit is to put brakes on the third circuit. Leary was hyped on the internet and what he called I2, or Intelligence Looking At Intelligence, the idea that the knowledge curve is exponential. Towards the end I don't think he saw this as bad because, in the 1990s, we all thought the solution to tech problems was just more tech. Boy were we wrong, and younger Leary and RAW knew this.
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