Links to Consider, 4/27

Razib Khan on urbanization and infertility; Mark Mills on green energy skepticism; Dan Williams on group demonization; Gurwinder on playing the games of life

Apr 27, 2024

Plotting women’s total fertility rate against percent urbanization yields an inverse correlation of -0.48, meaning that the more urbanized a nation, the fewer children born per woman. Today, the urbanization of nations below 2.0 total fertility averages 70%, while that of nations above 2.0 is 52%.

…South Korea, an ultra urbanized nation with a phenomenally high quality of life, is among the world leaders in innovating everything from phones and cars to pop culture. And like all its rivals in those rarefied and highly remunerative pursuits, its hyper successful citizenry also vies for the dubious distinction of the planet’s lowest fertility rates. Cities are one of humanity’s youngest mass experiments. Since arising, they have been supercharging cultural evolution and their innovations have driven the trajectory of our species. But in ancient Rome, as in today’s Seoul and hundreds of other modern urban centers, data shows again and again that the bill for access to such a banquet of luxury, comfort and innovation comes payable in a single priceless currency: our progeny. Cities, it would seem, represent human genetics’ ultimate Faustian bargain. In them we access the supreme accelerant of our innate drives for status and achievement, only to find that reproductive success, the very prize evolution has shaped us to chase, is their first casualty.

As Razib points out, until about 100 or 150 years ago, cities were unfriendly to reproduction because of disease. Your children were likely to die before they could reproduce. Today, cities are unfriendly to reproduction because of culture. And we do not know precisely why that is the case. But if population density is the problem, then that is self-correcting.

Mark Mills writes,

It’s not just that currently over 80 percent of our energy needs are met directly by burning oil, natural gas, and coal—a share that has declined by only a few percentage points over the past several decades; the key fact is that 100 percent of everything in civilized society, including the favored “green energy” machines themselves, depends on using hydrocarbons somewhere in the supply chains and systems.

He claims that the cost of the “energy transition” away from fossil fuels has been greatly underestimated.

Dan Williams writes,

if you want to attack people whilst maintaining a prosocial reputation, you need a justification. Demonizing narratives provide one. If people are truly evil, threatening, or morally depraved, even decent and fair-minded do-gooders would want to eliminate them. As Manvir Singh puts it, “Actors bent on eliminating rivals devise demonizing myths to justify their rivals’ mistreatment”
…When Campaigners express a demonizing narrative, they leave no doubt about their intentions and feelings towards the Targets. This lets others know that if they were to attack the Targets, they could expect the Campaigners’ support.

Demonizing narratives are an all-too-normal tactic in human group behavior. My TLP framework is not really about how progressives, conservatives, and libertarians think. It is about how they demonize one another.

Williams summarizes,

We are complicated, competitive, and cooperative apes who conjure up demons in the service of conflict and coordination.

Gurwinder writes,

choose long-term goals over short-term ones….choose hard games over easy ones…choose positive-sum games over zero-sum or negative-sum ones…choose atelic games over telic ones. Atelic games are those you play because you enjoy them. Telic games are those you play only to obtain a reward…choose immeasurable rewards over measurable ones.
…Even in a world where everything is a game, you don’t have to play by other people’s rules; you have a wide open world to create your own.

As a teacher, my goals was to play a long-term game. I was hoping that students would remember something ten years ago, not just cram for a test. I try to follow the same philosophy with my substack.

substacks referenced above: