Have you read Taleb's books on antifragility? Imagine some of the most brilliant thoughts you've ever come across, written by someone with the personality of the most insufferable Substack commenter you've ever had plague your Stack.
I’ve been hearing lately that the Mouse Utopia may be a case of academic fraud, or at least is far from what normally happens when mice have abundance and security.
"We in the developed world live in abundance" -- I wouldn't say that. Globalization, where the workers of nations are pitted against each other, makes this more of an economically-insecure world than the one I knew growing up in 1960s-70s, when unions were stronger. There is certainly no abundance of time. Two parents now have to have paying jobs in most families to make ends meet. Families are having fewer children. In my estimation, it is an impoverished era. As for the notion that we "require stressors and challenges," yes, maybe the physiological stressors of the past are fewer. (I for one, think that people should try to tolerate heat rather than use energy-intensive air conditioning). But the pace of contemporary life brings about huge stressors.
E.O. Wilson is just math. In large familles which consume a lot of resources to raise the children to reproductive age, non-reproductive adults are quite valuable indeed. In an extreme version, bees, ants, termites, you will find that almost all the colony are dedicated to survival of the shared genome. I don’t think you’d debate that bees, ants or termites are maladaptive. It’s a function of family size. Non-reproduction is not maladaptive in all circumstances. In humans I suspect gays and lesbians in families are a type of biological social security.
The size of response of “trans” is so vanishingly small relative to the total population of the earth, and almost exclusively a western phenomenon that currently I think it’s irrelevant to reproduction of populations. Surgical trans is 0.008% of the US. That’s probably a fraction of the variance in immigration into the US.
I had a remarkably similar version to your ideas about 40 years ago when I was curious about my own sexuality in a biological sense, and I came to a conclusion that homosexual sex has several origins. One is large families, another is genetic, there may be other mechanisms. I suspect we will also see that reproduction facilitates becoming exclusively gay later in life which is likely as common as AGP.
In humans since the dawn of time, large families have been social security. As financial social security evolved, the pressure to have a large family changed drastically.
There’s a similar effect to the current change in reproduction, which is male/female balance. In China, male children were prized and for decades there has been selective suppression of female children (involving abortion, and infanticide) and likely in India.
Such effects are self-balancing. When the imbalance hits a certain tipping point, females will be prized and there will be suppression of male children. It oscillates.
When children are seen as a resource drain, then we will have fewer children. When children are seen as an asset or security (past), then we will have more kids again. It oscillates.
What has changed drastically is the internet. Maladaptive behaviors can be entrained very rapidly even in the most remote areas, with virtually no social contact, no overcrowding, just internet. I find that is the most significant reason for all the maladaptive behaviors which have been erupting. There is no reason for a child in remote Utah to self-sterilize because of social crowding or lack of access to ressource. That’s a big reason why I find the mouse experiment doesn’t translate well.
Again, the maladaptive behaviors aren't conscious population control, so can't be evaluated by that metric. That number for surgical trans is outdated.
Several problems with the thought, but the outcome may be similar.
The percentage of the population which engages in gay or lesbian sex is apparently quite stable.
Self-reported “queer” is meaningless, it is not a term
Which describes sexual activity.
Homosexuals in a family actually enhance the survival of the familial genome, if you do the math behind it - E.O. Wilson had a bit to say. That contradicts the concept that it reduces children. It enhances passing on the genome of your brothers, sisters, and parents through additional resources they contribute to raise the children.
Likewise sexual apotomnophiliacs are a stable .008% of the population for decades.
Humans are monogamous. That creates a radically different context for sex than colonies of rodents with a single dominant male with a brood. Humans females are sexually receptive when not in an estrous cycle. Humans don’t have a vomeronasal organ - we aren’t wired to detect estrous cycles through smell.
What may be changing is that the aging of population, unrelated to population density but positively related to hygiene, medicine, and wealth, creates fathers who are quite old at conception.
Fathers older than 50 have a changce of transmitting altered genes for neurotransmitters causing incidence of autism and psychosis (or both) to rise threefold to fivefold in children.
We aren’t partially living more densely, we are living older.
Human reproduction can also be accelerated through wartime stress. The biggest baby boom have been at times of most cultural stresss.
I think the experiment is useful to show that populations collapse as poisons in the environment collect. I’m not sure where ours are
If a species is doing maladaptive things in response to environmental stress, that's not the same as consciously acting to reduce the population (even if it has the same effect). Thus, it doesn't matter (to the point being made about self destruction) if the maladaptive behaviors are "working" or not, just that they're occurring. The venn diagram of people sabotaging themselves and their species isn't going to be a perfect circle with the results of those behaviors.
That said, "queerness" does reduce the population, not necessarily because of gay sex (though that could be disputed), but because of puberty blockers, new castrations and hysterectomies, young people removing themselves from the dating/sex pool, and if all that fails, becoming pregnant with compromised/drugged bodies and inadequate resources to raise children.
If by "sexual apotemnophiliacs" you mean people who go through with castrations and hysterectomies, those have observably increased and the data support that as well. Even many of those who don't intend to go through with that will do so because of organ atrophy from HRT (see Buck Angel's story). Add to that the kids who wouldn't have become sexual apotemnophiliacs if their parents hadn't put them on puberty blockers, but now have a 99% chance of doing so.
The E.O. Wilson theory strikes me as rationalizing a reality after the fact, kind of an evo-psych that may or may not have any truth in it. I think a better theory (with the same result) is that kink or sexual deviance (for lack of better words) increases the population because it increases interest sex on the whole. Because of that some with deviances will individually fail to reproduce (homosexuals, practitioners of BDSM who've come to prefer submission to sex), but all the other kinksters will more than make up for it (especially historically, as preferences evolved). Please note that I'm calling homosexuality deviant in the deviation-from-norm sense and not in a moral sense (as a practitioner myself).
Baby booms tend happen after wars, not during. In any case, sure, people are going to miscarry etc. more under some conditions of stress than others. That could depend on how close to the crossfire mothers actually are and all sorts of other specifics.
Density of a population isn't necessary for overpopulation stress. There's a study of sitka deer that I couldn't find who capped themselves at a certain number despite it appearing to humans that they had plenty of space and food. Needs may not be obvious, and we're clearly a population in need if deaths of despair are rising. Poisons and older fathers may well be factors. I'm sure there are many factors.
Re: the article illustration: you have to appreciate AI's added touch of a five-legged juvenile mouse playing with a hand grenade.
Have you read Taleb's books on antifragility? Imagine some of the most brilliant thoughts you've ever come across, written by someone with the personality of the most insufferable Substack commenter you've ever had plague your Stack.
I have not. Now I'm not sure if I should try lol
You both have a prominent spot on my bookshelf for whatever that's worth.
Aww thank you!
Gnosticism. Modern gnosticism, anyway.
wow
I’ve been hearing lately that the Mouse Utopia may be a case of academic fraud, or at least is far from what normally happens when mice have abundance and security.
https://www.jollyheretic.com/p/the-great-mouse-mutant-meltdown-fraud
"We in the developed world live in abundance" -- I wouldn't say that. Globalization, where the workers of nations are pitted against each other, makes this more of an economically-insecure world than the one I knew growing up in 1960s-70s, when unions were stronger. There is certainly no abundance of time. Two parents now have to have paying jobs in most families to make ends meet. Families are having fewer children. In my estimation, it is an impoverished era. As for the notion that we "require stressors and challenges," yes, maybe the physiological stressors of the past are fewer. (I for one, think that people should try to tolerate heat rather than use energy-intensive air conditioning). But the pace of contemporary life brings about huge stressors.
E.O. Wilson is just math. In large familles which consume a lot of resources to raise the children to reproductive age, non-reproductive adults are quite valuable indeed. In an extreme version, bees, ants, termites, you will find that almost all the colony are dedicated to survival of the shared genome. I don’t think you’d debate that bees, ants or termites are maladaptive. It’s a function of family size. Non-reproduction is not maladaptive in all circumstances. In humans I suspect gays and lesbians in families are a type of biological social security.
The size of response of “trans” is so vanishingly small relative to the total population of the earth, and almost exclusively a western phenomenon that currently I think it’s irrelevant to reproduction of populations. Surgical trans is 0.008% of the US. That’s probably a fraction of the variance in immigration into the US.
I had a remarkably similar version to your ideas about 40 years ago when I was curious about my own sexuality in a biological sense, and I came to a conclusion that homosexual sex has several origins. One is large families, another is genetic, there may be other mechanisms. I suspect we will also see that reproduction facilitates becoming exclusively gay later in life which is likely as common as AGP.
In humans since the dawn of time, large families have been social security. As financial social security evolved, the pressure to have a large family changed drastically.
There’s a similar effect to the current change in reproduction, which is male/female balance. In China, male children were prized and for decades there has been selective suppression of female children (involving abortion, and infanticide) and likely in India.
Such effects are self-balancing. When the imbalance hits a certain tipping point, females will be prized and there will be suppression of male children. It oscillates.
When children are seen as a resource drain, then we will have fewer children. When children are seen as an asset or security (past), then we will have more kids again. It oscillates.
What has changed drastically is the internet. Maladaptive behaviors can be entrained very rapidly even in the most remote areas, with virtually no social contact, no overcrowding, just internet. I find that is the most significant reason for all the maladaptive behaviors which have been erupting. There is no reason for a child in remote Utah to self-sterilize because of social crowding or lack of access to ressource. That’s a big reason why I find the mouse experiment doesn’t translate well.
Again, the maladaptive behaviors aren't conscious population control, so can't be evaluated by that metric. That number for surgical trans is outdated.
Several problems with the thought, but the outcome may be similar.
The percentage of the population which engages in gay or lesbian sex is apparently quite stable.
Self-reported “queer” is meaningless, it is not a term
Which describes sexual activity.
Homosexuals in a family actually enhance the survival of the familial genome, if you do the math behind it - E.O. Wilson had a bit to say. That contradicts the concept that it reduces children. It enhances passing on the genome of your brothers, sisters, and parents through additional resources they contribute to raise the children.
Likewise sexual apotomnophiliacs are a stable .008% of the population for decades.
Humans are monogamous. That creates a radically different context for sex than colonies of rodents with a single dominant male with a brood. Humans females are sexually receptive when not in an estrous cycle. Humans don’t have a vomeronasal organ - we aren’t wired to detect estrous cycles through smell.
What may be changing is that the aging of population, unrelated to population density but positively related to hygiene, medicine, and wealth, creates fathers who are quite old at conception.
Fathers older than 50 have a changce of transmitting altered genes for neurotransmitters causing incidence of autism and psychosis (or both) to rise threefold to fivefold in children.
We aren’t partially living more densely, we are living older.
Human reproduction can also be accelerated through wartime stress. The biggest baby boom have been at times of most cultural stresss.
I think the experiment is useful to show that populations collapse as poisons in the environment collect. I’m not sure where ours are
Yet.
If a species is doing maladaptive things in response to environmental stress, that's not the same as consciously acting to reduce the population (even if it has the same effect). Thus, it doesn't matter (to the point being made about self destruction) if the maladaptive behaviors are "working" or not, just that they're occurring. The venn diagram of people sabotaging themselves and their species isn't going to be a perfect circle with the results of those behaviors.
That said, "queerness" does reduce the population, not necessarily because of gay sex (though that could be disputed), but because of puberty blockers, new castrations and hysterectomies, young people removing themselves from the dating/sex pool, and if all that fails, becoming pregnant with compromised/drugged bodies and inadequate resources to raise children.
If by "sexual apotemnophiliacs" you mean people who go through with castrations and hysterectomies, those have observably increased and the data support that as well. Even many of those who don't intend to go through with that will do so because of organ atrophy from HRT (see Buck Angel's story). Add to that the kids who wouldn't have become sexual apotemnophiliacs if their parents hadn't put them on puberty blockers, but now have a 99% chance of doing so.
The E.O. Wilson theory strikes me as rationalizing a reality after the fact, kind of an evo-psych that may or may not have any truth in it. I think a better theory (with the same result) is that kink or sexual deviance (for lack of better words) increases the population because it increases interest sex on the whole. Because of that some with deviances will individually fail to reproduce (homosexuals, practitioners of BDSM who've come to prefer submission to sex), but all the other kinksters will more than make up for it (especially historically, as preferences evolved). Please note that I'm calling homosexuality deviant in the deviation-from-norm sense and not in a moral sense (as a practitioner myself).
Baby booms tend happen after wars, not during. In any case, sure, people are going to miscarry etc. more under some conditions of stress than others. That could depend on how close to the crossfire mothers actually are and all sorts of other specifics.
Density of a population isn't necessary for overpopulation stress. There's a study of sitka deer that I couldn't find who capped themselves at a certain number despite it appearing to humans that they had plenty of space and food. Needs may not be obvious, and we're clearly a population in need if deaths of despair are rising. Poisons and older fathers may well be factors. I'm sure there are many factors.