My wife and I are Korean-American, albeit with many ties to our country of origin.
Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time.
Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affect a woman's fertility.
My wife and I have been trying for a kid but have been unsuccessful. Many of our friends are experiencing the same, and are resorting to clinical fertility procedures like in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination.
I don't know how true it is, but one of my friends outright said that the majority of women in Korea are conceiving through some kind of fertility procedure, and that if we really wanted a baby, not to waste our time and just go ahead and do the same.
One thing that makes me believe him is that there are a ton of twins amongst the couples in our social circle. My understanding is that naturally twins are a rare phenomenon, but much more likely if doing something like in vitro or artificial insemination?
Us, we've already decided that push comes to shove, we'll most likely adopt.
One problem of modern medicine is the use of fake-hormones.
When Progesterone USP (bio-identical) is applied to the skin, it gets into circulation and avoids first pass metabolization by liver. When the appropriate solvent is used to dissolve the Progesterone USP powder, the progesterone is transported through the liver.
Steroidogenesis refers to the process whereby the body makes steroids for itself. The key jump - from cholesterol to pregnenolone - is facilitated with Vitamin A and thyroid (T3).
Know a couple who were trying to conceive, after suppressing her fertility with fake hormones (and an IUD) for maybe 8+ years. Lots of miscarriages. They eventually went for IVF, which didn't work either. They gave up and started getting their house ready for adoption. Then they got surprised. I don't think she used topical Progesterone, just the megadoses in Prometrium (liver can't destroy it all on the first pass).
I've seen people bring up the idea of the covid vaccine reducing fertility many times, both in person and online. I've never seen any evidence. I think people on HN just get tired of seeing the same weird theory brought up with no evidence over and over again.
There's no difference in trajectory around when the covid vaccine was introduced. So I think we can safely say the declining birth rate is not due to the covid vaccine.
The problem is that there is not much to “talk” about. Do you have scientific evidence in the form of published papers in scientific journals? That is the baseline here.
If anything, the problem with vaccines and why it has become politicized is that there’s too many people “talking” about it. Talk. Talk. Talk. But zero scientific discourse.
See my comment above, but I don't have faith even in scientific journals. Science, academia, media, etc are beholden to corporate interests as is the governance structure. The world we live in is bent - legislation, funding, the 'reality' presentation is all bent to serve corporate-governmental control.
I don't have faith or trust.. Are you saying I should? I don't even trust that the provided data is real.
However, everyone else seems to have faith in what they are told. No one checks anything, but they believe the studies they are provided, the articles, etc. And, frequently, they don't believe their own experience!
Your "crime" is just bringing up vaccines in a context where it's wholly irrelevant, presumably as a low effort way of stirring up more low quality argument about vaccines and related subjects. This follow-up post of yours is supporting evidence that you brought up vaccines for no good reason.
Is it inconceivable that vaccine could cause difficulties for people in conceiving? If so, how is it irrelevant?
Re evidence, I have posted articles about data analysis etc. These are also frequently flagged.
In general though, I have little faith in the scientific establishments. It seems clear that they are politicised, and are serving agendas. In what world can an 80 year old be in charge of medical policy for decades, with ethical oversight being provided by his wife! Or re-defining what vaccines and viruses are? Or re-defining what can be put on death certificates as cause of death (ie, with, not from, covid)? Or that we can invoke emergency legislation and expedite unacceptably tested treatments which are effectively mandated by corporations? Etc. That's not the scientific method - it's a political stitch up.
So I don't think sciencific studies or those reporting on them, merit our trust - we are not get the impartial information. And hacker news is a part of the control structure, only allowing corporate messaging to be shared.
"I recognise that science, media, politics, education, etc have been perverted to serve corporate governance interests, and that the truth is secondary to those interests" would be a fairer quote.
"I recognise that science is imperfect, and that occasionally it can mislead, but that overall it is moving us forward" would perhaps surmise your position. Obviously this is to weak for me, I think the scale of corporate governance is far greater than this.
I find this topic very interesting. My observation (anecdata-lly, but I would love to see RCTs or perhaps a cleanly designed ANOVA study) is that these symptoms of infertility are particularly (world-wide) prevalent in people who have (usually undiagnosed) metabolic syndrome & low cholecalciferol.
In almost all South-east Asian countries in particular, I have noticed high levels of sucrose consumption so I am curious if Korea is the similar to SEA, or if either of these factors apply to either of you?
Koreans have famously long working hours, but as you are not there, those stress factors should likely not apply to you.
Another point to note is that I have heard adoption is at least as difficult as IVF, emotionally & financially speaking, although there's less physical pain. At least IVF can point you to where the problem lies (the knowledge of that can be disconcerting) providing you perhaps avenues to mitigate/ameliorate those factors, which could improve your overall QoL and also lead to better health-outcomes.
I'm Korean born, but spent most of my life in the US. My wife is a much more recent immigrant so she is a product of the Korean education system as well as the Korean corporate world and all that entails.
We have some friends that have adopted, so are aware of the potential issues. Most of them seem perfectly fine, but one had some initial problems with the child adjusting to his new life. These were all toddlers (3-5 years old).
Probably because it comes through as tall claims based on anecdata? But I've lived in Europe, America, Asia, ME & Australia (also visited every SEA country) and the prevalence of male feminization & rich-people obesity (esp central adiposity) in certain regions is quite staggering.
And almost every single person I know personally with difficulty conceiving (various races, various countries, various diagnoses including ectopic/fibroids/undiagnosed) had some obvious-to-me metabolic-syndrome/cholecalciferol/ferritin issues going on, particularly Asian-sub-continentals in northern sun-starved climates who were not supplementing cholecalciferol.
Aside: How does one tell downvotes? I suppose I should look in the FAQ. IIRC only established members can downvote. Despite my account being from HN's 2007 inception, I do not have enough established-karma to have my own downvote button. So I generally don't bother about it, as it's a bit of a circular dead-end karma-spiral which I had thought the HN mechanics were supposed to avoid.
Downvotes: I'm so glad you asked, as I often wonder the same on "you're being downvotes because" comments. Eventually a post goes grey, but prior to that I have not been able to spot an indicator of downvotes happening. And I do have the downvote button.
There is a karma threshold for downvoting, you likely haven't reached it yet. It's in the FAQ.
However, as to HN culture, typically anyone complaining about downvotes will be further downvoted. It usually does not matter what the rest of the comment says, if you complain about downvotes, HN will give you a lot more of them. I like to think that it is a way for the community to remind individuals that these are all imaginary points anyway and to not be attached to one's karma number anymore than one is attached to the number of the nearest speed limit sign.
What do you mean by male feminisation? I get the impression from context that you're referring to biological differences but that could easily be interpreted as "man aren't real men these days and that's why they can't conceive".
I think they mean feminization in the biological sense: It's the reason fat men usually have visible breasts: the body has a pathway for converting cholesterol into estradiol[0], excessive cholesterol causes some feminization due to that.
This is exactly what I meant. Particularly visible in richer social strata in SEA, especially in the Philippines and to a lesser extent in Malaysia & Singapore. The amount of sucrose consumed in that first country beggars belief. Everything at breakfast is full of sucrose, even the pork & of course, bacon.
Also, I appreciate your use of the singular "they" :-)
The weirdest part of it all is I see censorship, gaslighting when you bring up contraception possibly having impact on fertility. All discourse around it is stopped. We can't even question it. But we do know that contraception in developed countries were pushed heavily and is it concidence that in countries that don't have access to it have unchanged birth rates?
Even without evidence of contraceptions impact on fertility, when you repeatedly disrupt a natural process such as through abortion, is it any surprise that most development countries have dwindling birth rates? Is it a surprise that a country like South Korea with high abortion rate have the lowest birth rate?
Correlation may not mean causation but the probability is high. What doesn't help is that we censor/cancel people for even mentioning that abortion/contraception have unknown impact on fertility and we are left guessing what else it could be: plastic? air pollution? marijuana? All of these have been without previous generation but what was absent then compared to today was the ready availability of contraceptives/abortion.
Women have more power and independence than anytime in history, they can have a career, they can be sexually active, they can abort their fetus or put in their body all sorts of ways to prevent pregnancy. Is it any surprise that they are now finding it difficult to conceive?
It’s been studied, I don’t know any links off the top of my head but they’ve consistently found that fertility returns to normal within a couple of months / menstrual cycles. The hard part is knowing when you are fertile: since there are only a few days each menstrual cycle when the egg is available to be fertilized if you’re just coming off contraception and don’t know your natural cycle length it’s easy to miss those days.
You don't actually have to do that before having a child, you can do that while having a child.
If you are not wasteful (constant new things, fancy vacations etc), young children are not expensive. It really only gets expensive when you have to pay tuition.
Anecdata point: my wife and I chose not to have kids for the reasons outlined in the GP post (and more). Mortgages are so large these days that for people lucky enough to even be able to own a home, becoming comfortable enough with ones financial position that you feel you could give a child the kind of upbringing that you'd want for them (equivalent to your own, for example), takes long enough that the window of fertility is past. Plus, honestly, the world seems pretty bleak at the moment to myself and a lot of my smart friends. It's raining PF[AO]S, the climate is an unsolvable disaster, microplastics are everywhere, we're on the brink of war, inflation is rampant, housing is completely unaffordable, politics is a polarised mess, who'd want to bring a kid into a world like that without at least some kind of solid financial certainty? (There are positives, the world has it's amazing moments too, but hoo boy there are a lot of challenges to be solved).
Your list is basically "recentism" where current things seems much worse than old things. In modern history the world has never been cleaner, never been safer, never had less war than it does right now. The climate is not going to be a disaster, the worst that will happen is a ton of people will need to move - but the climate will change so slowly you'll barely notice. Inflation has been worse in the past, and while polarize politics makes me quite upset, I suspect it's been worse in the past.
This isn't about discrete reality. It is about perception and self-rationalisation. Unlike economics, I don't think people are "rational actors".
There are more factors nowadays that convince people (rationally or not) that bringing a child into this world would be to give someone the gift of a lifetime of misery.
My irrational argument for having a child? To combat the stupidity of the next generation. If the good people (And who doesn't think they themselves are the good guys?) don't procreate then the evil/stupid win by default.
"Default? The two sweetest words in the English language! De-FAULT! De-FAULT! De-FAULT!" - Homer
I know of this problem in Korea and even know one couple affected. I've thought that it may be caused by the stressful nature of Korean life. Is this difficulty in conceiving also prevalent among persons of Korean ancestry raised in America?
A big part of our social circle consists of recent immigrants from Korea (< 10 years) - my wife included (I've been here 30+ years).
But it does seem to affect Korean-Americans that have been here longer too.
Even amongst our close family, my cousin is affected, two of her cousins are affected. All three were born and raised in Korea to adulthood and came here within the past 10 years. My cousin has an American (Caucasian) husband, her two cousins have born-in-the-USA Korean-American husbands.
Interestingly enough, our friends of other nationalities don't seem to be as affected - or maybe they just don't talk about this subject as openly? Either way, I have not noticed the twins phenomenon there.
To be honest, this sounds environmental in nature…
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intentional. That said, all I have is the constant drum of “the world is over populated” by leaders around the world to back up my reasoning for potentially being intentional.
> If people are intentionally trying to limit births, why would that lead to a large amount of fertility procedures?
Those fertility procedures are not the desired way to go about having a baby. The vast majority of the time it's a procedure of last resort (i.e. can't get pregnant another way). These procedures are expensive and often don't work.
It could be intentional that a government, organization or pharmaceutical / chemical company is knowingly sterilizing / making it more difficult to conceive. This could either be through a willingness to look the other way (i.e. a side effect) or intentional (North Korea for instance may do some sabotage or government is intentionally pushing population reduction)
For instance, the US government gives funding to Planned Parenthood which provides birth control, abortions, and other drugs to support people looking to not have children. This organization advertises and gives a lot of birth control out for free or low fees. That's an overt intentional act of reducing population growth.
Similarly, a concern I have is purposefully downplaying the risks of long-term birth control via "the pill". Then having policies that make that pill easy to acquire (without being knowledgeable of said side effects) AND with the ability for minors to obtain them without parental awareness. Those are intentional policies intended to reduces fertility.
> Similarly, a concern I have is purposefully downplaying the risks of long-term birth control via "the pill".
Depo-provera - the monthly injection of medroxyprogesterone - was temporally associated with my friend's first psychotic break. Medroxyprogesterone causes cortisol deficiency; psychosis is associated with an inability to produce cortisol...
"The pill" uses fake hormones to shut down ovulation. But the doctors are trained to tell women their hormonal cycles are being 'regulated' with 'hormones, so that's what women get told. Tragic.
a bunch of girls i know had their depression massively improve after getting off it as well and their sex drives really improved. women are really complicated hormonally and messing with their hormomes is dangerous. tbh i think a consequence of mostly men designing the pill is that people didn't really realize that.
> It could be intentional that a government, organization or pharmaceutical / chemical company is knowingly sterilizing / making it more difficult to conceive. This could either be through a willingness to look the other way (i.e. a side effect) or intentional (North Korea for instance may do some sabotage or government is intentionally pushing population reduction)
For others reading, remember that no evidence is being provided for this hypothesis.
> For instance, the US government gives funding to Planned Parenthood which provides birth control, abortions, and other drugs to support people looking to not have children. This organization advertises and gives a lot of birth control out for free or low fees. That's an overt intentional act of reducing population growth.
You've provided no basis for this claim that Planned Parenthood provides birth control, abortions, or other drugs as part of a US program to intentionally reduce population growth.
> You've provided no basis for this claim that Planned Parenthood provides birth control, abortions, or other drugs as part of a US program to intentionally reduce population growth.
Any funding of birth control or abortions by definition will slow population growth.
Further and specifically in regard to planned parenthood
> Sanger was so intent on her mission to advocate for birth control that she chose to align herself with ideas and organizations that were ableist and white supremacist. In 1926, she spoke to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) at a rally in New Jersey to promote birth control methods. Sanger endorsed the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that states could forcibly sterilize people deemed “unfit” without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge. The acceptance of this decision by Sanger and other thought leaders laid the foundation for tens of thousands of people to be sterilized, often against their will.
What you said was that this was a US program to intentionally reduce population growth. I see no basis for that claim. Feel free to retract that claim or provide actual evidence.
You can certainly suggest that a result of family planning activities such as birth control, condoms, abortion, or abstinence result in slower or no population growth, but I do not see this as the primary purpose of these tools/activities, which is to enable people to decide when they are ready to have children.
This is the important point from your link, which naturally you took out a single quote out of context either out of malice and bad intentions, or because you simply didn't read further. I'll assume the latter.
> Planned Parenthood believes that all people — of every race, religion, gender identity, ability, immigration status, and geography — are full human beings with the right to determine their own future and decide, without coercion or judgement, whether and when to have children.
> Margaret Sanger’s racism and belief in eugenics are in direct opposition to Planned Parenthood’s mission. Planned Parenthood denounces Margaret Sanger’s belief in eugenics. Further, Planned Parenthood denounces the history and legacy of anti-Blackness in gynecology and the reproductive rights movement, and the mistreatment that continues against Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in this country.
The fact that they call out their history (which somehow still lacks being a US program) and are explicit about what they stand for and what they don't stand for is admirable and honest. You cherry-picking a quote isn't.
> What you said was that this was a US program to intentionally reduce population growth. I see no basis for that claim. Feel free to retract that claim or provide actual evidence.
I think you have to not read what I’m writing to make that argument.
The US government is funding an organization which has the explicit goal of reducing the number of children women have. By definition that is reducing population growth.
I pointed out it was founded with that purpose. But even if you look at what it does today: provide birth control and abortions (among other services). Again, by definition that will reduce population growth.
Might be for a good reason or a reason you agree with. Might be admirable, I personally don’t have any moral position. I’m just stating as a fact by funding that organization the US is funding the reduction in population growth through birth control and abortion services
But allowing people to decide when to have children via birth control doesn't reduce the population, it just means the children have better lives as their parents can afford them and don't need to rely on welfare.
The only reason to want population growth is to have more people to pay taxes, if they're unwanted unaffordable children they're not going to be paying more taxes than they cost the state in benefits.
> That said, all I have is the constant drum of “the world is over populated” by leaders around the world to back up my reasoning for potentially being intentional.
You might want to consult with a professional, that’s paranoid thinking.
Have you heard of planned parenthood? The government gives them money to aid in reducing fertility. Particularly in populations that would find children “burdensome”.
It’s not a stretch to consider the idea the government, organization or company might knowingly hide side effects of something detrimental. Alternative the government could say, urge it’s medical staff to hand out “the pill”. Schools already urge students to use condoms and give them out in some cases.
A quick google search leads me to an NYT article: "In the last several days, the British government’s environmental adviser declared it “irresponsible” to have more than two children. And Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, asserted that including contraception in the stimulus package could reduce government spending."
If China wanted to reduce population in 2022, would it announce a mandatory one-child-policy? Or would it use any number of other more subtle techniques to reduce fertility?
So OPs remark doesn't sound very paranoid to me. It sounds unjustified--I can think of a million innocent reasons fertility is decreasing.
China has not just repealed the one-child policy, but are pushing for more children, because they, like a lot of governments, are now more concerned about falling birth rates than about overpopulation. China is set to start seeing population decline within a decade or two at current rates.
While you might find individuals in governments some places that still worry about overpopulation, most places outside of sub-Saharan Africa, the concern now is a growing demographic timebomb as populations age and birth rates are falling below replacement almost everywhere. (Sub-Saharan Africa is also seeing sharp declines, but is not there yet)
> So OPs remark doesn't sound very paranoid to me. It sounds unjustified--I can think of a million innocent reasons fertility is decreasing.
For the record I actually agree with this. I think it’s most likely not intentional. That said I wouldn’t be surprised if it was intentional [as there is precedent] (which is what I initially said).
I can confirm what another commenter wrote - what I was told by my doctor is that this is very uncommon now, at least in California, where the guidance is to only do it in very limited circumstances.
On the other hand, even one IVF embryo has much more likelihood of splitting and creating twins than natural. I saw the science at 10X chance but a quick Google search shows slightly lower.
I know for a fact that at least some of our friends here in the US have gone to Korea to have the procedure done, not in the US, due to cost reasons. And obviously our friends still in Korea would have had it done in Korea.
That could also explain why I don't notice the prevalence of twins amongst our friends of other nationalities here.
> "My understanding is that naturally twins are a rare phenomenon, but much more likely if doing something like in vitro or artificial insemination?"
There are various factors that increase the chances of having fraternal (non-identical) twins. Genetics (a women who is a twin herself is more likely to have twins), age (older women are more likely to have twins), and, of course, fertility drugs which stimulate ovulation can result in more eggs being released and thus more likely to produce twins.
Identical twins, on the other hand, are a natural phenomenon that occurs in about 1 in 250 pregnancies. There are no known factors that increase the chances of identical twins.
father of twins (10 Y/O) via medical help here. 10 years ago our doctor said, "30 years ago the natural rate of twins was 3 sets per 1000 births. Now it's 3 sets per 100 births". After a quick search I couldn't find any data supporting a 10x increase in twins over the past 40 years but plenty of articles showing something closer to a 2x increase in the rate of twin births. I suspect the rate of twins amongst our peer group is skewed though since we're upper middle class surrounded by similar peers who can all afford fertility treatments so it appears that there are way more twins then ever...
I know personally 20+ families with twins. Of my close personal friends, ie. those that I see regularly and chat with regularly, 7 of them have twins. My neighbors on both sides of my house have twins. There are so many families with twins these days, it's nuts!
As soon as you hit 30-32 the rate of issues conceiving and issues with the baby grow exponentially.
How long have you been seeing this trend?
There’s a lot of experts who have been arguing that everything from pesticides to vaccines will slowly degrade our ability to produce [healthy] offspring. The general reasoning is fairly straight forward - if one thing damages your DNA or what have you, then it might be anywhere from 0 to 3 generations for issues to crop up.
There’s also social factors - fear, stress, isolation, etc will all impact willingness to reproduce (imo that’s not it).
Finally, there’s general stagnation. Ie if your not eating well, working in a field, etc you’re not going to be healthy.
Reality is probably a combination of everything, BUT women should also seriously research side effects of birth control. I have a sneaking suspicion birth control mediating hormones will have many long-term effects. I know women who were impacted by this.
Average fertility rate for women at 35 years old is half of what it is in their 20's. It basically goes from it's maximum to near zero during the 30's, that's a very rapid and significant decrease.
>>There’s a lot of experts who have been arguing that everything from pesticides to vaccines will slowly degrade our ability to produce [healthy] offspring.
Basically anything that can kill bacteria, mosquitoes or rats, can also kill tissues in your body. Nobody knows what tissues because body is a complicated structure of pathways. Most of the things we take in have an entry through mouth and nose, but no real exit path. They could kill things in your body.
Now many times that's tissues in your pancreas, or thyroid glands. Which perfectly explains diabetes and thyroid epidemics in countries like India.
if you're eating a lot of plants, look into phyto-hormones, those might be preventing fertility.
There are a few anecdotal stories from the carnivore/keto forums, that fertility came back after cutting out carbs.
Edit: Some Artificial hormones are found in plastic, rates go up when it's recycled plastics.
Disclaimer: I am quite firmly in that camp now, although at first I considered them all nutters. Some thing has been driving global ill-health in our post-disease world (excluding viruses) from 1920 onwards... imho there's clearly a complex ætiology with factors such as:
- carbohydrate (especially fructose) vs animal-protein/-fat consumption
- types of fat (our bodies only contain certain kinds)
- xenœstrogen & hormones of all types not just phyto-œstrogens
- Vitamin D, Magnesium, ferritin, pre-eclampsia, anæmia (lack of hæme iron consumption)
- more recently the whole statin-cholesterol debacle, Goodhart's law in action
so soy protein, dried or boiled soybeans, tofu, tempeh, and meatless soy products....but Koreans have been eating it forever. perhaps the processing in mass industrial scale has impact?
yeah I heard of the plastic theory and I think the air pollution in Korea is an overlooked factor. The fine dust particulates must have some impact on the reproduction system.
maybe even Ramen? Koreans consume a ton of instant ramen. High rate of alcohol?
I am interested to hear more about the impact of plastic. It is unavoidable and its widely used in Asia.
...what I really think is contraceptives is having an impact and that we are politically blocked from discussing it. What happened in Korea since 2010s? Huge amount of contraceptive pills were sold as society adopted a more laissez faire attitude towards sex. 10 years later those women are not trying to have babies and cannot. Is this too far fetched?
We are seeing the same issue in most western countries that correlate with high contraceptive usage. There is just less children being born but not an issue where contraception is tough.
If it’s contraceptives it might be possible to create a comparison group with some stricter religious group that does not take contraceptives and measure fertility levels between that group and a group that did take contraceptives.
> Some Artificial hormones are found in plastic, rates go up when it's recycled plastics.
I do know that some chemicals, possibly also found in some plastics (soft plastic probably) function a bit like estrogen, potentially reducing male fertility.
Watching her friends and my friends' wives go through it, we've been scared off.
Add to that, the usual HN phenomenon that we're observing how the world and our countries (USA & Korea) seem be going down the toilet, and that makes us feel hesitant to bring a new human being into the world, especially when there are kids already here that could use a loving family.
The world has always been going down the toilet. The only difference now is that we have higher visibility of and lower tolerance for the bullshit. You shouldn’t be so pessimistic.
The other difference now is that we're pretty close to wiping out crucial ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and show no signs of taking climate change as seriously as we should.
I was downvoted in my other comment, so I think I should explain what I meant.
My point was that there is no “we” when we speak of humanity as a broad aggregate this way. There are specific constituencies—for instance, Bolsenaro and his supporters in Brazil—who are blocking the policies that most of us want to implement to stop climate change. It’s not “we” who are the problem, it’s “them”.
If you blame humanity in the aggregate you misdirect your energies and misidentify the solution.
The thing to do is to apply the appropriate political levers to weaken and oppose the constituencies who prioritize status-quo fossil-fuel energy policies over civilizational stability and the well-being of life on Earth. Blaming all of humanity is the equivalent of giving up and doing nothing, and makes the problem worse.
But still, the word has really been going down the toilet for humans for a long time, famines, wars, plagues, pandemics. It's all been going down the shit shoot for a long time. But then you see a nice sunset, eat a decent meal and feel lucky. If my children get to experience some of those simple pleasures, maybe it's mission accomplished ?
Great comment. Your absolutely right. I'm often personally far too pessimistic about the future (climate change, nuclear annihilation, etc). There is no real benefit to such pessimism.
I agree with you in many ways, but I think humanity has never had this level of capability to destroy the earth. We'll either be unable to breathe freely or lose most of civilization in a nuclear war by the end of the century.
Not to detract, but "one kid" would only make the problem worse because a woman needs to give birth to at least two children in order for population counts at large to maintain parity.
That is, one kid per woman halves the population. If the axiom is at least maintaining, ideally growing the population, every woman needs to give birth to at least two and ideally three or more kids.
Of course, this isn't to say I'm telling other people what to do regarding offspring, because I hate that kind of intrusive attitude. I've already decided I'm having no kids, because fuck the human world; and anyone who comes bitching at me about it one way or another can take a hike and pound sand. So I'm not going to be hypocritical and turn around and tell other people what to do in the bedroom.
But if the purpose for all the noise behind childbearing is to take population count trends out of the negatives, advising "one kid" not only doesn't help solve the problem but actively makes it worse.
Within the wider context of population decline due to low birth rates, both are bad because both lead to population decline anyway. 2 kids is a hard minimum for maintaining population count, 3 or more kids for increasing population.
As for what decafninja (or any individual for that matter) decides upon in the bedroom, that's for him to decide and his business alone. I'm not going to comment because it's none of my business.
Because the longtermists are betting on 10^58 humans being alive one day. If you don't have children and population growth isn't exponential anymore their whole ideology comes crashing down.
If people voluntarily self limit the size of the population that is a good thing because it means we won't need to shoot each other if it turns out we are straining the earth too much.
You're asking the wrong guy; I don't care either way. :P
I'm just pointing out that in a wider discussion of "oh noes population decline oh noes low birth rates", it's not constructive to be talking about having 1 kid when there's a hard minimum of having 2 kids and ideally more.
Yeah, this is not to be underestimated in the context of Korea and Korean culture.
Thankfully, in our case, our parents don't care, and neither do we.
I'm also an only child, as is my wife, so this means both our branches of our families' genetic bloodlines are effectively ending (albeit the onus for this is on the male side). But again - we don't care.
Counterpoint: our species has very little genetic diversity, we’re all pretty closely related. The odds that there’s there’s something unique or special about any one person’s lineage is pretty low.
It depends on the difference, because genetic differences aren't always beneficial. The Hapsburg Dynasty's Charles II famously had an inherited birth defect due to the heavy inbreeding[1] among the ruling class, for example. It was of no value to anyone.
The true reason for valuing lineages is more about social rank/class protectionism.
The value of that intermarriage was ability to maintain an empire of significant power and influence, as well balance relationships with nearby royals, who were all cousins.
"no value" here is probably in tens, maybe hundreds of trillions of dollars in the present time PPP basis.
I heard the most bizarre & unexpected opinion first-hand from an obgyn. Prior to this I was firmly in the nurture camp of nature/nurture, but this obgyn's opinion on adoptions shocked me out of my complacency.
I am hoping Sapolsky's latest book may shed some light on the subject without the Wade/Murray "bell curve" implications.
Curious as to what you mean. I think you're implying that the personality makeup of the adopted child that comes from his/her biological parents is not to be underestimated? Is that really a questionable or controversial topic though?
The thought has occurred to me. I would describe both my wife and I as being stable mannered and not prone to rash decisions. Odds are a biological child of ours might resemble that personality.
I also acknowledge a child we adopt may have had biological parents with very different personalities than us, and therefore the child may be very different from us in personality.
At the same time, I don't believe that just because the child's biological parents might have been wild and crazy, the child is doomed to the same fate even with our care.
> At the same time, I don't believe that just because the child's biological parents might have been wild and crazy, the child is doomed to the same fate even with our care
Tell me you haven't read many behavioral genetics papers without telling me you haven't read many behavioral genetics papers :).
adoptee turned to hard drugs (opiods) in his teens. the opinion was: what do you expect, the father was an addict too. at the time I was shocked as I was so firmly in the nurture camp.
Addiction, and specifically OUD is complicated, but there is real evidence that genetics plays a sizeable role in the physiological dependence side of it.
However the main risk factor for trying and then abusing opioids, for example, is trauma, typically but not only in childhood. Basically, it’s both nature and nurture, as most things are. Where the percentages lie for both, I don’t think we know yet.
For instance parents who have genes that increase impulsivity are more likely to e beat their kids exposing them to trauma, the kids are more likely to do dumb things that expose themselves to trauma, and the kids are more likely to do impulsive things like try drugs.
So it's hard to disentangle what portion of the effects of trauma are direct and which are confounds.
Oh yeah, definitely. It's a complicated mess of variables, that I don't even know how one would begin to tease them apart, but that's also why I firmly come down on the side of "it's both" -- as not all trauma is directly from biological parents, for example.
yes, I agree with you. It's just at the time I was unaware that brain chemistry could be genetically dependent; although as you say that's pre-disposition, and the trigger can be trauma, and sometimes knowing you are adopted can be the source of that trauma, thus triggering the behaviour.
I can only speak from personal experience but that is what happened to my family. My brother is a sociopath who caused our family a lifetime of difficulty. The biological mother was drug addict and abusive before adoption and he became an addict. My sister also adopted from different family was less of a problem but also had some issues. My dad was very kind and not abusive and spent way too much trying to help. Who knows maybe it was environment and early abuse or something but nature stacked the deck I think in my family. The other issue with adoption is limited access to family medical history.
I don’t really understand your argument. Wearing dresses isn’t heritable, we know that because most women’s grandmothers wore dresses and most women wear jeans or casual wear.
Heritability isn’t proof that a trait is genetic, but it’s strong evidence once you start addressing confounding factors. As I recall, the IQ heritability research was done with twin studies.
This is like shocking to me we’re even debating this. I would have assumed it’s conventional wisdom.
Wearing dresses is heritable! Heritability is simply the ratio of genetically-caused variation to total variation for some trait across a population. Bad driving is heritable. So is risk aversion. So is musical taste. So is how much TV you watch. All of these: studied.
Traits can trivially be minimally heritable and totally genetically determined. The number of fingers on your hands is genetically determined by your Hox genes. But the variation in the number of fingers on your hand (more precisely: across the population) is overwhelmingly not genetically determined. Genetically determined, low heritability.
Traits can trivially be maximally heritable and not at all genetically determined. Whether or not you wear lipstick is largely decided by XY vs. XX. But there's no gene for wearing lipstick; if the cultural ball had broken a different way, we might all be wearing lipstick, or none of us. Genetically unencumbered, high heritability.
So: you haven't said anything. You're not even wrong. All you pointed out was that you can do a study and determine that population variations in intelligence (or bad driving, or social trust, or fear of dentists) are traceable to genetic variance. That doesn't mean that genes literally encode the outcome.
Heritability isn't "strong evidence". It's barely evidence at all. It's literally just a framing of the question, which your argument simply begs. Irresponsibly, at that. None of this should be news to you.
I don't even have to take a position on the blighted question of whether intelligence is genetically determined (or whether we can measure it meaningfully at all, or whether it's fixed at birth or fluid, or whether outcomes in intellectual performance are epigenetic). And I'm not. I'm just pointing out that your argument, the one I replied to, was literally vacuous.
> As I recall, the IQ heritability research was done with twin studies.
No, it wasn't. Such a set up is impossible because of lack of samples and sampling bias.
All that "IQ is X% heritable" means is that they ran a linear regression on a large data set and saw that the variance error in the regression reduced by X% when they plugged in parental IQ as a covariate in the regression.
This is a correlational study as causal studies are impossible. Correlational studies are inherently spurious and ignore lots of confounding factors. Nevertheless, we can say that what we routinely observe in real life - smart parents having smart kids, has been grounded in real data.
For getting effect of race on IQ you plug in race as a covariate. Typically, most of the race based IQ research remove parental IQ as a covariate. All of these regression based studies are dubious and there is no real way to correct it. A large data set of twins who were separated at birth could help, but there are caveats there as well.
As an aside, Jordan Peterson seems to love these race IQ regression models and likes to call them hard undeniable science. He immediately switched sides when talking about climate models and how these models can't be trusted, because the simple choice of covariate included creates absolutely unreliable and biased models.
We have relatively strong evidence for a significant degree of genetic determinism in athletic ability (at least for some sports). We do not for intelligence.
Something I've noticed is that many couples that do want a child have a very difficult time conceiving. People are having kids at a later age on average, but even younger couples seem to have a hard time.
Various gynecological disorders seem to be very common too - fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, amongst others, all of which affect a woman's fertility.
My wife and I have been trying for a kid but have been unsuccessful. Many of our friends are experiencing the same, and are resorting to clinical fertility procedures like in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination.
I don't know how true it is, but one of my friends outright said that the majority of women in Korea are conceiving through some kind of fertility procedure, and that if we really wanted a baby, not to waste our time and just go ahead and do the same.
One thing that makes me believe him is that there are a ton of twins amongst the couples in our social circle. My understanding is that naturally twins are a rare phenomenon, but much more likely if doing something like in vitro or artificial insemination?
Us, we've already decided that push comes to shove, we'll most likely adopt.