Spengler’s Sakura

Fertility, Mass Media, and Robin Hanson

0 Symphony

Imagine the most glorious symphony. It is a symphony of all things: music, lighting, art, all senses unified in perfect synchronicity. 

And then it is over, the musicians pack up, and then they die. Their homes are burned, their families are scattered to distant parts of the earth, and their children can only hope that one day, many generations later, the band gets back together. 

In the wreckage, each lineage of musician hones their craft. Stranded, they develop wild technique. It is prophesied that one day, a greater symphony will grace the earth. 

This is our technological moment.

1 Technology and Population

The civilizational contradiction introduced by Robin Hanson goes like this:

Technology is created by people. Its creation is enabled by past technological growth and present population growth. So it’s our moral duty to end history, focus on technological growth, use that to produce for a growing population, and create this great symphony.

Wait … I’m getting a correction … the population is no longer growing, least of all in technological nations. 

The key problem is that cultures today change quite rapidly. This isn’t a problem for changes driven by good outcome metrics. For example, when people copy the fishing practices of the most productive fishers, they all get better at fishing. But it is a problem when we copy the values, norms, and status markers of the high status folks around us. Since compared to centuries ago, we now have far less cultural diversity, and far weaker (really, slower) cultural selection, such changes are likely to be more maladaptive than adaptive, causing our cultures to drift “off the rails”.

If nothing is done, this drift will cause many dysfunctions, including fertility fall. And that alone should lead to a several centuries long decline in population, innovation, and civility. Plausibly ending when the descendants of today’s insular fertile subcultures, like Amish or Haredim, who double every two decades, come to dominate world population. Much like the once Christians grew to take over the Roman Empire.

2 Oswald Spengler