With singledom on the rise, technology replacing interaction, and people drinking less, some younger Australians are having less sex than previous generations.
If starting a family is no longer an imperative but just one possible option, being in relationships and finding a reliable life partner is no longer as vital. If starting a family looks infeasibly expensive to the point that only those willing to make big sacrifices would prioritise it, dating goes from being an essential part of not being an antisocial weirdo to a sort of cargo-cult ritual for those hoping on some level for the white picket fence and 2.4 kids. If you’ve ruled that out, or resigned yourself to not having it, the steady regimen of dates and couplehood milestones can be the next thing to be optimised out.
I always believed that the next thing we would optimise away is reproduction.
My prediction is, in 50 years (or sooner, depending on economics), having a baby naturally will be considered irresponsible, dangerous, and financially ruinous. Maybe even illegal. Instead, we’ll have lab grown people, no messy birthing process, streamlined directly into an optimised education system. No parents, just a series of boarding schools until adulthood. Maybe even they’ll experiment with the best genes for different jobs / castes, go full eugenics, but not for a while. Similar to how bees do it.
If people complain that it’s unethical, they can just point at 0.6 reproduction rates and say it’s necessary, ignoring all the fixable but inconvenient quality of life issues that are keeping that number low. It’ll be presented as a good thing, “solving” human extinction. Of course, there will be pros and cons to this.
If starting a family is no longer an imperative but just one possible option, being in relationships and finding a reliable life partner is no longer as vital. If starting a family looks infeasibly expensive to the point that only those willing to make big sacrifices would prioritise it, dating goes from being an essential part of not being an antisocial weirdo to a sort of cargo-cult ritual for those hoping on some level for the white picket fence and 2.4 kids. If you’ve ruled that out, or resigned yourself to not having it, the steady regimen of dates and couplehood milestones can be the next thing to be optimised out.
I always believed that the next thing we would optimise away is reproduction.
My prediction is, in 50 years (or sooner, depending on economics), having a baby naturally will be considered irresponsible, dangerous, and financially ruinous. Maybe even illegal. Instead, we’ll have lab grown people, no messy birthing process, streamlined directly into an optimised education system. No parents, just a series of boarding schools until adulthood. Maybe even they’ll experiment with the best genes for different jobs / castes, go full eugenics, but not for a while. Similar to how bees do it.
If people complain that it’s unethical, they can just point at 0.6 reproduction rates and say it’s necessary, ignoring all the fixable but inconvenient quality of life issues that are keeping that number low. It’ll be presented as a good thing, “solving” human extinction. Of course, there will be pros and cons to this.
Gattaca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_Man_(film)