The dawn of the posthuman age

Summary

Summarized wtih ChatGPT

The Industrial Revolution once boosted human progress by lowering birth rates and ending scarcity. Now, a second big drop in fertility is causing populations to shrink and age, which may hurt future economic growth. People may rely more on technology and online connections as societies change and have fewer children.

Key takeaways:

1. Shrinking populations could slow down innovation and growth.
2. Aging societies may struggle to support retirees and maintain productivity.
3. We should prepare for a future where technology plays a bigger role in our lives and economies.

Highlights from Article

Shrinking populations are continuously aging populations, meaning that each young working person has to support more and more retirees every year. On top of that, population aging appears to slow down productivity growth through various mechanisms. Immigration can help a bit, but it can’t really solve this problem, since A) when the whole world has low fertility there is no longer a source of young immigrants, and B) immigration is bad at improving dependency ratios because immigrants are already partway to retirement.

When I was a child, sometimes I felt bored; now I never do. Sometimes I felt lonely; now, if I ever do, it’s not for lack of company. Social media has wiped away those experiences, by putting me in constant contact with the whole vast sea of humanity. I can watch people on YouTube or TikTok, talk to my friends in chat groups or video calls, and argue with strangers on X and Substack. I am constantly swimming in a sea of digitized human presences. We all are.Humanity was never fully

• We are always a click away from all of humanity

As we gradually abandon reproduction, there are fewer and fewer of us, forcing us to cling even more tightly to the online collective — to spend more of our time online, to take solace in the ever-denser core of the final global village. The god-mind of that collective delivers us riches undreamt of by our ancestors, but we enjoy that bounty in solitude as we wirehead into the hive mind for a bit of company.

• The internet is where we want to spend time. We are done foring offline connections.

All material owns to the authors, of course. If I’m highlighting or writing notes on this, I mostly likely recommend reading the original article, of course.

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