Bewildered wrote:Flawed logic - you're assuming procreation inversely correlates with life expectancy when a better link would be culture. First world nations are struggling to meet replenishment birth levels whilst third world nations with all their problems are growing. However traditional first world families tend to be larger, yet the wealthy of the third world, which live in better than the average standard of first worlders, have many children!
Also, as shown by western society, poverty isn't about hardship or the lack of essentials but relative lack compared to your wealthier neighbour. The fact that people in neighbouring countries are dying due to lack of food and water is irrelevant - they don't count.
Aside from all that, welcome to the forum
yatesps1 wrote:Long time lurker, first time poster in a while.
.
What if the Gbaba had a tremendous Antigerone breakthrough? Textev shows that the Terrans had extended life to approximately 3 centuries. That required continuous shots of nano, but still.
.
What if the Gbaba were a naturally long life species, say for multiple centuries. What if they then had some sort of breakthrough that enabled them to indefinitely extend that period. Maybe its gene therapy, nano-tech, cloning, or some combination therein. What if they lived forever, for lack of a better word. If the lives of average Gbaba were measured in hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years. If indeed they had to die at all. If that were the case, the powers at the very top of the social structure would want to preserve the status quo. Even the average life of the average citizen would be pretty good.
.
If they had started out as a long lived species, then they would naturally have had a very low birth rate, because it wouldn't have needed to replenish its species. If such a species evolved with no natural predator, and a low birth rate, it would have a slow development cycle. Once it reached what the PTB considered a pinnacle of civilization, it would grind to a halt.
.
I imagine the GBaba were long lived, apex predators, with low birth rates. Who never suffered a mass extinction event. Once they had FTL travel and FTL communications, they probably didn't see any need to adapt further. Indeed, for the powers at the top of such a system, adaptation would threaten the power base of those rulers. Combine that with the very natural fear of AI uprising, and you have a stagnant society.
There will be anti-gerone treatments long before there are viable off world habitation possibilities. I remember an old scifi book I read where there was an large star empire where there were anti-gerone treatments available, but only if you were willing to live on one of the less civilized planets. On earth, the anti gerone ability will have to be tightly controlled lest we really get over crowded.
.
WRT my theory about the Gbaba, I feel like I was clear. There may be some biological limitation to their birthrate. If a species were naturally long lived prior to anti-gerone, it would naturally have low birth rates, or that species would soon over populate its environs. If the un-altered Gbaba had been long lived, they would naturally have had a low birth rate, or they would soon have exhausted their natural resources. My theory is that they evolved on a huge planet, but they lived for centuries, or even millennia, with no scientific help. If there were similarly no apex predators to thin out the herd, the Gbaba would have also evolved to have a low birth rate. This would also be a lesser driver of their glacially slow development. They would never have had to innovate quickly. There would have been no need to do so. Eventually, even with this, they would have left the planet because of diminishing resources. Especially if their own solar system had another habitable planet.
.
Given all this, once society reached what the powerful members of that society deemed to be a "pinnacle" any further advancement would be officially and ruthlessly discouraged. Would a powerful monarch wish to continue innovating? Do you think OPEC or petroleum companies are happy with research into alternative energy technologies? Nope. As soon as someone really perfects solar and battery storage, oil will lose 2/3 of its value, and current huge oil companies will essentially cease to exist. Within a few short years. Oil companies would love to stop energy research. I'm not picking on big oil, every industry is full of companies that live in fear of not controlling the next big innovation in their industry. So, once the Gbaba achieved a steady, prosperous society, one in which the powerful would remain alive to enjoy indefinitely, why would they change?
.
As for the out of nowhere comparisons about birth rates in poor countries, we know why that is so. Poor countries can afford neither birth control (if that isn't proscribed by religion/custom), nor alternative forms of entertainment. The best birth control ever invented was cable TV/Internet. Having boring sex with your spouse is worlds better than staring at a wall by candle light. Conversely, boring sex with your spouse pales in comparison to binge watching GOT or Castle or televised Sports, and then commenting on that easily available media entertainment. Poors in poor countries have nothing better to do than bone, and no way to prevent said boning from leading to kids. Relative rich people in poor countries don't have more kids than the poor in poor countries. They have more surviving kids. Poor people in poor countries have much higher infant mortality rates, or even toddler mortality rates. There are plenty of pregnancies, they just end tragically at a much higher rate that the "rich" in poor countries, because the "rich" can afford some level of pre-natal care as well as proper nutrition during and after pregnancy.
