Quest to create viable human sex cells in lab progressing rapidly, with huge implications for reproduction
Scientists are just a few years from creating viable human sex cells in the lab, according to an internationally renowned pioneer of the field, who says the advance could open up biology-defying possibilities for reproduction.
Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Katsuhiko Hayashi, a developmental geneticist at the University of Osaka, said rapid progress is being made towards being able to transform adult skin or blood cells into eggs and sperm, a feat of genetic conjury known as in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG).
His own lab is about seven years away from the milestone, he predicts. Other frontrunners include a team at the University of Kyoto and a California-based startup, Conception Biosciences, whose Silicon Valley backers include the OpenAI founder, Sam Altman and whose CEO told the Guardian that growing eggs in the lab “might be the best tool we have to reverse population decline” and could pave the way for human gene editing.
I'll never understand people who complain about population decline. It's a good thing. There are too many people here already. My thought on reading the headline was that it could be used in a different way. Everyone could be voluntarily sterilized, and then when they are ready and willing to have a kid they could use this new method to produce sex cells. No more unwanted pregnancies.
Population decline is not a problem for humanity. It is a problem for capitalism.
Even worse they're probably looking at the projection and seeing a loss of revenue directly related to population rates. They want more sheep to feed their money making systems.
Well of course
Depopulation is a problem for any economic system. You can't run any form of government or economy when young workers aren't contributing to the tax base and the aging population requires more and more care.
Sure as clockwork someone will come along and say tax the rich. That only works for so long in this scenario. The rich get rich off our backs. No backs, no rich.
No, see, what if we just had way less people? Fuck taxes, fuck the economy, just have everyone commit to a one child policy. Yeah, I won't be able to sit on my ass and play WoW all day, but is that really helping anyone?
Responses will be delayed by WoW marathons.
When you hit retirement, so will literally everyone else. You want to hire a nurse to wipe your ass because you can't, there's a 25 year waiting list because everyone is old.
Your one grandchild has 6 older people to take care of in addition to their one child (spouse exactly in the same position)
Yeah? And? Intergenerational households are a thing. Communities are a thing. A culture of small communities would be, in my opinion, superior to this isolating capitalist society.
Pivoting now, why would I want anyone to wipe my ass? I'm not a king. If I die because my immediate community and I cannot take care of myself, then that's how it goes. I don't plan on living forever and I certainly don't plan on life being free of suffering. It is my sincere hope and goal to be the kind of person that people want in their lives. *I want to contribute positivity and love, which is, again, in my opinion, the pathway to a good life and thereby maintain a close community that helps one another. *
Third pivot. If, and I do mean IF, you read that last sentence and responded cynically, reflect on where that is coming from and let me know. (I have italicized the sentence for clarity.)
Doesn't matter, you need working age people. A society can't function if it's all old people. Period
I hear what you're saying but also see that you have introduced a new idea into the discussion.
I agree that a society comprised solely of the elderly would not work and am not proposing a society comprised of only elderly people. Limiting the number of children people have does not mean that there will be no children. It means that there will be less children. I concede that during the transition to a smaller population there will be periods of suffering as resources and communal abilities to provide care rebalance. However, I also think that is fine. There is no guarantee or promise of an easy or happy existence. That is not to say that there will not be ease and mirth, but rather that experiencing periods of suffering is also part of the human experience.
So, I return to where I started, and state again that declining population is only a concern for capitalism, but will now add that this is because it forces everyone into the same social status. It is less likely that there will be billionaires, millionaires, or independently wealthy non-workers in a society that is focused on existing in the moment. Without an abundance of lower-class people to exploit, I believe that equality would increase.
Why accept the suffering of having fewer workers? If the fertility rate of the world is around 2, there are enough workers to sustain a perfectly good life for everyone
You want it to get worse before it gets better, I don't believe it's necessary
Am I correct that you are proposing to stop population at two children per couple?
Not necessarily at that exact number, replacement is 2.1 which is what I'm actually proposing
It seems like you are for a stable population (let me know if that is wrong) and I am for a stable population at a lower level. I don't think that these two positions are that far apart. I understand that you want to avoid the struggle of dealing with a lopsided generational distribution while I see population reduction, not just the elimination of growth, as necessary to improve the overall quality of life for all people*.
*While I was typing this, I thought to myself, "Oh yeah, okay. This is how Thanos got going."
Depopulation to a lower level will bring unnecessary hardship to the older generations and slow down technological progress.
I think that where we are parting is ways is on the value of progress. If progress were an equitable share of all resources and an improvement in everyone's quality of life, then I would be on board. However, in our current system, progress means infinitely growing wealth for some and infinitely growing labor for others. I believe that we should be less focused on progress and more focused on health and happiness, and these things do not require a lot of people.
My grandfather went to the bathroom in the outhouse (I know because I visited him). The improvement in the modern lifestyle is huge. You just don't know because you grew up with running water and didn't grow your own chickens for eggs
Please don't make assumptions of my lived experience based on your grandfather's toileting practices. That doesn't make sense. Regarding the progression of society, there is an interim step that you are skipping over. We didn't go from subsistence farming to our present state. We grew a civilization over time.
I am not anti-societal growth. I am anti-endless growth. Capitalism demands an endless amount of growth so that the people at the top are always making more money. It is inherent in the system that there can never be enough. I disagree with this and believe that we would be better off if we defined a standard of living that allowed people to be happy and pursue their own passions while not exploiting one another and over-consuming resources.
On an old commute I used to pass a sticker that said, "If you had enough, would you know it?" In our current system, the answer to that question will always be no because there will always be pressure to want more. This creates an infinite pursuit of more that is damaging to our psyche. We spend more time wanting than we do having. If we had a realistic goal, one that prioritized happiness and health over always getting more, then we wouldn't need an ever-growing society with an ever-growing population. We could shrink it and improve both the environment and our quality of life.
A stable human population of 9 billion cannot have endless growth in population, but you can conceivably endlessly improve people's lifestyles through technological improvement (well, until we know everything there is to know about science)
What does technological progression without the oppressive aspects of capitalism look like? (I don't know, and don't know if there is an answer.)
It seems to me that the current trend of population decline in the west is fine for humanity because it is not a sharp cut, but a taper, while it is a problem for capitalism because fewer people equal smaller markets over time. A stable population would also, based on this, cause problems for capitalism because the markets would not be growing and the infinitely increasing return expected by investors would fail to materialize.
The markets would be growing as productivity is always growing, and there's real wage growth as well, so there's more goods and services people consume over time.
Productivity has been increasing for decades, but real wages have not kept pace and income inequality continues to grow.
This looks like the graph is presenting the compensation line below the productivity in both graphs. In the second graph, the mean and median are represented in such a manner as to indicate that high end outliers are inflating the data set. This is speculative, I know, but certain patterns appear in certain ways for very few reasons.
Can you share the graph's definition of 'Real Producer' and 'Real Consumer'? I am specifically wondering if the capitalist-class wage and the working-class wage are represented as a single wage.
It's not real consumer/producer, real compensation is inflation-adjusted
Well, the mean compensation is always going to be higher than the median, right? The graph was originally posted to show that wages grow slower than the productivity. Both graphs are for the workers, but a lot of the difference is mean vs median. There are also other factors.
For example, total compensation grew faster than wages because company health plans just cost companies more these days. Health care prices grew faster than inflation, so clearly companies had to pay more for them.
In recent years the real (inflation-adjusted) wage growth has been solid
The price of groceries in hours worked had been mostly dropping
Not true lol
What a succinct, compelling argument!
Alright, ill do a mostly complete argument. Define depopulation please :3
People would have lots of kids if each subsequent child didn’t make their existing family’s life much more difficult
People used to have 5+ kids and it was considered fine. It's a cultural thing.
The culture is linked to the income. People have more kids in poorer countries because they typically don’t have a social safety net so the only way to survive in old age is by having lots of children. When the countries become richer and get social security they start having less kids, especially when kids become a financial burden
You're right, we need to dismantle the social safety net
I’m sure many people would see it like this
That's the actual setup of ergo proxy...not that they are volountarily sterilised. The whole point us the artifucial womb. I don't know if you watched it but if you haven't, do it.
... and no more poor stupid people (as per Musk's eugenics beliefs)
Mandating that girls from age of 12 be inseminated with republican zionist sperm once per year would be more "America first" policy.
Here's why.
https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk
Who is going to take care of all the old people? AI?
Who's gonna take care of everyone when earth reaches it's carrying capacity? Which is actually decreasing as we continue to ravage the planet.
Oh yeah who cares? It'll just be all the poor who suffer and die.
The Earth won't reach carrying capacity. Population is projected to max at 9 billion and after that it's going down
Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea. Let’s put the reproductive future of the species under commercial and/or governmental control.
Both of those things are demonstrably trustworthy, especially in the last decade.
We should cede all control to them. Indeed.
(/s)
Are you a young naive tech bro, or a Nazi Eugenicist? Is there a difference anymore? Have you even thought about what you are saying? That’s an insane take.
Um I never said anything about giving control to anyone... in fact I specifically said "voluntarily"... you seem like an angry person who is looking for things to be mad about. I'm not sure how you jumped to calling me a nazi.
I have thought about what I'm saying, have you? Unwanted pregnancies are something that by definition nobody wants. All I said was that this could be a way to address that, and you took that simple idea and ran to crazy town with it.
Because the population decline is mostly a western societal phenomenon induced by the late stage capitalism we are suffering from, and our planet dying from our carelessness. Other countries, especially poorer ones, are still happily making babies. So "population decline" effectively means the decline of western populations, and I can see how people (including me) might have an issue with that.
If all populations would shrink proportionally the same it would be a lot less contentious.
Even sub Saharan African fertility rates are dropping, so actually not
Lol go fuck yourself. You actual shitbag. There is one population on earth we should track: humans. Who fucking cares who they live today, losers like you I guess.
Ah yes I must be racist because I don't think we should be replaced. How does that help the planet?