As the authors concede, a major limitation
here is that ignoring heritability may not be the only problem with the
U.N.’s models. The simple fact that the demographic transition exists
shows that environmental changes can happen far more quickly than
evolutionary changes—and if new environmental changes push
fertility down even further, they could cancel out or even outweigh the
bounce-back brought by other forces. In the long run, we’ll probably be
outsourcing pregnancy to robotic wombs and uploading our brains to the
cloud, after all.Till then, whether we’ll see a population
rebound is an open question. That the modern world will change humanity?
That seems guaranteed.
Will Evolution Undo the Demographic Transition?
Published
CultML 