Will Human 2.0 Designs Prevent Return To Malthusian Trap?

Some people think we've left the Malthusian Trap permanently in our past. Now, some parts of the world have yet to do so. But the optimists think a permanent shift to low total fertility rates and industrialization in the entire world is in the cards as free markets spread everywhere. I am not with the optimists because I expect natural selection, both on the genetic level and on the social-religious level, will cause a reversion to higher fertility rates and population explosion until natural resources cause very painful limits to population size. Natural selection is relentless and seems very hard for conscious human minds to defeat it. But could genetic engineering of offspring enable us to escape selective pressures for...

Source: FuturePundit - September 28, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs