So this 'human extinction via VR/fake fitness signals/amusing ourselves to death' thesis - isn't this obviously wrong? Media consumption & fertility are heritable as anything else & respond to selection. It'd require absurdly indefinitely escalating selection to drive extinction.
Consider zero-fitness traits, e.g. homosexuality or religious celibacy. Arguably they manifest only beyond a threshold of synergistic nature+nurture. Hence they persist in population since environmental drive is variable.
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I'm not sure about either example there as example of environmental power. Celibacy is rare and may be inclusive fitness, and the causes of homosexuality are unknown and looks potentially coevolutionary. And heterosexuality and fertility are certainly in no danger from them...
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Was trying to draw a connection with absorption into luxury tech & homosexuality/celibacy as reproductive dead ends. The analogy is everyone has the capacity, just takes conditioning?Simplifying out the mechanisms
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Are you trying to say that homosexuality is merely environmental conditioning...? By whom?
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Whoa no I think its more likely part genetic, part social and part whatever's in the water. But that's just my intuition talking since I don't study this stuff much.
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I guess what I'm saying is there are scenarios where a personal anti-reproductive behavior is upregulated. Homosexuality or priesthood will never be so common to threaten population fertility. That's fantasy. Addiction on the other hand is a more realistic.
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Extinction by mass VR-induced celibacy argument is plausible given extreme social conditions. Something like Calhoun's mouse Utopia experiment. For now in the realm of sci-fi.
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