Venkatesh Rao

I lol-ed at the first question.

in the ballpark https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Care-Short-Stories-Cixin-ebook/dp/B008MMK5LM …

Hmm... basically impossible, for the simple reason that it would only take one gene or meme that preferred self-preservation for that to dominate. So author would either have to really not understand (/ deny) basic evolutionary processes, or come up with a damn good explanation.

I think this is something like “subliming” from Iain Banks’ Culture books. Most directly addressed in The Hydrogen Sonata. Beautiful swan song of a book... RIP Iain :(

Depending upon how you read it, "Childhood's End".

You stumbled backwards into a situation where there should be spoiler warnings.

That story won't have durability. Most of both doomsayers and prolific breeders will be dead in 25y, leaving us at a 'stable' 7Bn. Enough mental bandwidth to forage for new things in the Galaxy and combat alien federations as a collective

There are definitely stories where large chunks of the population choose to die, or just switch off their consciousnesses and dead head until the heat death off the universe. I can’t recall any where as while society goes for it though.