Population control

Population control could either be promoting births (if the world is underpopulated and we want more people to be able to live lives) or trying to restrict them (if the world is overpopulated and there aren’t enough resources, etc.). It could also aim to encourage certain births and discourage others, including the creation of genetically modified humans.

Policies may have to take stances on Population ethics.

“Dysgenic” pressure

Nick Bostrom says1:

It is possible that advanced civilized society is dependent on there being a sufficiently large fraction of intellectually talented individuals. Currently it seems that there is a negative correlation in some places between intellectual achievement and fertility. If such selection were to operate over a long period of time, we might evolve into a less brainy but more fertile species, homo philoprogenitus (“lover of many offspring”).
However, contrary to what such considerations might lead one to suspect, IQ scores have actually been increasing dramatically over the past century. This is known as the Flynn effect; see e.g. [51,52]. It’s not yet settled whether this corresponds to real gains in important intellectual functions.
Moreover, genetic engineering is rapidly approaching the point where it will become possible to give parents the choice of endowing their offspring with genes that correlate with intellectual capacity, physical health, longevity, and other desirable traits.
In any case, the time-scale for human natural genetic evolution seems much too grand for such developments to have any significant effect before other developments will have made the issue moot [19,39].

Importance

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Tractability

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Neglectedness

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See also

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