It doesn't deal in addiction but overwhelming stimuli, whether or not they're repeated. Animals can be fooled by unrealistically strong experiences - you can trick a goose into 'hatching' a volleyball - and it appears that humans have somewhat similar responses.
The insights in the two articles aren't vastly different, but there's one intriguing thought: there are actual selection pressures against this. When animals are fooled by superstimuli they're things that are rare (brood parasitism) or nonexistent (volleyballs) - if the extreme stimulus was common they would refine their processing. Some human cases may be hard to avoid (e.g. dopamine receptors) but some might be simpler. It's starting to look like overriding these responses is a major skill for everyday human functioning.
I disagree with the second sentence in this assertion in the article you linked: "Perhaps less dramatically, anyone who lives in an urban center probably has friends or acquaintances who have chosen not have children, simply because they prefer an epicurean lifestyle. This is not a phenomenon that occurs in the poorest countries in the world, but rather one that is unique to the wealthiest."
Birth rates have been falling dramatically all over the world over the past 40 years, in rich and poor countries alike. It is true that the birth rate is still higher in poor countries than it is in rich countries. But even in poor countries, birth rates have dropped. You can go look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
and find your favorite poor country and see the changes. North Korea is just less than replacement rate, 2.0 children/woman. Cuba is 1.6 children per woman, well under replacement rate.
Haiti went from 5.8 children per woman in 1970 to 3.0 in 2013. That kind of drop has been experienced around the world, in rich countries as well as poor countries. Pakistan is another example I commonly cite, going from 6.6 children/woman in 1970 to 3.8 in 2013
However, almost every poor country has been getting richer, so it might be hard to untangle the effects.
I'm not clear on where the disagreement is here? I guess "unique to the wealthiest" is rather strong, but the claim made is pretty specific.
The general explanation for falling fertility rates like '5 -> 3' is that it's mostly about falling infant mortality and improved birth control. People have more control over pregnancies and more confidence in the survival of their children, so they can achieve a small family with fewer births.
That's a substantially different matter than being voluntarily childless. I admit I'm summoning up complexity here by claiming that 'N -> 2.1' has a different mechanism than '2.1 -> 1.46', and that there are some odd examples. North Korea I'd largely discount because famine warps birth rates, but Cuba is interesting. Presumably this is some of the same effects, but I'm not sure if there are very many people in Havana doing the "young and rich and childfree" thing with the same cultural markers. I'm actually not sure, I'd need someone more familiar with Cuban (or other) cultures to answer that.
> I guess "unique to the wealthiest" is rather strong, but the claim made is pretty specific.
That seemed to be the claim, and I still state this claim is false.
Forgive me for nitpicking more, but most places with famines tend to still tend have large families, and arguably North Korea is an exception to that. Compare North Korea to the countries affected by 2011 drought in east Africa and the countries affected by 2012 Sahel drought. I'm not going to list every country but north African countries in general have far larger birth rates than east Asian countries.
In terms of cultures, I've never been to Cuba, Haiti, or North Korea either, so I don't really know either. But my anecdotal experience of places I have been, there are a lot of people both who don't want children, but won't admit it, particularly not to their parents. And there are also a lot of people who do want children.
Improved birth control implies "prevents unwanted births". Some places without 'modern' birth control have low rates of unwanted pregnancy, but some places are pretty high. They both lower birth rates, but better birth control will only drop rates to "as many kids as people want to have", which is >0 for a lot of people.
Voluntarily childless has a personal/psychological element - it's about not wanting a family in the first place - and can take personal birth rates down to 0.
There are also plenty of examples that did not change as dramatically, for example Nigeria from 6.5 to 5.8 children per women. In fact, Nigeria is projected to have 400 million inhabitants by 2050, overtaking the US as well as Western Europe. Birth rates in Africa have declined a little, but not as fast as most models predicted.
I highly recommend Deirdre Barrett's book Supernormal Stimuli for a fascinating and detailed review of this phenomenon in its various manifestations in human societies.
There does seem to be selection with respect to functioning in modern society, but I'm not sure there's a strong correlation with expected functionality and expected number of children. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a negative correlation.
In addition, because of how interconnected our society is a selection process individually would be enough. It would have to also be powerful enough to stop the memetic heritability of "superstimuli" memes.
> there are actual selection pressures against this.
Selection pressure is a feedback system, and in order for it to function there must be enough time for the feedback to catch up. If it can't, we get extinction instead of adaptation.
A great example against this are diseases: on the one hand, the more viral a disease is, the better it competes against other diseases. On the other, being too viral is bad for the health of the host, or even lethal, which is a selection pressure against it. However, if the disease can spread from host to host independent of their health, like diseases that spread through mosquitos or water, the selection pressure against lethal virality is gone, untill all possible hosts within range die. That is why safe drinking water has the unexpected side effect of making the diseases themselves less lethal[0]. And like safe drinking water, I do not think we should make this a responsibility of the individual. This is something to be solved at the societal level.
It doesn't deal in addiction but overwhelming stimuli, whether or not they're repeated. Animals can be fooled by unrealistically strong experiences - you can trick a goose into 'hatching' a volleyball - and it appears that humans have somewhat similar responses.
The insights in the two articles aren't vastly different, but there's one intriguing thought: there are actual selection pressures against this. When animals are fooled by superstimuli they're things that are rare (brood parasitism) or nonexistent (volleyballs) - if the extreme stimulus was common they would refine their processing. Some human cases may be hard to avoid (e.g. dopamine receptors) but some might be simpler. It's starting to look like overriding these responses is a major skill for everyday human functioning.