Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation
by
Byrne Hobart
and
Tobias Huber
Published 29 Oct 2024
Biology may be a factor, as older people have lower rates of the hormone testosterone, which is associated with risk-taking. 23 There is also robust evidence that testosterone levels are declining across a wide spectrum of the male population. 24 This general decline could be contributing to changing population dynamics, as falling testosterone levels are linked to rising rates of certain reproductive disorders and decreased sperm counts. 25 And while concerns about an impeding “testocalpyse” 26 might be dismissed as expressions of an outdated obsession with masculinity, some researchers worry that we have entered a catastrophic global fertility crisis. 27 This represents a species-level existential risk that almost no one talks about. “The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” warns leading epidemiologist Shanna H. Swan. 28 These demographic factors also affect real interest rates.
Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today
by
Jane McGonigal
Published 22 Mar 2022
Some researchers argue that it won’t be a problem if most men wind up with a “low” sperm count in the tens of millions, because it doesn’t take that much sperm to make a baby.16 Others suggest that for all we know, the sperm count fifty-plus years ago, when scientists first started tracking it, was abnormally high; maybe it’s just now falling back to levels that were normal hundreds or thousands of years ago.17 How much mental energy should we put into imagining a hypothetical global fertility crisis today if the risks might turn out to be overblown? Professional futurists have a term for scenarios that have a low probability of happening but that would have a huge impact on society if they actually occurred. They’re called high-impact, low-probability events, or HILP events for short.