Two speakers examine how memes spread ideas that reshape society. The "don't have kids" meme, they argue, may be driving real demographic decline in countries now facing shrinking populations, unlike the 1970s overpopulation fears that proved wrong.
The way that I think about memes is like it's the smallest bit of information that could spread, right?
It's very powerful and have to be used wisely.
There's good memes and bad memes. I really do believe like sticky ideas like, dude, the, the don't have kids meme, terrible meme, bad meme for culture.
Well, I think these things, everything starts out in like a good place, right? Like the don't have kids. Maybe it starts out of like just being more caring of people that can't have kids. But I mean, these things can spread and like they can have enormous effects. Like there's dozens of shrinking countries around the world already. We had the opposite meme in the 1970s, which were there were too many people.
Oh, overpopulation.
Yeah. Like people really thought there was going to be like the end of the world, but we totally just didn't expect that we'd get way better at food production.
And we're way worse at human production, I guess.
Reproduction. Yeah, now we have the opposite.
