&gt; World fertility rate is still somewhat above replacement,<p>World fertility is only above replacement because of a few hot spots that have high fertility. As those cultures are converted to something more western-looking, fertility plummets.<p>You&#x27;re postulating that, somehow, this will reverse and those places will convert the west to something not-so-western-looking, or that they&#x27;ll fail to convert.<p>Both of these seem very unlikely.<p>Do you see any trends or evidence that either of those will come to pass?<p>&gt; Low fertility doesn&#x27;t lead to extinction in a few hundred years. Let&#x27;s say the average is one child per woman (even places like Japan are above this), then it still takes 23 generations to reduce the global population to a thousand people, and a further ten generations to reduce to one.<p>It&#x27;s a compounding effect. When there are only one thousand people, you still expect those who grew up in such an environment will still somehow manage a fertility rate of 1.0?<p>What will allow you to hit 1.0 and plateau at that for 33 generations?<p>&gt; Nobody really understands why fertility rates drop with wealth,<p>That&#x27;s easy to understand. As individuals can be mentally ill, so can large groups of people be so collectively. And collectively, the world is neurotic.<p>&gt; so it&#x27;s not weird to think that further changes could<p>Yes, miracles will happen.