The Compression Wave: Digital Maturity and the Evolutionary Fate of Modern Culture

J.M. Bailey

No df9rv_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Global fertility rates are currently converging toward unprecedented lows, with digitally mature nations exhibiting Total Fertility Rates (TFR) far below the replacement threshold. While standard economic models attribute this decline to the quality-quantity trade-off, they fail to explain why fertility remains suppressed despite significant pro-natalist financial interventions. This paper proposes a novel theoretical framework—the Compression Wave—to explain this demographic-evolutionary paradox. Synthesizing longitudinal demographic data with cultural evolutionary theory, I argue that digital maturity acts as an environmental mismatch that hijacks evolved status-seeking heuristics. Drawing on Richerson and Boyd’s Big Mistake hypothesis and Henrich’s Collective Brain, I demonstrate how the shift from vertical (parent-to-child) to oblique and horizontal (teacher- and peer-driven) cultural transmission creates a Status Trap. In this trap, individuals are evolutionarily seduced into a runaway positional arms race for digital prestige, modeling their lives after childless teachers rather than fertile parents. This process results in the systematic unlearning of the domestic social operating system—the specific cultural heuristics required for low-friction child-rearing. The paper concludes by proposing a Reflexive Turn, suggesting that the same digital maturity that induced the collapse—specifically via Large Language Models (LLMs)—may offer the only viable mechanism for re-synthesizing the lost cultural buffers necessary for demographic sustainability.

Date: 2026-02-13
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:df9rv_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/df9rv_v1

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