Will two people have 100 or more biological children by 2035? This can be achieved using artificial wombs, surrogacy, or any other technology, but each of the 100 children should have the same two people as their biological parents (half of the genes from one person and another half from the other).
Edit: if some of the children were born before creation of the market, they count.
1,000If you google "batumi mama" you'll find out about a couple that currently has 22 children. And apparently they want to have 100 or more.
In vitro gametogenesis would make this pretty feasible for a wealthy female couple. Here's a back-of-the-napkin estimate. With the assistance of two surrogates: 4 women, each with one pregnancy per year (including 2-3 months to collect eggs), 1-in-4 chance of twins, could have a hundred kids in as short as 20 years.
Side note: I am surprised more pronatalists haven't been promoting this technology!
@LoganTurner I'm assuming a couple means two people, plus you still have to raise one damn hundred childs, even with the technology 😂
@Gyfer Involving surrogate mothers is allowed for this market, only genes of eventual children matter
@Gyfer yeah haha. Siblings would need to help out a ton. It gets even weirder to imagine an intergenerational baby-maxxing strategy. (Which I oppose, btw.) But it could look something like…
0-10 years old, be a kid, learn stuff
10-17, take care of younger sisters, find a partner
18-38, constantly pregnant, work from home
39-59, travel for work, make a ton of money
60-80, take care of granddaughters
If they're naturally talented in high-paying remote skills (ex. programming), these all-women families could easily outpace traditional ones. And they would be on the supply side of surrogacy, not the (expensive) demand side.
From a natural selection perspective, even if you yourself choose not to use IVG, the fact that it exists would mean that your daughter will statistically have more offspring than your son. She can receive gametes from anyone in the population, and simultaneously give her own to half of the population. Your son can only do the latter. If the artificial womb isn't invented soon afterwards, I would predict a drop in newborn boys, accelerating toward zero.
@LoganTurner I can only count on global education level increase to prevent us from the doom of this hypothetical mad couple
This seem too low. Even with completely natural births, the current record although disputed is 69 children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children
@roma Wait... you mean 100 children in total, not 100 children born starting from the date the market opened? (If so, you might want to clarify that.)
@ArmandodiMatteo Ah, yes, in total. Didn't occur to me this could be interpreted otherwise.
BTW, if it turns out this has happened already before I created the market, this resolves to N/A.
@Gyfer Since you're the biggest NO bettor, what was your interpretation? I've temporarily closed the market and considering to resolve to N/A or change the interpretation.
@roma Hi! I think we both have the same understanding of the market.
Will there be any couple that will have 100 children together, no matter the way?
I strongly think no for a main reason, but don't look too closely at the likeliness of the market. That's the risk when you throw a big bone in an illiquid market: you're making it moving too high or too low. So basically my thinking is that the more we get through the years, the more people get educated. And the more people, and especially women, get educated, the less they shall have babies.
Plus, even if the actual record is 69, it's disputed and it was long time ago. You can see on the link you shared that the closest record is less than 50 children in 2016.
Hope it helped! Let's get all in on No. 😎
@Gyfer Alright. I've just added an edit. Just to be sure, could you confirm it wouldn't change your bets if this was part of the initial description?