Surprisingly, these hypothesized trends (i.e. increased pressure to acquire ever-more cultural information, increasing
life expectancy co-evolution with increased brain capacity, and increased autonomous individual decisions to avoid biological reproduction) are not at odds with Life History Theory (LHT). As stated above, traditional LHT conceptualized growth and maintenance in solely biological terms (e.g. somatic cell replacement and maintenance). As a result traditional LHT presents a "sex versus soma" framework. However, for organisms like humans, growth and maintenance can also be achieved through cultural learning via the brain. So within this LHT framework I am proposing that an emerging fourth
primate life history transition is in the process of reducing energy dedicated to current biological reproduction indefinitely.
This is occurring in favour of allocating energy towards ever-more advanced culturally mediated growth and maintenance through learning via our enlarged (and perhaps soon-to-be-dramatically enlarged) brains. The mechanisms to realize this transition, as described above, are already emergent. All selection for this process is undoubtedly being driven by cultural evolution as opposed to biological evolution, which may suggest that a new evolutionary process is soon to predominant the biological evolutionary process. Complexity would be directed by mind.