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The Population Bust

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Re: The Population Bust

#111

Post by dumbfoundded »

guerrilla wrote: post #103
dumbfoundded wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all we know, we're the brightest light of consciousness in the universe. (Hopefully not, feel free to prove me wrong). Expanding this consciousness seems a worthy goal. In terms of "killing" the Earth. It's not really possible for us to do (yet). We could surely kill humanity but we cannot possibly eliminate complex life from Earth. More interestingly, I think we have a burden placed upon us by our own developmen…

> We could surely kill humanity but we cannot possibly eliminate complex life from Earth. Why do you think nuclear war can't do that?

The Chicxulub impactor (an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs), had impact energy roughly equivalent to 100 million TSAR Bombas (50MT nuke) and the largest nuclear weapon ever denotated.

The currently nuclear stockpile is about 1000x short, with some very friendly assumptions about our capabilities.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

Re: The Population Bust

#112

Post by crooked-v »

WalterBright wrote: post #100
_0ffh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think western population development has gone sustainable largely due to social advancements re women. Not all parts of the world have yet had that kind of progress, and are still happily multiplying in an unsustainable way. Unless we manage to export this kind of progress, I fear we will not be able to avoid all overpopulation issues. One problem is that costly (in loss of lives) regional wars over resources and t…

> the enslavement of women as a means of replenishment for your armies What society has ever done that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women

Re: The Population Bust

#113

Post by rficcaglia »

Robotbeat wrote: post #83
triceratops wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productivity increases though, don't rely on population, and are the actual driver of economic growth. Growth due to population increase is the baseline rate and shouldn't count because people aren't more prosperous per-capita.

One important insight of mainstream economics is the idea of "economies of scale" and "specialization," both of which improve productivity and both of which rely in part on a larger population or increased trade. Once you've globalized trade, you're limited by population. This is especially true for things somewhere between niche and commodity: it's not worth automating something if you're not producing enough of the…

In some cases it may indeed be worth automating even when producing at low volumes:

* data mining or AI can analyze data sets better than all the humans you could possibly muster, data sets that can illuminate low volume but high impact decision making (new product need, safety critical alerts, incoming asteroids) * robot surgical devices can perform more consistently (possibly higher efficacy) which is highly valuable even for low volume surgeries * automated cars will be demonstrably safer even if overall demand for transportation declines * demand for more specialized and lifelong education will increase even if the number of students decreases (career changes, working retirements, self-improvement, etc) * automated solutions to climate change remediation (carbon sequestration, planting trees, etc) will likely scale well beyond manual labor options in an aging shrinking population and will be needed generations after the damage levels off * space exploration requires automation even for just a single mission, and even a smaller population will likely continue to explore the solar system

I think imagination and adaptation will manage ok. In fact I would rather see capital deployed to less consumption by volume and more high value consumption. Would you rather eat a farm-to-table organic microgreens salad for dinner, or a bag of Wonder Bread?

Re: The Population Bust

#114

Post by tzs »

philwelch wrote: post #102
tzs wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're closer than most people think. Isaac Asimov's essay "The Power of Progression" from his monthly science column in the May 1960 issue of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction", and reprinted in the collect "The Stars in Their Courses" in 1971 [1], goes through the math for how long it would take to reach various population levels at the rate the population was growing at the time. It was doubling every 47…

I mean, a bunch of O’Neill cylinders turns the carrying capacity of our solar system into potentially trillions of people if not more. Turning the entirety of habitable ground into Manhattan is hilariously far off just because we can expand habitable ground pretty damned far.

If we can make enough O'Neill cylinders to handle a trillion (10^15) people, that would buy 440 years at the current grown rate (doubling every 63 years) starting from the current population (7.7 billion).

If we can build enough to handle 1000 times that population, one quadrillion people, that can handle 1000 years of growth.

An upper limit on the number of people we can have without leaving the solar system is about 28 octillion (2.8 x 10^28), obtained by dividing the mass of the sum (1.9891 x 10^30 kg) by the mass of an average human (70 kg).

At the current growth rate, that's 3900 years away.

Indefinite exponential growth can overwhelm pretty much anything.

Re: The Population Bust

#115

Post by BubRoss »

malandrew wrote: post #13
Causality1 wrote: post #2

This phenomena is why I'm strongly pro-immigration. Speaking as an American, I want there to be more Americans. We're not making them ourselves so we need to import. The more we import now, the better since the current population is both younger and more numerous than it will be in a few decades when we'd actually need the imported population. Doing it now means the Americanization of the immigrants will be more comp…

I'm strongly pro skilled immigration. Automation is going to leave a lot of unskilled people unemployed and that will lead to civil unrest.

Automation is not new, it has been happening since the printing press, the cotton gin and the assembly line.

Re: The Population Bust

#116

Post by BubRoss »

newvoiceoldphne wrote: post #33
Causality1 wrote: post #2

This phenomena is why I'm strongly pro-immigration. Speaking as an American, I want there to be more Americans. We're not making them ourselves so we need to import. The more we import now, the better since the current population is both younger and more numerous than it will be in a few decades when we'd actually need the imported population. Doing it now means the Americanization of the immigrants will be more comp…

I think we need to slow the pace of immigration, to preserve our culture.

To preserve what 'culture' exactly? When you say 'our' who are you referring to?

Re: The Population Bust

#117

Post by yters »

Aperocky wrote: post #3

Soon it won't matter what the population is, automation will sweep through all industries, what you see today in automation is what people 30 years ago see in computers - slow, cumbersome, expensive. That's going to change.

What's the point of automating everything if there are no more people? I think ultimately people are the source of happiness for people. Material things are just an intermediary in the happiness exchange. So, if we get rid of people to replace them with material things we will become less happy.

Plus, it isn't obvious that all the important stuff can be automated.

Re: The Population Bust

#118

Post by yters »

fiblye wrote: post #62
philwelch wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have economic growth without growing population or resource consumption. Either way, that still doesn’t address the problems of population decline.

You can, to an extent. There’s a limit to what one person can buy or contribute to an economy. It’s easier to sell 2 TVs to two people than it is 2 TVs to one person.

Let's say we have a population of 100 people living in caves, and all they have to entertain themselves is paint on rocks. Then, someone draws a picture on a leaf. Suddenly everyone is snapping those leaf pictures up. Next, someone sticks the leaves together into a book, and that's the next big thing. Finally, someone invents the leaf screen, that is constantly beaming new leafy picture shows into your personal cave. They can't make the leaf screens fast enough to keep up with demand!

So, with a constant population we still achieve economic growth.

Re: The Population Bust

#119

Post by meruru »

tzs wrote: post #114
philwelch wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a bunch of O’Neill cylinders turns the carrying capacity of our solar system into potentially trillions of people if not more. Turning the entirety of habitable ground into Manhattan is hilariously far off just because we can expand habitable ground pretty damned far.

If we can make enough O'Neill cylinders to handle a trillion (10^15) people, that would buy 440 years at the current grown rate (doubling every 63 years) starting from the current population (7.7 billion). If we can build enough to handle 1000 times that population, one quadrillion people, that can handle 1000 years of growth. An upper limit on the number of people we can have without leaving the solar system is abou…

I think a trillion people can find a solution to that problem in under 440 years.

Re: The Population Bust

#120

Post by Aloha »

Aperocky wrote: post #3

Soon it won't matter what the population is, automation will sweep through all industries, what you see today in automation is what people 30 years ago see in computers - slow, cumbersome, expensive. That's going to change.

They said this 30+ years ago too, it's still not there.

As it turns out, often the opex for the people is still cheaper than the capex plus opex for the robot.

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