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Why are there so many humans?

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Re: Why are there so many humans?

#51

Post by remram »

pengaru wrote: post #37
redis_mlc wrote: post #16

> “Then two technologies were introduced that changed these Maya’s lives and, ultimately, their population: a gas-powered water pump and two gas-powered maize grinders. [..] By 2003, women who started reproducing in the 1970s had eight to 12 children.” Gotta wonder if the women thought that was progress, or not.

> Gotta wonder if the women thought that was progress, or not. It's not like women don't tend to love children...

The fact that they tend to love their own children (which is not a specifically female or motherly trait?) has little to do with whether the life they want for themselves is one of caring for 12 of them.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#52

Post by NineStarPoint »

crazygringo wrote: post #39

The conclusion appears to be, technology frees up time so women can have more kids, older children help raise younger ones so it scales, and grandparents and the village help too so larger-scale cooperation scales more. I guess I'm struggling to see what's novel about this. It seems awfully well-established that as food supply goes up because of better technology, populations explode (e.g. twentieth-century Africa) l…

The theory I hadn’t heard before was the theory that human children uniquely help with the raising children process when compared to other complex species, and this helped make the population boom faster than it would have been otherwise. An interesting thought at least.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#53

Post by pm90 »

crazygringo wrote: post #39

The conclusion appears to be, technology frees up time so women can have more kids, older children help raise younger ones so it scales, and grandparents and the village help too so larger-scale cooperation scales more. I guess I'm struggling to see what's novel about this. It seems awfully well-established that as food supply goes up because of better technology, populations explode (e.g. twentieth-century Africa) l…

The article's goal was to understand what set early humans apart from their closely related species, not simply to understand why modern human populations have exploded in the last couple of centuries. The answer to that seems to be that inter-generational co-operation in early human societies are what set them apart, enabled specialization and allowed the development of technology that frees up time, which led to more pop, and so on.

Perhaps these facts are not novel? I'm not sure how much of this is generally understood. Personally it seemed an interesting read. My education consisted of listing eras of human evolution (hunter gatherer, farmer, stone age etc), without much info on what human society looked like in the hunter gatherer stage. So this was novel to me at least.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#54

Post by pengaru »

remram wrote: post #51
pengaru wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gotta wonder if the women thought that was progress, or not. It's not like women don't tend to love children...

The fact that they tend to love their own children (which is not a specifically female or motherly trait?) has little to do with whether the life they want for themselves is one of caring for 12 of them.

Certainly not today's women, that would get in the way of traveling and filling your instagram with selfies from exotic places.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#55

Post by chadcmulligan »

eindiran wrote: post #44
chadcmulligan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The close knit tribe that thrived with cooperation is definitely in its death throes right now Is it? I think there are a lot of social systems that are being tested at the moment, some are failing. There are many developed countries that are improving their cooperation in the current crisis - I'm in one - Australia, there are others that have seemed to come together, and others that have failed abysmally. No doubt…

Taking a look at some other "social systems that are being tested at the moment", I don't think your claim that Australia is "coming together" in comparison to other "developed countries" is correct. Some examples: * Brisbane's "Boundary St" still exists, name unchanged [0]. * Story from less than 1 hour ago: 4 month-old baby of indigenous women dies while mother is in police custody [1]. * PM calls Australian BLM pr…

There's always disputes, but no ones dying or being thrown out of their homes, people are being looked after. I have been amazed at the compassion being shown by the political class on both sides. iirc there was a lot of extra care taken in the NT for indigenous people because they seem extra susceptible to covid 19 just as a counter example. I didn't know that about boundary st - assumed it was just a boundary, seems it should be changed.

Its great this conversation has started, like most I'm unaware of these problems, and its good to get them out in the air, if the fix is renaming a street - then who cares, rename the street.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#56

Post by cmrdporcupine »

k__ wrote: post #43

I always like to learn about human skills that aren't obvious and that other animals, especially other great apes, lack For example Humans can throw good. Humans can run very long. Humans won't usually kill each other when put together in great masses.

The first one is an attribute of homo sapiens, but not other, extinct, humans like neanderthal. Spearthrowing appears to be an adaptation that is unique to our kind of human. Sportsball fans everywhere rejoice!

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#57

Post by AstralStorm »

hnaccy wrote: post #48
bena wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be eventually true, but we're much further from that point than you might think. The U.S. alone wastes about 141 trillion calories worth of food. It comes out to around 1250 calories per capita. Feeding the world is a logistics problem right now, not a production problem. And we also have the space for all 7 billion humans with room to spare. I think right now, there's enough for everybody to have about 4 ac…

Pure caloric need may be a non-issue but I don't think it's sustainable for every living human to have a first world lifestyle barring many tech improvements. It's seems preferable to have a lower stable population where everyone has a very high standard of living and a low aggregate environmental impact. A flat cap of two children per person would halt and slowly reduce the population without killing anyone or being…

What is "high standard of living" anyway? How many yachts and airplanes is it? How many cars? Other modes of transportation? Average kilograms of stuff owned and used per person? Living space? How long you have to travel to work or how far? How much do you strictly have to work to live at that level, if linear scaling would be sufficient? How much energy, thermal and electrical is used to sustain and separately embodied in production of your stuff? Etc.

Once we define the threshold of high standard of living, we can optimize for it. This is literally when we say "nearly nobody can live as opulent as this" and can condemn waste. Feel free to pick say 90th percentile or something.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#58

Post by AstralStorm »

klmadfejno wrote: post #35
Supermancho wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being human is defined by existing humans. That's a philosophy, not a fact. Individuals and organizations define things by all sorts of criteria. eg temporally, consensus and differentiation are just a few. It's not as simple as "we all agree this zebra is a human".

And yet if your philosophy contends that zebras are humans you're either nuts or are getting off on an argument of semantics that is clearly adjacent to the issue everyone is trying discuss.

So frogs are people too? Bah.

Why are people so hung up on definition of human rather than more critical things we don't understand, such as consciousness and intelligence?

Perhaps they're afraid to be put in the non-human box, and non-human is to be removed or exploited? (Also, inhumane. For once properly built word.)

History has shown repeatedly narrow definitions of humanity in action. It ends in a bloodbath of some kind.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#59

Post by AstralStorm »

skadamou wrote: post #20
golergka wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you forgetting about epigenetics? Human being's development is not only defined by the DNA code.

This. Even if you could conceivably account for every feasible epigenetic difference possible in every conceivable genetically distinct human, I'm not sure what the point is. Twins are still different people with different experiences and personalities even if they are nearly genetically (and epigenetically - at least at first) identical. I feel like the spirit of OPs post is humans in a post scarcity society have a…

The bigger more pressing question is: How much value is in uniqueness and is it diminishing?

See, to maximize uniqueness you would institute crazy eugenic policies to combat sexual selection, random culling (literally euthanized at random) in addition to randomizing wealth and power. (Sortition.) Conceivably this would result in a somewhat unstable society, but perhaps workable.

Fun sci-fi setting.

Re: Why are there so many humans?

#60

Post by eindiran »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #55
eindiran wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a look at some other "social systems that are being tested at the moment", I don't think your claim that Australia is "coming together" in comparison to other "developed countries" is correct. Some examples: * Brisbane's "Boundary St" still exists, name unchanged [0]. * Story from less than 1 hour ago: 4 month-old baby of indigenous women dies while mother is in police custody [1]. * PM calls Australian BLM pr…

There's always disputes, but no ones dying or being thrown out of their homes, people are being looked after. I have been amazed at the compassion being shown by the political class on both sides. iirc there was a lot of extra care taken in the NT for indigenous people because they seem extra susceptible to covid 19 just as a counter example. I didn't know that about boundary st - assumed it was just a boundary, seem…

> There's always disputes, but no ones dying or being thrown out of their homes, people are being looked after.

This is an underrated point; I think your larger message, that cooperation isn't dying, is likely true. I think I have the tendency to focus on the problems that are growing (or continue to exist) without noticing areas where there is progress and my comment was a reflection of that. And I agree that it is good that we have started to have these conversations.

But I also think there is something to be said for the point the OP was making: human systems simply don't function as well at scale. Or stated more precisely: humans are better at being prosocial in smaller groups than they are in bigger groups. There are a lot of reasons why this might be the case (see for example [0], [1], [2], [3]). As we scale our society to be more and more global, I think we are going to need to reckon with this at some point.

[0] Not having enough interactions for tit-for-tat to function as a strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...)

[1] Inability of humans to hit the requirements for a sense of community in very large social networks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_community#Membership)

[2] Not having enough interaction between individuals to encourage reciprocity and cause feelings of guilt (or shame) when an individual is muddying the commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

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