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How many people have ever lived on Earth?

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Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#51

Post by irrational »

Jach wrote: post #16
tjpnz wrote: post #3

Why do I keep (mis)remembering a fact that most members of the human race are alive right now?

There's a version of this that may actually be correct if you restrict it to the number of humans ever older than 60 years old, but I admit I never followed up on that one. The roughly 100 billion ever claim I recall more readily as it's an interesting remark to give to people who think they see ghosts to see what they think of it and the related question of where they all are.

Why are the ghosts usually wearing clothes from the last few hundred years? Where are the Bronze Age ghosts? Or do ghosts dissipate after a period of time? Has anyone ever asked these questions of ghost believers?

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#52

Post by tap-snap-or-nap »

irrational wrote: post #50
lyu07282 wrote: post #33

Makes me wonder how many more billions will have to die before we bother to put some actual effort into ending death, but I know that's a very obscure opinion. https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon

Yes, because I totally want to continue working to pay taxes, rent, utilities, clothing, food, etc. forever. Frankly, I am not trying to hasten my death, but I am looking forward to it. Finally a break from the eternal go go go go, just to maintain life.

Tang ping

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#53

Post by dataflow »

jcranmer wrote: post #42
yreg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Doomsday Argument[0] relates to this. It says that since the reader is born in the current times with there being X billion humans so far, statisticslly there shouldn't be too many more (not say tens of trillions). I don't think the logic is too sound though. Or rather that the premises should be taken for granted. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

I like Randall Munroe's summary of the argument ( https://what-if.xkcd.com/65/ ): > Almost everyone who hears this argument immediately sees something wrong with it. The problem is, everyone thinks it's wrong for a different reason. And the more they study it, the more they tend to change their minds about what that reason is.

I guess I'm one of those people because I read Wikipedia and this seems like a complete non-sequitur to me:

> The Copernican principle suggests that any one human is equally likely (along with the other N-1 humans) to find themselves in any position n of the total population N.

I feel like I must be misunderstanding the argument because it just doesn't make sense to me. First, why should I even assume N is finite? Second, even if I did, not everyone had an equal chance of participating in this hypothetical thought-experiment (or random selection, or whatever you want to call it) -- only those alive at the time of your sampling can participate in it.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#55

Post by gizajob »

lyu07282 wrote: post #33

Makes me wonder how many more billions will have to die before we bother to put some actual effort into ending death, but I know that's a very obscure opinion. https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon

We do put huge amounts of effort into ending it, which so far has only served to delay it by decades.

It's part of life that it ends, it seems. No way of getting around that no matter how many sci-fi solutions Bostrom proposes as realistic.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#56

Post by shanks512 »

jcranmer wrote: post #41
justinclift wrote: post #27

> Average life expectancy in Iron Age France (from 800 B.C.E. to about 100 C.E.) has been estimated at only 10 or 12 years. Doesn't that sound extremely weird? Like, how does puberty, and 9 months to have a baby, fit in with a 12 year total life expectancy? Maybe I need more coffee or something...

This is a common misconception about how life expectancy works. If you have 10 children, 9 of them die at age 5, and the 10th dies at age 55, the life expectancy of your children is 10. Those 9 children who die early aren't going to go through puberty and become parents, but the life expectancy of those who do reach that stage is decently long. Low life expectancy doesn't mean you're considered some decrepit geriatri…

I think a more useful metric would be average life expectancy of the subset of people who lived over say 20 or 30. We could compare that number at 1600s with the present to see the net impact of lifestyle changes (fast food, minimum exercise) vs advances in medical care.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#57

Post by shanks512 »

irrational wrote: post #50
lyu07282 wrote: post #33

Makes me wonder how many more billions will have to die before we bother to put some actual effort into ending death, but I know that's a very obscure opinion. https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon

Yes, because I totally want to continue working to pay taxes, rent, utilities, clothing, food, etc. forever. Frankly, I am not trying to hasten my death, but I am looking forward to it. Finally a break from the eternal go go go go, just to maintain life.

Or you could just take that break from work now and do better things with life without having to necessarily wait for death.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#58

Post by csomar »

Towaway69 wrote: post #43
delgaudm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to end death?

I think it was Ayn Rand who said that with her death all life ends. Well it did for her thankfully not for the rest of us.

From her perspective, it is still correct.
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