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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?

#101
post #96
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems redundant given 'pagan' means either * not Christian other religions in the Roman Empire, or (more generally) * not Christian religions. Easier to say most, if not all, religions have an afterlife story.

Yeah I love picking nits too. I just meant to reaffirm that it's not an Abrahamic religion innovation.

I have trouble working out who the pagans are:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-20/the-christian-convert...

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I love life and there’s nothing after this?

What do you think would happen if perpetual longevity were achieved? I mean realistically, not ideally? I think it's almost certain we'd see those at the top become [even more] vainly obsessed with their own mortality to the point of doing absolutely every single thing they could, with no norms of behavior, to ensure no other human could ever, under any circumstance - no matter how remote, pose a possible threat to t…

Would it be good for the species even if life was fair for everyone? One can easily imagine that it would create stagnation where very little would change over very long periods of time.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, imagine having 117B people walking around on earth right now. No thank you.

I'd like to substitute your picture for a more plausible one: imagine a world full of incredibly wealthy robber barons, using their fortunes to ensure that "colored" workers stick to their designated bathrooms, putting lead into everything because dying is something that only happens to the poor, and refusing jobs to workers with the wrong skull shape. And if you think owning a home is hard, just wait until every pro…

Yeah the naivety and/or selfishness of folks wishing to be immortal is beyond me, something about primary school math lessons skipped. I do hope they are not parents (at least yet). I can accept it in some form once we reach other stars, but not in this century and definitely not in next one neither.

First of all, such technology would be usurped by dictators for dictators only. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Putin and endless stream of other pathetic figures, they all desperately clinged to life and would burn this world to the ashes 1000x over just to stay immortal. I can't imagine how we could avoid global semi-permanent slavery, not with actual real human nature that we see manifested in the news every day. Its fine if you wouldn't use it malevolently, that says nothing about more capable and more sinister individuals who are out there in numbers you probably would have hard time accepting.

Second, where do we put all those folks if we actually achieve some hippie paradise? How do we feed them? Concept of individual ownership goes very much against this. The opposite is communism, which has 100% failure rate, and we tested it already on few hundred millions, no thank you. You have to live through it to see and feel its failures in their many aspects to understand, I did and never ever want that back in any form.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#105
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know it. All empirical evidence from thousands of years of scrutiny points to you ending when your body dies. You dont treat any other piece of knowledge with the same demand as you do the (lack of) afterlife.

dude... whether it's jesus or eternal nothingness, it takes faith to believe in both. There's no evidence for any of this so the only correct answer is we don't know. > All empirical evidence from thousands of years of scrutiny Yes, I'm very curious to see empirical evidence of what happens post-death and someone who lived to tell us.

Since religions come and go, there are hundreds, it can be empirically reasoned that it isn't Jesus, because Jesus is just the latest made up thing. IF there was one true god/religion, then why haven't we stuck with the same one for 200k years, right from the beginning. Why aren't we born knowing it? Why don't we know it from birth? Instead we believe whatever we were raised with. And that is a pretty flimsy basis to base some actual physical reality that exists after death.

On other hand, guess since we don't know what is after death, we can't also say with complete 100% certainty that it is nothing. But for there to be something, then that would mean there is something in this physical reality that gets transported, and we should be able to detect it. And since there has been nothing detected after a lot of tries (experiments), at this time there is nothing.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#106

If you are just curious, the number is 117B people who was ever born on Earth. High amount of guesstimates and assumptions involved. Yadda yadda popsci article phrases.

Now wonder how many people have been born anywhere but Earth

Depends on your definition of "on Earth".

There have been people born on planes, for example.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#107

I don't think that Earth had 300M people in 1 c.e. Roman empire with client states probably had population 30M, maybe another 30M for China and 30M for Indian subcontinent. These would absolutely dwarf everything else. No room for 3x of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_by_population_i... these guys disagree and even have some references.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire says the peak population of Roman Empire was at most 75M, whereas the quoted link has 13M more, which makes the numbers very suspicious.

Even then, this link only suggests 250M population by 1 CE and not 300M. Deflate that number by another 50M and it would begin becoming plausible.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#108
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus claimed to offer everlasting life to those who believe in him (see Gospel of John). Worth looking into?

So did Muhammad (see Quran). Worth looking into?

The Quran says that Allah sent Jesus with the Gospel (Sura 5:46). If this is true, then what Jesus said is true.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#109
Evolution occurs through birth and death. If humans stopped dying, then presumably they would also stop having kids, because why keep having them, and thus we'd get stuck on that last generation. Then, with no new generations, we would also stop evolving, as a species.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#110

Evolution occurs through birth and death. If humans stopped dying, then presumably they would also stop having kids, because why keep having them, and thus we'd get stuck on that last generation. Then, with no new generations, we would also stop evolving, as a species.

We might keep having kids to populate other planets (which becomes slightly more feasible if people can live for millions of years).

We might evolve through in-situ genetic editing / body modifications.

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