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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?

#171
post #169
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does not follow that there is absolutely nothing after clinical death. Where's your evidence? What if I claimed when you die you are reincarnated as a zebra on omnicrom-5? Why is that more or less reasonable than an explanation some religious leader made up one time when he was high? Anyone can come up with some ungabunga, but unless you have evidence there's no rational to believe it.

The point is there is no evidence, and also there is no claim that I am making. It is unknown. The only claims of resurrections are religious in nature, which proves my point.

There's plenty of evidence, what do you even mean?

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we’re doing hypotheticals how about this. We colonize mars and have large habitation modules flotations in space. Humanity has a large new space to expand into and doesn’t have to curtail growth rates.

>doesn’t have to curtail growth rates. Eh, you can't slow an exponential growth with a linear gain in living space. There might be a lot of space out there but not nearly enough of the stuff we need to live in order to consider physical space the limiting factor. You might buy time but you'll run up against the familiar discomfort of too little living space again, and will have to downsize or expand out again before…

We’re not dealing with exponential growth in most of the world at this point. It’s on average around 2 in most places. So this would be a linear increase if that because the average is still dropping.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Since we’re doing hypotheticals how about this. We colonize mars and have large habitation modules flotations in space. Humanity has a large new space to expand into and doesn’t have to curtail growth rates.

It's fun doing hypotheticals on this. I'd actually argue that 'perpetual' humans would be much less likely to explore the stars! Take, for instance, the people who recently died on the Titan. They knew they were taking a risk going on it. At least one of them had also recently flown on one of Bezos' rocket launches. Their mindset is really easy to understood, as it also happens to be my own.

They were looking to experience all that life could offer, because in the end - what's the worst that happens? Well you die, but you're going to die anyhow. And living a rich life, ended prematurely, seems infinitely more desirable than living a drawn out life, doing everything to minimize risk, where you die all the same but perhaps without having ever given yourself a chance to live.

But imagine those individuals could have reasonably expected they might be able to live forever. I expect there is exactly 0 chance they would have even considered going on that sub, in one of Bezos' rockets, or engaged in basically any activity with any possible risk whatsoever. Because suddenly what you're risking, your life, has literally infinite value unless you happen to be suicidal to begin with. And this would pose a major problem for society doing much of anything.

There's going to be a high rate of mortality for the first colonists on Mars because there's a zillion things that can go wrong, and we aren't going to be able to anticipate even a fraction of them. Who in the world would ever want to risk this if you could live forever?

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#174

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.

An interesting but unanswerable question is how many people will ever live on the Earth.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#176
post #163
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.

It's not empirically testable. Nobody has truly died and come back and no one can. Even if all religions are false it does not follow that there is absolutely nothing after clinical death. This is just a limitation of science, because we need a conscious mind to test and/or interpret the results.

Would you consider as evidence the observable life cycle of all things in nature around us on this planet?

Human exceptionalism -- our nascent ability to reason -- does not exempt us from being animals in the biosphere in which we evolved.

And space (beyond our planet) is observably not a paradise for things that live on Earth. Unless we are all reincarnated as tardigrades.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that by invoking the concept of immortality, you have therefore invoked the “unimaginable timeframe” of infinity to the conversation from the outset. so it’s not like it was ever not part of the conversation

I also specified that this jellyfish is BIOLOGICAL immortal. If it were provided with a livable space indefinitely, it would live forever.

The better word to avoid confusion here is amortal, meaning it would not die of old age. True immortality is much harder, as accidents would still pose a risk in the long term. Like the janitor pulling the plug on the livable space you set up for the jellyfish, without warning.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If me manage to cure death, then there is no need to stick around on earth. We can start exploring the universe.

If we managed to cut death, we probably would turn much more risk-averse. An unfortunate accident would make you lose eternity, not just a couple decades. I bet that would not foster many explorers.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#179
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the two of you are weightless in the middle of a room shouldn't you remain in the middle of the room so long as you don't throw anything? Like if you wiggle your arms you won't start to swim through space so as long as your bodies are wiggling then you also shouldn't start to swim? As long as you kick your shoes after before not during it seems to me that there shouldn't be an issue.

You're working on a one body problem there. This is a two body problem where some force applied will cause a transfer of momentum from one body to another. Without something to tether the two bodies together, it is quite likely they'll move apart.

The 3-Body Problem: A new movie adaption by PornHub.

Re: How many people have ever lived on Earth?

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it dated?

Stable persistent settlement has been dated by genetic clocks, various types of radiological markers on rock art and layered artifacts and middens with ranges at differing locations from comfortably 30k years out to 70k years at a stretch - it's a very big country. eg: at least 50k established by genetics for most of the land area: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21416

But how were the stories dated? 70k is so long before the invention of writing systems.
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