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Selfish reasons to want more humans

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Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#51

Post by zizee »

defrost wrote: post #22

More ambitious projects need a certain critical mass of resources behind them. Ancient Egyptian civilization built a large irrigation system to make the best use of the Nile floodwaters for agriculture, a feat that would not have been possible to a small tribe or chiefdom. This doesn't mean people, we're no longer bound by labour intensive solutions. I live in a single state with a tiny population that mines and ship…

Whilst I don't agree with the article, you're ignoring that these epic machines you talk of are the product of a much larger population. These megamachines wouldn't exist, or at least not all the types of machines, if not for us having billions of people on the planet.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#55

Post by defrost »

kiba wrote: post #38
defrost wrote: post #22

More ambitious projects need a certain critical mass of resources behind them. Ancient Egyptian civilization built a large irrigation system to make the best use of the Nile floodwaters for agriculture, a feat that would not have been possible to a small tribe or chiefdom. This doesn't mean people, we're no longer bound by labour intensive solutions. I live in a single state with a tiny population that mines and ship…

The problem is really negative externality and pollution caused by production and consumption. That's really the core issue of our global economy and technological landscape, and probably the greatest constraint that limits us from expanding resource extraction. Humanity is a civilization that lives on resource consumption of truly tiny amount of energy and materials compared to the whole that's available within this…

There's a long narrow expensive isthmus between the gravity well of Earth and the rest of the solar system.

Colonies elsewhere are a fine idea if the goal is to expand the footprint of humans but there's limited prospect of that moving significant numbers off of the planet or improving the environmental balance here.

These are two almost orthogonal endeavours.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#56

Post by Affric »

> More geniuses

I am going to hazard a guess that we aren’t missing the underlying number of geniuses. We are probably wasting a lot of potential geniuses.

> More progress

Unless the limiting factor isn’t those factors.

> More options

The west has more options than ever. We also have more people without purpose than ever before. We aren’t lacking people.

> Deeper patterns

We all want rival goods. Shelter. Clothing. Food. That’s not even getting to diseconomies of scale.

The population debate is fraught with charlatans.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#59

Post by hazbot »

Depurator wrote: post #15

This is a good example of a very narrow human centric view that captures why its bad to try to maximize for particular made up metrics, such as human utility. It also a wonderfully hare brained view of technolocial innovation that disregards the dark sides, material input, or externalities at all. Is this person an economist or something?

I think they are quite upfront about their values, and I suspect they would quite likely be OK with being labelled human-centric, as would I!

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#60

Post by hugh-avherald »

zizee wrote: post #51
defrost wrote: post #22

More ambitious projects need a certain critical mass of resources behind them. Ancient Egyptian civilization built a large irrigation system to make the best use of the Nile floodwaters for agriculture, a feat that would not have been possible to a small tribe or chiefdom. This doesn't mean people, we're no longer bound by labour intensive solutions. I live in a single state with a tiny population that mines and ship…

Whilst I don't agree with the article, you're ignoring that these epic machines you talk of are the product of a much larger population. These megamachines wouldn't exist, or at least not all the types of machines, if not for us having billions of people on the planet.

Australia lags behind other countries in certain technology, but not in mining technology. There's sufficient expertise in a population of a few million. (Of course, there's a disproportionate amount of mining engineering experts in Perth.)
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