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Selfish reasons to want more humans

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Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#161

Post by adastra22 »

healsdata wrote: post #122
adastra22 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions have been lifted out of poverty in China and India alone. Africa is next. The problem is not too many people. If anything, people who think there are too many people are a problem.

The combined population of those countries is 2.8 billion. For your assertion to be true, 71% of those countries would have had to have been in poverty in the recent past and now are not.

> For your assertion to be true, 71% of those countries would have had to have been in poverty in the recent past and now are not.

Yup, that is in fact the case. Look it up.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#162

Post by abigail95 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #114

"Growth" - everything in this world is about "growth" - if your economy is not "growing" it is a disaster, thus you import more people because people == "growth". Despite the fact that growth is bad for the environment and espite constant "growth" for decades our problems have not been solved.

Is it easier to have a completely green supply chain with 1,000 people, or 1,000,000? When does the growth become bad?

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#163

Post by alexey-salmin »

caskstrength wrote: post #144
xyzzy4747 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a human, I have a human-centric mindset. I don’t want to live in the forest with rain filling up my mud floor. I like nice things.

> As a human, I have a human-centric mindset. I don’t want to live in the forest with rain filling up my mud floor. I like nice things. I think the whole discussion is about which amount of humans on this planet would maximize the probability of having nice things for each individual. Certainly it would be hard for you to have nice things when there is only a million humans on Earth, but probably even more so if ther…

Hopefully with a trillion people around we'll figure out a good source of energy that'll deliver both prosperity on earth and interplanetary travel

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#165

Post by luckystarr »

chaostheory wrote: post #133
Depurator wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, it was just more of a general criticism toward such a view, as leading to long term degradation of the world. I totally get how humans would always protitize humanity first, but in the long term we have some issues such as overfishing, global warming, biodiversity loss etc. as a result. But the esiest would of course to not belive in thos issues, and have cool toys

What you described is still human centric. Nature has survived several extinction level events and I’m sure it will survive more. If humanity changes the current environment enough, then it will no longer be the once ideal environment to that continues to sustain humanity indefinitely. Going on a tangent, a lot of environmentalists have a marketing problem.

Nature will die with 100% certainty. That is a verified fact due to the coming life-cycle changes of our sun. Nothing will survive that.

Only humans have a chance to save "nature" by bringing life along to the stars. Not sure if we will be able to pull it off, but I see no other option.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#166

Post by alexey-salmin »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #34

I strongly disagree, while technology clearly helped us growing, there are always tradeoffs, even agriculture is not ideal. We can solve some problems but it is almost never « for free » and the cost is newer problems to solve. I think there is a compounding effect with population growth, and I don’t think that population can grow forever on a single planet, that is nonsense. How much is enough? My intuition is that…

You just looked at the current number, arbitrarily added some margin on both sides and assumed it's the "sweet spot".

Congratulations, you're at the same level of thinking as 17th, 18th and 19th centuries philosophers.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#167

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

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…

if you compare those two examples (from ancient egypt and yours) then you also have to count all those people developing, maintaining and providing services for the machinery you use.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#168

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

defrost wrote: post #87
ezzaf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where are those mining machines that allow this to occur manufactured? How about all the components of the mining machines? The locomotives that take all that iron ore to port? The port infrastructure? The ships that transport the ore to its overseas customers? WA and its mining wealth and efficiency wouldn't exist without a global market for both its supply and demand.

Look at all the people involved in machine manufacture, transport, mining, etc. for sure. The point being made is that more and more tonnes of raw material are being shipped to smelters per person than ever before. Automation is still advancing so this will only increase, automation is also advancing in processing and production - we no longer need vast numbers of people to produce a billion tonnes of steel, and the…

> The point being made is that more and more tonnes of raw material are being shipped to smelters per person than ever before.

your argument fails to prove that for above mentioned fault in how you count the people involved.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#170

Post by defrost »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #167
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…

if you compare those two examples (from ancient egypt and yours) then you also have to count all those people developing, maintaining and providing services for the machinery you use.

That's correct.

It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a small city to support a mine, the food, the tool upkeep, etc.

And the per capita-hour including all the people involved tonnages involved have vastly increased.

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