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Selfish reasons to want more humans

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Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#171

Post by defrost »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #168
defrost wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mineral | mining resource databases are a decent start:

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...

You can access annual reports and technical reports on pretty much all the major mine sites about the globe, capital investments, plant sizes, work forces, etc.

then expand outwards mapping supply chain networks, etc. You know, the usual legwork.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#172

Post by em-bee »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #74
jewelry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

intelligence is a lottery at birth, assuming the education system is good enough at identify talents of all kind. and with the world especially Asian countries better at this, I think we do need more human to maintain the current talents pool.

It is not. There is a part of genetics, like most things, but if you look at past geniuses, there is a common pattern, wealthy enough families able to afford tutors. Tutoring is what makes geniuses, not lottery.

exactly this.

the potential of humanity is largely underutilized. the reason we need geniuses now is because our current way of teaching is not enabling peoples potential as well as it could. it doesn't even take individual tutoring. better teaching methods such as montessori, project based learning, smaller groups (say a 10 to 1 ratio in class compared to the 50 to 1 ratio i see in china and other countries i have visited) would be a massive increase in the quality of education creating a potential way beyond what a doubling of the number of geniuses could ever achieve.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#173

Post by adrian_b »

ido wrote: post #143
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 amount of people living in good conditions is also higher than it ever was. In fact the % of people living poverty world wide is decreasing while world population is increasing.

That depends a lot on how you define "good conditions".

My grandparents did not have television or computers, but they (and most people from their village) had a much bigger house and garden than I could ever afford and they were eating much better food than I can find anywhere in a city now, despite having nominally much lower revenues than I have today.

Some of their tastiest fruit cultivars might have completely disappeared, because I have never seen them again in any place, for many decades.

It is true that the percentage of people who are so poor that they fear not having food enough to survive and not having where to sleep has decreased, but the percentage of people who must be content to live in small boxes and be content with low-quality food has increased.

The problem of the space for houses is much less obvious in USA or Canada, which are huge in comparison with their populations, than in most other countries, which have much higher human densities.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#174

Post by em-bee »

vunderba wrote: post #124
stephc_int13 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not. There is a part of genetics, like most things, but if you look at past geniuses, there is a common pattern, wealthy enough families able to afford tutors. Tutoring is what makes geniuses, not lottery.

No, it certainly does not. Obviously, a higher socioeconomic background means increased resources and dedicated attention to education which certainly helps, but genius, in the true sense of the word needs a good starting foundation, and that probably has a significant genetic component. Nikola Tesla, Einstein, Ramanujan were all child prodigies without exceptional access to tutors and other educational resources. If…

i don't agree with the genetic argument but with your other point.

producing geniuses is not a billion dollar industry because we don't yet even know how to teach to that. but that doesn't mean that we could not improve teaching and peoples potential massively.

china used to have a billion dollar tutoring industry (ok, i don't know if it was a billion, but china is huge so it's possible) until a change of laws shut it down.

but this chinese tutoring industry was not aimed at producing geniuses. instead it was aimed at exploiting parents, extracting their money without providing any real value except putting pressure on the children to perform.

that's why it was shut down.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#175

Post by willi59549879 »

Too much of a single thing is usually not good. Wild populations of animals have diminished rapidly. More people also means less space for the dwindling wild populations. Making all life on earth one species is not a good idea, one dimensional thinking is usually detrimental to the system.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#176

Post by imgabe »

willi59549879 wrote: post #175

Too much of a single thing is usually not good. Wild populations of animals have diminished rapidly. More people also means less space for the dwindling wild populations. Making all life on earth one species is not a good idea, one dimensional thinking is usually detrimental to the system.

Have you ever driven across the US? There is an unfathomable amount of open space. Same in most countries, aside from maybe Europe. We are nowhere close to running out of land.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#177

Post by ozim »

Animats wrote: post #121
nine_k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are still bound by labor amount, but now it's mostly the intellectual labor. The amount of thinking happening in the world depends on the amount of human brains available, and their level of education and knowledge, in the widest sense. Solving current challenges faster is often only possible by applying a larger amount of thinking to them. (No, the AI is not yet a game changer here.)

The US, at least, seems to be past peak intellectual labor. Somewhere between 30% - 60% of people with STEM degrees don't work in jobs that need them.[1] Bloomberg has worse numbers for degrees generally.[2] "A quarter of grads over the age of 25 make less than $35,000 a year, with many close to the poverty level." It's entirely possible that the economic reward for intelligence is decreasing. Up until 1920 or so, wh…

I disagree with this take. There are so many variables like job availability in area where person wants to live, graduation does not mean one is fit for job, job openings are for experienced positions and openings for recent grads are almost non existent.

If there are only openings for experienced people, as a recent grad you take whatever else you can find. Then people just get stuck in whatever they got as first job because they get experience there and get value.

It also doesn’t say what STEM people end up with - I bet a lot is clerical job and not moving boxes for Amazon or flipping burgers.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#178

Post by throwaway047278 »

nine_k wrote: post #43
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…

We are still bound by labor amount, but now it's mostly the intellectual labor. The amount of thinking happening in the world depends on the amount of human brains available, and their level of education and knowledge, in the widest sense. Solving current challenges faster is often only possible by applying a larger amount of thinking to them. (No, the AI is not yet a game changer here.)

> The amount of thinking happening in the world depends on the amount of human brains available, and their level of education and knowledge

It seems to me that most of today's high impact "minds" come from relatively wealthy families compared to the world's average. They come from a small pool of candidates, compared to the vast world population as a whole that don't have the same opportunities. We basically throw away potential geniuses.

If we reduced poverty, corruption and unemployment, and made higher education available for everyone, we would increase that pool by billions of people.

We don't need more people in the world - what we need is to give those that are already here the opportunity to nurture their minds and have a place where they can apply them

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#179

Post by caskstrength »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #163
caskstrength wrote: post #144

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. 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

There would be some significant tradeoffs necessary for maintaining a trillion people population on Earth no matter the energy cost. Even if you assume cheap and abundant cold fusion energy source, living in mcmansion and eating avocado toasts with wild salmon is likely out of the question.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#180

Post by willi59549879 »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #77
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?

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 like nice things too. But increasing human population even more by decreasing animal diversity I see as a bigger threat to livability on earth.
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