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Selfish reasons to want more humans

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Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#181

Post by sph »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #79
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?

A human centric view is not unreasonable.

That's not what they're saying. They are saying that focusing strictly on utilitarianism can prove to be unreasonable.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#182

Post by throwaway047278 »

adastra22 wrote: post #159
Jensson wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got about a billion in China, they were at the bottom end of the country gdp per capita rankings, now they are well into the upper half. The commenter probably assumed India did a similar journey, but India is still full of poverty and not even close to China, so yeah probably less than two billions combined but definitely more than a billion.

"More than a billion" is enough to add the -s in English grammar.

As long as we're in the pedantic mode: "More than a billion" could mean from 1 billion up to 1.99 billion. You need at least 2 billions to be able to add the -s

The poster you replied to wrote "so yeah probably less than two billions combine", so that actually means you could not use the "-s" ending in this case.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#183

Post by lars512 »

waffleiron wrote: post #152
chr1 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before capitalism all of the world was "Third world". And the equity you get without capitalism is everybody being equally poor. And then millions die, like in every attempt to build communism in past century.

I know it’s unfashionable to say on a venture capitalist forum, but millions die under capitalism too.

That's certainly true and remains an unacceptable state of the world, but it's also true that globally, it's a steadily decreasing number, even under conditions of population growth.

E.g. looking at child mortality over time

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-deaths-igme-data

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#186

Post by silvestrov »

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 "more people" was always better then India and Africa should be much richer than Europe.

A lack of people can be an innovation driver: "hiring people is too expensive, so we have to automate everything", i.e. innovation is a must for survival.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#187

Post by globalnode »

Never ever thought I'd see this argument. It's amusing in the same way you would be if you saw someone intentionally throw off all their safety gear before attempting a dangerous activity "just because". Or even better "Aim for the Bushes Scene" -- check it out, a new approach to population management.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#189

Post by collyw »

ozim wrote: post #177
Animats wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jo…

A lot of STEM jobs are bullshit. Intellectual grunt work. Most people are fixing other peoples bugs rather than building anything innovative. And a lot of the "innovation" in tech over the last years has been a rehash of ideas from the 60s.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#190

Post by collyw »

throwaway047278 wrote: post #178
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 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 aw…

Wealthy families mean you are able to take risks with your ideas, while the rest of us need to play it safer if we want to pay our rent.
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