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Selfish reasons to want more humans

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Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#211

Post by alexey-salmin »

caskstrength wrote: post #179
alexey-salmin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think it's the case. If you have truly free energy then transformation of matter in whatever you want it to be becomes a purely technological question.

And in any case, having spaceships and no avocado is much better than the inverse.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#212

Post by em-bee »

imgabe wrote: post #176
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.

yes, but do we want to turn all that land into high density housing? (ok, i exaggerate but) there are tangible benefits from leaving spaces open and untouched.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#213

Post by vasco »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #158
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

You can't even define "degradation" without humans around. The planet itself doesn't care, nor does the fish. Extending human empathy to non-human processes is peak anthropocentrism.

I think you can define degradation. I can make objective claims that less biodiversity is worse than more biodiversity and use it to measure degradation without humans around. I can measure this degradation in planets without humans or model out the degradation in a future where humans are extinct, and call certain situations objectively worse than others under that yardstick.

Maybe I misunderstood because it seems you're claiming if there's no humans around it's impossible to model any phenomena, but we possess abstract thought to make up those situations and define things like degradation in the absence of humans.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#214

Post by caskstrength »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #211
caskstrength wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think it's the case. If you have truly free energy then transformation of matter in whatever you want it to be becomes a purely technological question. And in any case, having spaceships and no avocado is much better than the inverse.

> I don't think it's the case. If you have truly free energy then transformation of matter in whatever you want it to be becomes a purely technological question.

Some purely technological problems are hard to solve. There is already a market for (very expensive) meat substitutes and they taste like crap. If you are talking about some sci-fi "replicator" tech that will just "synthesize" you and avocado, then I'm not sure how achievable that is in short or medium-term irrespective to energy prices.

> And in any case, having spaceships and no avocado is much better than the inverse.

Much better for whom? OP said they like "nice things". I would also prefer avocados to spaceships since I'm not that interested in space travel without FTL.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#215

Post by okwhateverdude »

adastra22 wrote: post #104
arbitrary_name wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that another account posted this exact response slightly further up. It's a non sequitur designed to degrade the conversation and it implies that having reservations about constant growth within the current paradigm is somehow akin to desiring large scale mass killing? Bizarre and troubling.

It is a sincere and honest question. Misplaced concern about overpopulation has already caused world bank loans to be tied to population management quotas, which have been met through the creative means of forced sterilization of indigenous/minority women in Central America and South Asia. AKA literal genocide. A political movement to “decrease the Earth’s population” is extremely bizarre and troubling, and deserves…

Cool, then we're on the same page for other ecology management issues too, right? All of that "let's sell licenses for hunting other animals" we should simply stop, right? We should just let the world sort itself out since we've never had any success in managing populations of other animals either through protection or hunting, right?

Humans are not some unique, special animal. We're a very invasive, ecology modifying organism. We already have rules on where humans can and cannot live, where resource extraction can happen and how much. It may be uncomfortable to consider, but yes, we absolutely should manage our own population so we don't fuck up our one, and only, spaceship that's flying through a universe that is very hostile for us.

Metastatic growth is simply unsustainable. Running our civilization like a capitalistic business ignoring externalities and borrowing against the future that needs constant growth to sustain isn't a great idea. That will crash.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#216

Post by synecdoche »

strangattractor wrote: post #103
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 2 most prominent proponents of this idea happen to have the resources (money) that will allow them to avoid most of the downsides a larger population would create. Great for them bad for me. There are plenty enough geniuses in existence today. They cannot be utilized because they live in shitty conditions created by the too large population we already have. As others have pointed out consideration of of negative…

How about providing concrete methods for reducing population? Exactly how do you propose to reduce population and who should be forced to not have children first? Should we assume that you will lead by example?

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#217

Post by okwhateverdude »

croes wrote: post #208

>More geniuses First, more people means more outliers—more super-intelligent, super-creative, or super-talented people, to produce great art, architecture, music, philosophy, science, and inventions. >If genius is defined as one-in-a-million level intelligence, then every billion people means another thousand geniuses—to work on all of the problems and opportunities of humanity, to the benefit of all. The same is val…

> The same is valid for psychopaths and other bad people.

Just what we need. More soulless, avarice soaked, societal parasites.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#218

Post by ant6n »

synecdoche wrote: post #216
strangattractor wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2 most prominent proponents of this idea happen to have the resources (money) that will allow them to avoid most of the downsides a larger population would create. Great for them bad for me. There are plenty enough geniuses in existence today. They cannot be utilized because they live in shitty conditions created by the too large population we already have. As others have pointed out consideration of of negative…

How about providing concrete methods for reducing population? Exactly how do you propose to reduce population and who should be forced to not have children first? Should we assume that you will lead by example?

Rich people voluntarily have fewer kids. Spread the wealth, reduce the population pressure.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#219

Post by dave4420 »

synecdoche wrote: post #216
strangattractor wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2 most prominent proponents of this idea happen to have the resources (money) that will allow them to avoid most of the downsides a larger population would create. Great for them bad for me. There are plenty enough geniuses in existence today. They cannot be utilized because they live in shitty conditions created by the too large population we already have. As others have pointed out consideration of of negative…

How about providing concrete methods for reducing population? Exactly how do you propose to reduce population and who should be forced to not have children first? Should we assume that you will lead by example?

The global population is projected to go down to 6 billion by the end of the century, without any coercion or policy changes.

This drives people like the author of the article mad, because they think we should do something to prevent that.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#220

Post by usrusr »

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.)

And the amount of productive thinking is depending on the fraction of the total sum that goes into zero sum games like advertising and finance. No, I'm not saying that those don't have any utility, they do, but that utility has a clear "good enough" limit and more brains trying to maximise their piece of the pie does not make the pie any bigger.
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