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Selfish reasons to want more humans

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Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#361

Post by snewman »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #317

This is an absolutely terrifying perspective. The planet can realistically support about one billion human beings. It was only the Haber–Bosch process in the early 1900s that made it possible to grow enough food to maintain the 8 billion humans we have today. At the time, it seemed like an incredible humanitarian advance, feeding so many more people than before, and providing higher profits for farmers, boosting the…

What is your source for the planet only being able to support one billion people? That's a very bold statement, given that we are currently at eight billion and have fairly clear technological pathways to sustainability.

Of course sustainability is not a guaranteed outcome, it will require making good decisions, but I'm sure that a "mere" one billion people would also be unsustainable with sufficiently poor decisions.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#362

Post by keenmaster »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #317

This is an absolutely terrifying perspective. The planet can realistically support about one billion human beings. It was only the Haber–Bosch process in the early 1900s that made it possible to grow enough food to maintain the 8 billion humans we have today. At the time, it seemed like an incredible humanitarian advance, feeding so many more people than before, and providing higher profits for farmers, boosting the…

In my opinion, this thinking is wholesale incorrect and actually terrifies me more. Yes, there is global warming. Yes, it is extremely concerning, and leads to countless endangerment, extinction, and coastal/island loss etc…it will cost untold billions to mitigate its effects in even a handful of cities like Miami, Venice, etc…

But, exactly why should people have fewer kids? It’s the large, sweeping, gubernatorial and industrial changes and innovations that drive meaningful shifts in sustainability (with downstream effects on consumer sustainability i.e. cheaper EVs heat pumps and solar panels = greener consumer behavior). If we have fewer kids, that’ll just add to our problems - we’ll have climate change and accelerated economic collapse. If you survey people from developing countries on the anti-natal perspective, who emit a fraction of the C02 that people in developed countries do, they might find it borderline pathological. Malthus was dead wrong, and his intellectual successors continue to be wrong, just with more cope. I have no reason to believe that will change.

Anyway, people who think that having fewer kids is as much of a disaster as climate change will continue to have kids. People who think that they should go against their core reproductive instinct in order to save the planet (???) will not have successors, if their behavior is consistent with their ideology. It is only the children of the former who’ll be able to evaluate the outcome. I assume they’ll be generally thankful that they’re alive to evaluate anything in the first place. I also assume that they won’t be living in a literal hellscape - point me to any credible literature which portends that for people living in the United States in 2100 (because that’s where most people on HN live - there are people today that live in a hellscape, they don’t even have to wait for 2100, but it’s not predominately due to overpopulation).

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#364

Post by Zababa »

throwaway295729 wrote: post #39

This may be a bit reductive but the article is basically saying that the larger the population the quicker progress and innovation will occur. What’s unclear though is if this progress and innovation leads to greater human happiness and fulfillment. As we’ve seen lately, the opposite could also be true. With climate change on the horizon, we may have even reached peak human happiness sometime in the late 20th century

Progress and innovation absolutely does lead to greater human happiness and fulfillment. As an example, absolute number of people living in extreme poverty started to sharply decline at the start of the 21st century: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre....

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#365

Post by naasking »

hef19898 wrote: post #346
naasking wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's a cute term for oppressing people to a degree that they don't want to follow natural instincts to procreate. For instance, developed nations economically penalize parenthood to such an extent that native birth rate is now below replacement in all of them with only a few exceptions.

That birth rates go down withe conomic prosperity has nothing to do with government oppression... That talking point is utter BS, and close to the conspiracy theory of the great "replacement" ...

Who said anything about government oppression?

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#366

Post by moralestapia »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #340
jaysonelliot wrote: post #317

This is an absolutely terrifying perspective. The planet can realistically support about one billion human beings. It was only the Haber–Bosch process in the early 1900s that made it possible to grow enough food to maintain the 8 billion humans we have today. At the time, it seemed like an incredible humanitarian advance, feeding so many more people than before, and providing higher profits for farmers, boosting the…

There’s a Delta flight that is flying exclusively for the pleasure of a tiny group of people who want to watch the eclipse for multiple hours https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39447603 The concept that we’re resource constrained to the extent that we’re beyond the carrying capacity of the world is beyond ridiculous We have a greed, fear and distribution problem, not a production problem Nobody needs a Ferrari when…

Your argument is good but is also half-baked.

Sure, there's plenty of inequality and bad[1] resource allocation throughout the planet.

>The concept that we’re resource constrained to the extent that we’re beyond the carrying capacity of the world is beyond ridiculous

We definitely are beyond the carrying capacity of the world, if we want to guarantee a high standard of life for everybody here. 99.9999% of humans will lack the chance of being able to experience the upcoming eclipse from a plane, would you argue that's an unfair scenario?

>Don’t complain about the state of the world unless you’re actively fixing it.

I absolutely like this comment because that's the way I also go through life, since if one doesn't practice what they preach, one would be just another meek hypocrite, of which we already have an overpopulation of. I can presume, then, that you are doing your part to solve the "greed, fear and distribution" problem you mention, by lowering the amount of resources you consume to one that is typical of what the vast majority of the planet lives on?

Nobody needs drones and a robot pet when there’s still politically unstable regions of the world that could use the energy and care that went into creating such luxuries. [2]

1: "Bad", as defined by which standards tho?

2: https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1757845715445752201

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#367

Post by naasking »

pixl97 wrote: post #355
naasking wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to encourage it, birth control and capitalism have already produced a depopulation trend in all developed countries. It's not a good thing.

It's not a good thing because???? I'll accept a well reasoned argument, but you've not presented any yet in this discussion and engaged in your own naturalistic fallacies. If you're using the reason that "Wanting to breed is natural" then surmise that you've never been involved in animal husbandry before. Nor have you studied mammal populations between species, especially those that have boom and bust cycles.

The article outlines plenty of good reasons, that's why we're discussing it. Most depopulation scenarios are nightmares (wars, famines, genocides), and even the good ones are very, very unpleasant (disproportionate resources must be directed towards caring for the aging population, leaving little labour for maintenance of existing infrastructure, let alone development).

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#368

Post by aranelsurion »

naasking wrote: post #344
hef19898 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depopolating is just another word for genocid, that's why it is terrifying. Or at least should br, but then some people are just too edgy to get that.

Or it's a cute term for oppressing people to a degree that they don't want to follow natural instincts to procreate. For instance, developed nations economically penalize parenthood to such an extent that native birth rate is now below replacement in all of them with only a few exceptions.

This seems to me only partially true. Sure if everyone had one-percenter level resources they'd be more inclined to procreate, though the cultural change and the shifted focus to individualism and one's own experience in life (YOLO thinking, if I may) probably has as much or even more effect on it.

As an anecdata, most people I know are somewhere on the low-class to upper-mid class, and the ones who want kids seem to always have at least one, consequences be damned, and the ones who don't, often don't put a price tag on it and merely use it as an excuse if they feel pressured.

Also the `natural instinct` may not be a given here, since up until recently the instinct to have sex and procreate meant the same results for humans just like other animals, which no longer holds true either.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#369

Post by al_borland »

I often wonder how much the average return on the stock market, which everyone with a retirement plan depends on, has simply been a function of a population growth.

If the population shrinks, economies will have to contract, the market will need to fall in proportion to the people available to buy stuff, and the compound interest gravy train for a comfortable retirement will end. This is my selfish reason for wanting more people.

This is based on nothing but my own rumination. I’d love to be proven wrong, as this worries me.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#370

Post by AndrewKemendo »

moralestapia wrote: post #366
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a Delta flight that is flying exclusively for the pleasure of a tiny group of people who want to watch the eclipse for multiple hours https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39447603 The concept that we’re resource constrained to the extent that we’re beyond the carrying capacity of the world is beyond ridiculous We have a greed, fear and distribution problem, not a production problem Nobody needs a Ferrari when…

Your argument is good but is also half-baked. Sure, there's plenty of inequality and bad[1] resource allocation throughout the planet. >The concept that we’re resource constrained to the extent that we’re beyond the carrying capacity of the world is beyond ridiculous We definitely are beyond the carrying capacity of the world, if we want to guarantee a high standard of life for everybody here. 99.9999% of humans will…

So I see you want to go personal with this in order to try and call me a hypocrite?

Is that where you want to go with this cause I promise you it's not going to go how you want it to

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