Selfish reasons to want more humans • Hacker News Board

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#401

Post by toomuchtodo » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

jondwillis wrote: post #395

toomuchtodo wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with that Delta eclipse viewing flight so long as they had mandated direct air carbon capture offsets to offset the flight. The fact that they haven't is the problem, not the flight itself. Take issue with the externalities dumped elsewhere, not on the activity. If you pay the fully loaded costs, by all means, partake in your CO2 emission activity (beef, air travel, etc). Current DAC cost is ~$…

I am sure it is highly variable, but I wonder what the cost of negative soil CO2 sequestration techniques like biochar, is these days? Or even just land use improvements to sequester more CO2, seems like lower hanging fruit than DAC.

We must assume only the highest quality, verifiable carbon offsets are utilized for luxury activities. Only DAC meets that criteria currently.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#402

Post by chaostheory » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 6:25 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #378

al_borland wrote: post #369

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…

It's worth considering that stock market valuations are supposed to be driven by revenue and profit, not by population (valuations have gotten completely out of whack since the financial system effectively broke in 2008). There are multiple ways to do this - one is certainly to increase the population, but another is to increase productivity per person in conjunction with expenditure per person. i.e. The same number…

The problem is entitlement programs likes socialized health care and pension programs like social security. When retirees begin to outnumber working adults, the system will start to collapse. Maybe countries will adapt? Japan and China are at the forefront of the age demographic bomb. They are about 30-40 years ahead of us in experiencing this problem. The US and Canada has been able to counter it much longer than anyone else primarily due to our origins in and experience with immigration. No other countries on earth can compete with either the US or Canada when it comes to assimilation of immigrants.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#403

Post by btbuildem » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 6:31 PM UTC

The endless-growth mindset will eventually be viewed as a mental illness. We pity hoarders, but we somehow look up to the unreasonably wealthy, even though they are eerily similar in their attitude and behaviour towards "their precious".

If you look at a graph of human population over the last 1000 years [1] (and since -10000AD if you want [2]), it looks eerily like a stock market chart that has temporarily spiked before crashing back down to a more reasonable valuation.

Over the ages, we've had many population declines [3] but they've tended to be smaller and smaller (relatively to the total population). Is there a massive "correction" coming, as challenges of carrying capacity, climate change, global conflict and disease rear their ugly heads? Hard to say.

Regardless - I object to using the word "progress" as a stand-in for "more". It hardly ever is.

1: https://i.imgur.com/iSNbGTN.png

2: https://i.imgur.com/73zV927.png

3: https://i.imgur.com/sccJBGB.png

(these are hastily back-of-the-napkin'd with GPT, so take with a grain of salt)

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#404

Post by Voultapher » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 6:35 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #378

al_borland wrote: post #369

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…

It's worth considering that stock market valuations are supposed to be driven by revenue and profit, not by population (valuations have gotten completely out of whack since the financial system effectively broke in 2008). There are multiple ways to do this - one is certainly to increase the population, but another is to increase productivity per person in conjunction with expenditure per person. i.e. The same number…

Or, the majority working more than ever, and a vanishingly small amount of people living increasingly lavishly. I see no reason to believe the current systemic factors that drive the growth of wealth disparity will slow down or reverse.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#405

Post by nitwit005 » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

martindbp wrote: post #331

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…

It's interesting how malthusians never take matters into their own hands. It's always too many of "others".

If you ask people about how many children they plan to have, and why, they do list environmental concerns.

So, "others", apparently includes their own chidren.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#406

Post by misnome » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 7:23 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #358

pixl97 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don’t complain about the state of the world unless you’re actively fixing it What kind of backwards ass thinking is this. I mean, stop and think for at least one second before typing things like this. If I'm living hand to mouth, as in if I stop farming my own food I'll quickly starve it would be stupid to, one, stop growing my own stuff because I'll starve otherwise, and two, not complain about the situation becaus…

How could you possibly interpret what I wrote as an exhortation against the poor? Should I specifically explicate the groups that this exhortation is targeted to? Use your judgement based on the content and context instead of requiring me to think for you and fully solve all of the questions you might have. Do you own a Ferrari? Are you taking the Delta flight? Can you extrapolate from those two examples of egregious…

No, “Don’t complain about the state of the world unless you are actively fixing it” is _explicitly_ excluding everyone who isn’t wealthy enough to do so.

Try reading your own words once in a while rather than pretending that you intended something all along and everyone else should have the same context in your head.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#407

Post by mtalantikite » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 7:34 PM UTC

I’m curious to know if the author has spent any significant time in any place that is going to feel the brunt of the climate catastrophe. I’d invite them to spend a couple months in Delhi or Dhaka and then take another pass at this think piece. Or maybe they’re cool with taking in a few hundred million climate refugees into the US and just didn’t mention it, as many parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa will have wet bulb temperatures that are unsurvivable in the next few decades.

Also, some parts just are off:

“A bigger society has more cuisines, more architectural styles, more types of fashion, more sub-genres of entertainment.” Then why are tons of languages on the verge of extinction? Why do so many apartments around the world look like IKEA exploded in it? How come the weaver I visited in Lombok is making patterns and cuts for westerners rather than their traditional stuff, and he himself was just wearing basic tshirts? How come the clothing store across from the spot I stayed at in south Goa was selling Jack Daniel’s t-shirts rather than traditional crafts? How come every gen z person is wearing what I wore in middle and high school? It’s not like SHEIN is making new niche styles for people.

“Better matching to careers” Tell that to the young men in Algiers that asked us for directions to any consulate that would maybe help them get a work visa to leave since there’s no work. Or any of the migrants getting on dangerous boats to cross the Mediterranean to do whatever work they can find. Every cousin of mine that can leave has left. There are plenty of geniuses sitting around without many options just because of where they were born, we don’t need more population to get more geniuses if we’re not even working with what we’ve got.

I’ll give him the niche markets one, though that’s more a function of communication via the Internet than it is about population numbers go up.

I don’t know, it’s hard to take a think piece like this seriously. It just reeks of privileged guy in tech that lives in a major metropolitan region of the US that hasn’t really experienced much of the world outside that niche. Living in a luxury Airbnb in Canggu doesn’t count. Happy to be wrong though.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#408

Post by thwarted » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 7:40 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #174

vunderba wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

producing geniuses is not a billion dollar industry

The concept of producing a specific kind of human being an industry or not is like something out of "A Brave New World".

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#409

Post by nec4b » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

defrost wrote: post #236

nec4b wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they rely on billions of other people to do other things, so they can specialize in mining.

Australia in general, and my specific mining state in particular, over produces food - again with a small population, again with big industrial scale machines. The thing about technology is it allows fewer people to achieve far more .. including build and maintain more technology per capita.

>> Australia in general, and my specific mining state in particular, over produces food - again with a small population, again with big industrial scale machines.

Great, and what about everything else on this world you need. Do you also build computers and network equipment to access hacker news? The problem with technology is that it requires specialized knowledge which in turn requires people who specialize in it. There is a good reason why small disconnected communities stay the way they are and do not advance.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#410

Post by nec4b » Sun, Feb 25, 2024, 7:57 PM UTC

defrost wrote: post #160

nec4b wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the automation would not increase if population would fall, because there would be less demand for iron ore. Your machines would rust away and the knowledge to make them would get lost. We are not living in Star trek utopia where with a push of a button a machine makes whatever you want. Less people means less specialization, less creativity and less activity.

Even if the population suddenly stabilised overnight mining automation would continue to increase in order to meet the rising per capita demand from global population. It's already rising to meet the transition from fossil fuel energy to other sources. We are living in a world where 60+ year olds like myself increased per capita throughput in exploration, extraction, processing and production. Much of this creative a…

None of what you said would be possible with a dwindling population. We do not live in a Star trek utopia where at press of a button every wish is synthesized by a machine. More people can simply get more done.

There is a good reason why most of the stuff, new discoveries and technologies come from big countries and not from small ones.

Even rich countries per capita with small population size do not build huge infrastructure projects, do not send stuff and people in space, do not have sophisticated armies,...