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Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

maartenboudry.be

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Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#121

Post by Rochus »

RugnirViking wrote: post #117
Rochus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more people means more progress Is that really the case? Isn't it more a matter of experience that some countries or even continents show impressive population growth and at the same time are pretty resistant to progress? Isn't it rather the case that even in the so-called developed countries only a small part of the population is responsible for technological progress? And do the exceptional geniuses (such as Eins…

You clearly missed the parents sarcasm

How do you know it's sarcasm?

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#122

Post by thriftwy »

defrost wrote: post #120
thriftwy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that population will stabilize despite fertility falling univerasally all around the globe (with tiny but highly unpleasant exceptions). The economic issues are only projected to get worse. There are no known mechanisms for fertility to rebound. Yet you assume with certainty that the trend will reverse. Great to be you.

> You assume that population will stabilize Correct. This is seen in all manner of real world dynamic systems with constraint pressures. "Stabilize" in this context includes "bounces up and down between a few too many and a few too little". Now you're getting it. > There are no known mechanisms for fertility to rebound. Now you're being silly and all doom and gloom. > Yet you assume with certainty that the trend will…

A lot of dynamic systems go off the rails and destruct, though.

We haven't seen any population rebounds yet. Not even close.

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#123

Post by defrost »

thriftwy wrote: post #122
defrost wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You assume that population will stabilize Correct. This is seen in all manner of real world dynamic systems with constraint pressures. "Stabilize" in this context includes "bounces up and down between a few too many and a few too little". Now you're getting it. > There are no known mechanisms for fertility to rebound. Now you're being silly and all doom and gloom. > Yet you assume with certainty that the trend will…

A lot of dynamic systems go off the rails and destruct, though. We haven't seen any population rebounds yet. Not even close.

> "A lot" ..

The solar system is still spinning, perhaps you might widen your outlook and quantify.

The guide from Applied Mathematics is the only "numbers" that matter long term are -1, 0, 1, sin, and infinity. Systems either dwindle, explode, stabilise, invert, or oscillate ... and everything around us in the universe is part of some system or another.

> We haven't seen any population rebounds yet.

One example (in humans)

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep04541

Another example of a type of constriction with evidence that this likely occured in human population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

Many many examples in nature (eg: cyclic boom | bust of kangaroo populations).

Have you considered looking about before uttering readily falsifiable platitudes?

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#124

Post by linehedonist »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #108
ang_cire wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that when someone says "can't afford" what they really mean is "I'd rather spend that money on something else". No, what many of us mean is that "We can't afford to give a child the kind of support and resources and opportunities that a responsible parent knows it is their job to provide." Many of us grew up poor, and saw people around us who didn't make it out. Many of them are still poor bordering on dest…

> We can't afford to give a child the kind of support and resources and opportunities that a responsible parent knows it is their job to provide. that's a lot of subjective terminology delivered as absolute truth. If I disagree with you on the amount of resources, let's say I think it's 10% of what you think, does that make me an irresponsible parent? If I double the resource expenditure for marginal improvement, doe…

Who cares for your kids while you’re working? Who pays that person?

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#125

Post by linehedonist »

ncclporterror wrote: post #32

Birth rate is not a law of nature that can be naively extrapolated. Increased pace of technological development implies an increased pace of societal changes, which will impact birth rate. Predicting birth rate for 2060 from today might be roughly equivalent to someone in 1850 trying to extrapolate birth rate to 1950. They would have been completely wrong because there was no way they could predict the level of devel…

2060 is 36 years from now, not 100. People having kids in 2060 are alive today or will be born in the next 20 years. Not crazy to make predictions about those people.

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#126

Post by friend_and_foe »

linehedonist wrote: post #124
friend_and_foe wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't afford to give a child the kind of support and resources and opportunities that a responsible parent knows it is their job to provide. that's a lot of subjective terminology delivered as absolute truth. If I disagree with you on the amount of resources, let's say I think it's 10% of what you think, does that make me an irresponsible parent? If I double the resource expenditure for marginal improvement, doe…

Who cares for your kids while you’re working? Who pays that person?

I do. I tailor my life around my family, not my work. I have a wife who does the same. You just have to find a way to not be a cog in someone else's machine while still delivering value to others. Don't work for or with people who expect family hostile arrangements or you won't have a family. You will belong to someone who doesn't care about you instead of belonging to yourself and those you love.

Half the people in this thread make six figures a year, they can't afford to care for their family on a single income? What kind of lifestyle are they living? I make less than them, but I also work a lot less, and I do just fine.

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#127

Post by dang »

jakeogh wrote: post #83
dang wrote: post #34

Related ongoing thread: Selfish reasons to want more humans - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39497686 - Feb 2024 (214 comments)

That is not even remotely the title of the article!

It's a representative subhead. Those are a legit alt when the article's main title is baity. (Lots of past examples: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

People often think that HN insists on using the original title but that's only half of the rule: ""Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - note that word 'unless'.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#128

Post by RugnirViking »

Rochus wrote: post #121
RugnirViking wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly missed the parents sarcasm

How do you know it's sarcasm?

using intentionally reductive and simplistic reasoning, like " line goes up ", "which means we will all live in a utopia" as well as taking modern events and changing the details to make a ridiculous position "conduct a huge trek to reach countries like uhh India, China and so on and so forth" (people are in fact not in huge numbers immigrating to those countries, instead are going to the west)

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#129

Post by jakeogh »

dang wrote: post #127
jakeogh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not even remotely the title of the article!

It's a representative subhead. Those are a legit alt when the article's main title is baity. (Lots of past examples: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ) People often think that HN insists on using the original title but that's only half of the rule: "" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " - note that word 'unless'. https://news.ycombin…

Right, so when it jives with moderator opinion, its fine to reverse the meaning. "don't editorialize"

Re: Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

#130

Post by thriftwy »

defrost wrote: post #123
thriftwy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of dynamic systems go off the rails and destruct, though. We haven't seen any population rebounds yet. Not even close.

> "A lot" .. The solar system is still spinning, perhaps you might widen your outlook and quantify. The guide from Applied Mathematics is the only "numbers" that matter long term are -1, 0, 1, sin, and infinity. Systems either dwindle, explode, stabilise, invert, or oscillate ... and everything around us in the universe is part of some system or another. > We haven't seen any population rebounds yet. One example (in…

What if it's "dwindle" or "oscillate not far from zero" for humanity?
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