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Selfish reasons to want more humans

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Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#121

Post by Animats »

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.)

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, what employers wanted was physical robustness and reliability. There was a period when intelligence was prized, probably beginning post-WWII. That may be over.

Amazon's fulfillment operations represent today's corporate ideal - "Machines should think, people should work." They want physical robustness and reliability in their employees. Not original thinking.

[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/2024/02/09/few-st...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-18/is-colleg...

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#122

Post by healsdata »

adastra22 wrote: post #106
totetsu wrote: post #2

This could easily all be arguments for why you personally should want a more equitable world where we don’t have a Third world full of unhappiness and wasted tallent.

Billions have been lifted out of poverty in China and India alone. Africa is next. The problem is not too many people. If anything, people who think there are too many people are a problem.

The combined population of those countries is 2.8 billion. For your assertion to be true, 71% of those countries would have had to have been in poverty in the recent past and now are not.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#123

Post by Jensson »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #74
jewelry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

intelligence is a lottery at birth, assuming the education system is good enough at identify talents of all kind. and with the world especially Asian countries better at this, I think we do need more human to maintain the current talents pool.

It is not. There is a part of genetics, like most things, but if you look at past geniuses, there is a common pattern, wealthy enough families able to afford tutors. Tutoring is what makes geniuses, not lottery.

Lots of people get tutored without becoming geniuses, hence tutoring isn't enough to make geniuses. Also many geniuses didn't have tutoring, they need wealthy enough families to afford public school which used to be a high bar but today most people gets it even if you include poor countries.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#124

Post by vunderba »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #74
jewelry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

intelligence is a lottery at birth, assuming the education system is good enough at identify talents of all kind. and with the world especially Asian countries better at this, I think we do need more human to maintain the current talents pool.

It is not. There is a part of genetics, like most things, but if you look at past geniuses, there is a common pattern, wealthy enough families able to afford tutors. Tutoring is what makes geniuses, not lottery.

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 tutoring could produce geniuses (160 IQ) we would have a billion dollar industry around it instead of snake oil companies like Luminosity.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#125

Post by chaostheory »

kelnos wrote: post #81
RheingoldRiver wrote: post #12

> and there are basically no major examples of catastrophic resource shortages in the industrial age is this really true? there were tons of supply-line problems during covid for example I feel like to make this point you would have to define "catastrophic" and "resource" and "shortage" extremely narrowly.

I don't think something like what happened due to COVID is related to that. That was a matter of poor logistics, not of scarcity of resources. I believe the author is talking about things like "we need lots of mineral foobar to sustain us, and at our current population growth, we'll run out in five years!" ---> "oh neat, we can substitute mineral barbaz, plus a little cheap processing, and we have enough to last us t…

> Oil and natural gas reserves that were not feasible to pump out of the ground 50 years ago are now being harvested.

This is a bad example. We are doing this because we are desperate. The easy and cheap to access oil sources are nearly gone. What we have left is expensive to reach and process oil. Peak oil is still an issue as well as Peak [insert natural resource]. Our natural resources like fresh water are finite.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#126

Post by Jensson »

healsdata wrote: post #122
adastra22 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions have been lifted out of poverty in China and India alone. Africa is next. The problem is not too many people. If anything, people who think there are too many people are a problem.

The combined population of those countries is 2.8 billion. For your assertion to be true, 71% of those countries would have had to have been in poverty in the recent past and now are not.

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.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#127

Post by hilbert42 »

"One argument for a larger population is based on utilitarianism, specifically the version of it that says that what is good is the sum total of happiness across all humans."

Utilitarianism doesn't say that 'good is the sum total of happiness across all humans' but rather it says it's 'the greatest good for the greatest number', which is substantially different, so this is a distortion of the facts. I would refer the author to the works of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill especially his work Utilitarianism.

"If each additional life adds to the cosmic scoreboard of goodness, then it’s obviously better to have more people (unless they are so miserable that their lives are literally not worth living)."

I can't be bothered to debate population argument in detail again as it always polarizes and ends up in unresolved arguments—except to say the author doesn't seem to have enough understanding about the implications of exponential growth.

The facts are clear even to Blind Freddy that the resources and environmental problems presently being experienced are caused by excessive demands on the planet's resources.

Of course the elephant in the room is the world's population but any serious discussion about that is verboten in the public discourse.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#128

Post by yareal »

These all have the same fundamental error -- the presumption that progress and faster progress is desirable. With today's luxuries but half the people, everyone could live pretty well, and have meaningful work. Genuinely, if we focused less on driving progress at all costs and focused more on "well being for all", we wouldn't even need to reduce the population. We have the capacity to provide a safe, comfortable, low effort society for everyone today. We just choose not to arrange ourselves to pursue it.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#129

Post by yareal »

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.

Sure. And neither is a non human centric view. However, both seem unreasonable to the other.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#130

Post by chaostheory »

wonderwonder wrote: post #49
aborsy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rate of the growth can be reduced. After a generation or two, so does the total size.

Who gets to decide who can reproduce and who cant?

The choice has already been made long ago. The more industrialized the country, the less fertile males of that country become. Only small parts of Africa have been immune to this phenomenon. I believe we started seeing it in action starting in the 1950s

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20231013/Experts-call-for-...

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