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The Population Bust

foreignaffairs.com

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Re: The Population Bust

#171

Post by pdonis »

adverbly wrote: post #147
pdonis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Relying on a larger and larger population to keep supporting endless growth The article talks about "growth" as though it has to be absolute growth, but it doesn't; it only needs to be per capita growth. If the population is shrinking, absolute growth can be negative but per capita growth can still be positive (all that's necessary is that the rate of absolute decline of the economy is less than the rate of decline…

Per capital growth is also not sufficient. Such a metric could easily be achieved by slowly reducing the population to 1. I might propose some analog of total output minus population growth as a better metric.

> Per capital growth is also not sufficient. Such a metric could easily be achieved by slowly reducing the population to 1

Only if the 1 person can continue to increase their productivity with nobody else to trade with, which is absurd. Increasing productivity comes from specialization and trade.

Re: The Population Bust

#172

Post by dumbfoundded »

ryacko wrote: post #170
dumbfoundded wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think piracy is highly likely without a strong unified (not necessarily American) naval presence. It wouldn't be Somalian pirates. I'd guess it'd look more like the piracy of the 17th and 18th century where state-sponsored individuals create profit and havoc from interference with competing countries. Shipping fragmentation also seems likely without a strong global navy. As you mention, the Petrodollar is dependent…

It requires very little equipment to fight a future war against pirates? Or even disorganized militia groups acting as pirates? The US did more to hamper oil prices by invading Iraq than anything else.

It would require enormous resources to combat pirates. I'd look at the comment above about whales & efficiency as a better explanation than I can provide. Piracy would be more like terrorism than a traditional war. Extremely asymmetric costs & predictability.

As for oil prices, the Iraqi war did disrupt Iraqi oil production for about a year. In 2004, oil production reached pre-war levels and has been growing steadily since.

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/iraq/crude-oil-product...

Re: The Population Bust

#173

Post by dumbfoundded »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #168
dumbfoundded wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder what post AGI society will look like: - Will we become pets? - Will we become extinct? - Will we absorb into the AGI? Maybe the AGI will just disappear and leave human affairs to humans and with some residual presence to ensure we never create a second. I think much more likely than real AGI, we create an "intelligent" computer virus that locks up all networked computing power.

Perhaps humans, with the aid of super powerful computers, can unlock our genome and in turn make us more competitive. There will be some left behind, but humanity will continue on as an partially artificial GMO much like our own creations

In the near term, I agree that genetically modified humans make a ton of sense. In fact, this is already happening.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331330/

Post-AGI, I'm not sure if life as we know it makes sense from a practical perspective. My post AGI assumptions:

- You can fully emulate a brain digitally

- The AGI will do this emulation with less power than our bodies naturally consume

- Any physical interaction with the world will be carried out better with 100% robotics or networked bodies genetically modified to the point we can no longer consider them independent or human.

I really don't think the AGI will have any inherent practical use of keeping humans around in any form. The real question is what will the AGI want to do? It will literally be a god with no limits we are capable of understanding. What will this god want to do?

Re: The Population Bust

#174

Post by WalterBright »

_0ffh wrote: post #151
WalterBright wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the enslavement of women as a means of replenishment for your armies What society has ever done that?

Every society that denies women independence from men. I agree this is a sliding scale, but near the extreme end is this staple: Girls belong to the parents until such time as they are married off to a husband, who is then in effect their new owner. I take the liberty to call this slavery.

I was talking about forcing women into the army.

Re: The Population Bust

#175

Post by RyanAF7 »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #159
RyanAF7 wrote: post #73

[flagged]

Cows have increased at the same time as humans, yet all of agriculture only produces 9% of greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The idea that humans breathing produces enough carbon to affect climate change seems more like something you settled on in search of a scornfully aloof position to take, than an interest in verifiable facts. Know-it-all superiority is a ki…

"The idea that humans breathing produces enough carbon to affect climate change seems..."

That's because that's not the idea. You don't even understand the argument. What you linked adds zero value to your argument, and the cows/agriculture bit only supports mine.

Do you write down and reason out what you're saying or just type as the ego-filtered justifications come to you?

Re: The Population Bust

#176

Post by philwelch »

toasterlovin wrote: post #123
philwelch wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also consider that it’s hard to experimentally separate cultural and genetic influences because most children are raised and hence inculturated by at least one of their genetic parents.

There are natural occurring experiments which overcome this called twins. Studies of twins are what’s usually involved in figuring out the genetic component of a characteristic or behavior.

Specifically twins separated at birth. Do you know of any twin studies on fertility in particular?

Re: The Population Bust

#177

Post by Noumenon72 »

RyanAF7 wrote: post #175
Noumenon72 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cows have increased at the same time as humans, yet all of agriculture only produces 9% of greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The idea that humans breathing produces enough carbon to affect climate change seems more like something you settled on in search of a scornfully aloof position to take, than an interest in verifiable facts. Know-it-all superiority is a ki…

"The idea that humans breathing produces enough carbon to affect climate change seems..." That's because that's not the idea. You don't even understand the argument. What you linked adds zero value to your argument, and the cows/agriculture bit only supports mine. Do you write down and reason out what you're saying or just type as the ego-filtered justifications come to you?

I'm sure my links aren't going to be relevant if I've misunderstood your argument so badly!

"Now, 150 years after the end of the Little Ice Age and with an extra 6.3 billion people breathing in air, absorbing oxygen, and exhaling carbon, the temperatures and PPM of Carbon are on the rise."

If the exhaling carbon is not significantly affecting the PPM of carbon, wouldn't you have written

"Now, 150 years after the end of the Little Ice Age, the temperatures and PPM of Carbon are on the rise."

What argument did you intend to make if not "6.3 billion people exhaling carbon is contributing to climate change"?

Re: The Population Bust

#178

Post by _0ffh »

WalterBright wrote: post #174
_0ffh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every society that denies women independence from men. I agree this is a sliding scale, but near the extreme end is this staple: Girls belong to the parents until such time as they are married off to a husband, who is then in effect their new owner. I take the liberty to call this slavery.

I was talking about forcing women into the army.

Oh my, that's what you thought I meant with "the enslavement of women as a means of replenishment for your armies"?

I fear that was a misunderstanding, good sir. I didn't mean that women were ever press ganged into the army, but into producing the next generation of recruits. Frankly, I actually lold when I got that just now! =)

Re: The Population Bust

#179

Post by RyanAF7 »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #177
RyanAF7 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The idea that humans breathing produces enough carbon to affect climate change seems..." That's because that's not the idea. You don't even understand the argument. What you linked adds zero value to your argument, and the cows/agriculture bit only supports mine. Do you write down and reason out what you're saying or just type as the ego-filtered justifications come to you?

I'm sure my links aren't going to be relevant if I've misunderstood your argument so badly! "Now, 150 years after the end of the Little Ice Age and with an extra 6.3 billion people breathing in air, absorbing oxygen, and exhaling carbon, the temperatures and PPM of Carbon are on the rise." If the exhaling carbon is not significantly affecting the PPM of carbon, wouldn't you have written "Now, 150 years after the end…

You focused on the wrong thing. It's not about exhaling carbon, or as you originally stated, "producing" CO2. It's about the absorption of Oxygen.

Consider a popular idea, that planting 1 trillion trees to scrub carbon through transpiration, I assume you're familiar with it, is given real credence as a solition to heterogenic climate change then why are you so quick to dismiss the notion that humans doing the exact same thing by breathing isn't an aspect of the problem of increasing CO2 PPM?

My argument, was if the article is all about human population booms ending and thus with it Capitalism, and the author still only correlates economic activity to increasing climate danger then its irresponsible and uninformed. Undermining the entire premise of the article.

Re: The Population Bust

#180

Post by philwelch »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #121
philwelch wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s actually not true. The Baumol cost disease means that people who are not actually more productive in their current roles (eg orchestral clarinetists) still make more money because of productivity growth elsewhere. You couldn’t possibly pay an orchestral clarinetist as much today as you did in 1800 because they’d just quit and do literally anything else for a living. You have to pay them more.

On a scale from 1800 to now, we are all better off. But if you look at the past 20 years in the us, we are clearly not benefiting all of society. Arguing that the avg clarinetist is slightly better off today compared to 1970 doesn't account for the fact that many many other people haven't had an increase, but they've had a decrease in their standard of living.

I find this claim rather incredible, if only because of the set of things that hadn’t even been invented in 1970, which nonetheless everybody seems to have today.
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