Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Selfish reasons to want more humans

rootsofprogress.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 480 posts

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#311

Post by carlosjobim »

silvestrov wrote: post #186
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…

If "more people" was always better then India and Africa should be much richer than Europe. A lack of people can be an innovation driver: "hiring people is too expensive, so we have to automate everything", i.e. innovation is a must for survival.

Europe is much more densely populated than Africa.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#312

Post by xipho »

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?

Our climate and ecosystems. See any introductory 101 ecology class where you learn all about the trivial ways populations can grow, fluctuate and crash. Disease, access to "energy", reproductive strategy and potential, population demographics, ecosystem stability, all existed with out humans around.

Perhaps the big reason to have fewer humans around is that we inject "chaos" into many of these well understood dynamics, creating instability in them, which does, and will, continue to produce a lot of suffering. Assuming humans (animals) are somehow immune to what the rest of life on this world has to deal with (we can invent our away around these problems) is akin to believing in gods, and perhaps that might not end well.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#313

Post by Libcat99 »

dotancohen wrote: post #305
nerdponx wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if people are starving or otherwise suffering, they probably aren't innovating. We already have plenty of people. We have a lack of people with the means to live comfortably and invent stuff.

Is not necessity the mother of invention?

At some point you also need resources. A lot of the invention necessity + nothing can lead to already exists.

You can "invent" a lever or pulley out of random objects that you already have. It may make your task easier, but it won't be world changing.

Necessity (read, pending starvation) may lead to a desperate search for Other People's Money to bring a concept to fruition, but it's not quite the same thing.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#315

Post by [deleted] »

carlosjobim wrote: post #311
silvestrov wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "more people" was always better then India and Africa should be much richer than Europe. A lack of people can be an innovation driver: "hiring people is too expensive, so we have to automate everything", i.e. innovation is a must for survival.

Europe is much more densely populated than Africa.

[deleted]

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#316

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

dash2 wrote: post #245
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…

> no weight at all is given to the downsides of truly challenging levels of resource extraction currently at play to meet the high consumption demands of a small proportion of the large population we already have on the planet. Those arguments are addressed in the second paragraph: > Historically, as we run out of a resource (whale oil, elephant tusks, seabird guano), we transition to a new technology based on a more…

Also no mention of the outlier downsides. More research geniuses also means more psychopaths and rapists. The question is whether one's positives outweigh the other's negatives.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#317

Post by jaysonelliot »

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 world economy. But the unintended consequences were devastating. Resource extraction has been catastrophic, of course, as has the destruction of natural habitats that come from population explosion, the accelerated extinction of animals, and the potentially apocalyptic global warming that has resulted both directly and indirectly.

Demographers predict a population collapse (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/18/opinion/human...) that could see the world drop under 2 billion again, but without help, it will probably come too late to save the planet as we know it now. We should be doing everything possible to discourage birthrates and get the only habitable planet in our known universe back to a sustainable equilibrium.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#318

Post by giantg2 »

So the author mentions a sustainable population level but does absolutely no research into what level is sustainable, nor talk about it at all in their own argument.

And of course we see no mention of obvious counterpoints. More geniuses, ok. But how about more psychopaths? Not just from a pure numbers perspective, but higher psychopathology rates correlate with higher living densities, which are sure to increase when increasing the population significantly.

Arguments about more people meaning more cuisine need much greater support. It seems much of the culinary development flourished because of isolation first followed by globalization. What we've seen more recently seems to be less new styles or dishes and more homogenization of existing styles. Much of the exposure to other cuisines is actually from negatives like war and famine, both from occupation, refugees, and warriors returning home with newly acquired tastes. And of course many of these conflicts were around scarcity of resources especially during transitional times when switching from one resource/tech to another.

Like they say in the market, past returns are not indicicators of future returns. Blindly relying on benefits of infinite technology growth exceeding the rate of population demands is not a compelling argument.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#319

Post by silverquiet »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #316
dash2 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no weight at all is given to the downsides of truly challenging levels of resource extraction currently at play to meet the high consumption demands of a small proportion of the large population we already have on the planet. Those arguments are addressed in the second paragraph: > Historically, as we run out of a resource (whale oil, elephant tusks, seabird guano), we transition to a new technology based on a more…

Also no mention of the outlier downsides. More research geniuses also means more psychopaths and rapists. The question is whether one's positives outweigh the other's negatives.

What about a genius-psychopath rapist? (Have to be careful of the grammar there because I want to be clear that I mean a rapist who is also a genius and psychopath, not a genius who targets psychopath rapists).

I kid, but a lot of the top Nazis were geniuses by IQ; I don't know that there's any reason to believe that virtue and genius are correlated, which is only one of the reasons I think this whole conversation is a bit goofy. It honestly feels like yet another weirdo billionaire rationalization for why the line must always go up.

Re: Selfish reasons to want more humans

#320

Post by giantg2 »

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…

"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."

Yes, a small tribe couldn't have enslaved large groups to form the majority of the labor base. Societal advances are easy to achieve if you usurp resources from a marginalized group and force them to work on your projects. I would hope that we have learned that's not the right model to pursue.

Post reply on HN