Overpopulation Is Not the Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#51

Post by grannyg00se » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:46 PM UTC

"Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? "

This entire argument is based on the idea that we should be able to continually expand carrying capacity by our inventiveness. Stating for example increased farming yield with technology.

Not only is there a likely limit to our ability to squeeze more and more out of finite resources, but the author completely ignores the subtle long term damage that our technology creates. Our current food production systems are highly toxic to the environment and are a major source of CO2 output. So while we increased food carrying capacity we did so by reducing long term habitability of the planet.

Personally, I'd like to see populatin growth reduced by a global increase in quality of live. But not western culture consumption obsessed quality of life. That would need to change. As would the growth based financial system. Those two go hand in hand so this could all gradually happen at the same time. In theory.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#52

Post by hannibal5 » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:50 PM UTC

seclorum wrote: post #23

hannibal5 wrote: post #17

The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. Currently world produces enough food for everyone. Then why do we have 700 - 800 million malnourished people, even more people facing food insecurity, why we are destroying farmland and why are we wasting the primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K). Overpopulation i…

>The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case. 200,000 years of evidence suggests that, in spite of our superstitions, we humans are capable of managing our resources and replenishing the world from which we derive our sustenance. Are you sure yo…

Yes. I'm 100% sure. If you don't believe me go and look at how we are capable of managing our resources in Sahelin region.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#53

Post by cnorgate » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:50 PM UTC

bayesianhorse wrote: post #3

Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion. Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases. Or they caution the expansion of health services in Africa "because it would make the problems worse".

The reality is that the best way to control population expansion is by bringing good healthcare to a region. People in the third world have huge families for a number of reasons - a few of them include the reality that:

1) Many children will die young, so in order to have at least a few that survive they need to have a large number of them

2) They have no form of birth control available available to them, so even if they wanted to they could not control the population

To go along with this, in societies that lack a social safety net / old age pensions, your children are your retirement fund, so you tend to have many of them.

It's a multi-faceted problem, but there are humane, concrete solutions that don't involve acts of god.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#54

Post by foobarbazqux » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:52 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #42

foobarbazqux wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By contrast, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in March 1932, it made national headlines for years -- years -- until the perpetrator was apprehended, tried, and executed in 1936. It's the story of one family, one child, one murder. Today that story wouldn't be able to compete with the latest mass murder account. "Oh, Bashar Assad has killed 1,500 people in a nerve gas attack. Oh, well, they're not anyone I know…

> it doesn't mean that there needs to be some Malthusian die-off localized in space and time ... Yes, that's true, but that isn't an argument that it won't happen, only that it's needn't happen. Modern history is increasingly an account of population control by mass death. > nor does it need to involve people going crazy. Certainly not, and as time passes, more and more crazy behavior is rationalized as a creative ad…

> Modern history is increasingly an account of population control by mass death.

I get that this is your claim, but I don't understand your argument that it's increasing when compared to WW1 and WW2.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#55

Post by gd1 » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:52 PM UTC

grannyg00se wrote: post #51

"Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? " This entire argument is based on the idea that we should be able to continually expand carrying capacity by our inventiveness. Stating for example increased farming yield with technology. Not only is there a likely limit to our ability to squeeze more and more out of finite resources, but the author completely ignores the subtle long term damage…

In what possible way can freeing fossilized carbon back (where it came from) into the carbon cycle "reduce long term habitability of the planet"?. It may make it awkward for some low lying cities in the short term, but long term it guarantees a warmer, moister, more bountiful planet if anything.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#56

Post by lutusp » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:52 PM UTC

seclorum wrote: post #19

lutusp wrote: post #4

This is the most purblind, misguided editorial opinion I have read in weeks. It repeats an old saw often repeated by people who don't understand the Logistic function and its role is describing biological systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function The Logistic function concisely describes the behavior of biological systems that don't have any control over their numbers, as humans most certainly do not. A…

Fixed ideas being challenged is exactly what science - not superstition - is all about. The point of the article is we wouldn't be here today at all if we hadn't been able to manage our resources. The science demonstrates this, over and over: land re-use is the key to it. The same area of land, supporting increasingly larger and larger populations, demonstrates that in fact we can manage our population growth, and ha…

> Fixed ideas being challenged is exactly what science - not superstition - is all about.

Science isn't a political movement. Science can produce very reliable results if conducted efficiently, but it cannot get people to listen. That's the divide between science and politics.

> The same area of land, supporting increasingly larger and larger populations, demonstrates that in fact we can manage our population growth ...

Nonsense. It shows how biological colonies adopt increasingly clever ways to squeeze more sustenance out of the environment. All such efforts eventually collide with the real carrying capacity of the environment, a fact that we ignore at our peril.

> But what does your superstition have to do with this?

Biology is science, not superstition. The logistic function is science, not superstition. All these scientific results show the peril of ignoring the role of environment in survival.

> ... but the archeological record demonstrates that we are capable, as a species of dealing with this.

It does nothing of the kind. The archaeological record shows any number of examples of species being wiped out by changes in their environments. In one case, an environmental change wiped out 90% of all species on earth. Apparently those species weren't aware of your blithe dismissal of the role of environment in the equation of life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/16/science/meteorite-that-kil...

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#57

Post by glenra » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:52 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #4

This is the most purblind, misguided editorial opinion I have read in weeks. It repeats an old saw often repeated by people who don't understand the Logistic function and its role is describing biological systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function The Logistic function concisely describes the behavior of biological systems that don't have any control over their numbers, as humans most certainly do not. A…

The rate of both mass killings and individual killings is WAY down from what it's been historically. One interesting thing about news coverage is it covers NEWS - stuff that is new or that happens rarely. Once you've seen something happen a thousand times before, it stops being news. Auto accidents, being common, don't get national news coverage. High-profile kidnappings and large-bodycount school shootings, being much more rare, do.

The fact that news has this dynamic means you can't take the amount of news coverage as an indication of how serious or common a problem is. We DO do that due to a cognitive error called "availability bias", but if anything, the reverse strategy would be more sensible.

In short: if you see a threat in the newspapers, you should assume it's news because it happens so rarely that it isn't worth your worrying about anymore (if it ever was).

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#58

Post by pdonis » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:53 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #18

bayesianhorse wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logistic model especially assumes that the carrying capacity is constant. Which it's not, for humanity.

> The logistic model especially assumes that the carrying capacity is constant. Yes, but the model easily accommodates scenarios in which more and more sustenance is squeezed out of the environment, which is the primary argument of the deniers. Finally, though, because big loaves of bread don't give birth to little rug-rat loaves of bread, the Logistic function predicts the same outcome -- mass birth balanced by mass…

I'm not saying there's a solution to this problem -- there isn't

It seems to me that you actually agree with the article's claim that the primary problem is social. You just don't agree with the article's claim that the problem can be solved; basically you don't think humans will be able to come to grips with the social changes that would be required to manage ourselves as a species responsibly. Is that a fair statement of your position?

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#59

Post by fedvasu » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:53 PM UTC

I think we are seeing evolution and natural selection in action right in front of our eyes here. Nature produces stupid people like this are in influential position and most of our species has this mentality and we will reach a point where it is truly unsustainable and nature has it's way in form mass extinction events, even if we survive that, our species is way more violent and a civil/traditional war will obliterate most of humanity.

Re: Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

#60

Post by lutusp » Sat, Sep 14, 2013, 3:55 PM UTC

fiter wrote: post #32

seclorum wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed ideas being challenged is exactly what science - not superstition - is all about. The point of the article is we wouldn't be here today at all if we hadn't been able to manage our resources. The science demonstrates this, over and over: land re-use is the key to it. The same area of land, supporting increasingly larger and larger populations, demonstrates that in fact we can manage our population growth, and ha…

I think that neither of the historical trend models are going to be realistic except by chance. Past performance doesn't guarantee future returns. Basically, I'm not sure that the past situations and solutions will be the same as the future situation and non-/solutions. Also, this misses a big part of what's important to me. The standard of living should also be considered. Given that we can support 9 billion people,…

> I'm not sure that the past situations and solutions will be the same as the future situation and non-/solutions.

The future will be completely different than the past, but in the same way -- consistent with the Logistic function and its description of the relation between species and environment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

There are any number of unpredictable aspects to how events unfold, but physical laws remain the same.