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World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

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Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#81

Post by raverbashing »

aortega wrote: post #53
gonzo41 wrote: post #17

This is fine, it's a small blip. Millenials and Zoomers and some Gen Xers will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down.

>will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down. Why? intuitively it would seem that that less humans will improve the environment, but intuition is often wrong. The planet can sustain much more people, it's essentially empty. More people means more intelligence and more money and power to improve the environment. Remember, most of the environmental damage was done by a very small number o…

> more intelligence and more money and power to improve the environment.

> was done by a very small number of very rich countries

And where do you think the (actionable) "intelligence" and money comes from?

It's not that poorer countries don't have intelligence, but they don't have the resources to put it to good use. One random person in a TED talk gets more attention than the people actually dealing with the issue

"More population" has always meant more misery and more conflict

With less people, each one can go further

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#82

Post by jack_pp »

aortega wrote: post #64
padjo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those cause the least environmental impact For now! They all want the quality of life of the rich nations and understandably so. I really doubt that the world can support 8bn people with the average US standard of living, let alone more. There isn’t enough land to grow feed for all the livestock we’d need for a start!

>I really doubt that the world can support 8bn people with the average US standard of living That's a completely different problem. So basically what you want is to poor people to stay poor. Well, luckily technology improves and with that resource consumption is optimized. But that wont happen if you halve the population because there will be half of the scientists and engineers to do it (and likely, much less than h…

The problem isn't that we want the poor to stay poor but rather that the "rich" utilize resources very inefficiently. By our current definition of rich it is impossible for every human to live like the rich, that would mean automating everything like food production, food delivery, food preparation, construction and all of the associated menial labor which we are a very long way from.

In theory you are right, there is a lot of space to grow the population but in practice most people want to live in big popular cities and chase the dream of being rich which simply isn't sustainable and promotes a lot of waste.

A lot of people as they mature will give up their big city life dreams once they realize the cost / stress / commute isn't worth it unless you're very successful and rich. They move to the city to "make it", survival of the fittest selects some % of people who make it and the rest either cope with distractions / drugs or move to cheaper areas.

So we have a lot of space for many people to live but they won't live in luxury and since human nature is to compare ourselves to others and strive to climb social hierarchies most of the population will just overcrowd the already popular areas to live which is a problem

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#83

Post by randomsearch »

nivenkos wrote: post #73
infofarmer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion There's an even better cognitive bias than this describing your «optimism» about the future, but I fail to find its name.

But we're reaching a point where we're hitting the limits of Physics in many areas. Like it's hard to imagine an even faster passenger aircraft than the Concorde for example.

Don’t think this is the problem.

I think it’s an allocation of resources problem.

Pre 80s a lot of the best and brightest worked in engineering.

Post 80s they went into finance and then tech. The latter a mixed bag - brought us Google maps etc but sadly mostly focused on selling ads.

That’s the risk I see. We either need to change incentives or change culture to get back to a focus on progress / exploration rather than exploitation.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#84

Post by grapeskin »

j245 wrote: post #77
grapeskin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans thought they'd find a fix for their problems before, so nothing to worry about. A lot of those people died because no fix was found in their lifetimes. Nobody fixed the plagues that went around Europe. Nobody fixed the droughts that killed millions. Entire civilizations went extinct because they weren't able to find a fix before a problem caught up with them. A lot of problems won't have a fix within our lifet…

Yet here we are.. having a discussion about whether too many humans are surviving for too long.

And yet here the Aztec aren’t.

Living today doesn’t guarantee living tomorrow.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#85

Post by erklik »

nivenkos wrote: post #73
infofarmer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion There's an even better cognitive bias than this describing your «optimism» about the future, but I fail to find its name.

But we're reaching a point where we're hitting the limits of Physics in many areas. Like it's hard to imagine an even faster passenger aircraft than the Concorde for example.

We don't even have a Concorde though. It's genuinely frustrating to me honestly. I feel like the level of advancement during that time was truly fascinating and it impacted people's life. Today, what do we have? Another iPhone? More faster computers? It's all incremental.

Why can't we fly on a Concorde? (I know why obviously). I guess I am sad to see that tech that truly changed people's lives doesn't happen as much anymore.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#86

Post by infofarmer »

nivenkos wrote: post #73
infofarmer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion There's an even better cognitive bias than this describing your «optimism» about the future, but I fail to find its name.

But we're reaching a point where we're hitting the limits of Physics in many areas. Like it's hard to imagine an even faster passenger aircraft than the Concorde for example.

Aircraft in general were famously predicted to be impossible by multiple credible sources.

https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/air-space-flight-imp...

Does any science claim or even attempt to estimate its own comprehensiveness?

It's all the same bias. We're living in the stone age.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#87

Post by erklik »

jl6 wrote: post #76

Might as well say it: 8 billion is too many, and it’s a good thing that population growth is levelling off. A decline down to ~1 billion would be fine. If we have to change retirement planning, so be it. No other species can grow its population exponentially indefinitely. Population growth in every other species is kept in check by conflict and starvation. We have an opportunity to voluntarily limit our footprint to…

Why? I don't genuinely understand this pessimism. More people means more brains, more intelligence, more energy to achieve things. More people means more Einstiens, Newtons, Da Vincis etc.

I do think our systems need changing. Our society currently incentivizes the smart people into something that's not entirely productive but wishing for less people, hmm, I don't know. I feel like this is the start of history, not the end.

No other species can grow it's population exponentially. True. However, we aren't any other species (that we know of at least). The planet can support far more people, it truly can, and more so, the rest of space awaits. We can spread further and further. Is it really good to wish for a reduction of our species? of the only life we know that can truly observe and appreciate the beauty of creation?

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#88

Post by bojan »

jl6 wrote: post #76

Might as well say it: 8 billion is too many, and it’s a good thing that population growth is levelling off. A decline down to ~1 billion would be fine. If we have to change retirement planning, so be it. No other species can grow its population exponentially indefinitely. Population growth in every other species is kept in check by conflict and starvation. We have an opportunity to voluntarily limit our footprint to…

This makes no sense whatsoever. 8 billion is too many, for what, for whom? Next to 8 billion of us, we also take the luxury of keeping and feeding billions of animals, which is enormously expensive and horrible for the environment.

Let's start first by making sure we only keep and feed animals that we actually need, and then discuss if we are too many. I wonder how many humans this planet can sustain for every cow that is out there.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#89

Post by bigDinosaur »

erklik wrote: post #85
nivenkos wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're reaching a point where we're hitting the limits of Physics in many areas. Like it's hard to imagine an even faster passenger aircraft than the Concorde for example.

We don't even have a Concorde though. It's genuinely frustrating to me honestly. I feel like the level of advancement during that time was truly fascinating and it impacted people's life. Today, what do we have? Another iPhone? More faster computers? It's all incremental. Why can't we fly on a Concorde? (I know why obviously). I guess I am sad to see that tech that truly changed people's lives doesn't happen as much…

We didn't actually regress in terms of supersonic flight though, it just got relegated to specialist uses such as military. The actual advantage of the Concorde specifically was less than imagined - basically: would you prefer 7 hours in business or first class on a slower but vastly more spacious jet, or 3.5 hours on a much more cramped one? The Concorde was very fast but ordinary passenger jets are also quite fast, they're no slouches!

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#90

Post by slavik81 »

xcom86 wrote: post #2

Happy to see the world population growing. Unlike many here I don't believe the world is overpopulated and that we need more people to grow and expand beyond the planet. Located in the U.S. where we could double the population without starting to feel cramped. We can and we should.

Human beings represent 3% of all animals on earth by weight. At this point, 90% of all birds and mammals on Earth are human-raised livestock [1].

There is room on this planet for more humans, but taking it for our own comes at a cost. If we choose to use it for people, then it can't also be wild. So, we have a choice to make about the kind of world we wish to live in.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/al...

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