5 ms·

I really don't think earth is going to be able to support 9 billion people without some sort of dramatic paradigm shift in the way, as a species, we consume thi

I really don't think earth is going to be able to support 9 billion people without some sort of dramatic paradigm shift in the way, as a species, we consume things

WildUtah 10y ago
We're well on our way to 15+ billion without pause on the current UN projections, so hang on for a scary ride.
- erispoe 10y ago
  Imagine what 15 billion brains can do.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    The number of clever high-IQ people and engineers will continue falling. It's only the nations and cultures that don't value learning and invention that are expanding.
    - erispoe 10y ago
      Care to elaborate on that?
      - WildUtah 10y ago
        https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/our-dumb-world/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/our-dumb-world/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
  - crpatino 10y ago
    Assume an infinite number of brains. Is it still possible to figure out a way to break the Laws of Nature? Yes or no, please.
    - erispoe 10y ago
      What laws of nature? Gravity?
      - crpatino 10y ago
        Sure, why not. Just please note, aeronautics does not defy gravity. It makes use of knowledge in mechanics of fluids to produce vouyancy, which ultimately is a manifestation of gravity. To be more clear, infinite knowledge does not allow you achieve any arbitrary goal you care to imagine. It informs you on what means can be used to achieve the subset of goals that are feasible to begin with. Throwing arbitrarily large amounts of computing power to the same problem may as well result in a flood of responses: "No. Nice idea, but it has been tried before N times, last time at T. It never worked because of X, Y, and Z"; "No. Nice idea, but it has been tried before N+1..."
davidiach 10y ago
9 billion is 1.6 billion more people than we have today. What dramatic paradigm shift do we need for the earth to be able to support such a modest increase?
- crpatino 10y ago
  It would be a "modest increase" if we had spare carrying capacity. Instead, what we have now is a situation that is going from bad to worse, but since the crisis is unfolding in slow motion, most people do not recognize it as such; after all, most people alive today have either never seen what a good situation looks like, or where too young to grasp the meaning of the changes they observed back then. The (human) carrying capacity of Earth was estimated to be around 2 billion, which was surpased sometime in the late 1920's. Contrary to other comments here, that does not mean that after you hit population 2,000,000,0001 we all die (we clearly did not). Instead, what it means is that given the technological level we had at that time, we'd consume renewable resourses faster than they can renew themselves, and we'd also produce waste faster than the environment can degrade it. Otherwise, more than 2B people would cause environmental degradation, which would itself reduce the carrying capacity in the long term. Please note this definition is tied with humans technological level. It is not set in stone, since we have some degree of control over our impact in the environment, and we have the ability to use the same resources in a more efficient way. The big tragedy of 20th century is that this fact was not recognized but for a handful of theorists, and therefore it was not a political and economic goal to explicitly manage the carrying capacity of Earth. As of 2016, the situation is still the same. By example, we gained a bunch of technologies that allows us to do the same stuff more efficiently. Given explicit economic incentives, we might have... maybe doubled our carrying capacity (CC=4B). Unfortunatelly, because this was not a goal itself, we engaged in a buch of economic practices that negated much of this benefits, so if we are generous these might have been reduced by half (e.g. CC=3B). Also given that population growth was not arrested back in the 1970's, but only slowed down, the carrying capacity has not improved at all (CC=2B). Currently, environmental degradation is going in overdrive. We have lost a lot of time, and the resources we need to make an orderly transition are already commited to keep the system going. Population will go down, one way or the other. I don't believe in a single sharp die off many apocalyptic thinkers profetize, but adding and extra 1.6B mouths to feed will make the downward tendency of the curve more steeper than it needs to be.
erispoe 10y ago
Medieval economy relied heavily on wood consumption, in a very unsustainable way. Forests were cut down way faster than they could renew and, if no technological change happened, they would have hit a wall pretty violently. But they didn't. Instead, people and societies adapted. The lesson of that is that you cannot extrapolate our current technology and the resources we consume in the future and assume that everything will stay the same. It's like saying medieval societies should have stopped growing so they could sustain on the wood they cut down.
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  >The lesson of that is that you cannot extrapolate our current technology and the resources we consume in the future and assume that everything will stay the same. I am reminded of an old joke: "A man jumped from the 10th story and is falling to the ground. A woman at the 4th floor sees him from her window and asks, 'Hey, how's it going?'. The man replies 'So far, so good.'" Yes, technology has saved us in the past. Given that new discoveries are increasingly harder and more expensive to achieve, will technology continue to do so in the future...?

I really don't think earth is going to be able to support 9 billion people without some sort of dramatic paradigm shift in the way, as a species, we consume things

WildUtah 10y ago

We're well on our way to 15+ billion without pause on the current UN projections, so hang on for a scary ride.

erispoe 10y ago
Imagine what 15 billion brains can do.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  The number of clever high-IQ people and engineers will continue falling. It's only the nations and cultures that don't value learning and invention that are expanding.
  - erispoe 10y ago
    Care to elaborate on that?
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/our-dumb-world/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/our-dumb-world/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
- crpatino 10y ago
  Assume an infinite number of brains. Is it still possible to figure out a way to break the Laws of Nature? Yes or no, please.
  - erispoe 10y ago
    What laws of nature? Gravity?
    - crpatino 10y ago
      Sure, why not. Just please note, aeronautics does not defy gravity. It makes use of knowledge in mechanics of fluids to produce vouyancy, which ultimately is a manifestation of gravity. To be more clear, infinite knowledge does not allow you achieve any arbitrary goal you care to imagine. It informs you on what means can be used to achieve the subset of goals that are feasible to begin with. Throwing arbitrarily large amounts of computing power to the same problem may as well result in a flood of responses: "No. Nice idea, but it has been tried before N times, last time at T. It never worked because of X, Y, and Z"; "No. Nice idea, but it has been tried before N+1..."

davidiach 10y ago

9 billion is 1.6 billion more people than we have today. What dramatic paradigm shift do we need for the earth to be able to support such a modest increase?

crpatino 10y ago
It would be a "modest increase" if we had spare carrying capacity. Instead, what we have now is a situation that is going from bad to worse, but since the crisis is unfolding in slow motion, most people do not recognize it as such; after all, most people alive today have either never seen what a good situation looks like, or where too young to grasp the meaning of the changes they observed back then. The (human) carrying capacity of Earth was estimated to be around 2 billion, which was surpased sometime in the late 1920's. Contrary to other comments here, that does not mean that after you hit population 2,000,000,0001 we all die (we clearly did not). Instead, what it means is that given the technological level we had at that time, we'd consume renewable resourses faster than they can renew themselves, and we'd also produce waste faster than the environment can degrade it. Otherwise, more than 2B people would cause environmental degradation, which would itself reduce the carrying capacity in the long term. Please note this definition is tied with humans technological level. It is not set in stone, since we have some degree of control over our impact in the environment, and we have the ability to use the same resources in a more efficient way. The big tragedy of 20th century is that this fact was not recognized but for a handful of theorists, and therefore it was not a political and economic goal to explicitly manage the carrying capacity of Earth. As of 2016, the situation is still the same. By example, we gained a bunch of technologies that allows us to do the same stuff more efficiently. Given explicit economic incentives, we might have... maybe doubled our carrying capacity (CC=4B). Unfortunatelly, because this was not a goal itself, we engaged in a buch of economic practices that negated much of this benefits, so if we are generous these might have been reduced by half (e.g. CC=3B). Also given that population growth was not arrested back in the 1970's, but only slowed down, the carrying capacity has not improved at all (CC=2B). Currently, environmental degradation is going in overdrive. We have lost a lot of time, and the resources we need to make an orderly transition are already commited to keep the system going. Population will go down, one way or the other. I don't believe in a single sharp die off many apocalyptic thinkers profetize, but adding and extra 1.6B mouths to feed will make the downward tendency of the curve more steeper than it needs to be.

erispoe 10y ago

Medieval economy relied heavily on wood consumption, in a very unsustainable way. Forests were cut down way faster than they could renew and, if no technological change happened, they would have hit a wall pretty violently. But they didn't. Instead, people and societies adapted. The lesson of that is that you cannot extrapolate our current technology and the resources we consume in the future and assume that everything will stay the same. It's like saying medieval societies should have stopped growing so they could sustain on the wood they cut down.

GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
>The lesson of that is that you cannot extrapolate our current technology and the resources we consume in the future and assume that everything will stay the same. I am reminded of an old joke: "A man jumped from the 10th story and is falling to the ground. A woman at the 4th floor sees him from her window and asks, 'Hey, how's it going?'. The man replies 'So far, so good.'" Yes, technology has saved us in the past. Given that new discoveries are increasingly harder and more expensive to achieve, will technology continue to do so in the future...?