4 ms·

If you zoom out far enough, all life grows at an exponential rate until it reaches the carrying capacity of its environment. Perturbations in the curve exist on

If you zoom out far enough, all life grows at an exponential rate until it reaches the carrying capacity of its environment. Perturbations in the curve exist only to the extent that you are zoomed way in or the species you are looking at is struggling to avoid extinction.

dogruck 9y ago
Yeah so easy forget that in the scale of Earth's maturation, Humans have just recently arrived.
stale2002 9y ago
That depends an awful lot on how you define "carrying capacity". For example, I'd define carrying capacity as to include consumer preferences in how much they want to have babies. And if you include consumer preferences, well that changes the equation a whole lot. It means that you aren't necessarily going to get in a position where the stopping point is literally people starving to death. All you have to do is have the environment cause 2 people to only want to have 2 babies. And there are a whole lot of reasons as to why 2 people might only want to have 2 babies, other than being forced to under the threat of literal starvation.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  >All you have to do is have the environment cause 2 people to only want to have 2 babies. Those 2 people will be quickly replaced by the couple that wants to have 3 babies. Unless you pass and strongly enforce laws limiting reproduction, which our culture seems unwilling to do, you will get overpopulation. Nature has a lot of population control mechanisms other than starvation. Like disease and predators. But humans have mostly eliminated those.
- toasterlovin 9y ago
  IMO, a better lens by which to examine human preferences is to take the position that humans are poorly evolved for modern life and that what we are witnessing right now with regards to plummeting birth rates is selection pressure which will force the human race to evolve immunity to modern life. As best as I can tell, the version of the human race that will result probably looks a lot like the fundamentalist religious sects that have high birth rates (Amish, Haredi, Mennonites, Hutterites, etc.). And the very poor.

dogruck 9y ago

Yeah so easy forget that in the scale of Earth's maturation, Humans have just recently arrived.

stale2002 9y ago

That depends an awful lot on how you define "carrying capacity". For example, I'd define carrying capacity as to include consumer preferences in how much they want to have babies. And if you include consumer preferences, well that changes the equation a whole lot. It means that you aren't necessarily going to get in a position where the stopping point is literally people starving to death. All you have to do is have the environment cause 2 people to only want to have 2 babies. And there are a whole lot of reasons as to why 2 people might only want to have 2 babies, other than being forced to under the threat of literal starvation.

Houshalter 9y ago
>All you have to do is have the environment cause 2 people to only want to have 2 babies. Those 2 people will be quickly replaced by the couple that wants to have 3 babies. Unless you pass and strongly enforce laws limiting reproduction, which our culture seems unwilling to do, you will get overpopulation. Nature has a lot of population control mechanisms other than starvation. Like disease and predators. But humans have mostly eliminated those.
toasterlovin 9y ago
IMO, a better lens by which to examine human preferences is to take the position that humans are poorly evolved for modern life and that what we are witnessing right now with regards to plummeting birth rates is selection pressure which will force the human race to evolve immunity to modern life. As best as I can tell, the version of the human race that will result probably looks a lot like the fundamentalist religious sects that have high birth rates (Amish, Haredi, Mennonites, Hutterites, etc.). And the very poor.