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Agree adoptive parents are doing something great for a child in need, but I don't accept the Malthusian corollary you often see taken as granted, that having ki

Agree adoptive parents are doing something great for a child in need, but I don't accept the Malthusian corollary you often see taken as granted, that having kids is a net cost on the planet. People in the '80s were certain we'd soon exhaust global coal supplies. The 1880s. Now we are more likely to replace it with alternatives as run out. Before that it would have been kerosene or whale oil. This isn't unique to fuel. Minerals were harder to come by in the 1930s, when we had 2 billion people, than they are today, with 7.5. We've made them more abundant not less: http://www.aei.org/publication/julian-simon-still-more-right-than-lucky-in-2013/ http://www.aei.org/publication/julian-simon-still-more-right... This is counterintuitive at first, but we're really good at finding more efficient ways to do things. Or... economies of scale kick in when you have enough people, especially once you don't need to dedicate almost everyone to farming, when you can add some inventors and chemists, say. Maybe that's why historically humanity has had far more to fear from population crashes than booms. Turning matter into MIPS is not a sin. Adding processing power is one of the best ways to make stuff more valuable.

lprubin 9y ago
Do you think that the average earth ecosystem is better or worse off with modern human civilization?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  I don't think it makes any sense to anthropomorphize ecosystems. “Better or worse off” only applies to things that have utility functions.
- brownbat 9y ago
  It depends what you value. Measured by capacity for processing information? Much better. Measured by incidence of cholera and dysentery? Much better. Measured by the net increase in sublime human experiences minus human suffering? Much better. I know a lot of people don't find these values very satisfying and are looking for something else though. When you imagine a world untouched by humanity, what is the foundational good, the bedrock value that it represents? Stability? A dead rock is stable, I don't think that's it. Biodiversity? Biodiversity is just correlated with heat, highest around the equator where there's more abundant energy for systems to incorporate into replication. I don't think you just want a warmer planet. Maybe sustainability? To preserve a habitat for humanity? I just suspect inventiveness is more helpful for humanity's long term survival, of the sort you get from an abundance of people so that we can put some to work not just on farms, but on space stations.

lprubin 9y ago

Do you think that the average earth ecosystem is better or worse off with modern human civilization?

dragonwriter 9y ago
I don't think it makes any sense to anthropomorphize ecosystems. “Better or worse off” only applies to things that have utility functions.
brownbat 9y ago
It depends what you value. Measured by capacity for processing information? Much better. Measured by incidence of cholera and dysentery? Much better. Measured by the net increase in sublime human experiences minus human suffering? Much better. I know a lot of people don't find these values very satisfying and are looking for something else though. When you imagine a world untouched by humanity, what is the foundational good, the bedrock value that it represents? Stability? A dead rock is stable, I don't think that's it. Biodiversity? Biodiversity is just correlated with heat, highest around the equator where there's more abundant energy for systems to incorporate into replication. I don't think you just want a warmer planet. Maybe sustainability? To preserve a habitat for humanity? I just suspect inventiveness is more helpful for humanity's long term survival, of the sort you get from an abundance of people so that we can put some to work not just on farms, but on space stations.