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I think the argument is pretty straightforward: You take the following things as premises: a.) Humans tend to reproduce, often above-reproduction level b.) Hum
by oerpli 8y ago
I think the argument is pretty straightforward:
You take the following things as premises:
a.) Humans tend to reproduce, often above-reproduction level
b.) Humans usually tend to optimize their well-being
c.) Well-being of individuals of your own species is more important than well-being of other species
The first two should be uncontroversial.
The third one is not uncontroversial but still the foundation of most legal systems worldwide.
The argument goes:
More humans need more resources. Each generation uses more resources than the previous generation, due to (b). Even if you could educate everyone to use less, due to (a) you would still have to provide more resources.
Better technology allows more efficient generation of resources with less impact on the environment.
Thus if you care about the environment/whatever, technical advances are a good thing.
You could also try to kill humans/don't allow them to reproduce but this clashes with (c) and basic decency.
Also: You will never convince a non-marginal amount of humans to give up pleasure for some greater good.
- Cruelty of meat production will be solved by artificial meat, not by a tiny percentage of vegetarians.
- Global warming will also be solved by clean energy, not by using less energy.
What Hassabis is hinting at is the possibility of using AI to advance crops (GMOs) and materials in way that allows efficient provision of more stuff for more people. It is far more likely that these efforts yield fruits than that you convince 8B people to constrain their consumption (we've tried the latter for many years now: If you're aware of any progress made so far I, please share).
- wnkrshm 8y agoI wouldn't say that your premise a) is uncontroversial - it's estimated that the global population will become stationary by 2050 or 2040, not limited by simply lots of people being born and even more dieing from starvation but a globally decreasing birth rate. I.e. people adapt to the environment by having fewer children, because they don't need as many for their family to survive.
- oerpli 8y agoIndeed, that is correct. Though I think that most people enjoy having children but the economic circumstances and expectations make it hard to have them. I personally believe that fertility rates will go up again, due to two things: - YIMBYs (/reason) will prevail and at some point and living in constrained areas will get more affordable - Social expectations will change. Having children in school was a bad idea a few decades ago (when school was from 6-18/20). If the majority of people spend their 20s in some sort of school these social norms have less reason to exist and will likely fade at some point. And even if I'm wrong in both cases, I would assume that the rising population in southern countries will offset losses in the northern countries.
- xbmcuser 8y ago2050 the population will be 20% more than current levels we already are producing more carbon and other polutants than the world can handle . It does not matter if the population will stagnate in the future as current population is already to high.
- Ntrails 8y ago#TeamThanos There is a huge difference between the population flattening out and continuing to grow strongly. Whilst you are broadly correct, that we need to solve for 120% current - that's obviously easier than solving for 200% current.
- mcguire 8y ago"Better technology allows more efficient generation of resources with less impact on the environment." I think I may want a source for that.