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File this under "Things still too radical to say in 2018." Honestly, your proposed solution goes too counter to human nature to be viable, in my opinion. Not t

File this under "Things still too radical to say in 2018." Honestly, your proposed solution goes too counter to human nature to be viable, in my opinion. Not to say it wouldn't work if you could pull it off, just that there's too much going against it. Human nature is selfish on a per-tribe basis. I think much of humanity's ills stem from our inability to effectively care about more than ~100-1k people. Even if you convinced the world to go along with this, including the inevitable rash of unrest by religious groups and murders/etc by people who feel they were unfairly sterilized, here are a couple questions I have with this plan: 1) Age distribution +30 years out from implementation? Developing nations with declining growth rates (most of them) are facing serious age-related care and resource issues as the largest section of population becomes elderly. The plethora of energy and real estate wouldn't kick in until the sterile group shuffles off, and the preceding ~10-20 years would be a really uncomfortable transition without some serious forced old-people-warehousing solutions. Even from just a "how many care nurses can we really get in here" point of view. 2) How to implement permanent, lasting cultural shift on wealth, growth, and sustainability? The mentality that led us here, that maximum growth and wealth is more important than sustainable growth, would have to be permanently squashed from the human psyche, otherwise it's only a matter of time before the "chosen ones" and their progeny get us right back where we started. I don't think anything is permanently squashable from the human psyche, especially things that lead necessarily to occasional "my tribe has to take a haircut so someone I've never met can improve," due to afore-mentioned tribal nature of humans. There are more, but I don't have time to think of them. I would like to revisit this later, perhaps. Personally, I think we need to re-organize society to be more in line with how humans are wired, then build-in rules and solutions for sustainable growth. Like designing society around many more, smaller towns, linked together by internet and services that make sense as national services (like risk pools, transportation networks, etc.) but are as close to self-sufficient as possible in terms of energy, food, and water. I don't know what that society would look like, or how to get there, though.

titzer 8y ago
> Honestly, your proposed solution goes too counter to human nature to be viable, in my opinion. I know it does. That's why we are well and truly screwed. But to be honest it's the only thing I can think of that would give us even a fighting chance, because a century of 7+ billion humans will absolutely suck this planet dry. BTW there is no such thing as "sustainable growth". It is a contradiction in terms. I'll refer you to Al Bartlett. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3LryW47B_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3LryW47B_M
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >I know it does. That's why we are well and truly screwed. But to be honest it's the only thing I can think of that would give us even a fighting chance Agreed. We either have to kill 90%+ of the population or get a similar amount to agree to sterilize themselves. I am NOT saying we need to start kicking down doors and shooting people or tranq darting them and snip-snip-snipping but unless an alien peacekeeping armada fills our skies with their ships and starts handing out free fusion plants and food replicators and machines to pull the carbon dioxide out of the air that manufactures inert carbon ingots... we're truly screwed. Tech types are entirely too optimistic, they think just because we will need to figure something out that we will. Ok, let's say fusion. Let's say someone got a fusion reactor online TOMORROW and that over the next 6 months they found ways to scale and mass produce it. Now let's say they can start mass producing everything needed on multiple continents while construction companies set to work building all the facilities needed to replace the 60,000 something power plants on the planet. The construction of the buildings alone would take several decades purely to supply all the needed concrete (which itself creates absurd amounts of carbon dioxide). So great, we create a solution to our energy problem which would let us drastically reduce our carbon emissions but under realistic conditions it takes us decades to convert fully to that energy, still spewing tens of gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year which would continue to worsen weather conditions, further acidify the oceans, likely lead to crop failures, kill more species that can't handle even modest temperature changes... Sigh.

titzer 8y ago

> Honestly, your proposed solution goes too counter to human nature to be viable, in my opinion. I know it does. That's why we are well and truly screwed. But to be honest it's the only thing I can think of that would give us even a fighting chance, because a century of 7+ billion humans will absolutely suck this planet dry. BTW there is no such thing as "sustainable growth". It is a contradiction in terms. I'll refer you to Al Bartlett. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3LryW47B_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3LryW47B_M

ryanmercer 8y ago
>I know it does. That's why we are well and truly screwed. But to be honest it's the only thing I can think of that would give us even a fighting chance Agreed. We either have to kill 90%+ of the population or get a similar amount to agree to sterilize themselves. I am NOT saying we need to start kicking down doors and shooting people or tranq darting them and snip-snip-snipping but unless an alien peacekeeping armada fills our skies with their ships and starts handing out free fusion plants and food replicators and machines to pull the carbon dioxide out of the air that manufactures inert carbon ingots... we're truly screwed. Tech types are entirely too optimistic, they think just because we will need to figure something out that we will. Ok, let's say fusion. Let's say someone got a fusion reactor online TOMORROW and that over the next 6 months they found ways to scale and mass produce it. Now let's say they can start mass producing everything needed on multiple continents while construction companies set to work building all the facilities needed to replace the 60,000 something power plants on the planet. The construction of the buildings alone would take several decades purely to supply all the needed concrete (which itself creates absurd amounts of carbon dioxide). So great, we create a solution to our energy problem which would let us drastically reduce our carbon emissions but under realistic conditions it takes us decades to convert fully to that energy, still spewing tens of gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year which would continue to worsen weather conditions, further acidify the oceans, likely lead to crop failures, kill more species that can't handle even modest temperature changes... Sigh.