5 ms·

Population shrinking is a good thing long term.

merpnderp 7y ago
If extraordinary ability is a function of a percentile of the population, then a smaller population will have fewer geniuses and prodigies in art, literature, science, and politics. A smaller population leaves us poorer and less capable. There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable by changing how we generate energy or dispose of waste.
- Arainach 7y ago
  There's a lot more to society than energy. Take food, for example - a huge portion of the world's food is grown in the American midwest. That food is powered by fertilizer (petroleum) and aquifers that are being depleted far faster than they're being refilled. Or seafood, which is being depleted rapidly. More people require more resources - wood, minerals, you name it - and there simply isn't enough to go around arbitrarily.
- aylmao 7y ago
  > If extraordinary ability is a function of a percentile of the population, then a smaller population will have fewer geniuses and prodigies in art, literature, science, and politics I doubt it is, but if so, and education just "exposes" natural talent, I wouldn't be worried. We already have a lot of natural talent in the developed world that's untapped. India alone should have 4x more geniuses than the USA. > A smaller population leaves us poorer and less capable. I'd like to discuss this with HN. Less capable to do what? We won. Nature won't kill us any more, we have no predators, we know how to produce more food than we need [1], transportation is so easy we get access to things from all over the world and communication so seamless we can stay in touch with anyone. What do we need more people for? Our largest existential enemy right now is unsustainability. > There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable by changing how we generate energy or dispose of waste. I don't think anyone really knows this to be true, and in fact I suspect it might apply to small communities, but not to the world at large. Even if we could continue growing for now, eventually we'll reach a limit. But in any case, why do we want to keep growing? [1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/world-hunger_n_1463429 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/world-hunger_n_1463429
  - drak0n1c 7y ago
    Slate Star Codex recently did an analysis of technological progress and income growth and found that the most correlated variable was population growth. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-singularity-was-cancelled/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-sing...
  - lurquer 7y ago
    >Our largest existential enemy right now is unsustainability. When has 'unsustainabilty' ever caused the destruction of a large portion of a human population? Seriously. Can you think of any? The two existential threats -- the two things that can, have, and will -- wipe out millions are War and Disease. Everything else -- asteroids, climate change, sustainability -- are speculative. But, evidence-based analysis clearly points to War and Disease.
    - Para2016 7y ago
      The destruction of the Western Roman Empire due to enormous migrations comes to mind. Those migrations were due to 'unsustainability'.
      - Gibbon1 7y ago
        The Late Bronze age Collapse and the Classic Maya Collapse as well.
  - seba_dos1 7y ago
    > Nature won't kill us any more I wouldn't be so sure about that ;) Everything seems to suggest that we're about to have a bad time.
- shagmin 7y ago
  If it's a function of a percentile of the population, then sure, there would be fewer geniuses and such. But a shrinking population seems to coincide with a better educated population. An educated, stable, slightly shrinking population can realize its full potential more than a growing population competing for finite resources.
- PunchTornado 7y ago
  2b people in Asia/Africa with no access to education don't give many geniuses. you can have less people but everyone educated.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- everdrive 7y ago
  >There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable by changing how we generate energy or dispose of waste. I'll believe that when I see it. Organizing disparate groups of people is quite difficult.
- samhain 7y ago
  >There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable What methods are you using to know this is true?
- ramblerman 7y ago
  Nonsense, what a strange metric to focus on. You completely ignore the added pain and suffering of a larger population to crank out one more beethoven. If we keep the planet sustainable, we also have time on our side, and that beethoven will still be born, just later.
jerkstate 7y ago
I agree but according to the article the overall population will continue to grow until 2070.
- beat 7y ago
  The population growth isn't coming from new births, which have leveled off. Rather, it's coming from people living longer. This is true in every nation that manages to crawl out of utter poverty - within a generation or two, birth rate drops to at or below replacement. Yes, this seems counter to everything we're told about the population explosion. It's not the 1960s anymore, but our education hasn't caught up to that yet. Hans Rosling writes about this extensively in Factfulness.
neokantian 7y ago
Well, if it is the result of birth rates below the replacement level, the question is: Is it uberhaupt possible to later on bring these birth rates up again? There will still be a need to replace the entire population every 75 years. If the only way is down, for the birth rate, and it looks like it is, it means that entire populations are going to die out. Now, this could indeed be "a good thing long term", but some people may feel that it is not. Debatable ...
- drak0n1c 7y ago
  In a future with far fewer natural births, and much more automation, it could be possible to fund large scale IVF creation of babies carried to term by paid/volunteer surrogates, or artificial surrogates. I could see both secular and religious motivations for such a program. The raising of such children in stable family units or non-dysfunctional academies would probably be a bigger challenge than the birthing program.
themagician 7y ago
Not with the current political and economic structures we have. They all REQUIRE a growing population to function because we borrow from the future. Without a growing population safety nets collapse because there aren’t enough young people to support the older people. Government debt spirals out of control as revenues can only decline in the future. Capitalism itself, at least the way it functions today, starts to fall apart at the seems. No modern western country has any system to deal with this. Stocks values, social security, government spending, staffing (military and private) all rely on more people with more productivity and more money on the bottom end.
- neokantian 7y ago
  It is certainly not the only contradiction in the system. The only question left is: How do you hedge against or even personally profit from the inevitable collapse?
  - beat 7y ago
    Why does it have to collapse? The failure of capitalism might be just a brief blip as we transition to the Next Big Thing.
- wait_a_minute 7y ago
  Long before that is a problem we will have moved to a society where the marginal costs of basically any business are close to 0. Meaning that we can then simply automate the necessities of life and use a universal basic income for everything else. Capitalism is the bootloader for a Star Trek society.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Not with the current political and economic structures we have. True, but the structures we have are mathematically unsustainable. Eventually, it has to become something else. When that shift happens, it's going to hurt. I think it's better if that change is more gradual rather than a sudden collapse. A gradual reduction of population would be an excellent way to accomplish that.
tengbretson 7y ago
Why? We have an entire solar system out there to explore!
- drivingmenuts 7y ago
  One that is incredibly hostile to life as we know it. Dr McCoy was right: Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.
  - tengbretson 7y ago
    Our current planet was made habitable by organisms infinitesimally less intelligent than humans. I think we're up to the challenge.
    - leonroy 7y ago
      > Our current planet was made habitable by organisms infinitesimally less intelligent than humans. I'm a big Musk/Bezos fan too and share their dreams of colonizing the solar system but let's be fair, our amoeba ancestors had billions of years in which to adapt to the planet. Homo-sapiens have barely been around for 400 000 years and there's little evidence our current societal structures will be sustainable for a fraction of that time.
    - ksaj 7y ago
      While absolutely true, it did take time, fraught with a whole lot of failure to bring us to this point where we feel the need to recognize a potential and probable impending failure (again). Life may compete with the elements as it has for so long and so many times on Earth, or become completely obliterated as it may have been on a planet such as Mars. Then again, without a long enough window of time for observance, we really have very little way to determine if life on Mars is already well on its way to a huge resurgence. A lot of change happens in a little as 100,000 years...
    - drivingmenuts 7y ago
      Those oeganisms didn’t have lawyers and safety experts to answer to. It’s not like A. Moeba was going to sue B. Moeba because C. Moeba a died in a chlorophyll-related incident.

If extraordinary ability is a function of a percentile of the population, then a smaller population will have fewer geniuses and prodigies in art, literature, science, and politics. A smaller population leaves us poorer and less capable. There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable by changing how we generate energy or dispose of waste.

Arainach 7y ago
There's a lot more to society than energy. Take food, for example - a huge portion of the world's food is grown in the American midwest. That food is powered by fertilizer (petroleum) and aquifers that are being depleted far faster than they're being refilled. Or seafood, which is being depleted rapidly. More people require more resources - wood, minerals, you name it - and there simply isn't enough to go around arbitrarily.
aylmao 7y ago
> If extraordinary ability is a function of a percentile of the population, then a smaller population will have fewer geniuses and prodigies in art, literature, science, and politics I doubt it is, but if so, and education just "exposes" natural talent, I wouldn't be worried. We already have a lot of natural talent in the developed world that's untapped. India alone should have 4x more geniuses than the USA. > A smaller population leaves us poorer and less capable. I'd like to discuss this with HN. Less capable to do what? We won. Nature won't kill us any more, we have no predators, we know how to produce more food than we need [1], transportation is so easy we get access to things from all over the world and communication so seamless we can stay in touch with anyone. What do we need more people for? Our largest existential enemy right now is unsustainability. > There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable by changing how we generate energy or dispose of waste. I don't think anyone really knows this to be true, and in fact I suspect it might apply to small communities, but not to the world at large. Even if we could continue growing for now, eventually we'll reach a limit. But in any case, why do we want to keep growing? [1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/world-hunger_n_1463429 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/world-hunger_n_1463429
- drak0n1c 7y ago
  Slate Star Codex recently did an analysis of technological progress and income growth and found that the most correlated variable was population growth. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-singularity-was-cancelled/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-sing...
- lurquer 7y ago
  >Our largest existential enemy right now is unsustainability. When has 'unsustainabilty' ever caused the destruction of a large portion of a human population? Seriously. Can you think of any? The two existential threats -- the two things that can, have, and will -- wipe out millions are War and Disease. Everything else -- asteroids, climate change, sustainability -- are speculative. But, evidence-based analysis clearly points to War and Disease.
  - Para2016 7y ago
    The destruction of the Western Roman Empire due to enormous migrations comes to mind. Those migrations were due to 'unsustainability'.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      The Late Bronze age Collapse and the Classic Maya Collapse as well.
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  > Nature won't kill us any more I wouldn't be so sure about that ;) Everything seems to suggest that we're about to have a bad time.
shagmin 7y ago
If it's a function of a percentile of the population, then sure, there would be fewer geniuses and such. But a shrinking population seems to coincide with a better educated population. An educated, stable, slightly shrinking population can realize its full potential more than a growing population competing for finite resources.
PunchTornado 7y ago
2b people in Asia/Africa with no access to education don't give many geniuses. you can have less people but everyone educated.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
everdrive 7y ago
>There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable by changing how we generate energy or dispose of waste. I'll believe that when I see it. Organizing disparate groups of people is quite difficult.
samhain 7y ago
>There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable What methods are you using to know this is true?
ramblerman 7y ago
Nonsense, what a strange metric to focus on. You completely ignore the added pain and suffering of a larger population to crank out one more beethoven. If we keep the planet sustainable, we also have time on our side, and that beethoven will still be born, just later.

jerkstate 7y ago

I agree but according to the article the overall population will continue to grow until 2070.

beat 7y ago
The population growth isn't coming from new births, which have leveled off. Rather, it's coming from people living longer. This is true in every nation that manages to crawl out of utter poverty - within a generation or two, birth rate drops to at or below replacement. Yes, this seems counter to everything we're told about the population explosion. It's not the 1960s anymore, but our education hasn't caught up to that yet. Hans Rosling writes about this extensively in Factfulness.

neokantian 7y ago

Well, if it is the result of birth rates below the replacement level, the question is: Is it uberhaupt possible to later on bring these birth rates up again? There will still be a need to replace the entire population every 75 years. If the only way is down, for the birth rate, and it looks like it is, it means that entire populations are going to die out. Now, this could indeed be "a good thing long term", but some people may feel that it is not. Debatable ...

drak0n1c 7y ago
In a future with far fewer natural births, and much more automation, it could be possible to fund large scale IVF creation of babies carried to term by paid/volunteer surrogates, or artificial surrogates. I could see both secular and religious motivations for such a program. The raising of such children in stable family units or non-dysfunctional academies would probably be a bigger challenge than the birthing program.

themagician 7y ago

Not with the current political and economic structures we have. They all REQUIRE a growing population to function because we borrow from the future. Without a growing population safety nets collapse because there aren’t enough young people to support the older people. Government debt spirals out of control as revenues can only decline in the future. Capitalism itself, at least the way it functions today, starts to fall apart at the seems. No modern western country has any system to deal with this. Stocks values, social security, government spending, staffing (military and private) all rely on more people with more productivity and more money on the bottom end.

neokantian 7y ago
It is certainly not the only contradiction in the system. The only question left is: How do you hedge against or even personally profit from the inevitable collapse?
- beat 7y ago
  Why does it have to collapse? The failure of capitalism might be just a brief blip as we transition to the Next Big Thing.
wait_a_minute 7y ago
Long before that is a problem we will have moved to a society where the marginal costs of basically any business are close to 0. Meaning that we can then simply automate the necessities of life and use a universal basic income for everything else. Capitalism is the bootloader for a Star Trek society.
JohnFen 7y ago
> Not with the current political and economic structures we have. True, but the structures we have are mathematically unsustainable. Eventually, it has to become something else. When that shift happens, it's going to hurt. I think it's better if that change is more gradual rather than a sudden collapse. A gradual reduction of population would be an excellent way to accomplish that.

tengbretson 7y ago

Why? We have an entire solar system out there to explore!

drivingmenuts 7y ago
One that is incredibly hostile to life as we know it. Dr McCoy was right: Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.
- tengbretson 7y ago
  Our current planet was made habitable by organisms infinitesimally less intelligent than humans. I think we're up to the challenge.
  - leonroy 7y ago
    > Our current planet was made habitable by organisms infinitesimally less intelligent than humans. I'm a big Musk/Bezos fan too and share their dreams of colonizing the solar system but let's be fair, our amoeba ancestors had billions of years in which to adapt to the planet. Homo-sapiens have barely been around for 400 000 years and there's little evidence our current societal structures will be sustainable for a fraction of that time.
  - ksaj 7y ago
    While absolutely true, it did take time, fraught with a whole lot of failure to bring us to this point where we feel the need to recognize a potential and probable impending failure (again). Life may compete with the elements as it has for so long and so many times on Earth, or become completely obliterated as it may have been on a planet such as Mars. Then again, without a long enough window of time for observance, we really have very little way to determine if life on Mars is already well on its way to a huge resurgence. A lot of change happens in a little as 100,000 years...
  - drivingmenuts 7y ago
    Those oeganisms didn’t have lawyers and safety experts to answer to. It’s not like A. Moeba was going to sue B. Moeba because C. Moeba a died in a chlorophyll-related incident.