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If the problem is human population growth then good news, it’s a self limiting problem that won’t outlive the 21st Century. A world of 1 billion people would b

by hyko 6y ago

If the problem is human population growth then good news, it’s a self limiting problem that won’t outlive the 21st Century. A world of 1 billion people would be a very comfortable world compared to what people put up with now - this statement is demonstrably false, as such a world existed in 1804, and living conditions were what can only be described as dog poop for almost everyone. 1 billion people is just a figure plucked out of the air, in truth we have no idea what the carrying capacity of the earth is or what the optimal number of people is for long-term human and ecological flourishing. There are many reasons to hate the human race and to wish billions of people didn’t exist, but philanthropy is not one of them.

sgt101 6y ago
The world of 2304 with 1bn humans will be unknowably different from the world of 1804 with 1bn humans. Trying to use the conditions of the past as an axiom in predicting the future is like arguing that a dog will win the Nobel prize because cucumbers are green.
- hyko 6y ago
  My point was that reducing the human population to 1 billion doesn’t necessarily improve the world, in fact the only known example of a world with 1 billion humans was pretty poor by our standards. Human progress could really improve the 1 billion world of 2304, or it could collapse and conditions end up even worse than the 1804 one. The solution to every problem is not a reduction in human population size. With that framing we could easily conceive of a pleasant 2304 Earth with 100 billion human inhabitants instead of 1 billion. Trying to use the conditions of the past as an axiom in predicting the future... Obviously this was a comment on an argument I wasn’t making, but all the same I don’t we can state this quite as strongly. The future and the past are not completely independent of each other, otherwise science and even memory would be impossible. Plenty that is true today was true in 1804 and will hold out to 2304.
  - _nalply 6y ago
    > Plenty that is true today was true in 1804 and will hold out to 2304. Even in man-made paradise man will suffer from things. The things vary but suffering does not.

by hyko 6y ago

sgt101 6y ago

The world of 2304 with 1bn humans will be unknowably different from the world of 1804 with 1bn humans. Trying to use the conditions of the past as an axiom in predicting the future is like arguing that a dog will win the Nobel prize because cucumbers are green.

hyko 6y ago
My point was that reducing the human population to 1 billion doesn’t necessarily improve the world, in fact the only known example of a world with 1 billion humans was pretty poor by our standards. Human progress could really improve the 1 billion world of 2304, or it could collapse and conditions end up even worse than the 1804 one. The solution to every problem is not a reduction in human population size. With that framing we could easily conceive of a pleasant 2304 Earth with 100 billion human inhabitants instead of 1 billion. Trying to use the conditions of the past as an axiom in predicting the future... Obviously this was a comment on an argument I wasn’t making, but all the same I don’t we can state this quite as strongly. The future and the past are not completely independent of each other, otherwise science and even memory would be impossible. Plenty that is true today was true in 1804 and will hold out to 2304.
- _nalply 6y ago
  > Plenty that is true today was true in 1804 and will hold out to 2304. Even in man-made paradise man will suffer from things. The things vary but suffering does not.