3 ms·

Humans are bad in estimating exponential growth (like, totally - we're good in suppressing bad news, and _very_ bad in accepting ideas we don't like) Still, we

Humans are bad in estimating exponential growth (like, totally - we're good in suppressing bad news, and _very_ bad in accepting ideas we don't like) Still, we're depending on exponential growth (be it pension funding, companies, inflation, you name it). We're lying to ourselves regarding population. Ok, too many people - we'll resort to a vegetarian diet - oh wait, that's not sustainable, too many people. Well, we'll be vegans! Oh wait, not sustainable also, we'll need gene editing (bad, but we'll accept that reaching a certain threshold). Well, then let's grow our food in vertical farms! Seems sustainable, until we reach the next (last?) limit. This expands to anything (ICE vs EE, flying vs train travel). Unless we accept this inherent flaw and restrict us accordingly, we'll outgrow anything. Oh well, then let's just ... ? Go to mars :) (I truly believe this is the only mid-term sustainable¹ option, since we'll never be able to have at most only 2 children as a population - and I'd love to gain as much hate for this statement as possible if I were proven false). ¹ Mars will not be enough in just a few centuries, probably even just decades

ravi-delia 6y ago
Humans are indeed bad at estimating exponential growth, but you may have fallen into your own trap. We have already vastly exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet in Malthus's time. The reason is exponential growth in technology. Technological progress is dependent on current level of technology, and population. As population grows, so does technology. It's hard to imagine how to effectively feed the theoretical maximum population, but then again it was hard to imagine profitably extracting oil from arctic shale or natural gas from long-tapped reserves in Appalachia. I wouldn't bet against this exponential continuing long into the future.

ravi-delia 6y ago

Humans are indeed bad at estimating exponential growth, but you may have fallen into your own trap. We have already vastly exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet in Malthus's time. The reason is exponential growth in technology. Technological progress is dependent on current level of technology, and population. As population grows, so does technology. It's hard to imagine how to effectively feed the theoretical maximum population, but then again it was hard to imagine profitably extracting oil from arctic shale or natural gas from long-tapped reserves in Appalachia. I wouldn't bet against this exponential continuing long into the future.