3 ms·

Of course most people are not making 'children decisions' around national or ideological objectives. And yes, it's possible to be 'overly concerned'. But ther

by jariel 6y ago

Of course most people are not making 'children decisions' around national or ideological objectives. And yes, it's possible to be 'overly concerned'. But there is something to be said about a species that doesn't replace itself, that's an existential question. More importantly: the rate of decline is enormous in the grand scheme. If you plot a curve of human population it trends up correlating with industrial power, education, advancement etc. - but then it hits a sudden wall and falls straight down. If you extend the 'downward trend' of population decline outwards several decades it looks problematic. It looks like an extinction event. For context, if you care one bit about the 'greater good' and humanity, life etc. beyond your own life, then you'll likely have some degree of concern about 'extinction' or evaporation of people, culture, knowledge wisdom. People that do have a sense of 'greater good' would naturally have some anxiety over this.

CogitoCogito 6y ago
I think you're being overly dramatic. Humans will not go extinct due to this apparent drop in birthrate. If we lost 10% of the world population every 50 years for 500 years straight, we'd still have one third the current population. I.e. billions of people. I.e. more than 100 years ago. I see no reason to feel anxiety for our species. I'd recommend reserving that for the rest of earth's species.
- jariel 6y ago
  Losing 2/3 of the population over 500 years is the blink of an eye in historical terms. The issues is the speed but also the 'leveling out' threshold, i.e. if it drives downward, what's to say that won't stop. Finally, we have 'many cultures' on this planet, and most will go extinct at that rate, and we really don't know what an ideal situation would be for population on Planet Earth. Remember we want to build in some petty heavy safety factors into the numbers as risk mitigation. We literally just took hold of the reproductive process over the last few decades - this is a very big deal, like getting fire from Prometheus, and the first thing we've done with it is put ourselves on a hard downward slope. That's scary unless we know where that equilibrium will land.
  - CogitoCogito 6y ago
    > Losing 2/3 of the population over 500 years is the blink of an eye in historical terms. How so? It's way slower than the population has grown in the past few centuries. > The issues is the speed but also the 'leveling out' threshold, i.e. if it drives downward, what's to say that won't stop. What's to say growing populations won't lead to the extinction of humanity? We can't write off that possibility just like we can't write of yours. It's all just speculation. > Finally, we have 'many cultures' on this planet, and most will go extinct at that rate, and we really don't know what an ideal situation would be for population on Planet Earth. Cultures seem to mainly go extinct by assimilation by others. This has largely been driven by growing populations. If anything, I think a drop in population would preserve cultures. > Remember we want to build in some petty heavy safety factors into the numbers as risk mitigation. I have no idea what you mean by this. > We literally just took hold of the reproductive process over the last few decades - this is a very big deal, like getting fire from Prometheus, and the first thing we've done with it is put ourselves on a hard downward slope. That's scary unless we know where that equilibrium will land. What does it matter if there are only 100 million people? And even that would require extreme sustained drops in population for as long as human civilization. The current trend is such a blip on the radar that I see no reason to worry. And even if the trend holds so what? Why do we need to have so many people?
    - jariel 6y ago
      1. Both the growth in population and the current rate of decline are 'unprecedented' in velocity. They are 'spikes' like the spike we see in climate change graphs. 2. 'Growth' to the extent there are resources to grow is a positive state, 'shrinkage' even given positive conditions in which growth is possible is a much worse state, because it's never happened and implies something might be wrong - like the possibility of a social or some other kind of disease. 3. 'More' population, given resources to sustain it is at least on 1st order basis 'better' - for obvious reasons. Clearly 'more' (or even present amount) may not be ideal but you'd have to do a second order assessment there (i.e. possibility of long term exhaustion of resources etc.) - and determine ways in which it would be worse, but I don't see any really any reason to believe that 7B is 'less safe' than 500M. In the event of a major nuclear war, it would probably be better to have more people, of more variety, in more places, in more variety of living conditions. 4. 'Safety Factors' If we could magically calculate some kind of ideal population size, we'd have to assess for all sorts of black swan events (war, famine, disease) and have ample extra population to account for those possibilities. You carry more fuel than you need to cross the Atlantic if you really want to make sure that you get all the way. 4. "What does it matter if there are only 100 million people?" Ok - so this should have been question #1 because this is they key understanding. Civilization is a pyramid that generates disproportionate wealth from those operating at higher levels of sophistication. Those people require the support of others doing basic work. If there were only 1000 people on planet earth, civilization would collapse entirely, everyone would be working on the farm. Only at a certain scale would basic foodstuffs be available such that others could start working on 2cnd order things, like carpentry and basic metallurgy. Significantly more people would be required to have enough slack labour to provide for basic literacy and education. The economy would have to be even larger to start to support the most basic technological advancements. Etc. Etc. Etc.. Given that we now have a lot of knowledge and have harnessed fossil fuels which provide at least tremendous energy, it would be possible to maintain our state of civility with less people surely, but still quite a lot, definitely more than 100M. Our economy, which sustains our lives to very high material standards, depends upon an huge amount of sophistication and knowledge. I don't think the number for maintaining that is less than 1B and realistically, given that social systems develop at different paces, and some collapse etc. it's probably more around 2B.

by jariel 6y ago

CogitoCogito 6y ago

I think you're being overly dramatic. Humans will not go extinct due to this apparent drop in birthrate. If we lost 10% of the world population every 50 years for 500 years straight, we'd still have one third the current population. I.e. billions of people. I.e. more than 100 years ago. I see no reason to feel anxiety for our species. I'd recommend reserving that for the rest of earth's species.

jariel 6y ago
Losing 2/3 of the population over 500 years is the blink of an eye in historical terms. The issues is the speed but also the 'leveling out' threshold, i.e. if it drives downward, what's to say that won't stop. Finally, we have 'many cultures' on this planet, and most will go extinct at that rate, and we really don't know what an ideal situation would be for population on Planet Earth. Remember we want to build in some petty heavy safety factors into the numbers as risk mitigation. We literally just took hold of the reproductive process over the last few decades - this is a very big deal, like getting fire from Prometheus, and the first thing we've done with it is put ourselves on a hard downward slope. That's scary unless we know where that equilibrium will land.
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  > Losing 2/3 of the population over 500 years is the blink of an eye in historical terms. How so? It's way slower than the population has grown in the past few centuries. > The issues is the speed but also the 'leveling out' threshold, i.e. if it drives downward, what's to say that won't stop. What's to say growing populations won't lead to the extinction of humanity? We can't write off that possibility just like we can't write of yours. It's all just speculation. > Finally, we have 'many cultures' on this planet, and most will go extinct at that rate, and we really don't know what an ideal situation would be for population on Planet Earth. Cultures seem to mainly go extinct by assimilation by others. This has largely been driven by growing populations. If anything, I think a drop in population would preserve cultures. > Remember we want to build in some petty heavy safety factors into the numbers as risk mitigation. I have no idea what you mean by this. > We literally just took hold of the reproductive process over the last few decades - this is a very big deal, like getting fire from Prometheus, and the first thing we've done with it is put ourselves on a hard downward slope. That's scary unless we know where that equilibrium will land. What does it matter if there are only 100 million people? And even that would require extreme sustained drops in population for as long as human civilization. The current trend is such a blip on the radar that I see no reason to worry. And even if the trend holds so what? Why do we need to have so many people?
  - jariel 6y ago
    1. Both the growth in population and the current rate of decline are 'unprecedented' in velocity. They are 'spikes' like the spike we see in climate change graphs. 2. 'Growth' to the extent there are resources to grow is a positive state, 'shrinkage' even given positive conditions in which growth is possible is a much worse state, because it's never happened and implies something might be wrong - like the possibility of a social or some other kind of disease. 3. 'More' population, given resources to sustain it is at least on 1st order basis 'better' - for obvious reasons. Clearly 'more' (or even present amount) may not be ideal but you'd have to do a second order assessment there (i.e. possibility of long term exhaustion of resources etc.) - and determine ways in which it would be worse, but I don't see any really any reason to believe that 7B is 'less safe' than 500M. In the event of a major nuclear war, it would probably be better to have more people, of more variety, in more places, in more variety of living conditions. 4. 'Safety Factors' If we could magically calculate some kind of ideal population size, we'd have to assess for all sorts of black swan events (war, famine, disease) and have ample extra population to account for those possibilities. You carry more fuel than you need to cross the Atlantic if you really want to make sure that you get all the way. 4. "What does it matter if there are only 100 million people?" Ok - so this should have been question #1 because this is they key understanding. Civilization is a pyramid that generates disproportionate wealth from those operating at higher levels of sophistication. Those people require the support of others doing basic work. If there were only 1000 people on planet earth, civilization would collapse entirely, everyone would be working on the farm. Only at a certain scale would basic foodstuffs be available such that others could start working on 2cnd order things, like carpentry and basic metallurgy. Significantly more people would be required to have enough slack labour to provide for basic literacy and education. The economy would have to be even larger to start to support the most basic technological advancements. Etc. Etc. Etc.. Given that we now have a lot of knowledge and have harnessed fossil fuels which provide at least tremendous energy, it would be possible to maintain our state of civility with less people surely, but still quite a lot, definitely more than 100M. Our economy, which sustains our lives to very high material standards, depends upon an huge amount of sophistication and knowledge. I don't think the number for maintaining that is less than 1B and realistically, given that social systems develop at different paces, and some collapse etc. it's probably more around 2B.