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Technological advancement and human overpopulation are orthogonal concepts. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe the planet is heavily overpopulated with humans

Technological advancement and human overpopulation are orthogonal concepts. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe the planet is heavily overpopulated with humans and also that technological advancement is desireable. There is very much not a direct relationship between absolute number of humans, and technological advancement. This is increasingly true as we inch closer to AGI.

shkkmo 5y ago
> There is very much not a direct relationship between absolute number of humans, and technological advancement. There very much absolutely is a direct and bidirectional link between the two. Technological advancement (esp fetilizers) has been crucial to the increase in the absolute number of humans to its current level. There is also good reason to think that there are direct effects in the opposite direction. There seems likely to be a minimum population that can support the degree of specialization needed for a given level of technological advancement. But while there absolutely is a direct relationship, I don't think that your core point is necessarily wrong. The minimum population required to maintain our current level of technology might well be one or more magnitudes less than our current population. Our current population may well be sufficient to achieve the level of technology required to become a space habitating species.
- atweiden 5y ago
  Despite claiming “a direct and (emphasis added) bidirectional link” exists, you’ve only argued for a link between technological advancement and population size, and not vice versa. So it would seem we actually agree? (E.g. you don’t seem to be arguing increasing the human population by X% leads to X% technological advancement.) Current human population levels are ecologically unsustainable without several major shifts taking place — Sir David Attenborough counts regulating the human population size among them [1]. [1]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/david-attenborough-warns-planet-cant-cope-with-overpopulation/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/david-attenborough-wa...
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > Despite claiming “a direct and (emphasis added) bidirectional link” exists, you’ve only argued for a link between technological advancement and population size, and not vice versa. That is not correct. I laid out the effects in both directions.
    - atweiden 5y ago
      In that case, could you please expound upon why increasing the human population by X% increases our technological advancement by X%? I must’ve missed where you supported that assertion with facts or evidence.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        > There seems likely to be a minimum population that can support the degree of specialization needed for a given level of technological advancement. 50 people can support much smaller degree of specialization than 50 million people can. This should be fairly obvious, so I am not sure why it needs to be restated.
        atweiden 5y ago
        Granted, having X number of living humans could conceivably be necessary to facilitate the specialization required to bootstrap technological advancement. But even a highly generous take on this would reveal it’s “necessary but not sufficient”. Fundamentally, X number of humans does not equal X level of technology. If an X% increase in population really did in fact lead to an X% increase in technological advancement, then we could e.g. achieve AGI merely by multiplying the number of living humans by some constant.

shkkmo 5y ago

> There is very much not a direct relationship between absolute number of humans, and technological advancement. There very much absolutely is a direct and bidirectional link between the two. Technological advancement (esp fetilizers) has been crucial to the increase in the absolute number of humans to its current level. There is also good reason to think that there are direct effects in the opposite direction. There seems likely to be a minimum population that can support the degree of specialization needed for a given level of technological advancement. But while there absolutely is a direct relationship, I don't think that your core point is necessarily wrong. The minimum population required to maintain our current level of technology might well be one or more magnitudes less than our current population. Our current population may well be sufficient to achieve the level of technology required to become a space habitating species.

atweiden 5y ago
Despite claiming “a direct and (emphasis added) bidirectional link” exists, you’ve only argued for a link between technological advancement and population size, and not vice versa. So it would seem we actually agree? (E.g. you don’t seem to be arguing increasing the human population by X% leads to X% technological advancement.) Current human population levels are ecologically unsustainable without several major shifts taking place — Sir David Attenborough counts regulating the human population size among them [1]. [1]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/david-attenborough-warns-planet-cant-cope-with-overpopulation/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/david-attenborough-wa...
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > Despite claiming “a direct and (emphasis added) bidirectional link” exists, you’ve only argued for a link between technological advancement and population size, and not vice versa. That is not correct. I laid out the effects in both directions.
  - atweiden 5y ago
    In that case, could you please expound upon why increasing the human population by X% increases our technological advancement by X%? I must’ve missed where you supported that assertion with facts or evidence.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      > There seems likely to be a minimum population that can support the degree of specialization needed for a given level of technological advancement. 50 people can support much smaller degree of specialization than 50 million people can. This should be fairly obvious, so I am not sure why it needs to be restated.
      - atweiden 5y ago
        Granted, having X number of living humans could conceivably be necessary to facilitate the specialization required to bootstrap technological advancement. But even a highly generous take on this would reveal it’s “necessary but not sufficient”. Fundamentally, X number of humans does not equal X level of technology. If an X% increase in population really did in fact lead to an X% increase in technological advancement, then we could e.g. achieve AGI merely by multiplying the number of living humans by some constant.