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> For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. How can we acknowledge that we need a lot of people to run the sort of s

> For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. How can we acknowledge that we need a lot of people to run the sort of society we ended up with today without also reasoning that the more advanced society we might achieve in 100 years might need a lot more people? There's nothing special about 10 billion people. People have been throwing out numbers as "overpopulation tipping points" for hundreds of years, and we've passed all of them. And now we acknowledge that it's important that we passed them, because we can't even keep our advanced version of "the lights on" without having done so.

bhouston 5y ago
Humans are resources in a general sense. More humans means more resources which you can throw at various challenges, problems. So you are right. More humans has benefits. But unfettered growth isn't sustainable, this has been proved again and again. So what we need is controlled growth or at least sustainable levels. Right now we are switching into a decrease which will be very jarring and not sustainable. We've never truly has controlled population growth, we just had unfettered growth, which now has slowed down into a decrease. What is next is for us to increase it again and then have control over this. It is basically getting us to the next level of human development. We just have to be careful about those that want to exercise differential growth/decrease rates based on people's memberships in ideological, religious or racial groups.
- rcoveson 5y ago
  > But unfettered growth isn't sustainable, this has been proved again and again. This is vague, and assumes the conclusion. All we've ever known is unfettered growth, and it's been accompanied by people "proving" that it's "not sustainable" for a long time. So far we have not only sustained it, but thrived while sustaining it. More importantly, we have come to rely on it: We're pretty sure we couldn't have a society like this one without hundreds of millions of people.
  - tzs 5y ago
    Any given growth rate is not sustainable long term. For example, consider a growth rate of 1% per year (about what the world population growth rate currently is). Right now, every human is on or near the Earth. Let's call this year 0. In year 1, every human must be within one light-year of the Earth. In year 2, every human must be within two light-years of the Earth. In year N, every human must be within N light-years of Earth. Take the volume of a sphere of radius N light-years and divide it by the population after N years of 1% growth, and you get the volume available per person if humans were spread out evenly among all possible space that humans could theoretically occupy. At year 1, that is about 4.39 x 10^38 m^3 per person, so no problem. But at around year 11600 it is 4 m^2 per person. By 12101 it is down to 0.04 m^3 per person. The internet tells me that the average volume of a human is about 0.06 m^3 so 0.04 m^3 per person would be bad news. What if we manage to invent Star Trek style warp engines right away, which let us go 1000x the speed of light. That makes everything a 10^9 times better. At 12101 we have 40000000 m^3 per person. But by 13524 we are down to 40 m^3 per person, and by 14000 below 0.39 m^3 per person. From there we have only got until 14192 before we are just below 0.06 m^3. Remember, this is being ridiculous optimistic. Even with warp drive available starting tomorrow we would not be able to spread so fast that 14000 years from now we are uniformly occupying a 28000 light year diameter spherical volume around Earth. In reality we'll hit a space limit a lot earlier. Hence, we can conclude that 1% is not sustainable for more than a few thousand years even under very optimistic assumptions. Long term the growth rate must be one that on average declines over time, simply because a growth rate that does not do so leads to exponential growth, but we live in a universe were accessible space cannot grow faster than polynomially.
- 8note 5y ago
  We've never had unfettered growth. People are limited in how many children they can have, and how many they want to have. We can trust parents to know how many children they want. We don't need a bureaucrat telling us when we can have sex and when we're required to have sex

bhouston 5y ago

Humans are resources in a general sense. More humans means more resources which you can throw at various challenges, problems. So you are right. More humans has benefits. But unfettered growth isn't sustainable, this has been proved again and again. So what we need is controlled growth or at least sustainable levels. Right now we are switching into a decrease which will be very jarring and not sustainable. We've never truly has controlled population growth, we just had unfettered growth, which now has slowed down into a decrease. What is next is for us to increase it again and then have control over this. It is basically getting us to the next level of human development. We just have to be careful about those that want to exercise differential growth/decrease rates based on people's memberships in ideological, religious or racial groups.

rcoveson 5y ago
> But unfettered growth isn't sustainable, this has been proved again and again. This is vague, and assumes the conclusion. All we've ever known is unfettered growth, and it's been accompanied by people "proving" that it's "not sustainable" for a long time. So far we have not only sustained it, but thrived while sustaining it. More importantly, we have come to rely on it: We're pretty sure we couldn't have a society like this one without hundreds of millions of people.
- tzs 5y ago
  Any given growth rate is not sustainable long term. For example, consider a growth rate of 1% per year (about what the world population growth rate currently is). Right now, every human is on or near the Earth. Let's call this year 0. In year 1, every human must be within one light-year of the Earth. In year 2, every human must be within two light-years of the Earth. In year N, every human must be within N light-years of Earth. Take the volume of a sphere of radius N light-years and divide it by the population after N years of 1% growth, and you get the volume available per person if humans were spread out evenly among all possible space that humans could theoretically occupy. At year 1, that is about 4.39 x 10^38 m^3 per person, so no problem. But at around year 11600 it is 4 m^2 per person. By 12101 it is down to 0.04 m^3 per person. The internet tells me that the average volume of a human is about 0.06 m^3 so 0.04 m^3 per person would be bad news. What if we manage to invent Star Trek style warp engines right away, which let us go 1000x the speed of light. That makes everything a 10^9 times better. At 12101 we have 40000000 m^3 per person. But by 13524 we are down to 40 m^3 per person, and by 14000 below 0.39 m^3 per person. From there we have only got until 14192 before we are just below 0.06 m^3. Remember, this is being ridiculous optimistic. Even with warp drive available starting tomorrow we would not be able to spread so fast that 14000 years from now we are uniformly occupying a 28000 light year diameter spherical volume around Earth. In reality we'll hit a space limit a lot earlier. Hence, we can conclude that 1% is not sustainable for more than a few thousand years even under very optimistic assumptions. Long term the growth rate must be one that on average declines over time, simply because a growth rate that does not do so leads to exponential growth, but we live in a universe were accessible space cannot grow faster than polynomially.
8note 5y ago
We've never had unfettered growth. People are limited in how many children they can have, and how many they want to have. We can trust parents to know how many children they want. We don't need a bureaucrat telling us when we can have sex and when we're required to have sex