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Didn't watch the video but the article was good. I think their mindset is absolutely correct- we should be worrying less about overpopulation than underpopulati

Didn't watch the video but the article was good. I think their mindset is absolutely correct- we should be worrying less about overpopulation than underpopulation and we should be pushing forward trying to make technological progress instead of embracing a degrowth mindset. While it does seem like big ideas are harder to find, I think some incentive shifting (e.g. more focus by corporates on long-term growth through productivity increases and innovation and less on financial chicanery) along with the innovation that comes sometimes with a single new platform (remember all the "Uber for X" products that the iphone enabled) that can help turn the tide. Plus, seems like many more people are concerned with progress, from Cowen to Progress.institute, so hopefully with more focus there will be more results.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
It seems quite obvious to me there is a lot of growth left with information being close to free now - and much of the adult world still being VERY poorly educated. The current children that replace them will be much more educated due to free information. I don't see how this doesn't create a huge jump in productivity in the developing world (~50% of the population).
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Good point, I remember seeing a report a little while ago about literacy rates even in the U.S. and they were surprisingly bad (a quick lookup on Wikipedia shows "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level") That said, I'm not sure it's a guarantee that kids will be more educated and productive. I spent quite a bit of time in Africa (Kenya and Cameroon for projects, Uganda for holiday) last year and many people are relatively highly educated (e.g. local university degree) but still cannot get work, access to finance to start their own biz and be productive, or as soon as they make some money their business will get taxed (legally or illegally) to death. So other factors beyond education holding folks back, and even if it was just enabled from online learning, I think we'd see much more takeup of MOOCs and the like. Edit: Grammar
- captainbland 4y ago
  I think a big - maybe huge and insurmountable - barrier to this is the sheer amount of junk attention sinks and outright wrong information on exactly the same medium that the good, free information is on.
  - stouset 4y ago
    I remember being naïve and thinking the Internet would solve the issue of spreading high-quality information far and wide. What I (and I think many others) completely neglected to realize was that it also made misinformation exponentially easier to spread.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      Misinformation is not making people worse programmers or worse engineers or worse doctors or worse lawyers at the same rate (or higher) that good information is making more people better. Misinformation is mostly affecting a relatively small portion (~10%) of the population that is predisposed to believe conspiracy. It's not like your BiL who thinks Lizard People are running the world would've won the Nobel prize in Physics if it weren't for that Facebook post by your aunt that rotted his brain. Information as a whole is good (so far).
    - stickfigure 4y ago
      I think the misinformation risks are overstated. Qanon-ers are a tiny part of the population. Even antivaxers are a distinct minority. Good information wins out, even if the process is not perfect.
      - esrauch 4y ago
        Are there more Qanon-ers or Coursera users though? Even if the risks are overstated (which I'm not sure about) it seems like the amount of quality learning happening online rounds to zero. Even narrowly, I'm not sure that more true information about vaccines is spread online than false information, partly because I think it's actually pretty low amount of true information being spread. Ten years ago there was a lot of optimism that moocs we're going to bring education to the masses, make $40k/year tuition entirely obsolete, but that seems to basically have entirely failed.
slx26 4y ago
And yet, at the same time, growth can't continue forever (unless you get into space colonization on artificial habitats and are able to develop that faster than population grows and other stuff we are not going to discuss now). What happens, as the article indeed points out, is that many things keep breaking, and we keep fixing and repairing and improving and more things fail and stop working and then again we fix and replace them. And so on and so on. The main problem is that people suffers in that process. The system self-regulates, sure. Nature self-regulates all the time through natural selection, evolutionary pressure and competition. That doesn't make it right. We develop medicine because being human is the opposite of accepting the randomness, competition and cruelty of nature. We want to have control, we want people to be happy, we don't want to be exposed to arbitrary tragedy, unfairness, pain. As I always say, don't confuse the comfort of your boat with the state of the sea. That you are comfortable riding the current wave of pressure doesn't mean no one is suffering. This doesn't mean we should never grow, but it means we should do it responsibly. Saying growth is already responsible because the world keeps self-regulating is just being blind to many of the dynamics of the system. And ok, one may argue that finding an equilibrium is impossible. That when there are resources available, we will always start taking more and more, growing above our possibilities, taking water until we hit the bottom, dumping shit until it spills. Then pressure and competition kicks in, people fall, people suffer, self-regulation is the way and all is good again. I don't understand. (sorry for the rant, I understand you may also have concerns about the rate of growth and welfare of people in the process, but I wanted to share this take anyway)
- slothtrop 4y ago
  As you say, growth, on Earth anyway, is projected to end. We should be planning for it. Instead nations are deferring and deferring by focusing on increased immigration.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

It seems quite obvious to me there is a lot of growth left with information being close to free now - and much of the adult world still being VERY poorly educated. The current children that replace them will be much more educated due to free information. I don't see how this doesn't create a huge jump in productivity in the developing world (~50% of the population).

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Good point, I remember seeing a report a little while ago about literacy rates even in the U.S. and they were surprisingly bad (a quick lookup on Wikipedia shows "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level") That said, I'm not sure it's a guarantee that kids will be more educated and productive. I spent quite a bit of time in Africa (Kenya and Cameroon for projects, Uganda for holiday) last year and many people are relatively highly educated (e.g. local university degree) but still cannot get work, access to finance to start their own biz and be productive, or as soon as they make some money their business will get taxed (legally or illegally) to death. So other factors beyond education holding folks back, and even if it was just enabled from online learning, I think we'd see much more takeup of MOOCs and the like. Edit: Grammar
captainbland 4y ago
I think a big - maybe huge and insurmountable - barrier to this is the sheer amount of junk attention sinks and outright wrong information on exactly the same medium that the good, free information is on.
- stouset 4y ago
  I remember being naïve and thinking the Internet would solve the issue of spreading high-quality information far and wide. What I (and I think many others) completely neglected to realize was that it also made misinformation exponentially easier to spread.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Misinformation is not making people worse programmers or worse engineers or worse doctors or worse lawyers at the same rate (or higher) that good information is making more people better. Misinformation is mostly affecting a relatively small portion (~10%) of the population that is predisposed to believe conspiracy. It's not like your BiL who thinks Lizard People are running the world would've won the Nobel prize in Physics if it weren't for that Facebook post by your aunt that rotted his brain. Information as a whole is good (so far).
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    I think the misinformation risks are overstated. Qanon-ers are a tiny part of the population. Even antivaxers are a distinct minority. Good information wins out, even if the process is not perfect.
    - esrauch 4y ago
      Are there more Qanon-ers or Coursera users though? Even if the risks are overstated (which I'm not sure about) it seems like the amount of quality learning happening online rounds to zero. Even narrowly, I'm not sure that more true information about vaccines is spread online than false information, partly because I think it's actually pretty low amount of true information being spread. Ten years ago there was a lot of optimism that moocs we're going to bring education to the masses, make $40k/year tuition entirely obsolete, but that seems to basically have entirely failed.

slx26 4y ago

And yet, at the same time, growth can't continue forever (unless you get into space colonization on artificial habitats and are able to develop that faster than population grows and other stuff we are not going to discuss now). What happens, as the article indeed points out, is that many things keep breaking, and we keep fixing and repairing and improving and more things fail and stop working and then again we fix and replace them. And so on and so on. The main problem is that people suffers in that process. The system self-regulates, sure. Nature self-regulates all the time through natural selection, evolutionary pressure and competition. That doesn't make it right. We develop medicine because being human is the opposite of accepting the randomness, competition and cruelty of nature. We want to have control, we want people to be happy, we don't want to be exposed to arbitrary tragedy, unfairness, pain. As I always say, don't confuse the comfort of your boat with the state of the sea. That you are comfortable riding the current wave of pressure doesn't mean no one is suffering. This doesn't mean we should never grow, but it means we should do it responsibly. Saying growth is already responsible because the world keeps self-regulating is just being blind to many of the dynamics of the system. And ok, one may argue that finding an equilibrium is impossible. That when there are resources available, we will always start taking more and more, growing above our possibilities, taking water until we hit the bottom, dumping shit until it spills. Then pressure and competition kicks in, people fall, people suffer, self-regulation is the way and all is good again. I don't understand. (sorry for the rant, I understand you may also have concerns about the rate of growth and welfare of people in the process, but I wanted to share this take anyway)

slothtrop 4y ago
As you say, growth, on Earth anyway, is projected to end. We should be planning for it. Instead nations are deferring and deferring by focusing on increased immigration.