6 ms·

Ask HN: What's the most ethical way to have less people on the planet?

1 points by nominusllc 4y ago

title.

gurut 4y ago
Educate everyone on the perils of over-population ?
BoorishBears 4y ago
Uplift our poorest people: - improve child mortality rates so they don't feel the need to have "replacement children" - improve education so they have fewer children with their own free will - improve their financial situations so they don't need children for labor (this isn't some evil heartless thing that poor people do btw, a lot of child labor is for sustenance farming just to maintain the bare minimum of an existence) - improve their access to healthcare and safe birth control
- eesmith 4y ago
  Here's a literature reference supporting several of these points - https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-8331-7 https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... : > In decreasing order of strength, fertility (TFR) correlates negatively with education, [contraceptive prevalence rate], and GDP per capita, and positively with religiosity.
johncoltrane 4y ago
Just a quick reminder that "ethical" is relative.
mardiyah 4y ago
Moldoteck 4y ago
Probably make poor people richer
themodelplumber 4y ago
Tightly define the ethics system first, then it should be more obvious. One of the biggest problems we have in the logical problem-solving space, especially with humanity-level issues, is that our soft systems (ethics, relations, morals, values) are left unstructured when in fact the opposite case is badly needed.
- xodjmk 4y ago
  There have been plenty of historical instances of supposed morally & ethically superior people reducing the earth's population. Generally, those are humanities greatest moments.
xodjmk 4y ago
It would be more ethical to have many more people on the planet. Larger denser cities. More exceptionally talented people collaborating on increasingly complex projects. higher acceleration in the advancement of science and technology, become a multi-planet species, and eventually a multi-star species. This post sounds anti-human, and lacking in vision.
King-Aaron 4y ago
A celestial impactor
Trouble_007 4y ago
Human Overpopulation : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation Overcrowding : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcrowding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcrowding -- Edit Add; >ethical concerns< The Trolley Problem : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Probably for a few generations to not reproduce as much. I see no direct ethical concerns here as long as it is voluntary.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ant1oz 4y ago
Just wait for WW3, and wait for all big cities and gvt building who don't care about life and nature gets destroyed. Then you'll have left the country people - the one who know how to survive with land, grow their own food - without lobbies telling them to have their seeds patented in order to sell them - and restore the landscape and the environment. Nothing to do - just wait. If that doesn't happen - then we're all doomed. All we'll have left is Matrix - or Brave new world - no freedom - which will eventually lead to human extinction.
usrn 4y ago
We have a serious problem in the West where there are too few people being born. You can't replace them with immigration because that leads to political instability (plus if the birthrates are low for moral reasons you'll just be replaced with people having different morals by definition.) We've known this since at least the 80s and it's kind of frustrating to see people continuing to freak out about it.
h2odragon 4y ago
If you feel so strongly that the planet needs less people, then why isn't it ethical to kill some of the excess ones? Justify it as defending the people you like from whatever effects you think "too many people" are causing. Having decided that "too many" is the call (and that you're the person to make that call), would it be better, ethically, to leave that distasteful task of cleansing the undeserving to someone else? *what if they don't have the same notion of "undeserving" as you?

1 points by nominusllc 4y ago

title.

gurut 4y ago

Educate everyone on the perils of over-population ?

BoorishBears 4y ago

Uplift our poorest people: - improve child mortality rates so they don't feel the need to have "replacement children" - improve education so they have fewer children with their own free will - improve their financial situations so they don't need children for labor (this isn't some evil heartless thing that poor people do btw, a lot of child labor is for sustenance farming just to maintain the bare minimum of an existence) - improve their access to healthcare and safe birth control

eesmith 4y ago
Here's a literature reference supporting several of these points - https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-8331-7 https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... : > In decreasing order of strength, fertility (TFR) correlates negatively with education, [contraceptive prevalence rate], and GDP per capita, and positively with religiosity.

johncoltrane 4y ago

Just a quick reminder that "ethical" is relative.

mardiyah 4y ago

Moldoteck 4y ago

Probably make poor people richer

themodelplumber 4y ago

Tightly define the ethics system first, then it should be more obvious. One of the biggest problems we have in the logical problem-solving space, especially with humanity-level issues, is that our soft systems (ethics, relations, morals, values) are left unstructured when in fact the opposite case is badly needed.

xodjmk 4y ago
There have been plenty of historical instances of supposed morally & ethically superior people reducing the earth's population. Generally, those are humanities greatest moments.

xodjmk 4y ago

It would be more ethical to have many more people on the planet. Larger denser cities. More exceptionally talented people collaborating on increasingly complex projects. higher acceleration in the advancement of science and technology, become a multi-planet species, and eventually a multi-star species. This post sounds anti-human, and lacking in vision.

King-Aaron 4y ago

A celestial impactor

Trouble_007 4y ago

Human Overpopulation : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation Overcrowding : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcrowding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcrowding -- Edit Add; >ethical concerns< The Trolley Problem : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Probably for a few generations to not reproduce as much. I see no direct ethical concerns here as long as it is voluntary.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ant1oz 4y ago

Just wait for WW3, and wait for all big cities and gvt building who don't care about life and nature gets destroyed. Then you'll have left the country people - the one who know how to survive with land, grow their own food - without lobbies telling them to have their seeds patented in order to sell them - and restore the landscape and the environment. Nothing to do - just wait. If that doesn't happen - then we're all doomed. All we'll have left is Matrix - or Brave new world - no freedom - which will eventually lead to human extinction.

usrn 4y ago

We have a serious problem in the West where there are too few people being born. You can't replace them with immigration because that leads to political instability (plus if the birthrates are low for moral reasons you'll just be replaced with people having different morals by definition.) We've known this since at least the 80s and it's kind of frustrating to see people continuing to freak out about it.

h2odragon 4y ago

If you feel so strongly that the planet needs less people, then why isn't it ethical to kill some of the excess ones? Justify it as defending the people you like from whatever effects you think "too many people" are causing. Having decided that "too many" is the call (and that you're the person to make that call), would it be better, ethically, to leave that distasteful task of cleansing the undeserving to someone else? *what if they don't have the same notion of "undeserving" as you?