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I agree with everything you said and everything in the article, except for the number of people. There are 8B people now, and, if nothing changes, by 2100 there

I agree with everything you said and everything in the article, except for the number of people. There are 8B people now, and, if nothing changes, by 2100 there will be 16B people. But I would not be surprised if this thing with the mice getting younger is developed rapidly for people in the next 20 years or less, and 20 years after that it's a staple of comprehensive health care, and by 2100 there's instead 32B people. My thing is, whomever wants to colonize space and Mars and distant exoplanets around other stars... let them go. Let whomever wants to go, go. Encourage them to go. The rest of us can clean up the Earth and work to create a future society that doesn't use 175% of the available resources every damn year, work to find a balance that preserves diversity and honest to goodness Nature, stop expanding development and deforestation, finds some equitable solution to birth control, prevent stupid people from constantly breeding, support and encourage LGBQ and celibate priests, solve crime, and stop polluting the air, water, land and the food everything eats. Colonizing space and other worlds only helps Earth and everything living or that will live on it, because while there are very smart people, humanity as a whole is a complete idiot, so the best thing we can do is reduce and limit the number of people here without cruelty or genocide. Think of space as a suicide booth, and let people be free. We shouldn't let insurmountable odds deter them. People will lotteries. Throw enough spaghetti at a wall and sooner or layer, it will stick.

chitowneats 4y ago
> so the best thing we can do is reduce and limit the number of people here without cruelty or genocide. Think of space as a suicide booth, and let people be free. Unrealistic and honestly pretty cruel sounding despite your caveat. If space is a death trap, you will never get more than a few small caravans to give it a shot. No way that would put a dent in your 32B, a number you pulled from nowhere, loosely based on one recent study about improving longevity in mice.
- Maursault 4y ago
  140M people are born every year, but only 60M people die every year. We'll need to do something if the birth rate keeps increasing or even stays steady, or even slows down, but the death rate stops.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    "if the birth rate keeps increasing" is another of your assumptions that most demographers find unrealistic. Rising incomes have solved this problem (perhaps too well) in every single advanced economy on Earth. Is your assumption that certain developing societies aren't capable of this? Or won't do this? If that's the case, why? Why are we extrapolating current birth rates in places like West Africa 100 years into the future? That didn't happen anywhere else.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      > Rising incomes have solved this problem (perhaps too well) in every single advanced economy on Earth. This is an unrealistic fantasy. 90% of all the available wealth is held by the top 1%. Cost of living increases have never matched inflation. The most advanced society Earth has ever seen is sliding slowly backwards. Few are getting richer, nearly everyone is getting poorer. Your solution is elusive. > Is your assumption that certain developing societies aren't capable of this? Or won't do this? If that's the case, why? What are you talking about? Look around. I don't see this utopia of yours anywhere now or before, so why do you expect it will just materialize in the future?
      - chitowneats 4y ago
        [flagged]
        Maursault 4y ago
        There are some that see the glass half full, but I've never before encountered someone that sees half a glass and thinks there's an Olympic swimming pool.
        chitowneats 4y ago
        Perhaps you've heard of this country called China. A country that was as poor as the places in West Africa that you've written off. In 4 decades, they pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. As a result, they are now facing a demographic crash that will shrink their population nearly in half: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/12/05/key-facts-about-chinas-declining-population/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/12/05/key-facts-a... This isn't exactly going to be a nice situation for them, or for us. You misunderstand my position as being wildly optimistic. You simply don't understand contemporary human societies, so your assumptions about their trajectories miss the mark completely.

chitowneats 4y ago

> so the best thing we can do is reduce and limit the number of people here without cruelty or genocide. Think of space as a suicide booth, and let people be free. Unrealistic and honestly pretty cruel sounding despite your caveat. If space is a death trap, you will never get more than a few small caravans to give it a shot. No way that would put a dent in your 32B, a number you pulled from nowhere, loosely based on one recent study about improving longevity in mice.

Maursault 4y ago
140M people are born every year, but only 60M people die every year. We'll need to do something if the birth rate keeps increasing or even stays steady, or even slows down, but the death rate stops.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  "if the birth rate keeps increasing" is another of your assumptions that most demographers find unrealistic. Rising incomes have solved this problem (perhaps too well) in every single advanced economy on Earth. Is your assumption that certain developing societies aren't capable of this? Or won't do this? If that's the case, why? Why are we extrapolating current birth rates in places like West Africa 100 years into the future? That didn't happen anywhere else.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > Rising incomes have solved this problem (perhaps too well) in every single advanced economy on Earth. This is an unrealistic fantasy. 90% of all the available wealth is held by the top 1%. Cost of living increases have never matched inflation. The most advanced society Earth has ever seen is sliding slowly backwards. Few are getting richer, nearly everyone is getting poorer. Your solution is elusive. > Is your assumption that certain developing societies aren't capable of this? Or won't do this? If that's the case, why? What are you talking about? Look around. I don't see this utopia of yours anywhere now or before, so why do you expect it will just materialize in the future?
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - Maursault 4y ago
        There are some that see the glass half full, but I've never before encountered someone that sees half a glass and thinks there's an Olympic swimming pool.
        chitowneats 4y ago
        Perhaps you've heard of this country called China. A country that was as poor as the places in West Africa that you've written off. In 4 decades, they pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. As a result, they are now facing a demographic crash that will shrink their population nearly in half: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/12/05/key-facts-about-chinas-declining-population/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/12/05/key-facts-a... This isn't exactly going to be a nice situation for them, or for us. You misunderstand my position as being wildly optimistic. You simply don't understand contemporary human societies, so your assumptions about their trajectories miss the mark completely.