3 ms·

10B ppl, we can make it! lulz... I wonder when people will wake up and stop following that stupid never ending economy growth pattern. Its just impossible.. No

by Borg3 3y ago

10B ppl, we can make it! lulz... I wonder when people will wake up and stop following that stupid never ending economy growth pattern. Its just impossible.. Nothing in nature grows for ever.. ok.. except blackholes but thats special case... We either can have 200M happy ppl living decent lives or 10B poor ppl, struggling for basic things.

low_common 3y ago
So what are you gonna do about it?
Vecr 3y ago
Black holes don't actually grow forever, at least if you accept hawking radiation and the heat death of the universe. Eventually the evaporation due to hawking radiation will outpace the inflow of matter and light, causing the black hole to shrink until it is gone.
myshpa 3y ago
> stupid never ending economy growth pattern. Its just impossible Agree with degrowth, exponential growth in a finite environment is not physically possible. > 200M happy ppl living decent lives or 10B poor ppl We can feed 10B people just fine ... with plant based diets. But don't worry, if we don't stop fossil fuels and animal ag pronto, we'll get to 200M or less soon enough. Not so sure about "happy" though. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable
- Borg3 3y ago
  Haha.. funny argument. Feeding is just one problem. There are few to handle more: - providing goods for people - managing their biological waste - managing their technological waste All those needs energy, from whatever source.. And we cannot scale it up forever.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    > Feeding is just one problem But the biggest one, given the resistance it evokes and how much damage our current practices cause (esp. biodiversity loss, deforestation, soil erosion, eutrophication, excessive water, use ... all driven by animal ag). > All those needs energy Agree, and understand. We're too dependent on fossil fuels, and the EROI keeps falling down. I hope we'll manage to switch to renewables before the time runs out. Some hope is necessary :)
robocat 3y ago
> We either can have 200M happy ppl living decent lives or 10B poor ppl False dichotomy. We can have both (and probably do - and you are likely one of the 200M winners since you write English, have access to HN and you have the free time to comment on HN). You are making the ugly argument for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism - better hope you are one of the few lucky winners!
- Borg3 3y ago
  Oh, thats not that simple. Curves in nature are never linear or exponental. They are mixed, depending on several factors. But always you will hit plateau. Not understanding it means you are poor at math. Just take a look at human population graph past last 2000 years. And why growth was such small? Answer is simple, energy density. Once humans started to use coal and later oil (high density energy sources) they could utilize machines to do all the hard work and so, we could grow futher. (I skip other importand achivements, but they are directly linked to energy density anyway). As for the winner, oh well.. Yeah, im lucky one that I born in western world, I can have nice job and live in pretty fine conditions. But also, I am not person that will deny such live to other people, like all those fanatics saying we can have 10B ppl living. Yeah, we can.. in shitty conditions. But why those saying that usually are very rich having serveral huge houses and acres of land for themselfs, leaving others in small flats and working hard. Again, we cannot afford that for 10B ppl.
chr1 3y ago
200M is not enough to maintain the current level of technology. There simply won't be enough people to develop new cpus, build rockets, maintain enough communication cables and satellites, research new treatments. On the other hand 200M is quite enough to destroy ecosystems and cause mass extinctions, like we did with megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event. How can one live a decent life, if his loved ones die from illnesses that would have been treatable if there were more people, and if one knows that all of his descendants eventually will die from a fall of an asteroid because there is not enough people to ever develop measures against that. In fact we live much better lives than what any of our ancestors did. And earth can sustain much more than 10B. We'll use gene drive to eliminate species like bark beetles, and when we double the population we'll be able to control the weather, solving by that climate change issue, and allowing population to double again. > Nothing in nature grows for ever maybe, but there are no signs that we are at a point that we can't grow anymore, because there is so much unused space around us. 30% of land are empty deserts that can be used with new technologies, 3x more is sea surface that can be used when we have enough people to develop seasteading, and after that there is virtually infinite amount of empty planets in our galaxy, so we are not even near the limit.
- Borg3 3y ago
  You are underestimating amount of energy waste for bullshit jobs. Its huge. Only a fraction of population handles those importand hi-tec jobs. Majority of jobs are for services. And a lot of jobs are bullshit jobs, like: lawyers, judges, our inflated financial jobs, politics, various govs jobs. While those are needed for our complex society, they are very inflated these days. You are right, even small greedy population can destroy world. And that the primary problem, greed. Thats why we have ever growing economy, because we need grow to have more and more. Thats dead end. Much better is to have stable environment that ups and downs. Also, stop dreaming about weather control, its extremally complex system that is not yet understood (will ever be? I hope so). There are a lot of examples on earth where people wanted to control ecosystem and it ended badly. This is another problem. Someone popups with an idea or tech and everyone jumps on it, lets use it, not doing research about possible side effects and how to mitigate it. Great example: plastics. As for empty space, its not really empty. Its importand ecosystems for this planets that sustain live there. In reality, there is no empty space on earth, if you take a look on whatever spot, there is life there, small or tiny and we are struggling to understand what role in ecosystem it have.

by Borg3 3y ago

low_common 3y ago

So what are you gonna do about it?

Vecr 3y ago

Black holes don't actually grow forever, at least if you accept hawking radiation and the heat death of the universe. Eventually the evaporation due to hawking radiation will outpace the inflow of matter and light, causing the black hole to shrink until it is gone.

myshpa 3y ago

> stupid never ending economy growth pattern. Its just impossible Agree with degrowth, exponential growth in a finite environment is not physically possible. > 200M happy ppl living decent lives or 10B poor ppl We can feed 10B people just fine ... with plant based diets. But don't worry, if we don't stop fossil fuels and animal ag pronto, we'll get to 200M or less soon enough. Not so sure about "happy" though. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable

Borg3 3y ago
Haha.. funny argument. Feeding is just one problem. There are few to handle more: - providing goods for people - managing their biological waste - managing their technological waste All those needs energy, from whatever source.. And we cannot scale it up forever.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > Feeding is just one problem But the biggest one, given the resistance it evokes and how much damage our current practices cause (esp. biodiversity loss, deforestation, soil erosion, eutrophication, excessive water, use ... all driven by animal ag). > All those needs energy Agree, and understand. We're too dependent on fossil fuels, and the EROI keeps falling down. I hope we'll manage to switch to renewables before the time runs out. Some hope is necessary :)

robocat 3y ago

> We either can have 200M happy ppl living decent lives or 10B poor ppl False dichotomy. We can have both (and probably do - and you are likely one of the 200M winners since you write English, have access to HN and you have the free time to comment on HN). You are making the ugly argument for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism - better hope you are one of the few lucky winners!

Borg3 3y ago
Oh, thats not that simple. Curves in nature are never linear or exponental. They are mixed, depending on several factors. But always you will hit plateau. Not understanding it means you are poor at math. Just take a look at human population graph past last 2000 years. And why growth was such small? Answer is simple, energy density. Once humans started to use coal and later oil (high density energy sources) they could utilize machines to do all the hard work and so, we could grow futher. (I skip other importand achivements, but they are directly linked to energy density anyway). As for the winner, oh well.. Yeah, im lucky one that I born in western world, I can have nice job and live in pretty fine conditions. But also, I am not person that will deny such live to other people, like all those fanatics saying we can have 10B ppl living. Yeah, we can.. in shitty conditions. But why those saying that usually are very rich having serveral huge houses and acres of land for themselfs, leaving others in small flats and working hard. Again, we cannot afford that for 10B ppl.

chr1 3y ago

200M is not enough to maintain the current level of technology. There simply won't be enough people to develop new cpus, build rockets, maintain enough communication cables and satellites, research new treatments. On the other hand 200M is quite enough to destroy ecosystems and cause mass extinctions, like we did with megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event. How can one live a decent life, if his loved ones die from illnesses that would have been treatable if there were more people, and if one knows that all of his descendants eventually will die from a fall of an asteroid because there is not enough people to ever develop measures against that. In fact we live much better lives than what any of our ancestors did. And earth can sustain much more than 10B. We'll use gene drive to eliminate species like bark beetles, and when we double the population we'll be able to control the weather, solving by that climate change issue, and allowing population to double again. > Nothing in nature grows for ever maybe, but there are no signs that we are at a point that we can't grow anymore, because there is so much unused space around us. 30% of land are empty deserts that can be used with new technologies, 3x more is sea surface that can be used when we have enough people to develop seasteading, and after that there is virtually infinite amount of empty planets in our galaxy, so we are not even near the limit.

Borg3 3y ago
You are underestimating amount of energy waste for bullshit jobs. Its huge. Only a fraction of population handles those importand hi-tec jobs. Majority of jobs are for services. And a lot of jobs are bullshit jobs, like: lawyers, judges, our inflated financial jobs, politics, various govs jobs. While those are needed for our complex society, they are very inflated these days. You are right, even small greedy population can destroy world. And that the primary problem, greed. Thats why we have ever growing economy, because we need grow to have more and more. Thats dead end. Much better is to have stable environment that ups and downs. Also, stop dreaming about weather control, its extremally complex system that is not yet understood (will ever be? I hope so). There are a lot of examples on earth where people wanted to control ecosystem and it ended badly. This is another problem. Someone popups with an idea or tech and everyone jumps on it, lets use it, not doing research about possible side effects and how to mitigate it. Great example: plastics. As for empty space, its not really empty. Its importand ecosystems for this planets that sustain live there. In reality, there is no empty space on earth, if you take a look on whatever spot, there is life there, small or tiny and we are struggling to understand what role in ecosystem it have.