3 ms·
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 communic
by 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 agoYou 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.