3 ms·

It would be more accurate to say that 'a rebound is difficult'. Not extinct or impossible. With smaller number, are smaller breading opportunities. So after t

It would be more accurate to say that 'a rebound is difficult'. Not extinct or impossible. With smaller number, are smaller breading opportunities. So after the population collapse, yes, humans will still exist. But might take hundreds of years again to reach our current population levels, and in the interim, societies would have gone through huge upheavals.

ben_w 2y ago
Sure, but I'd say mere hundreds of years is brief, almost but not quite negligible, on the scale of human history — the Greek dark ages was about 400 years long.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  You are Correct. Just sometimes I hear people on the 'right' say we don't really need to take action on X,Y,Z problems, because humans will adapt, and we've been around for thousands of years, so we are really just over-reacting. They ignore that, yeah, humans will be here on a geologic scale, but the US wont, Congress wont, Constitution wont, we're going to collapse into a bunch of warring city states, and where is their precious outrage then? It wont matter if they believed it was all a hoax, when they are dead, but we'll all be dead. So discussing time scales in short term, <100 years is important. Generally, for planning.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    For personal planning I'd make it much shorter than a century: in one decade I bought my first home, lost both parents, Brexit happened, I moved country, Covid triggered lockdowns worldwide, and Russia invaded Ukraine. But even on the timescale of 2100 — and 75 years was enough time to go from the height of the British Empire to what is widely considered to be its final end in the form of handing back Hong Kong, so quite reasonable to guess the US will be gone by then — only the most extreme forecasts have a lower global population than today.

3 ms·

It would be more accurate to say that 'a rebound is difficult'. Not extinct or impossible. With smaller number, are smaller breading opportunities. So after t

by FrustratedMonky 2y ago

ben_w 2y ago
Sure, but I'd say mere hundreds of years is brief, almost but not quite negligible, on the scale of human history — the Greek dark ages was about 400 years long.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  You are Correct. Just sometimes I hear people on the 'right' say we don't really need to take action on X,Y,Z problems, because humans will adapt, and we've been around for thousands of years, so we are really just over-reacting. They ignore that, yeah, humans will be here on a geologic scale, but the US wont, Congress wont, Constitution wont, we're going to collapse into a bunch of warring city states, and where is their precious outrage then? It wont matter if they believed it was all a hoax, when they are dead, but we'll all be dead. So discussing time scales in short term, <100 years is important. Generally, for planning.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    For personal planning I'd make it much shorter than a century: in one decade I bought my first home, lost both parents, Brexit happened, I moved country, Covid triggered lockdowns worldwide, and Russia invaded Ukraine. But even on the timescale of 2100 — and 75 years was enough time to go from the height of the British Empire to what is widely considered to be its final end in the form of handing back Hong Kong, so quite reasonable to guess the US will be gone by then — only the most extreme forecasts have a lower global population than today.