4 ms·

Throughout most of human history we have had less than a billion people. More people are alive today than have ever lived. And you are concerned that the popu

by EGreg 1y ago

Throughout most of human history we have had less than a billion people. More people are alive today than have ever lived. And you are concerned that the population will drop by a half? Everyone will be richer and better off. The amount of pollution and resource use will be solved too. The underlying input to that is the number of people. One third of arable land is undergoing desertification Insects and other species are dying off precipitously Corals and kelp forests too, entire ecosystems. Overfishing etc. My thoughts here are that we require a certain base number of humans to continue to expand science. If we have 100M humans world wide, I do not believe we'll be capable of expanding our current knowledge base, instead, I think we'll regress. That’s silly when AI can already make 1 person do the job of 100, and soon will be doing most of the science — it has already done this for protein folding etc. And it will happen sooner than in 30 years. This argument you and Musk make about needing more humans for science is super strange. Because you know the AI will make everything 100x anyway. And anyway, I would rather have the current level of science than ecosystem collapse across the board.

b112 1y ago
And you are concerned that the population will drop by a half? If you read more carefully, I am concerned by two things. A reduction to 0, and the lack of control over this. I think you don't get how the rate is continuing to decline, and further, that knowing why is important. And I have not said we need "more humans". Instead, I said we need a base number of humans.
- motorest 1y ago
  > If you read more carefully, I am concerned by two things. A reduction to 0, and the lack of control over this. I think you need to drop back to reality to reassess your concerns. Barring a major disaster, there is no risk of extinction. Population decline is a factor only in economic terms, as demographics alone will require a significant chunk of a nation's productivity potential to sustain people who left the workforce. However, countries like the US saw it's population double in only two or three generations, and people in the 50s weren't exactly fending off extinction.
agurk 1y ago
> More people are alive today than have ever lived. Assuming you meant died instead of lived to avoid a potentially nonsensical reading, this is not true. It seems this factoid[0] has been around since the 1970s, and at least in 2007 it was estimated to be 6% of people who'd ever lived being currently alive [1] [0] In the original sense of factoid - being fact-like, but not a fact (i.e. not true). C.f. android, like a man [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l...

by EGreg 1y ago

b112 1y ago

And you are concerned that the population will drop by a half? If you read more carefully, I am concerned by two things. A reduction to 0, and the lack of control over this. I think you don't get how the rate is continuing to decline, and further, that knowing why is important. And I have not said we need "more humans". Instead, I said we need a base number of humans.

motorest 1y ago
> If you read more carefully, I am concerned by two things. A reduction to 0, and the lack of control over this. I think you need to drop back to reality to reassess your concerns. Barring a major disaster, there is no risk of extinction. Population decline is a factor only in economic terms, as demographics alone will require a significant chunk of a nation's productivity potential to sustain people who left the workforce. However, countries like the US saw it's population double in only two or three generations, and people in the 50s weren't exactly fending off extinction.

agurk 1y ago

> More people are alive today than have ever lived. Assuming you meant died instead of lived to avoid a potentially nonsensical reading, this is not true. It seems this factoid[0] has been around since the 1970s, and at least in 2007 it was estimated to be 6% of people who'd ever lived being currently alive [1] [0] In the original sense of factoid - being fact-like, but not a fact (i.e. not true). C.f. android, like a man [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l...