4 ms·
Well, in the extreme case, human extinction seems like a pretty bad thing.
by Ajedi32 5mo ago
Well, in the extreme case, human extinction seems like a pretty bad thing.
- kranke155 5mo agoa large organism (human populaton on earth) reaching equilibrium and ceasing to grow does not equal to human extinction... it far more likely is just a temporary contraction that will then reverse when the conditions are set for it.
- calepayson 5mo agoYa but I’m 28 and have had enough with these contractions. For Christ sake can I get a sane decade so I can actually build a career. :)
- AndrewKemendo 5mo agoI mean you can always be a farrier, lineman, septic sumper, cobbler etc… What’s stopping you from being a welder or dentist?
- liglam 5mo ago[dead]
- calepayson 5mo agoI feel like this is a joke but honest answer: I worked ocean rescue for 4 years then lived with some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary. What’s stopping me? Probably some combo of wanting to one day afford a home and a family without having to move to Memphis and the a sense that I’d get bored as a welder and therefore be a bad one. Man, septic pumper tho…
- M95D 5mo ago> some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary Don't worry. It's temporary.
- AndrewKemendo 5mo agoNot a joke, I tried to start a trash company and be a handler on the back, but unfortunately my epilepsy got in the way
- kranke155 5mo agoits unlikely that will happen. If you read Arrighi, his hegemonic cycle narrative says that the interregnum between two hegemons is decades of chaos as the system reorganises. We seem to be heading for a US to China transition. The last transition was British Empire to US and that was 1900-1945. We can only hope for something better.
- calepayson 5mo agoYay.
- btilly 5mo agoPopulations do not tend to grow to equilibrium and then stop. They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse. The result may not be extinction. But losing 90% of the human population won't feel that different if you're living through it. A relevant book recommend, https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Revised/dp/0143117009/ https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Rev.... It walks through a variety of past examples of human societies that went through this. There is no reason to believe that our current world-wide society will fare better.
- Ajedi32 5mo ago> They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse. That's not what's happening here. Birth rates are below 2.1 in many countries who are no where close to "outstripping their resources". There are other factors causing the contraction which have nothing to do with resource limitations. In fact it seems like it's the opposite: richer nations with more resources tend to have lower birth rates. That's the scary part because it means there's no equilibrium to be reached. Birth rates could, in theory, remain low until humanity ceases to exist.
- kranke155 5mo agoHas any organism ever extinguished itself as you describe ? This whole human extinction thing… isn’t that catastrophising? We are a 7-8 billion individuals away from extinction.
- btilly 5mo agoYes. Read through https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-experiment-69941 https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-experiment-69941 to see that, given a good enough environment, mice can wipe themselves out. Here is a particularly telling passage: Eventually Universe 25 took another disturbing turn. Mice born into the chaos couldn’t form normal social bonds or engage in complex social behaviors such as courtship, mating, and pup-rearing. Instead of interacting with their peers, males compulsively groomed themselves; females stopped getting pregnant. Effectively, says Ramsden, they became “trapped in an infantile state of early development,” even when removed from Universe 25 and introduced to “normal” mice. Ultimately, the colony died out. “There’s no recovery, and that’s what was so shocking to [Calhoun],” says Ramsden. Like the mice, our population is going into reverse. And that description of behavior, looks awfully prescient when I compare to humans on social media today...
- Ajedi32 5mo agoThe population is not "reaching equilibrium", it's shrinking. If it was reaching equilibrium you'd expect the births per women to be slowly reducing until it approaches 2.1 and then staying there. It's dropping substantially below that. And there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the contraction is temporary, the causal factors seem largely unrelated to the existing population size.
- kranke155 5mo agoHow can you say it’s not temporary if it’s just started?
- Ajedi32 5mo agoBecause all plausible theorized causes (birth control, global reduction in poverty enabled by technology, women's rights) are not temporary conditions. (Or at least we better hope they aren't.)
- kranke155 5mo agoThose are just hypothesis. Here’s ankther likely hypothesis - isn’t this is a mega fauna arriving at capacity?
- Ajedi32 5mo agoThe problem is that's not a likely hypothesis. There's no evidence lack of capacity is the cause of declining birth rates. In fact there's strong evidence for the opposite: countries with more resources to go around tend to have lower birth rates than countries with less resources. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_rec... There's no equilibrium here, if anything the feedback loop is positive rather than negative. That's the concerning part. I thought this was common knowledge, but given the reaction I'm getting in this thread I guess it's not as common as I thought and I should have explained myself better in my original comment.
- BrainInAJar 5mo agohuman extinction is far more likely if we keep reproducing than if we slow down. See: climate change etc
- saulpw 5mo agoHumans are the second most populous animal on the planet. We are in no danger of extinction.
- Ajedi32 5mo agoIf the trend doesn't reverse, it's mathematically guaranteed. But realistically, I agree. Civilizational collapse would happen long before extinction, which seems like it would almost certainly return the birth rate back to pre-industrial levels. I just don't think that's a desirable outcome either. Or, even more realistically, nations with state religions that effectively outlaw birth control and/or women's rights will take over the world, and nations which don't do those things will collapse. That also seems like a bad outcome to me. Point is, I don't think it's wise to treat this like it's not a problem.
- Legend2440 5mo agoIt's not a problem. Go look at a graph of historical world population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File%3APopulation_curve.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File%3... It's virtually flat for eons, and then in the last 100 years it shoots up like a rocket. We didn't hit the first billion people until 1800, but the 8th billion took only 11 years. (2011-2022) This rate of exponential growth was never sustainable, and it's normal and natural that it's leveling off now.
- BobaFloutist 5mo agoI don't know where you got that idea, but we're not even the most populous species of vertebrates on the planet (that might be chickens). If you include arthropods, ants make it not even remotely close.
- saulpw 5mo ago"Land vertebrates", #1 is chickens, #2 is humans. But colloquially "animal" does not include ants or fish.