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Ah, but humanity is an expansive and consuming force, as is natural since most forces in the universe are entropy increasing ones. And since amino acids have be

by bdamm 18d ago

Ah, but humanity is an expansive and consuming force, as is natural since most forces in the universe are entropy increasing ones. And since amino acids have been discovered on asteroids and tardigrades and fungus have been shown to survive space travel, we can't even say that Space provably lacks biological matter. Expanding (back?) into space is our manifest destiny, and good for the price of real estate too since all of earth becomes a luxury destination.

wavemode 18d ago
Population growth has been slowing for a long time, and is actually already below replacement level in most parts of the world outside Africa. It's unlikely that we will ever reach a global human population of even 11 billion. Some estimates put the peak at under 9 billion.
- somenameforme 17d ago
  Unless humanity goes extinct in the near future this is certainly inaccurate. People don't realize how rapidly fertility affects populations. Take a place with a fertility rate of 1. That means each successive generation (which tends to be about 20 years, or the the window of fertility for a gen - from age ~20 to ~40) will decrease in size by half, in a compounding fashion. So over 1 century, that's a 97% decline (0.5^5) in generational size. Extinction comes shockingly fast. But the opposite is also true. So what's going to happen is that low fertility populations are simply going to go extinct. That's going to be just lovely for humanity as it also corresponds with higher income, higher education, higher liberalism, higher secularism, and so on. And the current high fertility groups will come to quickly dominate the world. So it's kind of amusing in a way that Biblical texts will indeed come to pass - you'll have groups like Amish or Haredi, the meek - who happen to have high fertility rates, indeed inheriting the Earth. This is part of the reason fertility is, by far, the biggest crisis facing humanity today. All love to the Amish and Haredi, but I don't want the Earth to turn into a planet of overalls and sidelocks. Even that would probably be just liminal, but we need some sort of high tech, high intelligence, high fertility sect to emerge. It's probably going to require something to akin to a modern religion, though presumably without a deity. Or maybe the Mormons had it right all along.
  - bdamm 17d ago
    > high tech, high intelligence, high fertility sect So, SpaceX?
ehe78qhe 18d ago
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by bdamm 18d ago

wavemode 18d ago

Population growth has been slowing for a long time, and is actually already below replacement level in most parts of the world outside Africa. It's unlikely that we will ever reach a global human population of even 11 billion. Some estimates put the peak at under 9 billion.

somenameforme 17d ago
Unless humanity goes extinct in the near future this is certainly inaccurate. People don't realize how rapidly fertility affects populations. Take a place with a fertility rate of 1. That means each successive generation (which tends to be about 20 years, or the the window of fertility for a gen - from age ~20 to ~40) will decrease in size by half, in a compounding fashion. So over 1 century, that's a 97% decline (0.5^5) in generational size. Extinction comes shockingly fast. But the opposite is also true. So what's going to happen is that low fertility populations are simply going to go extinct. That's going to be just lovely for humanity as it also corresponds with higher income, higher education, higher liberalism, higher secularism, and so on. And the current high fertility groups will come to quickly dominate the world. So it's kind of amusing in a way that Biblical texts will indeed come to pass - you'll have groups like Amish or Haredi, the meek - who happen to have high fertility rates, indeed inheriting the Earth. This is part of the reason fertility is, by far, the biggest crisis facing humanity today. All love to the Amish and Haredi, but I don't want the Earth to turn into a planet of overalls and sidelocks. Even that would probably be just liminal, but we need some sort of high tech, high intelligence, high fertility sect to emerge. It's probably going to require something to akin to a modern religion, though presumably without a deity. Or maybe the Mormons had it right all along.
- bdamm 17d ago
  > high tech, high intelligence, high fertility sect So, SpaceX?

ehe78qhe 18d ago

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