10 billion people with half in squalor conditions is not idea
I think a more reasonable population with the average quality of life to be very high is way more ideal.
1,600,000,000 humans in 1900
6,144,000,000 humans in 2000
8,000,000,000 humans in 2024
To me that is an incredibly exponential growth that is the main reason by the perspective of stagnation is good and why expansion is bad
Aggressively exponential growth is unsustainable in many ways and that a balanced perspective and outcome of population is the most ideal situation
"Exponential growth is unsustainable" is a meaningless phrase without a lot of details. What does unsustainable mean? If we're simply talking about raw population growth numbers, we can support a whole lot more people at our current level of technology if we're just talking about meeting their essential needs. When you factor in the exponential growth of technology, sky (or space) is the limit. Will their consumption patterns change? Sure. Will their standard of living change? Definitely.
Population growth is usually a red herring. The issue is social and political will and that has been the problem in every age and likely will continue to be. Increase population by ten fold or cut it by 90% and social and political problems will still be the issue.
This is plague species level growth. A biologist looking at a species which increases like this would know it's headed for a crash. Is humanity so exceptional it can avoid this?
And growth like this occurs when a species gains access to some new abundant food resource. What resource could that be in our case? Petroleum of course.
>Is humanity so exceptional it can avoid this?
I'd say yeah. Just about any species as intelligent, social and cooperative as humans is likely to be capable of avoiding it. The main reason being that we have a unique ability to completely and totally control our environment to a degree no other species can.
As for the practical reason we can avoid this? We have the technology to push beyond the boundaries of Earth. We have the industrial capability to build in space, albeit at great cost. Once a species can build in space, it's just a matter of time and brute force until your species is off your planet, assuming that's where you want to go. Once you're in orbit, you can go anywhere, and gathering resources becomes less of a question of scarcity, and more one of extraction and refinement.
But we already have lots of localised population crashes, so doesn't a thing happening cast doubt on the assumption it won't happen?
We also have the technology to avoid famines, ecological catastrophes and genocide, but we don't do that either.
These population crashes aren't being caused by resource shortages. Mostly it's laws, economic hardship and extreme work culture.
It's important to note that we aren't avoiding those things because it's not profitable. Our society is built upon ever increasing profits.
I said we can avoid these catastrophes, not that we will.
Except that's not an issue of population, it's a matter of efficiency. Our carrying capacity is limited by our current lifestyle, however with the right advancements we can expand from billions to quadrillions in a century while still drastically increasing quality of life.
I feel like it's possible, and you are doing a lot to justify that we could indeed reach that many.
The question we have to ask ourselves is should we continuously grow population or should we work towards something more stable
Is everyone forgetting what sub we're on? K2 or bust, baby!
I would also ask, what does "work towards something more stable" mean when you're talking about other people's children and reproductive freedom?
That’s like saying even if we inhabit a utopia, we’re living in the subtle horror that we didn’t invent agriculture 50,000 years earlier and are instead living with the unborn ghosts of 50 trillion trillion space-faring humans that might have been.
Also, why do you want octillions of potential people being born into anything less than a post-scarcity utopia? Isn’t that the ideal foundation to establish, governmentally, socially, and politically, and only then expand outward?
>That’s like saying even if we inhabit a utopia, we’re living in the subtle horror that we didn’t invent agriculture 50,000 years earlier and are instead living with the unborn ghosts of 50 trillion trillion space-faring humans that might have been.
I mean, that is still disappointing to me, but the thing is with that we can't do anything about it, but we CAN influence the future.
>Also, why do you want octillions of potential people being born into anything less than a post-scarcity utopia? Isn’t that the ideal foundation to establish, governmentally, socially, and politically, and only then expand outward?
I never said anything about a lower quality of life, just that between too equally utopian civilizations the larger one is better simply because more people are experiencing it.
Yeah, that’s a fair response. But you can’t argue like that for continual population growth in the present unless we’re at a utopia, which we’re not. All I’m saying is that, *if* a smaller population brings about a post-scarcity world, that’s a *significantly* better and more sustainable foundation to then continue growing into the octillions, no matter what future optimums there may be for spreading consciousness in the universe.
But quality is being dropped not because of the lack of resources but by twisted reality and shattered society chasing dollars not dreams.
No insulation cheap houses put up in tornado alley. When homes that laugh that off are old and easy and sequester carbon, but less heat. Less power and less jobs putting up what didn’t break down
We could easily carry 3x world population
People worry WAY too about world population growth, but I’d argue that there would have to be a point where human quality of life globally would be diminished by a huge population. It’s not just about our ability to feed, house and provide medical care in my opinion. So could we have a population of one trillion people? I think Arthur answered that question as yes but correct me if I’m wrong. But would we want to live in that world, would the human race thrive in that environment? That’s a question I don’t have a ready response to but it is worth exploring.
A trillion shouldn't be too bad with the right technology, that's nowhere near ecumenopolis levels like Coruscant from Star Wars, which would realistically have around a quadrillion.
Even if the technology currently exists to support such population sizes in reasonable comfort (a dubious proposition to begin with), the physical infrastructure and the political will to build it does not. We should work on that first.
how do you figure that? MANY areas are ALREADY experiencing drought. Not only lack of potable water to drink, but even lesser quality to use on crops. Food is also scarce in many areas, and land is at a premium.
I fail to see how we are worrying too much. IF anything, we are worrying far too LITTLE.
It's better to err on the safe side, than to vastly overpopulate and then face serious problems like having to kill off a large number of people just to survive.
Over population hysteria actually predates climate hysteria, but that’s what it is. There is plenty of arable land, plenty of water, heck, water literally falls from the sky. Water that is not potable can be made potable. We’ve barely scratched the surface of hydroponics and greenhouse technologies. Famines are caused by war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. We can prevent 100% of famines, they are not caused by overpopulation.
overpopulation has been a concern for a long time indeed, because the consequences are dire.
No, thee ISN'T "plenty of arable land, water, etc.. 75% of the planet is covered in SALT WATER. more is covered in desert, mountains too high to live on, and many other uninhabitable terrains. Water does sometimes fall from the sky, but not often enough to rely on to supply populations. why do you think it isn't a normal thing to rely on rain for water? Yes, and hydroponics and greenhouses require WATER. Are you even listening to me or yourself? where will you get the water for teh hydroponics if it is unavailable? Sheesh! No, famines are caused by conditions that are hostile to plant (crop) growth and sustainability, and it only takes a few degrees to render many crops unable to survive. No,w e CAN'T prevent 100% of famines, or there would be none. there are. Where are you getting this shit? IT's total misinformation.
You really need to start reading legit sources. It's NOT some baseless conspiracy. SCIENTISTS have been warning this since the 70's at least. They are long proven correct. Our leaders just stupidly continue to ignore them.
https://www.epa.gov/climateimpacts/climate-change-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply
How do you have any skin left after all that hand wringing? You really think we are running out of water, bro, have you ever seen an ocean? Using water doesn’t destroy it. I’ve already told you what causes famines, I cut and pasted that from Wikipedia. Do your own about famines and you will come to the same conclusion. We can definitely solve world hunger with world prosperity, no advanced country is food deprived. Don’t live in the past, we are more advanced than the 70’s, food technology has grown by leaps and bounds and we are successfully feeding billions every day. Don’t let the scare mongers get you down. Besides, there is absolutely nothing you can do to affect it. If you worry that much about things that are utterly beyond your control, you are just making yourself miserable.
I didn't do any hand wringing. I just stated FACTS. SCIENCE proves it's all true.
TEs, the ocean is salt water we can't use to drink or water plants. we covered this already. Are you so daft you think an abundance of salt water makes some kind of point? lol
I never said using water destroys it. so, again, what is your point here?
No, you CLAIMED what causes famines and didn't PROVE anything, while I DID give sources that pROVE you wrong. Cut from wiki WHERE? give me the source. Besides, SOME famines can be from war. That doesn't negate the FACT that there are other causes.
No, we can't solve world hunger with prosperity, since the prosperity we have now is only for the few and is UNSUSTAINABLE for the entire world, because teh FEW that are enjoying that prosperity use well over 50% (or at least a huge majority) of the resources. You can't stretch those resources, which are already being strained to the entire world. There isn't enough to go around.
There are indeed places in developed countries that are food and water deprived. Do you not watch teh news? It's been on there repeatedly, unless you watch FOX, which I would almost bet.
Yes, food tech has grown leaps an dbounds, but the population growth more than offsets that, even if it were implemented now, which it isn't.
I am not listening to "Scaremongers" I am listening to VALID SCIENCE. You should try it.
Yes, there is plenty we can do to affect it. we institute planned population control. This IS within our ability to control, as China has proved, as I Already pointed out. No, I Am making myself aware, which is hte first step in SOLVINg a problem. IF you just ignore the problem, it gets worse, even fatal, but we CAN do something, which it seems is what you are so against. IF you admit there's a problem, then you'd have to DO something or live by new restrictions you are unwilling to. I really don't understand not wanting to take actions that would ONLY make sure we have resources that will last, even if you think there is no problem now. We just don't NEED so many people, and can cut down on births. There's no downside to that. And AGAIN, science PROVES population is a problem and our resources are already strained beyond the breaking point. For some reason you just want to IGNORE those facts. I don't get it.
So much wrong with what you just said, there’s a lot to unpack. 100% of our freshwater comes from the ocean, it’s a water cycle, you should’ve learned that in elementary school. You’re not to blame, they were probably teaching you DEI awareness or some BS like that. No I do not watch Fox or any other network news source, do you really think watching that crap is in your best interest? DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! For every source of information, look at the agenda of the group that puts it out. I’ve been researching information in different context for the vast majority of my life. Now, I have found it wise to compare the information that I get from different sources. You can’t throw common sense out of the window either, you have to think rationally, not emotionally. I will repeat that for you, think logically, cold, clearly, not EMOTIONALLY.
yes, the water cycle, which takes a VERY long time to filter and purify the water. Excess usage EMPTIES the groundwater reservoir and it takes a very long time to replenish. That's what I learned in elementary school. Too bad you didn't pay attention.
Don't know what dei awareness, probably because I got my education in the sixties and seventies when school was really good. That and my ten years of college helped me learn a lot.
No, I don't watch any network news either, so I am still mystified how YOu are so misinformed about so much.
NO, I will NOT " do my own research", because I am unqualified and don't have the resources tod o that. I take the word of actual scientists, as I have told you repeatedly, that HAVE spent their entire lives learning and examining things to present the FACTS they found. YOU should try it. Do yo really think YOU can find valid info that contradicts them? That's insane. REAL scientists HAVE NO AGENDA.
LOL. astounding that you tell ME to think rationally, logically and clearly, when YOU Are not, and I PROVED I AM. AGAIN, I have no agenda and verify what the scientists say with many sources, also from scientists. YOU Are the one with an agenda, since you adamantly REFUSE to look at VALID SCIENCE that anyone gives you and STILL deny it is valid. THAT's an emotional response with an invalid agenda. so, YOU keep proving yourself the wrong one here. Keep going!
https://waterfilterguru.com/water-cycle/ "Even with the natural water cycle continuing as normal, experts predict that the global demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% by as early as 2030." This sentence had a LINK to an article that includes reference to a VALID scientific source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/17/global-fresh-water-demand-outstrip-supply-by-2030 which references THIS:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/18/are-we-running-out-of-water whic references THIS study:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/16/water-shortages-to-be-key-environmental-challenge-of-the-century-nasa-warns
And HERE is the actual science on ho wlong it takes to replenish the water cycle. We can't wait that long, and too many people are making a burden on it that it CAN'T HANDLE. THOSE ARE FACTS>
lol, I was hearing about over population when the world population was 3 billion, there were to be dire consequences in the next ten years, yadda yadda yadda. Food and water shortages, etc. The hysteria over this issue waxes and wanes. You clearly have way too much invested in your beliefs and I don’t think you are open minded on this issue, so there is really nothing to be gained by discussing it further. I would like to point out, though, that this subreddit is about futurism, which I have found to be quite optimistic. Futurism is both forward and backward looking, we try to learn from the past and present, and apply those lessons to the future. It’s really a positive outlook on humanity. To those of us who admire humanity, more of it is a good thing. But particularly in the past few centuries (arguably starting with the French Revolution but don’t get me started) there has been a pernicious anti-humanism growing in the world. Humans who hate humanity. Why can’t we live in peace and harmony with nature, these people plead, why must we destroy the natural world, why do we slaughter animals, pollute the atmosphere, and make life miserable for ourselves and other creatures? This group is prone to every sort of hysteria and confirmation bias, the internet in general and Reddit in particular are echo chambers for them. I love people, I think humanity is incredible. I think we are a product of our planet but destined to expand beyond it. I also think we have a profound responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world, and that if we lose sight of that then we are doomed as a species anyway. There has to be a balance. So, to me, world population is a topic worthy of discussion but it usually devolves into hysterical ranting about silly things like our water supply. Which is why I will sign off and wish you a good day.
Yes, we knew about overpopulation when the world had only 3 billion. That doesn't negate the FACT that it is real. AGAIN, it s NOT hyseria, it's fact. You just ignored all teh facts I gave you and went back to harping on your delusional BS.
I HAVE no "beliefs" especially about overpopulation. I have FACTS, which I gave you and you ignore. That really says it all, doesn't it? I agree, YOU are not "discussing" anything. You ignore any new input that proves YOUR beliefs wrong. YOU are not being rational because you refuse to change your baseless opinion when faced with facts. YOU Are the one ranting hysterically that facts are not real and you are right regardless of all the FACTS proving you wrong.
Our water supply is not silly, and I showed you how long the water cycle takes to replenish and you still give me this ignorant BS, response. LOL. so, you can wait 20 to 20,000 years for a drink? LOL yeah, your irrationality is evident throughout your posts.
I had a positive outlook on humanity for a long time. I held on to the idea that we were indeed working towards some kind fo utopia and that we could achieve it. However, too many leaders across the world, especially in the US refuse to even address all the problems we have created, and now it is unlikely that we can even overcome them. So, the future is in serious jeopardy, if not totally destroyed already.
You say you believe "we have a profound responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world", but if we ignore the problems we have created that are serious, we will never solve them and are doomed. So far, NO serious, all-encompassing action has been taken, and YOU advocate IGNORING the problems, so YOu are part of the problem.
I already signed off, due to your refusal to accept facts,m yet you still post teh same drivel without a SHRED of evidence to back it. Enjoy your bubble. Me? I try to face reality, downsides and all, and try to address the problems, even potential ones, in pes for a better future, if we still have one, but ignoring problems doesn't solve them. goodbye
> Octillions of would-be people are snuffed out before they even get the chance to exist
This has to be a joke post. There is no way that you’re serious. How old are you?
By criticizing their high-minded pondering, you're stifling the creative and intellectual curiosity of literally bazillions of spoozillions of people in the future. How dare you. How *dare* you.
Last time I could enter those high echelons of my mind palace was before I started my engineering degree. Every crevice of my brain is now dedicated on idfk memorizing the Euler Equation and when to apply it
It's the same sort of thinking we see from the every sperm is sacred religious types that use it as an argument against mastabation and abortion. "Every time you wank you're killing millions of children before they have a chance to be born"
I have seen it used to argue against Indian Point NPP because the hot water exhaust might overheat a few fish eggs from time to time and it was an ecological disaster.
The number was not the problem.
This post makes more sense knowing you’re a teenager, though, thank you. I’m sorry, I just don’t know a way to say that without it sounding condescending.
I'm not really sure what about my age makes you think I'm less intelligent, wise, or mature? And if the number isn't the problem, what is? A philosophical position you personally disagree with?
The problem is that your argument could be functionally applied to every single possible choice that any person makes and every major trend that has ever occurred. Is every time you beat off a dystopian horror because it could have been octuplets that could grow up to be fully realized people? The problem with arguments like this is that can be used by anyone to support anything but it’s just not based in reality.
You should just go ahead and post this to r/im14andthisisdeep and try to beat the other people who are surely considering it.
Don't even trip dude, I find this philosophical idea pretty weird but you're clearly intelligent and thoughtful. Have fun being young, I'm 10 years older and feel old as fuck even though life is more chill in most every way
Robert Zubrin made a very nice observation. Malthusian thinking assumes that lower population means greater access to resources for an individual. However, this fails to account for the fact that there is no such thing as natural resources. Every resource only became that thanks to concrete technologies brought by human ingenuity that utilize them. Farmland was not a resource before the advent of agriculture. Oil was not a resource before the invention of kerosene lamps. Uranium was not a resource before the construction of nuclear reactors. A post-scarcity utopia needs legions of scientists and engineers creating it and with a population too low, you're just not going to get it. Quite the contrary, the lower the population, the more of a problem will be to support enough specialization to even maintain what technology we have.
See, this is an argument for population growth that makes some kind of rational sense. I would counter that while resources may not be resources until technology can exploit them, it makes no practical difference to the fact that - unless entropy can be reversed or staved off indefinitely - there is ultimately an upper limit to the amount of accessible resources in existence, both at one time and universally. In the end, the best position is a compromise where we have enough people to maintain civilisation, but not so many that the current rate-of-use exceeds what can be accessed at that given moment. naturally how efficient we are in using energy and matter is a major deciding factor in how many humans/posthumans that will be.
> expansion is automatically bad
No one educated think's it's automatically bad. It is often bad as of late, because it decreases standard of living per person by adding people to a fixed pool of resources.
Is Japan a subtle horror? It has a broken work culture and highly xenophobic, but due to education we see a population reduction and leveling off to wealthier levels with good cost of living and high savings. Their economy on a per capita and personal experience is phenomenal compared to the "West".
Humans will naturally level themselves off and grow to fill the space appropriately, the current problem we have is significant immigration flows from different cultures, but all stable and modern educated cultures are seeing a natural drop off.
Only the governments believe we need endless growth. Once we have access to the stars, we will naturally fill them over time due to the opportunities for new wealth.
> insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory
It sure doesn't appear to be dystopian, forcing people to get building permits to build their homes etc. Who needs to forcefully control births? Just educate your population.
The number of persons any ecosystem can sustain without being degraded depends on:
- amount of local resources being consumed in a non-sustainable way
- surface area that is modified or destroyed permanently for human activities and living
- chemical and physical changes caused by human activities (pollutants, noise, light, fertilizers...)
- changes in vegetation and animal species caused by the presence of humans
These impacts depend on the number of humans, the technologies they use and the import of materials and energy.
The number of humans that a place like new Zealand (for example) can sustain without suffering massive ecological damage is hard to assess. 1960s humans maximized chemical pollution. 2020s humans maximize physical waste due to disposable items and excessive wrapping.
Still, the damage done on New Zealand ecosystems is moderate, because the population is just 5 million. With the current technological level and consumption habits, perhaps having just 1 million inhabitants in a limited number of settlements would cause very limited impacts.
But with future technologies such as clean power generation, electrical means of transportation, narrower paved streets, fully compostable wrappings (or fully recycled materials), etc., and dwellings that are either densified or better integrated into ecosystems, perhaps New Zealand could sustain 15 million inhabitants without much ecosystem degradation.
Earth is very clearly overpopulated right now, and large regions are suffering ecologically due to that. But with clean energy, reduction in ecological footprint, concentrated food production (reducing the amount of cultivated land), etc., perhaps a population of 5 billion could live comfortably and with nature regenerating.
As a side note, if we were to reduce the surface occupied by agriculture and the freshwater usage, we would see forests returning to large areas. Last time this happened, we had a reduction in global temperatures as a bonus (Little Ice Age). This climate shift in 17th century Europe was likely caused by organized societies collapsing in North America.
All this operates on the assumption that we even depend on the ecosystem, which we likely won't in the future. Farmscrapers and arcologies don't really need nature, plus they presumably have parks built in. Not to mention right now the only real thing holding population back is climate change, once we get that down the *lower* bound is 10-100 trillion, and that's while retaining most of nature. Something like Coruscant would have a quadrillion, and we could get even more still, all on one planet, and with human biology and decent enough living conditions. We could cover New Zealand in massive space towers reaching up to geostationary orbit and cram billions or even trillions in there without any real repercussions. With the right technologies carrying capacity becomes limited solely by waste heat, and with big enough radiators and perhaps some black holes the only limiting factors are space, energy, and resources.
>Farmscrapers and arcologies don't really need nature
Yes they do. Dead asteroids are still part of nature.
>climate change, once we get that down
We don't even know if we ever will. We are currently not making progress. While the % of renewables is increasing, the gross amount of fossil fuel use is still increasing due to population growth and increased wealth. Which means our greenhouse outgassing is increasing.
>Coruscant
Coruscant is fiction. We don't know whether such a thing is possible or sustainable. It's perfectly possible that there will never by a Coruscant anywhere in the universe.
>We could cover New Zealand in massive space towers reaching up to geostationary orbit and cram billions or even trillions in there without any real repercussions.
You do not know this. There is a reason that environmental studies about the repercussions of human activity *actually collect data* rather than just speculating.
>Yes they do. Dead asteroids are still part of nature.
Not biological nature. I mean, sure if you want to make the term "nature" apply to literally everything in existence I guess you can, but that's not what I meant.
>We don't even know if we ever will. We are currently not making progress. While the % of renewables is increasing, the gross amount of fossil fuel use is still increasing due to population growth and increased wealth. Which means our greenhouse outgassing is increasing.
To be fair though the worst case scenario predictions are getting less severe. We aren't on track to hit 4 degrees of warming anymore, and it used to be higher.
>Coruscant is fiction. We don't know whether such a thing is possible or sustainable. It's perfectly possible that there will never by a Coruscant anywhere in the universe.
"Sustainable" as though the only way to live is in an ecosystem that needs sustaining. If we get fusion and hydroponics we don't really need nature for survival. Now, we can still keep it around in reserves and parks, but it wouldn't be necessary for our survival anymore, at which point environmentalism is basically dead since this was never about "touching grass", it's about survival.
>You do not know this. There is a reason that environmental studies about the repercussions of human activity *actually collect data* rather than just speculating.
Again, I don't meam repercussions on an ecosystem, I mean repercussions for humans. It's quite possible that we might get the technologies needed to turn New Zealand (and anywhere else for that matter) into metropolises without any ecosystem outside of parks. And this isn't some crazy sci-fi tech either, the same stuff we'd need for major space colonization would be more than enough to make Coruscant possible.
Nature means everything not man-made. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nature](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nature)
Even if you cynically destroy earth's natural ecosystem, such that humans and our crops/livestock are the only species you leave alive, you still need to be sustainable. Sustainability is a universal requirement for any life (e.g. humans). This requirement exists even outside of earth's biosphere.
Also, the human species and our crops/livestock still count as an ecosystem.
But I do find it disturbing how nonchalantly you advocate for the near-complete destruction of earth's wild species.
I really hate when people argue over the exact specifics of definitions. For pete sake, you know what I meant!
We probably don't need livestock when we have lab meat (especially if it gets really good at mimicking texture), plus at that point "sustainability" is a technological matter. The tech needed to run an ecumenopolis sustainably isn't much more than what you need for space colonies in the first place.
Also, as for the environment I definitely value animal rights, which is why I think they should be uplifted into civilization rather than forming ecosystems built on blood and misery. Also, no wildness doesn't mean no green shit, just that it's in parks.
I didn't want to assume, as I was not completely that sure what you meant. And always accept an opportunity to educate yourself.
I'm glad you value animals. I didn't get that impression before.
It's just important to remember that there are hundreds of millions of species, and many of them require a lot of space. For example, many animals will not breed in captivity. I don't think relegating them to parks will cut it.
Even now, we are undergoing the [Holocene extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction), mostly driven by habitat loss.
>I didn't want to assume, as I was not completely that sure what you meant. And always accept an opportunity to educate yourself.
That's fine, I'm glad you get what I mean now. Also I learned something new!
>I'm glad you value animals. I didn't get that impression before.
I do, but I heavily lean i to the uplifting approach as opposed to leaving them as they are (unless once uplifted they say they want to go back). And if technology gets really good we could uplift *individual* animals, not just make a new species and leave the original behind.
>It's just important to remember that there are hundreds of millions of species, and many of them require a lot of space. For example, many animals will not breed in captivity. I don't think relegating them to parks will cut it.
Well "parks" can be flexible on size by a LOT, plus we might alter the uplifted versions to be more efficient to house.
> perhaps a population of 5 billion could live comfortably and with nature regenerating.
Add a few 0's.
If nature is being a problem, just redesign it.
My working hypothesis is that we will want to let nature take back most of the surface of Earth, and humans will try to not interfere too much.
Of course, there will be situations warranting an intervention, for example to save a species on the brink of extinction or to avoid the collapse of a land bridge between two landmasses.
But at the same time, maybe we will decide to let things go and just observe, catalog, and save seeds and tissue samples from species that are about to disappear.
It is hard to determine in advance what will be our descendants' view of nature and of humanity's roles and responsibilities towards it. There are ethical implications in everything we decide to do.
I'd be thrilled if we attempted to transplant entire ecosystems away from Earth (space stations, hollowed asteroids, domed cities)... And perhaps we won't have a choice but to use generic engineering to ensure a climate that is favorable to most living species.
Who knows.
We don't have to do that, but I think we will *want* to. Humans like green and other natural colours, and I don't think we'll have any desire or reason to change that aspect of ourselves, at least not for a long time.
>My working hypothesis is that we will want to let nature take back most of the surface of Earth, and humans will try to not interfere too much.
Worst mistake we could possibly make. We wamt to be doing the opposite, and once ecosystems aren't needed for survival, environmentalism will collapse and there won't be any incentives for keeping ecosystems, especially if we can uplift animals to human intelligence to stop them from suffering in darwinian natural selection.
Wow talk about arrogance. My age is not of your concern. That does not make me any less your equal, we're both adults here and opinions don't gain validity with age, they are simply either strong, justifiable ones, or flimsy ones.
Zero growth and negative growth are both born of Neo-Malthusianism. The zeros want population to become stagnant, while the the negatives want population scaled back. Neither group wants to talk about how such objectives are to be achieved.
To achieve zero, draconian population controls must be imposed. Think of China's now abandoned One Child policy. This may have sounded great to the party's elites when first conceived, but it's now coming back to bite their successors in the ass.
The negative growth crowd is even worse. They wish to scale back the human population. How this should be achieved is seldom spelled out, for good reason. Some of the negativists can seem rather impatient with the pace of nature.
Either way, it produces the worst possible zero-sum equation.
Agreed. Personally my only motivation for an interstellar or galactic humanity is to experience the wonders of the cosmos, not to colonize or conquer them or aggrandize ourselves. For me spreading out populating the stars is only desirable insomuch as it fulfills that purpose. And I don't even need it to be humans touring the universe to fulfill this desire of mine. It could be intelligent machine probes, or other alien species. So long as SOMEONE is out there discovering.
>On the flip side there is no point in growing either. I don't see why we should spread across the galaxy and why it would be horrible to live in a low population human galaxy. There is no manifest destiny that explains we should cover the stars with pink monkeys.
Because a future in which there are less good lives being lived is inherently worse. Even if quality of life is fine, there's still less people living those lives. Now, there's definitely better things to populate the galaxy with than humans, but we're a good example.
How would more not be better? Now I get the quality of life arguments, but if we can grow without decreasing quality of life we should. We have nothing to lose and tons to gain. And I'm also pro choice, I just think that in the bigger picture population growth is good (again so long as quality of life doesn't get negatively effected).
It will be centralized asexual reproduction/artificial wombs I presume...
Frankly, I'll take "Brave new world" over "1984" any day, but we will never be *given* this choice, and as they say "Why not both?", eh.
The problem of humanity is that it is stuck between a chimp and a bee. I'd, personally, not mind being happy (or at least un-conscious) part of greater collective where existence is strictly teleological/purpose laden and sacrifice myself and others for "greater cause" knowing that none of them suffer and fear death, but bringing new life into current status quo where pleasures are fleeting and most of them are inherently zero-sum, but suffering is a constant does not seem like a *rational* thing to do, but it was never about "rationality", isn't it?
Currently, our civilization is a negative image of Omelas where an ocean of "quiet desperation" (or very vocal one) is perched upon the happiness of a few that mostly happen to be children (or equivalent thereof) that are blissfully ignorant of life's tragedies.
For everyone critiquing OP is just that OP does a bad job at explaining it but there's a thinking current that says that given the current age of the universe and the lack of evidence for advanced extraterrestrial life it's not a far fetch to think that we are the precursors.
Most animals get a natural extinction rate of at least 2 million years and humanity overall has existed only for just over 150k years, we could be talking about trillions of future humans whose existence is entirely within our hands only with natural rates of extinction, and if humanity makes it a bit better than monkeys and we get to live for a few hundred million years octillion it's actually a rather conservative number of descendants given the number of stars and planets we could colonize within our galaxy, so you deciding not having children could mean that eventually millions of humans won't be born because of you.
In that sense it's not that different from the primordial cell, who if you go back in time and kill it, an unfathomable number of beings would have not been born.
Sure, but the argument falls apart when you realise that a) nobody is advocating for humans to go extinct and b) we don't need to spread humans to spread life and c) OP has argued that our goal should be to overwhelm natural evolution completely. OP isn't arguing that humanity should become the enlightened pre-cursor civilisation to a galaxy full of independent living beings seeking out their own lives and paths to ascension. OP is arguing for a manifest destiny empire that never ever dies and fills the galaxy up with whatever his idealised version of a perfectly 'harmonious' transhuman superstate looks like (trust me, this isn't OP's first post, my impressions are not coming from nowhere). Its just empire building churched up with techno-utopianism and il-considered longtermist rhetoric.
Well, the low population future is usually thought of in the context of Earth, which has limited resources and space. I don't think anyone thinks low population is inherently good when we talk about expanding beyond it.
>Not mention the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory
The whole point is that currently populations are stagnating on their own, no dystopian efforts required. Why would that change in the future?
>Octillions of would-be people are snuffed out before they even get the chance to exist, all because of irrational fears and excessive environmentalist attitudes.
That seems like a really weird attitude to me, those people do not care that they never existed because they never existed. There is nothing to be sad about. And our current trajectory - not caused solely by overpopulation, granted - is leading us towards the possibility of billions of people starving, so I don't think those environmentalist attitudes are a bad thing. Care about the people who actually exist instead of purely hypothetical people.
I think low population futures don't necessitate a lack of expansion. We're still expanding smart matter exponentially. It's just not wetware. As stuff starts self-optimizing the losses of individual viewpoints won't stall innovation. As longevity continues to increase the number of minds lost out the back will diminish too, and they will be more vital and fluid because that will be seen as healthy.
Now that doesn't solve the sorrow of the loss of potential individuals, but that is always true. There is no world where every potential mind can be realized within a single time continuum. So that tragedy is never going to be avoidable. Either you have to change your view on time so that you see that all possibilities exist in parallel, inaccessible but still realized, or accept that for the you that didn't have an egg this morning there is no salvation.
>Everyone these days talks about our stagnating population growth like its a good thing and that expansion is automatically bad
I've never seen anyone say this.
A lot of climate activists are de-growth and say this. I however hear just as many people recently being alarmed at population decline and insist we need to start being more pro-family. The two ideas are currently butting heads.
Pay attention to the de-growth movement and you'll hear it. I'm pleased to say it's mostly the more extreme ends of the view though. There are even a few de-growth people here on SFIA reddit ([I accidentally started a long conversation about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/IsaacArthur/comments/18w37sg/i_thought_youd_all_enjoy_this_meme_i_saw_some/)) but most of them take more moderate or cautious positions. Go to other places like X/Twitter and you'll find a few depopulation enthusiasts who make Thanos blush. Conversations with them is where I got that meme from, actually.
I don't think anyone say precisely _that,_ but many people have been complaining about overpopulation consistently for hundreds of years.
Primarily this asshole:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
Well population decline is bad - at least, according to economists and the like - because there will soon be a ton of old people who need welfare, medical care, etc., and not enough young people to actually care for them, bogging down the economy and/or leading to a huge amount of homeless people. (At least I think this is the general worry, someone correct me if I'm wrong) That's an issue in the next few decades, but probably not in the long term since population will probably stabilize at some point.
Personally I think that seems like a weird argument, because this is exactly the type of situation automation and AI should be able to help with - allowing automated care for more people with fewer humans involved (hopefully as part of a general welfare state). And the idea that we need to have more children so that old people can live out their sunset years in more comfort seems generally kind of fucked up to me. I don't want to be guilted into having kids so that old people who repeatedly vote to gut welfare of any sort despite relying on medicare and social security have someone to change their diapers in 20 years, what kind of idea is that?
Economists are not futurists. They make a point not to make projections off of technology that has not matured yet. We are optimistic about robotics and automation but economists are literally required to be more grounded.
I feel degrowthers are mainly a temporary movement, they want us to slow down until we've fixed climate change and a few other problems, then most of them don't massively care.
I refuse to believe that the joy of those happy lives are worth the suffering of those their joy is built upon. I do not want to breed for breedings' sake, for humans to pump out babies to maximize happiness points with no consideration for them as living individuals capable of experiencing equal, if not more, suffering. I do not want to live in Omelas.
Well if you've got artificial wombs and the right tech you could grow people to adulthood with full sets of skills downloaded into them matrix style, then pair them up into sibling groups for families.
What exactly would u like? Gilead? Just a world where woman pump out kids? For who? For what? You must give a reason, and "the future" isn't a good one. People live to have a life. It's not their job to secure a, I don't even know, idealistic dream of a teenager?
Not even just a galaxy, but the entire hubble volume which is around 5 billion galaxies, iirc, or 2% of the observable universe that we could ever access without going FTL. Based on scattered factoids, the available energy can support 5 quindecillion modern human lives, or 5x10^48.
On the one hand, I do think we need to contain our exploitation of the earth, but not so much that we can't expand off of it.
What are you gonna do, just convince people to have kids? It's very unaffordable at the moment. There are a lot of "small" problems compared to missing out on galactic conquest that are happening right now that we should focus on above pumping out babies. Temporary stagnation in population growth is going to happen and it will improve when nations and the world as a whole becomes safer and more prosperous.
Lol at the too poor to breed crowd. Look who is breeding, you are almost certainly richer. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-growth-rate/country-comparison/
Gonna just ignore the fact that after the black death in Europe, people were suddenly catapulted into much better conditions due to a greater abundance of resources and more demand for skilled labor driving wages up?
And how that boost in quality of life and drop in poverty is one of the wheels that drove Europe into the Rennaissance?
It's a seriously grim and messed up example to draw from, but my point stands: the drop in population made a lot of change possible. The horror that holds us back isn't a low population.
It's lives spent without the resources to realize their potential.
Y'all are funny. We'll be lucky if the 20 year survival on even a single SARS-CoV-2 infection is 5% now that we know it persists in abundance in the endothelium and is turning our vasculature into the meat equivalent of brittle clay. The only thing a civilization like that runs are euthanasia centers and crematoriums. The seeds of a low population future have already been sown--the next 20 years we be a slow motion reaping of general cognitive decline and cardiovascular disease.
I‘m going to assume that you’re moderately wealthy on a global scale, simply because you have the time to think about things like this and seem to be detached enough from reality.
That also means you’re lifestyle is unsustainable. If everyone were to live like you, or me for that matter, earth couldn’t support it for more than like 5 months each year.
Our current focus isn’t colonizing the galaxy or even the solar system, it’s surviving this god forsaken century without a World War, without countless refugees and millions dead from an ever more chaotic climate.
So no, as of right now, that fact that statistics predict we will only have to manage 10 billion humans by the end of the century is a massive relief because we can’t even sustainably, fairly and justly allow 8 billion to live right now.
I think what op is actually talking about is the subtle horror of a civilization stuck on earth. With no room to grow civilization would in fact develop into an unpleasant dystopia characterized by incredibly oppressive power structures and endless cycles of ossification and collapse.
What is better between:
A) Exist. considering the economic system we live in, this means that it's most likely you will be born poor. You will slave away your life, throwing away half of your daily waking hours in a job that gives you no upward mobility or economic safety whatsoever and then, when all your energy and time have been squeezed out of you by some fat dude in a suit driving a Lamborghini, you cease to exist.
B) Not exist.
>our stagnating population growth
but somehow also
>the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population
Pick one. You can't have both.
You can't even list what we lose and ignore what we gain. That's a total lack of evidence for your position.
Okay, HOW is a post-scarcity utopia worse?
More people doesn't drive innovation. All it does is put more stain on an already failing biome.
so what is the problem with denying octillions of "would be people" an existence? we have no impetus to create more people. More people is not demonstrated to be better in any way. Please show us how it is better. so a you haven't. In fact, one measure of an intelligent species is to learn to limit its population to fit within the biome's ability to sustain the population.
> Not mention the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory.
No such efforts are required. The main reason behind the current levelling off in the rates of population growth is not due to any dystopian edicts, but because fewer people are choosing to reproduce.
If anything it's the opposite that should concern ordinary folks. A shrinking population puts more bargaining power into the hands of labour, and in a society where capital is concentrated into the hands of a relative few, that might provoke an impulse to reduce or eliminate the ability of ordinary folks to make their own decisions about reproduction.
If you keep blowing air into a balloon, it will pop. You can build a better balloon, or even figure out a way to reduce the pressure of the air mass inside the balloon, but eventually the balloon fails. The earth is the balloon, human population is the air.
If you cannot, or don't want to, limit the air output then you need more balloons. This is space colonization. If you can pressurize an infinite number of balloons, you can have most of them at whatever the ideal air mass is.
Of course, this is assuming that people want children. It's hard to grow a population that doesn't want to reproduce.
I disagree. As long as we have only one world, we have a population limit. We might raise that limit through technological innovation but never eliminate it without finding or creating new worlds. If tempoarily overpopulating that world means collapse and extinction or near extinction, then even draconian population management mean that more people not less get to live over time.
Do you know what orders of magnitude are? We are already exceeding the carrying capacity at our current technological level, and 100 people for every one here wold require perfect recycling, vertical farms, and killing every other species off the globe.
Yes I'm well aware of the scales involved here, this is a matter of quadrillions, not billions or even trillions. Also those technologies seem quite reasonable to me, and we don't need to wipe out species, just put them in reserves or uplift them to sapience.
I don't agree with OP at all but no overpopulation is not destroying this planet. Poor management and distribution of resources - that manifests in many cases as intentional misdistribution and/or mismanagement - is.
10 billion people and most of them are using single use plastics.
I agree with what you said but disagree about your opinion of population. Most of what you said about corruption and mismanagement is true but when you look at deforestation, coral reef mass death, pollution in our rivers, lakes, bays, aquifers etc…. We are rendering most drinking water as toxic.
But that's not overpopulation, it's mindless unsustainable practice. Admittedly having so many people leads to taking the cheapest solutions right now, but it doesn't inevitably do so.
Would you rather have 1 billion people doing mindless unsustainable practices or 8 billion doing mindless unsustainable practices. Obviously the impact of 8 billion is an 8 fold increase. I agree that it’s mindless unsustainable practices but we are speeding up the planets demise by the sheer number of wreck less and selfish humans.
If we had multiple habitable planets I wouldn’t care about overpopulation. If we were carbon neutral and made the planet better then I would say the more humans the better. That is not the case though. Earth can only take so much and we are racing as fast as we can to the cliffs edge.
But how much the Earth can take is a matter of some debate. We are in agreement that we need to stop driving toward this cliff. I don't think we really need to reduce the number of humans we're making beyond making it possible for people to choose. Population is self-limiting in areas where resources and culture make it possible to do so. If we put the brakes on population growth and assume that it will solve environmental collapse we will have an empty, poisoned ruin.
I am not basing this off of anything credible, but I think it may be a problem that self-corrects over time if it's even a problem at all.
Too many people, conflict, scarcity, distrust of others, naturally people will be around people less if they are able and subsequently be making less people. More resources, less scarcity, more utility in the average person. Happiness and security increases and people will start multiplying like Gremlins again.
I don't know about you, but I do not see a lot of innovation happening lately unless it is the new and terrible ways corporations and governments have concocted to squeeze money out of people who are struggling.
>Too many people, conflict, scarcity, distrust of others, naturally people will be around people less if they are able and subsequently be making less people. More resources, less scarcity, more utility in the average person. Happiness and security increases and people will start multiplying like Gremlins again.
So far we're seeing the exact opposite. Developed countries have drastically lower birth rates than developing ones precisely because there's less crazy stuff going on and people feel less pressured.
>I don't know about you, but I do not see a lot of innovation happening lately unless it is the new and terrible ways corporations and governments have concocted to squeeze money out of people who are struggling.
Again its the exact opposite, things are moving faster now than ever. One guy here thinks there's gonna be a technological singularity in just a few decades.
"excessive environmentalist attitudes"
Elaborate.
I certainly hope you don't value "octillions of would-be people" that probably will never exist more than the living creatures that exist right now. (What do you even mean by "people" anyway?)
I would consider myself a moderate environmentalist, but purely for pragmatic reasons, right now we need an ecosystem to continue living, but that may not always be the case and when it isn't I'm all for turning earth into an ecumenopolis shellworld (with maybe a continent sized nature reserve for the tree-hugging types). However I highly value animal lives, which is why I'm a major proponent of uplifting, ecosystems are inherently cruel anyway, so why keep them once we and the animals are no longer part of them? As for the definition of people, that's unbelievably flexible. But yeah I definitely get fed up with environmentalists that treat current local overpopulation in some cities, and our global carbon emissions like some absolute barrier on population growth.
S-risk scenarios are as real (as in - highly hypothetical) as high-tech utopia, moreso perhaps.
Coercing the population towards participating in "galaxy sized megaprojects" inspired by vain leaders using violence or direct brainwashing is much easier compared to "herding cats" of more "democratic" futures, and the more population there is, the more aggregate suffering the system can generate - think "factory farming" humans and/or something like Warhammer 40k/Signalis.
"Numbers go brrrr" goes both ways.
Growth or lack of growth are not inherently good or bad. It depends on context.
(A) If your resources are limited, or your environment is fragile to your activity, it is irresponsible to grow too much.
(B) If your resources are currently basically unlimited and your activity does not meaningfully harm your environment, then there is no problem with growth.
>Not mention the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory.
We are currently (on earth) in scenario (A), where such measures might be (somewhat) more justifiable, and yet there are no such measures. Because people would collectively go ape shit if there were. I don't see this as a significant threat unless there is already a dystopia in place.
>Octillions of would-be people are snuffed out
I grew up mormon, where parents would (sometimes) be guilted into having more children than they wanted or could support by the idea that would-be children would be snuffed out. So I especially despise this argument, and see it for the absolute horse-shit that it is.
You definitely make a point with the A and B scenarios, and that's where I stand as well. I'm pro-growth, but not if it can't be done responsibly.
>I grew up mormon, where parents would (sometimes) be guilted into having more children than they wanted or could support by the idea that would-be children would be snuffed out. So I especially despise this argument, and see it for the absolute horse-shit that it is.
The argument isn't necessarily wrong. It's wrong to guilt trip people, but potential futures are still important, and in the extreme case of us remaining at say 100 million people forever, it is sad that what could have been was snuffed out by poor decision making.
There were times where the Roman empire lost half its population to war and famine, but didn't "collapse". I'm sure the millions of people who died during these times didn't care about the "fate of Rome."
The demographic collapse we face is that sort of disaster. There's no way to avoid millions of deaths. There's a distinct possibility core competencies will be lost. That culture, sense of life, motivation, ambition will all fail as rats fight over a shrinking pie. Not just regular ambition, but even the basic ambition to fix problems, terrible problem that affect everyone and our fundamental standard of living. There's nothing like a room emptying out and the lights going off. Societies where the entire generation of young people 18-35 is a distinct minority have miserable cultures with no future.
Nothing about this is good. People think far too grandiose about this issue. Society needs AT least a decent replacement rate, a set of young people balanced against old.
There's also this severely misguided notion that populations who use less resources are less bad for the Earth. They are the ones doing the labor that harms the Earth on behalf of the more developed societies.
It seems pretty obvious that developed societies should strive for replacement, and limit immigration to prevent massive cultural changes. Meanwhile, limited emigration can be a release valve for less developed societies to slowly lose population and then change culture and develop.
It's vital, developed societies that will figure out how to use resources responsibly without compromising human wellbeing, or rather, just giving up on it entirely.
Wait, why "It seems pretty obvious that developed societies should strive for replacement, and limit immigration to prevent massive cultural changes. Meanwhile, limited emigration can be a release valve for less developed societies to slowly lose population and then change culture and develop."? Societies can be constructed to only include people who agree with a set of principles, and society is very distinct from state. This conclusion is a dangerous and unreasonable one.
Not principles. Immigration is two way, but circumstances tend to make it one-way. The people emigrating are making the choice about which principles they value, not the state.
Preserving a society's culture through replacement - culture is taught in childhood and again in early adulthood - is how human society works. The only alternative is some kind of Brave New World state-as-parents system.
All I was saying is that replacement is necessary for good principles to evolve and continue. That is, without state intervention. As for immigration, I was implying no particular selection process, just stating that immigration is not a suitable alternative to population replacement through reproduction because of the loss of a cultural center of mass.
You drew the opposite conclusion from what I said in that quote.
I think you're bogged down by current year politics which is attaching to issues like immigration certain idiosyncratic tokens with preset ideological baggage or social conditioning that specific policies equate to specific kinds of hate or something.
That was what troubled me about the conclusion. I think people are more able to adapt to new societies even when older if they have proper buy-in and understanding, but it doesn't often happen that way so I see what you mean there. I juxtapose the way people join online community to the way they interact in meatspace, *Central Standard Tribe* style. I worry when statements about outgroups grow too divisive and hope that this will wither away as culture becomes more a choice and less an indoctrination.
10 billion people with half in squalor conditions is not idea I think a more reasonable population with the average quality of life to be very high is way more ideal. 1,600,000,000 humans in 1900 6,144,000,000 humans in 2000 8,000,000,000 humans in 2024 To me that is an incredibly exponential growth that is the main reason by the perspective of stagnation is good and why expansion is bad Aggressively exponential growth is unsustainable in many ways and that a balanced perspective and outcome of population is the most ideal situation
"Exponential growth is unsustainable" is a meaningless phrase without a lot of details. What does unsustainable mean? If we're simply talking about raw population growth numbers, we can support a whole lot more people at our current level of technology if we're just talking about meeting their essential needs. When you factor in the exponential growth of technology, sky (or space) is the limit. Will their consumption patterns change? Sure. Will their standard of living change? Definitely. Population growth is usually a red herring. The issue is social and political will and that has been the problem in every age and likely will continue to be. Increase population by ten fold or cut it by 90% and social and political problems will still be the issue.
This is plague species level growth. A biologist looking at a species which increases like this would know it's headed for a crash. Is humanity so exceptional it can avoid this? And growth like this occurs when a species gains access to some new abundant food resource. What resource could that be in our case? Petroleum of course.
>Is humanity so exceptional it can avoid this? I'd say yeah. Just about any species as intelligent, social and cooperative as humans is likely to be capable of avoiding it. The main reason being that we have a unique ability to completely and totally control our environment to a degree no other species can. As for the practical reason we can avoid this? We have the technology to push beyond the boundaries of Earth. We have the industrial capability to build in space, albeit at great cost. Once a species can build in space, it's just a matter of time and brute force until your species is off your planet, assuming that's where you want to go. Once you're in orbit, you can go anywhere, and gathering resources becomes less of a question of scarcity, and more one of extraction and refinement.
But we already have lots of localised population crashes, so doesn't a thing happening cast doubt on the assumption it won't happen? We also have the technology to avoid famines, ecological catastrophes and genocide, but we don't do that either.
These population crashes aren't being caused by resource shortages. Mostly it's laws, economic hardship and extreme work culture. It's important to note that we aren't avoiding those things because it's not profitable. Our society is built upon ever increasing profits. I said we can avoid these catastrophes, not that we will.
Also, the social pressure to have children has been collapsing for decades. I am personally glad I didn't have children.
Yup.
I would call it an aggressive hegemonic swarm, but you say tomato, I say bloody Mary
Yes I agree ins unsustainable, the reasons you outlined is why stagnation is considered positive vs continuous growth
Except that's not an issue of population, it's a matter of efficiency. Our carrying capacity is limited by our current lifestyle, however with the right advancements we can expand from billions to quadrillions in a century while still drastically increasing quality of life.
I feel like it's possible, and you are doing a lot to justify that we could indeed reach that many. The question we have to ask ourselves is should we continuously grow population or should we work towards something more stable
Is everyone forgetting what sub we're on? K2 or bust, baby! I would also ask, what does "work towards something more stable" mean when you're talking about other people's children and reproductive freedom?
That’s like saying even if we inhabit a utopia, we’re living in the subtle horror that we didn’t invent agriculture 50,000 years earlier and are instead living with the unborn ghosts of 50 trillion trillion space-faring humans that might have been. Also, why do you want octillions of potential people being born into anything less than a post-scarcity utopia? Isn’t that the ideal foundation to establish, governmentally, socially, and politically, and only then expand outward?
>That’s like saying even if we inhabit a utopia, we’re living in the subtle horror that we didn’t invent agriculture 50,000 years earlier and are instead living with the unborn ghosts of 50 trillion trillion space-faring humans that might have been. I mean, that is still disappointing to me, but the thing is with that we can't do anything about it, but we CAN influence the future. >Also, why do you want octillions of potential people being born into anything less than a post-scarcity utopia? Isn’t that the ideal foundation to establish, governmentally, socially, and politically, and only then expand outward? I never said anything about a lower quality of life, just that between too equally utopian civilizations the larger one is better simply because more people are experiencing it.
Yeah, that’s a fair response. But you can’t argue like that for continual population growth in the present unless we’re at a utopia, which we’re not. All I’m saying is that, *if* a smaller population brings about a post-scarcity world, that’s a *significantly* better and more sustainable foundation to then continue growing into the octillions, no matter what future optimums there may be for spreading consciousness in the universe.
True, my argument only extends as far as maintaining quality of life.
But quality is being dropped not because of the lack of resources but by twisted reality and shattered society chasing dollars not dreams. No insulation cheap houses put up in tornado alley. When homes that laugh that off are old and easy and sequester carbon, but less heat. Less power and less jobs putting up what didn’t break down We could easily carry 3x world population
People worry WAY too about world population growth, but I’d argue that there would have to be a point where human quality of life globally would be diminished by a huge population. It’s not just about our ability to feed, house and provide medical care in my opinion. So could we have a population of one trillion people? I think Arthur answered that question as yes but correct me if I’m wrong. But would we want to live in that world, would the human race thrive in that environment? That’s a question I don’t have a ready response to but it is worth exploring.
A trillion shouldn't be too bad with the right technology, that's nowhere near ecumenopolis levels like Coruscant from Star Wars, which would realistically have around a quadrillion.
Even if the technology currently exists to support such population sizes in reasonable comfort (a dubious proposition to begin with), the physical infrastructure and the political will to build it does not. We should work on that first.
how do you figure that? MANY areas are ALREADY experiencing drought. Not only lack of potable water to drink, but even lesser quality to use on crops. Food is also scarce in many areas, and land is at a premium. I fail to see how we are worrying too much. IF anything, we are worrying far too LITTLE. It's better to err on the safe side, than to vastly overpopulate and then face serious problems like having to kill off a large number of people just to survive.
Over population hysteria actually predates climate hysteria, but that’s what it is. There is plenty of arable land, plenty of water, heck, water literally falls from the sky. Water that is not potable can be made potable. We’ve barely scratched the surface of hydroponics and greenhouse technologies. Famines are caused by war, natural disasters, crop failure, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. We can prevent 100% of famines, they are not caused by overpopulation.
overpopulation has been a concern for a long time indeed, because the consequences are dire. No, thee ISN'T "plenty of arable land, water, etc.. 75% of the planet is covered in SALT WATER. more is covered in desert, mountains too high to live on, and many other uninhabitable terrains. Water does sometimes fall from the sky, but not often enough to rely on to supply populations. why do you think it isn't a normal thing to rely on rain for water? Yes, and hydroponics and greenhouses require WATER. Are you even listening to me or yourself? where will you get the water for teh hydroponics if it is unavailable? Sheesh! No, famines are caused by conditions that are hostile to plant (crop) growth and sustainability, and it only takes a few degrees to render many crops unable to survive. No,w e CAN'T prevent 100% of famines, or there would be none. there are. Where are you getting this shit? IT's total misinformation. You really need to start reading legit sources. It's NOT some baseless conspiracy. SCIENTISTS have been warning this since the 70's at least. They are long proven correct. Our leaders just stupidly continue to ignore them. https://www.epa.gov/climateimpacts/climate-change-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply
How do you have any skin left after all that hand wringing? You really think we are running out of water, bro, have you ever seen an ocean? Using water doesn’t destroy it. I’ve already told you what causes famines, I cut and pasted that from Wikipedia. Do your own about famines and you will come to the same conclusion. We can definitely solve world hunger with world prosperity, no advanced country is food deprived. Don’t live in the past, we are more advanced than the 70’s, food technology has grown by leaps and bounds and we are successfully feeding billions every day. Don’t let the scare mongers get you down. Besides, there is absolutely nothing you can do to affect it. If you worry that much about things that are utterly beyond your control, you are just making yourself miserable.
I didn't do any hand wringing. I just stated FACTS. SCIENCE proves it's all true. TEs, the ocean is salt water we can't use to drink or water plants. we covered this already. Are you so daft you think an abundance of salt water makes some kind of point? lol I never said using water destroys it. so, again, what is your point here? No, you CLAIMED what causes famines and didn't PROVE anything, while I DID give sources that pROVE you wrong. Cut from wiki WHERE? give me the source. Besides, SOME famines can be from war. That doesn't negate the FACT that there are other causes. No, we can't solve world hunger with prosperity, since the prosperity we have now is only for the few and is UNSUSTAINABLE for the entire world, because teh FEW that are enjoying that prosperity use well over 50% (or at least a huge majority) of the resources. You can't stretch those resources, which are already being strained to the entire world. There isn't enough to go around. There are indeed places in developed countries that are food and water deprived. Do you not watch teh news? It's been on there repeatedly, unless you watch FOX, which I would almost bet. Yes, food tech has grown leaps an dbounds, but the population growth more than offsets that, even if it were implemented now, which it isn't. I am not listening to "Scaremongers" I am listening to VALID SCIENCE. You should try it. Yes, there is plenty we can do to affect it. we institute planned population control. This IS within our ability to control, as China has proved, as I Already pointed out. No, I Am making myself aware, which is hte first step in SOLVINg a problem. IF you just ignore the problem, it gets worse, even fatal, but we CAN do something, which it seems is what you are so against. IF you admit there's a problem, then you'd have to DO something or live by new restrictions you are unwilling to. I really don't understand not wanting to take actions that would ONLY make sure we have resources that will last, even if you think there is no problem now. We just don't NEED so many people, and can cut down on births. There's no downside to that. And AGAIN, science PROVES population is a problem and our resources are already strained beyond the breaking point. For some reason you just want to IGNORE those facts. I don't get it.
So much wrong with what you just said, there’s a lot to unpack. 100% of our freshwater comes from the ocean, it’s a water cycle, you should’ve learned that in elementary school. You’re not to blame, they were probably teaching you DEI awareness or some BS like that. No I do not watch Fox or any other network news source, do you really think watching that crap is in your best interest? DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! For every source of information, look at the agenda of the group that puts it out. I’ve been researching information in different context for the vast majority of my life. Now, I have found it wise to compare the information that I get from different sources. You can’t throw common sense out of the window either, you have to think rationally, not emotionally. I will repeat that for you, think logically, cold, clearly, not EMOTIONALLY.
yes, the water cycle, which takes a VERY long time to filter and purify the water. Excess usage EMPTIES the groundwater reservoir and it takes a very long time to replenish. That's what I learned in elementary school. Too bad you didn't pay attention. Don't know what dei awareness, probably because I got my education in the sixties and seventies when school was really good. That and my ten years of college helped me learn a lot. No, I don't watch any network news either, so I am still mystified how YOu are so misinformed about so much. NO, I will NOT " do my own research", because I am unqualified and don't have the resources tod o that. I take the word of actual scientists, as I have told you repeatedly, that HAVE spent their entire lives learning and examining things to present the FACTS they found. YOU should try it. Do yo really think YOU can find valid info that contradicts them? That's insane. REAL scientists HAVE NO AGENDA. LOL. astounding that you tell ME to think rationally, logically and clearly, when YOU Are not, and I PROVED I AM. AGAIN, I have no agenda and verify what the scientists say with many sources, also from scientists. YOU Are the one with an agenda, since you adamantly REFUSE to look at VALID SCIENCE that anyone gives you and STILL deny it is valid. THAT's an emotional response with an invalid agenda. so, YOU keep proving yourself the wrong one here. Keep going! https://waterfilterguru.com/water-cycle/ "Even with the natural water cycle continuing as normal, experts predict that the global demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% by as early as 2030." This sentence had a LINK to an article that includes reference to a VALID scientific source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/17/global-fresh-water-demand-outstrip-supply-by-2030 which references THIS: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/18/are-we-running-out-of-water whic references THIS study: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/16/water-shortages-to-be-key-environmental-challenge-of-the-century-nasa-warns And HERE is the actual science on ho wlong it takes to replenish the water cycle. We can't wait that long, and too many people are making a burden on it that it CAN'T HANDLE. THOSE ARE FACTS>
lol, I was hearing about over population when the world population was 3 billion, there were to be dire consequences in the next ten years, yadda yadda yadda. Food and water shortages, etc. The hysteria over this issue waxes and wanes. You clearly have way too much invested in your beliefs and I don’t think you are open minded on this issue, so there is really nothing to be gained by discussing it further. I would like to point out, though, that this subreddit is about futurism, which I have found to be quite optimistic. Futurism is both forward and backward looking, we try to learn from the past and present, and apply those lessons to the future. It’s really a positive outlook on humanity. To those of us who admire humanity, more of it is a good thing. But particularly in the past few centuries (arguably starting with the French Revolution but don’t get me started) there has been a pernicious anti-humanism growing in the world. Humans who hate humanity. Why can’t we live in peace and harmony with nature, these people plead, why must we destroy the natural world, why do we slaughter animals, pollute the atmosphere, and make life miserable for ourselves and other creatures? This group is prone to every sort of hysteria and confirmation bias, the internet in general and Reddit in particular are echo chambers for them. I love people, I think humanity is incredible. I think we are a product of our planet but destined to expand beyond it. I also think we have a profound responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world, and that if we lose sight of that then we are doomed as a species anyway. There has to be a balance. So, to me, world population is a topic worthy of discussion but it usually devolves into hysterical ranting about silly things like our water supply. Which is why I will sign off and wish you a good day.
Yes, we knew about overpopulation when the world had only 3 billion. That doesn't negate the FACT that it is real. AGAIN, it s NOT hyseria, it's fact. You just ignored all teh facts I gave you and went back to harping on your delusional BS. I HAVE no "beliefs" especially about overpopulation. I have FACTS, which I gave you and you ignore. That really says it all, doesn't it? I agree, YOU are not "discussing" anything. You ignore any new input that proves YOUR beliefs wrong. YOU are not being rational because you refuse to change your baseless opinion when faced with facts. YOU Are the one ranting hysterically that facts are not real and you are right regardless of all the FACTS proving you wrong. Our water supply is not silly, and I showed you how long the water cycle takes to replenish and you still give me this ignorant BS, response. LOL. so, you can wait 20 to 20,000 years for a drink? LOL yeah, your irrationality is evident throughout your posts. I had a positive outlook on humanity for a long time. I held on to the idea that we were indeed working towards some kind fo utopia and that we could achieve it. However, too many leaders across the world, especially in the US refuse to even address all the problems we have created, and now it is unlikely that we can even overcome them. So, the future is in serious jeopardy, if not totally destroyed already. You say you believe "we have a profound responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world", but if we ignore the problems we have created that are serious, we will never solve them and are doomed. So far, NO serious, all-encompassing action has been taken, and YOU advocate IGNORING the problems, so YOu are part of the problem. I already signed off, due to your refusal to accept facts,m yet you still post teh same drivel without a SHRED of evidence to back it. Enjoy your bubble. Me? I try to face reality, downsides and all, and try to address the problems, even potential ones, in pes for a better future, if we still have one, but ignoring problems doesn't solve them. goodbye
> Octillions of would-be people are snuffed out before they even get the chance to exist This has to be a joke post. There is no way that you’re serious. How old are you?
By criticizing their high-minded pondering, you're stifling the creative and intellectual curiosity of literally bazillions of spoozillions of people in the future. How dare you. How *dare* you.
By the merits of my balls!
Last time I could enter those high echelons of my mind palace was before I started my engineering degree. Every crevice of my brain is now dedicated on idfk memorizing the Euler Equation and when to apply it
It's the same sort of thinking we see from the every sperm is sacred religious types that use it as an argument against mastabation and abortion. "Every time you wank you're killing millions of children before they have a chance to be born" I have seen it used to argue against Indian Point NPP because the hot water exhaust might overheat a few fish eggs from time to time and it was an ecological disaster.
The number is on point for a galaxy, actually a bit low. Btw I'm 18.
The number was not the problem. This post makes more sense knowing you’re a teenager, though, thank you. I’m sorry, I just don’t know a way to say that without it sounding condescending.
I'm not really sure what about my age makes you think I'm less intelligent, wise, or mature? And if the number isn't the problem, what is? A philosophical position you personally disagree with?
The problem is that your argument could be functionally applied to every single possible choice that any person makes and every major trend that has ever occurred. Is every time you beat off a dystopian horror because it could have been octuplets that could grow up to be fully realized people? The problem with arguments like this is that can be used by anyone to support anything but it’s just not based in reality. You should just go ahead and post this to r/im14andthisisdeep and try to beat the other people who are surely considering it.
Other way around. They thought you were unwise based on your post, and then asked for your age to excuse your lack of wisdom.
Don't even trip dude, I find this philosophical idea pretty weird but you're clearly intelligent and thoughtful. Have fun being young, I'm 10 years older and feel old as fuck even though life is more chill in most every way
This is far too unserious, I’m not doing this.
Robert Zubrin made a very nice observation. Malthusian thinking assumes that lower population means greater access to resources for an individual. However, this fails to account for the fact that there is no such thing as natural resources. Every resource only became that thanks to concrete technologies brought by human ingenuity that utilize them. Farmland was not a resource before the advent of agriculture. Oil was not a resource before the invention of kerosene lamps. Uranium was not a resource before the construction of nuclear reactors. A post-scarcity utopia needs legions of scientists and engineers creating it and with a population too low, you're just not going to get it. Quite the contrary, the lower the population, the more of a problem will be to support enough specialization to even maintain what technology we have.
See, this is an argument for population growth that makes some kind of rational sense. I would counter that while resources may not be resources until technology can exploit them, it makes no practical difference to the fact that - unless entropy can be reversed or staved off indefinitely - there is ultimately an upper limit to the amount of accessible resources in existence, both at one time and universally. In the end, the best position is a compromise where we have enough people to maintain civilisation, but not so many that the current rate-of-use exceeds what can be accessed at that given moment. naturally how efficient we are in using energy and matter is a major deciding factor in how many humans/posthumans that will be.
> expansion is automatically bad No one educated think's it's automatically bad. It is often bad as of late, because it decreases standard of living per person by adding people to a fixed pool of resources. Is Japan a subtle horror? It has a broken work culture and highly xenophobic, but due to education we see a population reduction and leveling off to wealthier levels with good cost of living and high savings. Their economy on a per capita and personal experience is phenomenal compared to the "West". Humans will naturally level themselves off and grow to fill the space appropriately, the current problem we have is significant immigration flows from different cultures, but all stable and modern educated cultures are seeing a natural drop off. Only the governments believe we need endless growth. Once we have access to the stars, we will naturally fill them over time due to the opportunities for new wealth. > insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory It sure doesn't appear to be dystopian, forcing people to get building permits to build their homes etc. Who needs to forcefully control births? Just educate your population.
You cannot use Japan as an example. It does not exist in isolation. They leverage ultra cheap labor from all over the world.
The number of persons any ecosystem can sustain without being degraded depends on: - amount of local resources being consumed in a non-sustainable way - surface area that is modified or destroyed permanently for human activities and living - chemical and physical changes caused by human activities (pollutants, noise, light, fertilizers...) - changes in vegetation and animal species caused by the presence of humans These impacts depend on the number of humans, the technologies they use and the import of materials and energy. The number of humans that a place like new Zealand (for example) can sustain without suffering massive ecological damage is hard to assess. 1960s humans maximized chemical pollution. 2020s humans maximize physical waste due to disposable items and excessive wrapping. Still, the damage done on New Zealand ecosystems is moderate, because the population is just 5 million. With the current technological level and consumption habits, perhaps having just 1 million inhabitants in a limited number of settlements would cause very limited impacts. But with future technologies such as clean power generation, electrical means of transportation, narrower paved streets, fully compostable wrappings (or fully recycled materials), etc., and dwellings that are either densified or better integrated into ecosystems, perhaps New Zealand could sustain 15 million inhabitants without much ecosystem degradation. Earth is very clearly overpopulated right now, and large regions are suffering ecologically due to that. But with clean energy, reduction in ecological footprint, concentrated food production (reducing the amount of cultivated land), etc., perhaps a population of 5 billion could live comfortably and with nature regenerating. As a side note, if we were to reduce the surface occupied by agriculture and the freshwater usage, we would see forests returning to large areas. Last time this happened, we had a reduction in global temperatures as a bonus (Little Ice Age). This climate shift in 17th century Europe was likely caused by organized societies collapsing in North America.
All this operates on the assumption that we even depend on the ecosystem, which we likely won't in the future. Farmscrapers and arcologies don't really need nature, plus they presumably have parks built in. Not to mention right now the only real thing holding population back is climate change, once we get that down the *lower* bound is 10-100 trillion, and that's while retaining most of nature. Something like Coruscant would have a quadrillion, and we could get even more still, all on one planet, and with human biology and decent enough living conditions. We could cover New Zealand in massive space towers reaching up to geostationary orbit and cram billions or even trillions in there without any real repercussions. With the right technologies carrying capacity becomes limited solely by waste heat, and with big enough radiators and perhaps some black holes the only limiting factors are space, energy, and resources.
>Farmscrapers and arcologies don't really need nature Yes they do. Dead asteroids are still part of nature. >climate change, once we get that down We don't even know if we ever will. We are currently not making progress. While the % of renewables is increasing, the gross amount of fossil fuel use is still increasing due to population growth and increased wealth. Which means our greenhouse outgassing is increasing. >Coruscant Coruscant is fiction. We don't know whether such a thing is possible or sustainable. It's perfectly possible that there will never by a Coruscant anywhere in the universe. >We could cover New Zealand in massive space towers reaching up to geostationary orbit and cram billions or even trillions in there without any real repercussions. You do not know this. There is a reason that environmental studies about the repercussions of human activity *actually collect data* rather than just speculating.
>Yes they do. Dead asteroids are still part of nature. Not biological nature. I mean, sure if you want to make the term "nature" apply to literally everything in existence I guess you can, but that's not what I meant. >We don't even know if we ever will. We are currently not making progress. While the % of renewables is increasing, the gross amount of fossil fuel use is still increasing due to population growth and increased wealth. Which means our greenhouse outgassing is increasing. To be fair though the worst case scenario predictions are getting less severe. We aren't on track to hit 4 degrees of warming anymore, and it used to be higher. >Coruscant is fiction. We don't know whether such a thing is possible or sustainable. It's perfectly possible that there will never by a Coruscant anywhere in the universe. "Sustainable" as though the only way to live is in an ecosystem that needs sustaining. If we get fusion and hydroponics we don't really need nature for survival. Now, we can still keep it around in reserves and parks, but it wouldn't be necessary for our survival anymore, at which point environmentalism is basically dead since this was never about "touching grass", it's about survival. >You do not know this. There is a reason that environmental studies about the repercussions of human activity *actually collect data* rather than just speculating. Again, I don't meam repercussions on an ecosystem, I mean repercussions for humans. It's quite possible that we might get the technologies needed to turn New Zealand (and anywhere else for that matter) into metropolises without any ecosystem outside of parks. And this isn't some crazy sci-fi tech either, the same stuff we'd need for major space colonization would be more than enough to make Coruscant possible.
Nature means everything not man-made. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nature](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nature) Even if you cynically destroy earth's natural ecosystem, such that humans and our crops/livestock are the only species you leave alive, you still need to be sustainable. Sustainability is a universal requirement for any life (e.g. humans). This requirement exists even outside of earth's biosphere. Also, the human species and our crops/livestock still count as an ecosystem. But I do find it disturbing how nonchalantly you advocate for the near-complete destruction of earth's wild species.
I really hate when people argue over the exact specifics of definitions. For pete sake, you know what I meant! We probably don't need livestock when we have lab meat (especially if it gets really good at mimicking texture), plus at that point "sustainability" is a technological matter. The tech needed to run an ecumenopolis sustainably isn't much more than what you need for space colonies in the first place. Also, as for the environment I definitely value animal rights, which is why I think they should be uplifted into civilization rather than forming ecosystems built on blood and misery. Also, no wildness doesn't mean no green shit, just that it's in parks.
I didn't want to assume, as I was not completely that sure what you meant. And always accept an opportunity to educate yourself. I'm glad you value animals. I didn't get that impression before. It's just important to remember that there are hundreds of millions of species, and many of them require a lot of space. For example, many animals will not breed in captivity. I don't think relegating them to parks will cut it. Even now, we are undergoing the [Holocene extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction), mostly driven by habitat loss.
>I didn't want to assume, as I was not completely that sure what you meant. And always accept an opportunity to educate yourself. That's fine, I'm glad you get what I mean now. Also I learned something new! >I'm glad you value animals. I didn't get that impression before. I do, but I heavily lean i to the uplifting approach as opposed to leaving them as they are (unless once uplifted they say they want to go back). And if technology gets really good we could uplift *individual* animals, not just make a new species and leave the original behind. >It's just important to remember that there are hundreds of millions of species, and many of them require a lot of space. For example, many animals will not breed in captivity. I don't think relegating them to parks will cut it. Well "parks" can be flexible on size by a LOT, plus we might alter the uplifted versions to be more efficient to house.
> perhaps a population of 5 billion could live comfortably and with nature regenerating. Add a few 0's. If nature is being a problem, just redesign it.
My working hypothesis is that we will want to let nature take back most of the surface of Earth, and humans will try to not interfere too much. Of course, there will be situations warranting an intervention, for example to save a species on the brink of extinction or to avoid the collapse of a land bridge between two landmasses. But at the same time, maybe we will decide to let things go and just observe, catalog, and save seeds and tissue samples from species that are about to disappear. It is hard to determine in advance what will be our descendants' view of nature and of humanity's roles and responsibilities towards it. There are ethical implications in everything we decide to do. I'd be thrilled if we attempted to transplant entire ecosystems away from Earth (space stations, hollowed asteroids, domed cities)... And perhaps we won't have a choice but to use generic engineering to ensure a climate that is favorable to most living species. Who knows.
We don't have to do that, but I think we will *want* to. Humans like green and other natural colours, and I don't think we'll have any desire or reason to change that aspect of ourselves, at least not for a long time.
>My working hypothesis is that we will want to let nature take back most of the surface of Earth, and humans will try to not interfere too much. Worst mistake we could possibly make. We wamt to be doing the opposite, and once ecosystems aren't needed for survival, environmentalism will collapse and there won't be any incentives for keeping ecosystems, especially if we can uplift animals to human intelligence to stop them from suffering in darwinian natural selection.
My god you're arrogant.
I don't get what my argument has to do with me. Believe me I'm no expert, I'm literally a highschooler, but I'm committed to this stance.
Oh don't worry I know you're a high schooler, because only someone in high school thinks these are good stances.
Wow talk about arrogance. My age is not of your concern. That does not make me any less your equal, we're both adults here and opinions don't gain validity with age, they are simply either strong, justifiable ones, or flimsy ones.
Zero growth and negative growth are both born of Neo-Malthusianism. The zeros want population to become stagnant, while the the negatives want population scaled back. Neither group wants to talk about how such objectives are to be achieved. To achieve zero, draconian population controls must be imposed. Think of China's now abandoned One Child policy. This may have sounded great to the party's elites when first conceived, but it's now coming back to bite their successors in the ass. The negative growth crowd is even worse. They wish to scale back the human population. How this should be achieved is seldom spelled out, for good reason. Some of the negativists can seem rather impatient with the pace of nature. Either way, it produces the worst possible zero-sum equation.
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Agreed. Personally my only motivation for an interstellar or galactic humanity is to experience the wonders of the cosmos, not to colonize or conquer them or aggrandize ourselves. For me spreading out populating the stars is only desirable insomuch as it fulfills that purpose. And I don't even need it to be humans touring the universe to fulfill this desire of mine. It could be intelligent machine probes, or other alien species. So long as SOMEONE is out there discovering.
>On the flip side there is no point in growing either. I don't see why we should spread across the galaxy and why it would be horrible to live in a low population human galaxy. There is no manifest destiny that explains we should cover the stars with pink monkeys. Because a future in which there are less good lives being lived is inherently worse. Even if quality of life is fine, there's still less people living those lives. Now, there's definitely better things to populate the galaxy with than humans, but we're a good example.
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How would more not be better? Now I get the quality of life arguments, but if we can grow without decreasing quality of life we should. We have nothing to lose and tons to gain. And I'm also pro choice, I just think that in the bigger picture population growth is good (again so long as quality of life doesn't get negatively effected).
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It will be centralized asexual reproduction/artificial wombs I presume... Frankly, I'll take "Brave new world" over "1984" any day, but we will never be *given* this choice, and as they say "Why not both?", eh. The problem of humanity is that it is stuck between a chimp and a bee. I'd, personally, not mind being happy (or at least un-conscious) part of greater collective where existence is strictly teleological/purpose laden and sacrifice myself and others for "greater cause" knowing that none of them suffer and fear death, but bringing new life into current status quo where pleasures are fleeting and most of them are inherently zero-sum, but suffering is a constant does not seem like a *rational* thing to do, but it was never about "rationality", isn't it? Currently, our civilization is a negative image of Omelas where an ocean of "quiet desperation" (or very vocal one) is perched upon the happiness of a few that mostly happen to be children (or equivalent thereof) that are blissfully ignorant of life's tragedies.
For everyone critiquing OP is just that OP does a bad job at explaining it but there's a thinking current that says that given the current age of the universe and the lack of evidence for advanced extraterrestrial life it's not a far fetch to think that we are the precursors. Most animals get a natural extinction rate of at least 2 million years and humanity overall has existed only for just over 150k years, we could be talking about trillions of future humans whose existence is entirely within our hands only with natural rates of extinction, and if humanity makes it a bit better than monkeys and we get to live for a few hundred million years octillion it's actually a rather conservative number of descendants given the number of stars and planets we could colonize within our galaxy, so you deciding not having children could mean that eventually millions of humans won't be born because of you. In that sense it's not that different from the primordial cell, who if you go back in time and kill it, an unfathomable number of beings would have not been born.
Sure, but the argument falls apart when you realise that a) nobody is advocating for humans to go extinct and b) we don't need to spread humans to spread life and c) OP has argued that our goal should be to overwhelm natural evolution completely. OP isn't arguing that humanity should become the enlightened pre-cursor civilisation to a galaxy full of independent living beings seeking out their own lives and paths to ascension. OP is arguing for a manifest destiny empire that never ever dies and fills the galaxy up with whatever his idealised version of a perfectly 'harmonious' transhuman superstate looks like (trust me, this isn't OP's first post, my impressions are not coming from nowhere). Its just empire building churched up with techno-utopianism and il-considered longtermist rhetoric.
Well, the low population future is usually thought of in the context of Earth, which has limited resources and space. I don't think anyone thinks low population is inherently good when we talk about expanding beyond it. >Not mention the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory The whole point is that currently populations are stagnating on their own, no dystopian efforts required. Why would that change in the future? >Octillions of would-be people are snuffed out before they even get the chance to exist, all because of irrational fears and excessive environmentalist attitudes. That seems like a really weird attitude to me, those people do not care that they never existed because they never existed. There is nothing to be sad about. And our current trajectory - not caused solely by overpopulation, granted - is leading us towards the possibility of billions of people starving, so I don't think those environmentalist attitudes are a bad thing. Care about the people who actually exist instead of purely hypothetical people.
I think low population futures don't necessitate a lack of expansion. We're still expanding smart matter exponentially. It's just not wetware. As stuff starts self-optimizing the losses of individual viewpoints won't stall innovation. As longevity continues to increase the number of minds lost out the back will diminish too, and they will be more vital and fluid because that will be seen as healthy. Now that doesn't solve the sorrow of the loss of potential individuals, but that is always true. There is no world where every potential mind can be realized within a single time continuum. So that tragedy is never going to be avoidable. Either you have to change your view on time so that you see that all possibilities exist in parallel, inaccessible but still realized, or accept that for the you that didn't have an egg this morning there is no salvation.
>Everyone these days talks about our stagnating population growth like its a good thing and that expansion is automatically bad I've never seen anyone say this.
A lot of climate activists are de-growth and say this. I however hear just as many people recently being alarmed at population decline and insist we need to start being more pro-family. The two ideas are currently butting heads.
As a temporary measure maybe, but I've never heard anyone say that humanity should never be allowed to grow
Pay attention to the de-growth movement and you'll hear it. I'm pleased to say it's mostly the more extreme ends of the view though. There are even a few de-growth people here on SFIA reddit ([I accidentally started a long conversation about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/IsaacArthur/comments/18w37sg/i_thought_youd_all_enjoy_this_meme_i_saw_some/)) but most of them take more moderate or cautious positions. Go to other places like X/Twitter and you'll find a few depopulation enthusiasts who make Thanos blush. Conversations with them is where I got that meme from, actually.
Ok, fair.
I don't think anyone say precisely _that,_ but many people have been complaining about overpopulation consistently for hundreds of years. Primarily this asshole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
Well population decline is bad - at least, according to economists and the like - because there will soon be a ton of old people who need welfare, medical care, etc., and not enough young people to actually care for them, bogging down the economy and/or leading to a huge amount of homeless people. (At least I think this is the general worry, someone correct me if I'm wrong) That's an issue in the next few decades, but probably not in the long term since population will probably stabilize at some point. Personally I think that seems like a weird argument, because this is exactly the type of situation automation and AI should be able to help with - allowing automated care for more people with fewer humans involved (hopefully as part of a general welfare state). And the idea that we need to have more children so that old people can live out their sunset years in more comfort seems generally kind of fucked up to me. I don't want to be guilted into having kids so that old people who repeatedly vote to gut welfare of any sort despite relying on medicare and social security have someone to change their diapers in 20 years, what kind of idea is that?
Economists are not futurists. They make a point not to make projections off of technology that has not matured yet. We are optimistic about robotics and automation but economists are literally required to be more grounded.
See the Degrowth movement. Beyond that, 'overpopulation is bad' is a pretty universal sentiment.
I feel degrowthers are mainly a temporary movement, they want us to slow down until we've fixed climate change and a few other problems, then most of them don't massively care.
I refuse to believe that the joy of those happy lives are worth the suffering of those their joy is built upon. I do not want to breed for breedings' sake, for humans to pump out babies to maximize happiness points with no consideration for them as living individuals capable of experiencing equal, if not more, suffering. I do not want to live in Omelas.
Yeah I don't believe in human sacrifices or volcano gods.
Well if you've got artificial wombs and the right tech you could grow people to adulthood with full sets of skills downloaded into them matrix style, then pair them up into sibling groups for families.
What exactly would u like? Gilead? Just a world where woman pump out kids? For who? For what? You must give a reason, and "the future" isn't a good one. People live to have a life. It's not their job to secure a, I don't even know, idealistic dream of a teenager?
Not even just a galaxy, but the entire hubble volume which is around 5 billion galaxies, iirc, or 2% of the observable universe that we could ever access without going FTL. Based on scattered factoids, the available energy can support 5 quindecillion modern human lives, or 5x10^48. On the one hand, I do think we need to contain our exploitation of the earth, but not so much that we can't expand off of it.
What are you gonna do, just convince people to have kids? It's very unaffordable at the moment. There are a lot of "small" problems compared to missing out on galactic conquest that are happening right now that we should focus on above pumping out babies. Temporary stagnation in population growth is going to happen and it will improve when nations and the world as a whole becomes safer and more prosperous.
Lol at the too poor to breed crowd. Look who is breeding, you are almost certainly richer. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-growth-rate/country-comparison/
Don’t worry. I’m nearly divorced, so I should be able to make up the difference shortly…
Gonna just ignore the fact that after the black death in Europe, people were suddenly catapulted into much better conditions due to a greater abundance of resources and more demand for skilled labor driving wages up? And how that boost in quality of life and drop in poverty is one of the wheels that drove Europe into the Rennaissance? It's a seriously grim and messed up example to draw from, but my point stands: the drop in population made a lot of change possible. The horror that holds us back isn't a low population. It's lives spent without the resources to realize their potential.
Y'all are funny. We'll be lucky if the 20 year survival on even a single SARS-CoV-2 infection is 5% now that we know it persists in abundance in the endothelium and is turning our vasculature into the meat equivalent of brittle clay. The only thing a civilization like that runs are euthanasia centers and crematoriums. The seeds of a low population future have already been sown--the next 20 years we be a slow motion reaping of general cognitive decline and cardiovascular disease.
I‘m going to assume that you’re moderately wealthy on a global scale, simply because you have the time to think about things like this and seem to be detached enough from reality. That also means you’re lifestyle is unsustainable. If everyone were to live like you, or me for that matter, earth couldn’t support it for more than like 5 months each year. Our current focus isn’t colonizing the galaxy or even the solar system, it’s surviving this god forsaken century without a World War, without countless refugees and millions dead from an ever more chaotic climate. So no, as of right now, that fact that statistics predict we will only have to manage 10 billion humans by the end of the century is a massive relief because we can’t even sustainably, fairly and justly allow 8 billion to live right now.
I think what op is actually talking about is the subtle horror of a civilization stuck on earth. With no room to grow civilization would in fact develop into an unpleasant dystopia characterized by incredibly oppressive power structures and endless cycles of ossification and collapse.
What is better between: A) Exist. considering the economic system we live in, this means that it's most likely you will be born poor. You will slave away your life, throwing away half of your daily waking hours in a job that gives you no upward mobility or economic safety whatsoever and then, when all your energy and time have been squeezed out of you by some fat dude in a suit driving a Lamborghini, you cease to exist. B) Not exist.
>our stagnating population growth but somehow also >the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population Pick one. You can't have both.
2 billion people in 1960s and it seemed innovation and prosperity were doing fine.
You can't even list what we lose and ignore what we gain. That's a total lack of evidence for your position. Okay, HOW is a post-scarcity utopia worse? More people doesn't drive innovation. All it does is put more stain on an already failing biome. so what is the problem with denying octillions of "would be people" an existence? we have no impetus to create more people. More people is not demonstrated to be better in any way. Please show us how it is better. so a you haven't. In fact, one measure of an intelligent species is to learn to limit its population to fit within the biome's ability to sustain the population.
> Not mention the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory. No such efforts are required. The main reason behind the current levelling off in the rates of population growth is not due to any dystopian edicts, but because fewer people are choosing to reproduce. If anything it's the opposite that should concern ordinary folks. A shrinking population puts more bargaining power into the hands of labour, and in a society where capital is concentrated into the hands of a relative few, that might provoke an impulse to reduce or eliminate the ability of ordinary folks to make their own decisions about reproduction.
If you keep blowing air into a balloon, it will pop. You can build a better balloon, or even figure out a way to reduce the pressure of the air mass inside the balloon, but eventually the balloon fails. The earth is the balloon, human population is the air. If you cannot, or don't want to, limit the air output then you need more balloons. This is space colonization. If you can pressurize an infinite number of balloons, you can have most of them at whatever the ideal air mass is. Of course, this is assuming that people want children. It's hard to grow a population that doesn't want to reproduce.
Fewer Asimovs will be worth the far fewer chads.
I disagree. As long as we have only one world, we have a population limit. We might raise that limit through technological innovation but never eliminate it without finding or creating new worlds. If tempoarily overpopulating that world means collapse and extinction or near extinction, then even draconian population management mean that more people not less get to live over time.
You are right, however we're orders of magnitude away from the theoretical limits.
Do you know what orders of magnitude are? We are already exceeding the carrying capacity at our current technological level, and 100 people for every one here wold require perfect recycling, vertical farms, and killing every other species off the globe.
Yes I'm well aware of the scales involved here, this is a matter of quadrillions, not billions or even trillions. Also those technologies seem quite reasonable to me, and we don't need to wipe out species, just put them in reserves or uplift them to sapience.
Dude. Your so misguided it’s sad. Overpopulation is destroying our planet.
I don't agree with OP at all but no overpopulation is not destroying this planet. Poor management and distribution of resources - that manifests in many cases as intentional misdistribution and/or mismanagement - is.
10 billion people and most of them are using single use plastics. I agree with what you said but disagree about your opinion of population. Most of what you said about corruption and mismanagement is true but when you look at deforestation, coral reef mass death, pollution in our rivers, lakes, bays, aquifers etc…. We are rendering most drinking water as toxic.
But that's not overpopulation, it's mindless unsustainable practice. Admittedly having so many people leads to taking the cheapest solutions right now, but it doesn't inevitably do so.
Would you rather have 1 billion people doing mindless unsustainable practices or 8 billion doing mindless unsustainable practices. Obviously the impact of 8 billion is an 8 fold increase. I agree that it’s mindless unsustainable practices but we are speeding up the planets demise by the sheer number of wreck less and selfish humans. If we had multiple habitable planets I wouldn’t care about overpopulation. If we were carbon neutral and made the planet better then I would say the more humans the better. That is not the case though. Earth can only take so much and we are racing as fast as we can to the cliffs edge.
But how much the Earth can take is a matter of some debate. We are in agreement that we need to stop driving toward this cliff. I don't think we really need to reduce the number of humans we're making beyond making it possible for people to choose. Population is self-limiting in areas where resources and culture make it possible to do so. If we put the brakes on population growth and assume that it will solve environmental collapse we will have an empty, poisoned ruin.
I am not basing this off of anything credible, but I think it may be a problem that self-corrects over time if it's even a problem at all. Too many people, conflict, scarcity, distrust of others, naturally people will be around people less if they are able and subsequently be making less people. More resources, less scarcity, more utility in the average person. Happiness and security increases and people will start multiplying like Gremlins again. I don't know about you, but I do not see a lot of innovation happening lately unless it is the new and terrible ways corporations and governments have concocted to squeeze money out of people who are struggling.
>Too many people, conflict, scarcity, distrust of others, naturally people will be around people less if they are able and subsequently be making less people. More resources, less scarcity, more utility in the average person. Happiness and security increases and people will start multiplying like Gremlins again. So far we're seeing the exact opposite. Developed countries have drastically lower birth rates than developing ones precisely because there's less crazy stuff going on and people feel less pressured. >I don't know about you, but I do not see a lot of innovation happening lately unless it is the new and terrible ways corporations and governments have concocted to squeeze money out of people who are struggling. Again its the exact opposite, things are moving faster now than ever. One guy here thinks there's gonna be a technological singularity in just a few decades.
"excessive environmentalist attitudes" Elaborate. I certainly hope you don't value "octillions of would-be people" that probably will never exist more than the living creatures that exist right now. (What do you even mean by "people" anyway?)
I would consider myself a moderate environmentalist, but purely for pragmatic reasons, right now we need an ecosystem to continue living, but that may not always be the case and when it isn't I'm all for turning earth into an ecumenopolis shellworld (with maybe a continent sized nature reserve for the tree-hugging types). However I highly value animal lives, which is why I'm a major proponent of uplifting, ecosystems are inherently cruel anyway, so why keep them once we and the animals are no longer part of them? As for the definition of people, that's unbelievably flexible. But yeah I definitely get fed up with environmentalists that treat current local overpopulation in some cities, and our global carbon emissions like some absolute barrier on population growth.
S-risk scenarios are as real (as in - highly hypothetical) as high-tech utopia, moreso perhaps. Coercing the population towards participating in "galaxy sized megaprojects" inspired by vain leaders using violence or direct brainwashing is much easier compared to "herding cats" of more "democratic" futures, and the more population there is, the more aggregate suffering the system can generate - think "factory farming" humans and/or something like Warhammer 40k/Signalis. "Numbers go brrrr" goes both ways.
Growth or lack of growth are not inherently good or bad. It depends on context. (A) If your resources are limited, or your environment is fragile to your activity, it is irresponsible to grow too much. (B) If your resources are currently basically unlimited and your activity does not meaningfully harm your environment, then there is no problem with growth. >Not mention the insane dystopian efforts you'd need to keep people from trying to expand in population or territory. We are currently (on earth) in scenario (A), where such measures might be (somewhat) more justifiable, and yet there are no such measures. Because people would collectively go ape shit if there were. I don't see this as a significant threat unless there is already a dystopia in place. >Octillions of would-be people are snuffed out I grew up mormon, where parents would (sometimes) be guilted into having more children than they wanted or could support by the idea that would-be children would be snuffed out. So I especially despise this argument, and see it for the absolute horse-shit that it is.
You definitely make a point with the A and B scenarios, and that's where I stand as well. I'm pro-growth, but not if it can't be done responsibly. >I grew up mormon, where parents would (sometimes) be guilted into having more children than they wanted or could support by the idea that would-be children would be snuffed out. So I especially despise this argument, and see it for the absolute horse-shit that it is. The argument isn't necessarily wrong. It's wrong to guilt trip people, but potential futures are still important, and in the extreme case of us remaining at say 100 million people forever, it is sad that what could have been was snuffed out by poor decision making.
There were times where the Roman empire lost half its population to war and famine, but didn't "collapse". I'm sure the millions of people who died during these times didn't care about the "fate of Rome." The demographic collapse we face is that sort of disaster. There's no way to avoid millions of deaths. There's a distinct possibility core competencies will be lost. That culture, sense of life, motivation, ambition will all fail as rats fight over a shrinking pie. Not just regular ambition, but even the basic ambition to fix problems, terrible problem that affect everyone and our fundamental standard of living. There's nothing like a room emptying out and the lights going off. Societies where the entire generation of young people 18-35 is a distinct minority have miserable cultures with no future. Nothing about this is good. People think far too grandiose about this issue. Society needs AT least a decent replacement rate, a set of young people balanced against old. There's also this severely misguided notion that populations who use less resources are less bad for the Earth. They are the ones doing the labor that harms the Earth on behalf of the more developed societies. It seems pretty obvious that developed societies should strive for replacement, and limit immigration to prevent massive cultural changes. Meanwhile, limited emigration can be a release valve for less developed societies to slowly lose population and then change culture and develop. It's vital, developed societies that will figure out how to use resources responsibly without compromising human wellbeing, or rather, just giving up on it entirely.
Wait, why "It seems pretty obvious that developed societies should strive for replacement, and limit immigration to prevent massive cultural changes. Meanwhile, limited emigration can be a release valve for less developed societies to slowly lose population and then change culture and develop."? Societies can be constructed to only include people who agree with a set of principles, and society is very distinct from state. This conclusion is a dangerous and unreasonable one.
Not principles. Immigration is two way, but circumstances tend to make it one-way. The people emigrating are making the choice about which principles they value, not the state. Preserving a society's culture through replacement - culture is taught in childhood and again in early adulthood - is how human society works. The only alternative is some kind of Brave New World state-as-parents system. All I was saying is that replacement is necessary for good principles to evolve and continue. That is, without state intervention. As for immigration, I was implying no particular selection process, just stating that immigration is not a suitable alternative to population replacement through reproduction because of the loss of a cultural center of mass. You drew the opposite conclusion from what I said in that quote. I think you're bogged down by current year politics which is attaching to issues like immigration certain idiosyncratic tokens with preset ideological baggage or social conditioning that specific policies equate to specific kinds of hate or something.
That was what troubled me about the conclusion. I think people are more able to adapt to new societies even when older if they have proper buy-in and understanding, but it doesn't often happen that way so I see what you mean there. I juxtapose the way people join online community to the way they interact in meatspace, *Central Standard Tribe* style. I worry when statements about outgroups grow too divisive and hope that this will wither away as culture becomes more a choice and less an indoctrination.