Too many people?

[Loren Pechtel]

There's no active population control, NONE, that does not involve genocide or horrible oppression and forced abortions.

You are missing the point.

Let me try it another way. Let A = the number of people on this planet. Let B = the number of people that this planet can sustainably hold. Is it or is is not possible to have a discussion on this forum about whether A>B without all the namecalling and lies?

You are missing the point.

B is under a million. It's early stone age technology. The breakpoint is flint--you have to go back to before flint tools because flint is not a renewable resource and at that tech level there's basically no mining. I would be astounded if we could cleanly descend to that point without a massive overshoot due to war.

Thus the only real survival for the human race is to advance technology to the point that a high tech society is sustainable.

 

[Jarhyn]

AI is going to unemploy hundreds of millions (to billions) of people.

The question is much much less about population, but managing how we will transition to a planet where so much of the work is done by computers, and how livelihoods can be managed where AI isn't in control (effectively arts, human services, sports, AI management). In the smaller scale of it, we have seen so many people who were replaced by machines not manage the change well, and resort to wanting to put toothpaste back in the tube and voting for a narcissistic sociopath in order to do so.

AI is going to make meaningful work available to hundreds of millions of people.

The fact is, it lowers the barrier to entry into a field and dramatically improves on the skill cap of even a skilled engineer or professional.

Instead of doing things once and saying you don't have time to redraft or accept an initial failure, you get the time to do it repeatedly, and taking the best, most refined process results of many.

AI will not eliminate art, but it will make life easier and faster for artists.

My husband is an artist and right now I'm doing the research necessary to train a model up on his art, so he can use it to accelerate his artistic process, and plug it into the workflow of a modern image editor.

 

[Jarhyn]

There's no active population control, NONE, that does not involve genocide or horrible oppression and forced abortions.

You are missing the point.

Let me try it another way. Let A = the number of people on this planet. Let B = the number of people that this planet can sustainably hold. Is it or is is not possible to have a discussion on this forum about whether A>B without all the namecalling and lies?

You are missing the point.

B is under a million. It's early stone age technology. The breakpoint is flint--you have to go back to before flint tools because flint is not a renewable resource and at that tech level there's basically no mining. I would be astounded if we could cleanly descend to that point without a massive overshoot due to war.

Thus the only real survival for the human race is to advance technology to the point that a high tech society is sustainable.

Your solution to the falling problem is "push hard to the side and hope you fall into orbit"

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Poking my head out of the foxhole...no bullets flying...is it safe to come out?

It sure would be nice if people here would address the things I wrote on this thread instead of making things up, and forcing me to explain that I never said the things they just made up. That behavior only wastes everybody's time.

The problem here is we are digging into the details rather than accepting your handwaved approach.

 

[ZiprHead]

Such an odd bunch on here. Whining about overpopulation and yet were frantically locking people down and screaming about all the deaths from covid not so long ago. WEAR YOUR MASK!! LOL.

Yes, we're all the same. Thanks for that non-contribution.

 

[Jayjay]

AI is going to unemploy hundreds of millions (to billions) of people.

The question is much much less about population, but managing how we will transition to a planet where so much of the work is done by computers, and how livelihoods can be managed where AI isn't in control (effectively arts, human services, sports, AI management). In the smaller scale of it, we have seen so many people who were replaced by machines not manage the change well, and resort to wanting to put toothpaste back in the tube and voting for a narcissistic sociopath in order to do so.

A human-level AI can probably be run at the energy expenditure of a light bulb. At some point, when AIs or enhanced humans have enough political clout, somebody is going to ask the question: how many of these inefficient meat bags we really need to keep around flailing their appendages and spewing CO2 into the atmosphere?

Definitely not billions. Maybe 10-100 million is a more manageable number, for nostalgia and to keep as pets.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's no active population control, NONE, that does not involve genocide or horrible oppression and forced abortions.

You are missing the point.

Let me try it another way. Let A = the number of people on this planet. Let B = the number of people that this planet can sustainably hold. Is it or is is not possible to have a discussion on this forum about whether A>B without all the namecalling and lies?

You are missing the point.

B is under a million. It's early stone age technology. The breakpoint is flint--you have to go back to before flint tools because flint is not a renewable resource and at that tech level there's basically no mining. I would be astounded if we could cleanly descend to that point without a massive overshoot due to war.

Thus the only real survival for the human race is to advance technology to the point that a high tech society is sustainable.

Your solution to the falling problem is "push hard to the side and hope you fall into orbit"

Better than the certain splat if you don't. You're going to have to shed an awful lot of weight (people) to get down to the point chutes work.

 

[Copernicus]

AI is going to unemploy hundreds of millions (to billions) of people.

The question is much much less about population, but managing how we will transition to a planet where so much of the work is done by computers, and how livelihoods can be managed where AI isn't in control (effectively arts, human services, sports, AI management). In the smaller scale of it, we have seen so many people who were replaced by machines not manage the change well, and resort to wanting to put toothpaste back in the tube and voting for a narcissistic sociopath in order to do so.

A human-level AI can probably be run at the energy expenditure of a light bulb. At some point, when AIs or enhanced humans have enough political clout, somebody is going to ask the question: how many of these inefficient meat bags we really need to keep around flailing their appendages and spewing CO2 into the atmosphere?

Definitely not billions. Maybe 10-100 million is a more manageable number, for nostalgia and to keep as pets.

There is no such thing as a "human-level AI", and we aren't even close to creating one. As for running one cheaply, ChatGPT, the program that is the most recent focus of hysterical anti-AI alarmism in the press, comes with a price tag:

How much does ChatGPT cost? $2-12 million per training for large models

 

[bilby]

to engineer a change in the behavioral patterns of billions of people in a way that stabilizes the world population probably won't happen.

It has happened literally everywhere where girls routinely have access to good primary education, even in places like Ireland where religious pressure has made contraception (and abortion) hugely difficult to obtain.

I don't agree that it won't happen; It is happening, and it's going to be almost impossible to prevent at this stage.

#1 There's no guarantee that girls will inevitably have access to primary education in all countries. Or whatever is the pre-condition to lowering birth rates.

It doesn't need to be all countries, just the wealthiest ones. It's already happened. Past tense.

#2 Future technological advances that increase longevity and fertility might reverse the trend. This will happen first in the affluent countries, which also use most resources per-capita.

Sure. If things change, they won't be the same. So what? Unless you've got a specific change in mind that is genuinely plausible, this is pure handwavium.

I think by end of the century we'll need to impose a two-child policy to keep population growth in check.

I think that's a dystopian nightmare that has zero probability of occurring, and that would be worse than the disaster it would be attempting to prevent, even if it could be shown to be in any way possible or desirable (it's neither, unless you're an authoritarian arsehole who likes making people miserable).

 

[Jarhyn]

There's no active population control, NONE, that does not involve genocide or horrible oppression and forced abortions.

You are missing the point.

Let me try it another way. Let A = the number of people on this planet. Let B = the number of people that this planet can sustainably hold. Is it or is is not possible to have a discussion on this forum about whether A>B without all the namecalling and lies?

You are missing the point.

B is under a million. It's early stone age technology. The breakpoint is flint--you have to go back to before flint tools because flint is not a renewable resource and at that tech level there's basically no mining. I would be astounded if we could cleanly descend to that point without a massive overshoot due to war.

Thus the only real survival for the human race is to advance technology to the point that a high tech society is sustainable.

Your solution to the falling problem is "push hard to the side and hope you fall into orbit"

Better than the certain splat if you don't. You're going to have to shed an awful lot of weight (people) to get down to the point chutes work.

Well, I was thinking some of column A and some of column B: push out the arc to the side while using the time to shed weight via consensual methodology, so that even if you don't splat, you might still be able to do a rolling landing.

We already have the <5 micron imaging technology in development to do the digitization task (it's tested on live rodents, just need to get it around a human brainstem now), the image analysis suites, and the hardware that can support the parameter sets it would output. It's a matter of maybe 2-3 years out before we are likely to see our first live mammalian brain digitization and replatforming (less for the destructive-scan version, since it just requires higher energy levels and less care of target survival), and maybe 4-5 years from human replatforming.

 

[Copernicus]

to engineer a change in the behavioral patterns of billions of people in a way that stabilizes the world population probably won't happen.

It has happened literally everywhere where girls routinely have access to good primary education, even in places like Ireland where religious pressure has made contraception (and abortion) hugely difficult to obtain.

I don't agree that it won't happen; It is happening, and it's going to be almost impossible to prevent at this stage.

But it is happening independently of social campaigns to cut back on population, and that was just my point. That is not engineering a change in social behavior. That is people living their lives normally and not changing their behavior because of a movement not to have children. If we could give most girls routine access to a good primary education (which, BTW, is getting more and more difficult in the US), then a gradual drop in the size of families would follow. However, we aren't going to eliminate poverty and lack of good education everywhere in the world all at once. So, I'm saying that the idea of engineering a change in human behavior to fix the population problem is more than a little quixotic. Meanwhile, catastrophic climate change is coming a lot sooner than governments are able to plan for it. The best we can do now is try to find ways to mitigate it. Population decline will happen on its own, and will be driven by external factors, not government policy.

 

[bilby]

But it is happening independently of social campaigns to cut back on population, and that was just my point. That is not engineering a change in social behavior. That is people living their lives normally and not changing their behavior because of a movement not to have children.

Yes, that's my point too.

Social engineering is not only hugely difficult, and very unpleasant; It's also completely and utterly unnecessary.

There's nothing so useless as to do, with great efficiency, that which should not be done at all.

You are looking at a massive rock that has been pushed off a cliff, and saying "How on Earth are we to solve the dreadful problem of this rock being too high up??".

You haven't demonstrated that the height of the rock is problematic, but even if we accepted your assertion that it is, it won't be for long even if we do nothing at all. The best strategy here is to do nothing at all.

Population isn't too high, isn't increasing exponentially, and within a few decades won't be increasing at all.

The only "problem" is that so many people are convinced that there's a problem, and are hell-bent on making other people miserable in an attempt to mitigate the problem that doesn't exist.

We don't need to engineer a solution to the problem of overpopulation, for the same reason that we don't need to engineer a solution to the problem of water running uphill.

We should ensure a good education for as many people as possible, for a million excellent reasons. Population control isn't one of those reasons.

It might, with great effort, be possible to force humanity back to exponential population growth; But the first and most difficult step towards that completely stupid and pointless goal would be to stop educating almost everyone, and that would be practically impossible to achieve at this point, because even the uneducated can now see that education is the way to improving their lives.

You couldn't make exponential population growth back into a problem if you tried.

All movements for people not to have children are both needless and futile, and serve only to enable the authoritarianism of the members of such movements. They are therefore evil.

 

[bilby]

Meanwhile, catastrophic climate change is coming a lot sooner than governments are able to plan for it. The best we can do now is try to find ways to mitigate it.

We found the solution to that one in the 1950s too.

But the neo-luddites refuse to allow us to act.

Many of these neo-luddites are also the neo-malthusian control freaks who want us to commit genocide.

There's a huge overlap between the sets "People who oppose nuclear power" and "People who claim the world is overpopulated". The existence of either set is the real problem here.

There's no technical, physical, or even biological problem here at all. We don't need to find solutions that already exist. We need to stop blocking their implementation - and that's a purely psychological set of problems.

People believe things that are untrue, and are determined to prevent anyone from acting as though their nonsense were nonsensical.

 

[laughing dog]

Meanwhile, catastrophic climate change is coming a lot sooner than governments are able to plan for it. The best we can do now is try to find ways to mitigate it.

We found the solution to that one in the 1950s too.

But the neo-luddites refuse to allow us to act.

Many of these neo-luddites are also the neo-malthusian control freaks who want us to commit genocide.

There's a huge overlap between the sets "People who oppose nuclear power" and "People who claim the world is overpopulated". The existence of either set is the real problem here.

There's no technical, physical, or even biological problem here at all. We don't need to find solutions that already exist. We need to stop blocking their implementation - and that's a purely psychological set of problems.

People believe things that are untrue, and are determined to prevent anyone from acting as though their nonsense were nonsensical.

Changing all power sources to nuclear and renewable energy sources would halt our contribution to intensifying climate change, but the current process continues until the climate attains it’s new “equilibrium”.

 

[bilby]

Meanwhile, catastrophic climate change is coming a lot sooner than governments are able to plan for it. The best we can do now is try to find ways to mitigate it.

We found the solution to that one in the 1950s too.

But the neo-luddites refuse to allow us to act.

Many of these neo-luddites are also the neo-malthusian control freaks who want us to commit genocide.

There's a huge overlap between the sets "People who oppose nuclear power" and "People who claim the world is overpopulated". The existence of either set is the real problem here.

There's no technical, physical, or even biological problem here at all. We don't need to find solutions that already exist. We need to stop blocking their implementation - and that's a purely psychological set of problems.

People believe things that are untrue, and are determined to prevent anyone from acting as though their nonsense were nonsensical.

Changing all power sources to nuclear and renewable energy sources would halt our contribution to intensifying climate change, but the current process continues until the climate attains it’s new “equilibrium”.

OK.

So, what do you want to do about that?

 

[laughing dog]

Meanwhile, catastrophic climate change is coming a lot sooner than governments are able to plan for it. The best we can do now is try to find ways to mitigate it.

We found the solution to that one in the 1950s too.

But the neo-luddites refuse to allow us to act.

Many of these neo-luddites are also the neo-malthusian control freaks who want us to commit genocide.

There's a huge overlap between the sets "People who oppose nuclear power" and "People who claim the world is overpopulated". The existence of either set is the real problem here.

There's no technical, physical, or even biological problem here at all. We don't need to find solutions that already exist. We need to stop blocking their implementation - and that's a purely psychological set of problems.

People believe things that are untrue, and are determined to prevent anyone from acting as though their nonsense were nonsensical.

Changing all power sources to nuclear and renewable energy sources would halt our contribution to intensifying climate change, but the current process continues until the climate attains it’s new “equilibrium”.

OK.

So, what do you want to do about that?

My point is that there is no solution at this point for the effects of climate change. While it is possible we may find a technological solution to the future climate mess, I am not sanguine. At best, we may be able to ameliorate some of the expected changes in climate.

I think the world needs to start bracing itself for these changes now in order to mitigate the effects of climate change.

 

[Copernicus]

I think the world needs to start bracing itself for these changes now in order to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Exactly, and this has also been my position all along. We need to focus on practical actions rather than wishful thinking. Even halting our massive contribution to greenhouse gasses now would not stop the oceans from flooding many of the world's major cities. The eastern seaboard in the US is particularly vulnerable. Cities like Boston, New York, Washington DC, and Miami are all at high risk now. The Doomsday glacier, which is roughly the size of Florida, will break off no matter what we do, and we don't know how soon it will happen. The estimate is that it will ultimately cause a sea level rise of roughly 10 feet, and that is not the only factor causing sea levels to rise.

 

[bilby]

Meanwhile, catastrophic climate change is coming a lot sooner than governments are able to plan for it. The best we can do now is try to find ways to mitigate it.

We found the solution to that one in the 1950s too.

But the neo-luddites refuse to allow us to act.

Many of these neo-luddites are also the neo-malthusian control freaks who want us to commit genocide.

There's a huge overlap between the sets "People who oppose nuclear power" and "People who claim the world is overpopulated". The existence of either set is the real problem here.

There's no technical, physical, or even biological problem here at all. We don't need to find solutions that already exist. We need to stop blocking their implementation - and that's a purely psychological set of problems.

People believe things that are untrue, and are determined to prevent anyone from acting as though their nonsense were nonsensical.

Changing all power sources to nuclear and renewable energy sources would halt our contribution to intensifying climate change, but the current process continues until the climate attains it’s new “equilibrium”.

OK.

So, what do you want to do about that?

My point is that there is no solution at this point for the effects of climate change. While it is possible we may find a technological solution to the future climate mess, I am not sanguine. At best, we may be able to ameliorate some of the expected changes in climate.

I think the world needs to start bracing itself for these changes now in order to mitigate the effects of climate change.

OK.

So...

Do you think that's not happening?

If there's something we can do, and the alternative is to just give up and die, I expect we will do it.

If there's nothing we can possibly do, then there's no point in wasting a single moment worrying about it. Is there?

You're on the Titanic. There's no way to stop it from sinking; The lifeboats are all gone; That bitch Rose is hogging all the floating doors.

Are you planning to spend your last few minutes of life railing against the fates, running around with your hair on fire, making your co-victims feel bad about having supported the White Star Line with their ticket purchases, despite their woefully inadequate lifeboat policy and sub-standard shipbuilding practices?

Or are you going to grab a bottle of champagne and listen to the band in quiet dignity?

Either way, you'll be dead tomorrow.

 

[lostone]

Even if we reduce our species to living on the barest of resources possible, with the finest nuclear technology, those resources will run out eventually. We are not going to become technological Gods, in spite of what the optimists say. Conserve as much as possible, so our species and other life on Earth can survive as long as possible, and Drink the champagne.

 

[Jayjay]

to engineer a change in the behavioral patterns of billions of people in a way that stabilizes the world population probably won't happen.

It has happened literally everywhere where girls routinely have access to good primary education, even in places like Ireland where religious pressure has made contraception (and abortion) hugely difficult to obtain.

I don't agree that it won't happen; It is happening, and it's going to be almost impossible to prevent at this stage.

#1 There's no guarantee that girls will inevitably have access to primary education in all countries. Or whatever is the pre-condition to lowering birth rates.

It doesn't need to be all countries, just the wealthiest ones. It's already happened. Past tense.

But there's no guarantee that all countries, or even all of the most populous countries, will become wealthy.

And migration will pump some of those people into the wealthy countries as well.

#2 Future technological advances that increase longevity and fertility might reverse the trend. This will happen first in the affluent countries, which also use most resources per-capita.

Sure. If things change, they won't be the same. So what? Unless you've got a specific change in mind that is genuinely plausible, this is pure handwavium.

Sure, that's a problem for the future generations. We'll be dead by then.

But there are already indications of that. According to surveys, people in countries with low fertility rates are not having as many children as they'd like. One of the reasons for lower birth rates in affluent countries is that the first child is more often postponed to a later date, which means the possible second or third children will never be born. And sometimes, not even the first one. But this problem can be alleviated with medical technology.

I think by end of the century we'll need to impose a two-child policy to keep population growth in check.

I think that's a dystopian nightmare that has zero probability of occurring, and that would be worse than the disaster it would be attempting to prevent, even if it could be shown to be in any way possible or desirable (it's neither, unless you're an authoritarian arsehole who likes making people miserable).

I don't consider it a dystopian nightmare, anymore than speed limits or regulating carbon emissions. Besides, in affluent countries fertility rates are already below 2, so if it were a dystopia, we're practically already living it.

In practice, I doubt it would be a hard rule for everyone. Rich people could still buy more child options, and poor people who don't have kids could sell them. Or they could be awarded based on some criteria like IQ, wealth, or signing ability.