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[ASCIt]

Hum... I can see (and concede) that as a fair point. Thing is, someone (not me, of course) could also argue that this creates a vicious circle, as industrialization was responsible for overpopulation in the first place.

[Eddren]

Yup, and industrialization is the reason I'm CURRENTLY alive, since I am contributing to the excess population so, thank you very much, I think I'm happier with it CREATING more people then non-industrialization MANAGES.

[wierd]

Yup, and industrialization is the reason I'm CURRENTLY alive, since I am contributing to the excess population so, thank you very much, I think I'm happier with it CREATING more people then non-industrialization MANAGES.

Both true and false.  Perpetual growth as any exponent is unsustainable in the long term. This means that the human population must ultimately decline, or become extinct suddenly from resource exhaustion.

This leads to a different moral dillema, that I have a much more difficult time reconciling:

Is it less ethical to induce a mass population reduction with 7bn people, than to knowingly allow a sudden mass extinction of say, 20bn people later?

I resolve this issue internally by adopting the "responsibility" philosophy. Knowing that continual growth cannot be sustained, and that by most practical measures the human race is overpopulated, I have chosen willingly to never procreate, and to educate others about the problem to discourage further exacerbating the problem. A stark reduction in birthrate coupled with natural mortality will cause the problem to self-resolve.

For this reason I advocate non-reproduction. The question is, will a sufficiently large percentage of the population take the hint, or continue to think infinite population growth is allowable?

[ASCIt]

Y'know, if we made a space fleet that problem would disappear.

[Eddren]

Economically illogical at this time. Rather, we could easily begin making use of the submerged land-masses for further growth, until eventually we are capable of space-travel. However, another thing we have to keep in mind is War: As terrible as it is, as much as I wish it DIDN'T exist, until we are capable of expanding to the point where everyone has enough breathing room, and there ARE no touching borders, it will continue to keep our population in check. What disease, famine, and other such problems don't take out, the ensuing wars from people being too close for their liking probably WILL.

[wierd]

 Not correct.
(Regarding space colonization)



I suggest watching this series of videos.



*edit: fix broken url tag, x2. Stupid youtube!

[Eddren]

...Two videos on black pilots, a video about Runescape, and a video about a movie titled 'The Movie?'

[wierd]

Damn stupid youtube!

No. Video is "most important video you will ever see", an 8 part video lecture on the exponential function.

[Eddren]

Which takes into account, of course, that the larger scale human-kind becomes, the larger-scale wars become, to the point where fortresses that once would have been impenetrable are now considered completely useless? That as the population becomes exponentially larger, the capability for larger manpower is made available, and exploited? It also includes the increased efficiency in mortality rates as we further develop weapons? It contains statistics accurately predicting the growth of war next to increased tensions due to increased border-conflicts created by mass-overpopulation?

[wierd]

More like "germs in a jar".

Say, you place a germ in a jar. It doubles every 15 minutes. How many hours does it take to exhaust the livingv space of the jar?

Now, say the germs realize this problem. They search high and low for other jars to move a significant portion of their population to. Say... half.

They find 2 other jars. They move half the population of the first jar into the second two. In 1 hour, all are dead from resource depletion.

Reason:

First jar reaches critical in 15 minutes, since the population doubles, and hits the limit again, and now has nowhere to go.

Other 2 jars double twice, same fate.

The same would happen for humans. Moving the population won't solve the problem of exponential growth.

[Kofthefens]

More like "germs in a jar".

Say, you place a germ in a jar. It doubles every 15 minutes. How many hours does it take to exhaust the livingv space of the jar?

Now, say the germs realize this problem. They search high and low for other jars to move a significant portion of their population to. Say... half.

They find 2 other jars. They move half the population of the first jar into the second two. In 1 hour, all are dead from resource depletion.

I love Bay12
Reason:

First jar reaches critical in 15 minutes, since the population doubles, and hits the limit again, and now has nowhere to go.

Other 2 jars double twice, same fate.

The same would happen for humans. Moving the population won't solve the problem of exponential growth.

Yet those other two jars would allow the germs to survive longer than if they had just one. Yes, they die in the end, but death is unavoidable both for an individual and for a species. Eventually the human race will end; the goal is merely to prolong that death.

[wierd]

Controlling rate of reproduction so that total population never reaches critical will prevent the catastrophe completely.

This means allowing the human population to have a sufficiently high natural morbidity to keep it in line.  This means abolishing life extending medicine, and limiting reproduction.

This will permit the human race to avoid overcrowding the jar indefinately. (Or at least until the human race mutates into something else, or the star goes nova. Which ever happens first.)

[Doughnut189]

Mm.

I'm rather certain that within the next fifty years peak production in many critical resources (oil, uranium, basic foodstuffs, water, coffee, etc) will be reached.

The powers of the day are shifting, and is nationalism on the rise or fall?  Are people becoming more interconnected, is globalization liberating the poor farmer from his squabble?
Some places it is, others it is not.

Since the resources needed to keep the many sickly and diseased denizens of Africa scratching by won't exist then, a sudden die-out of a large percentage of the population of Africa will occur within this timeframe. No telling what this could mean.

Will war come? Probably. A world war? Competition over one of our last viable sources of water (Antarctica) will probably make it so.  Meanwhile we'll see society run around in its same circles, the religious right will still try to apply their moral system to everything, and the talk-show hosts won't start thinking for themselves.

In any case, the world crumbles and it makes smashing good history.  Enjoy mad consumerism while you can, or try to fix it. It doesn't matter which you do, only how well you sleep at night. Pull up a chair and watch or hide your head in the sand.

That being said, Rocky Horror anyone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsoebjsZqI0&feature=related

[wierd]

I just hope somebody is around to read this history of our hubris, and learn from it. Otherwise, it is a collossal, pointless waste.

I prefer to think that there is a slim glimmer of hope, that we can get enough people to see the problem while it can still be fixed, and act accordingly.

Sadly, my anectodal experiences tell me the catastrophe will not be averted excepting a genocidal population reduction of one form or another.


In b4 whispers:

Carp now == "Over population"

[Lagslayer]

We are nowhere close to running out of resources and their alternatives. Even with our current technology, we could easily support 10 times the amount of people as are alive, and that's a low ball estimate. Space? We got shitloads of undeveloped land. Food? Again, tons of space, and food is easy to produce; we can even grow this stuff in skyscrapers now, so it can expand upwards instead of just outwards. Water? We could desalinize the oceans. The impact we would make on the water levels would be trivial. Energy? Even something like oil we still have a huge amount of, if we would just go after it (look up shale oil). We don't use solar and wind because they really suck in comparison. It would be stupid to convert over to it so much when we still have all this better stuff to use. Air quality? We know how to clean it up. After all, nobody wants to breath that shit in all the time, not even the super rich. And letting it kill the rest of us off isn't going to help them in the least. And there's always expansion into other planets/space when we need to.

The main problem is that it would take a lot of effort/cooperation on our part, and we would also have to shove nature aside. Humanity as a whole doesn't hate nature by any extent; we just don't like it to get in the way most of the time. And you'd be hard pressed to find someone who want's to take the time and effort to set up and maintain all this infrastructure.

But it certainly is possible. All the technology is there.