Overpopulation Rhetoric is Alarmist and Counterproductive

[Jonesthe Spy]

I can't find a full copy of his work. Please name a civilization that collapsed from overpopulation.

You seem to be demanding a gross oversimplification. Overpopulation has been one important factor in the collapse of civilizations, but there are always other factors. I don't think that means one should dismiss overpopulation as less important than the other causes, though.

This wouldn't seem to be a good solution to a resource shortage, since your close neighbors may not have the resources you need, or God forbid, that someone with as much muscle as you may have gotten there first.[/quote]

First: I don't see why I should assume that, since he stated the same technology existed, and it wouldn't, unless we had a sudden drop from our current level.

Second: None of those require a sudden drop. All they require is for those people to have never existed.

It's a thought experiment, dude. I assure you that if I'd meant "Imagine how nifty it would be if a disaster of genocidal proportions killed 2/3 of the world's population, I'd have said so.

I would not be able to do the work I do with a third the customer base. I might be able to get another job, sure. Just like I'd get another job if I was fired. But I'm a pretty high level industry, an industry that would shrink much faster than population size.

Those branches of science would be just as dead with a sudden drop or their pushers never existing. It's the same either way.

As folks have said, it's pretty accepted history that the Black Death lead to increased prosperity for European workers and farmers because of the increased value of labor, which in turn contributed to the Renaissance. Three billion people doing well could very well be a better market than 8 billion when the majority of those 8 billion are desperately poor and the rest spend a huge amount of their budget preparing to defend access to scarce resources.

My city would, like so many of the other cities in the area, still be completely and totally unable to support not only a mass transportation grid, but the culture that keeps it alive. I've been the sort of city we would be with a third the people, and these are cities that simply stopped growing at some point, and they are, in my experience, miserable places.

I think you probably should learn a bit about the history of cities. I don't know where you live, but San Francisco (the biggest city in my area) has not grown in population much at all over the last few decades. The population is now 812,826, and in 1950 it was 775,357. In 1939 the population of London was 8,615,245, it's currently 7,825,200. That's because in the developed world the population growth manifests itself as suburban sprawl eating up rural lands, and I sure as hell wouldn't be sorry to see that go, nor the vast slums you see on the edges of poorer cities like Delhi or Sao Paulo.

The houses thing was mostly a joke.

It shouldn't be. The cost of housing is eating up a bigger and bigger percentage of folks' income in the U.S., and you can bet increased demand has a lot to do with that.

But if we're talking about hypotheticals here, when did the population stop growing, or even reversing itself? Because I assume, if its stable worlwide, some places would be growing and others would be shrinking. So who's shrinking? Who's ending up left behind as people leave to seek out fewer population centers?

I suggest you look at Europe for that answer: well educated people who aren't suffering from economic insecurity and don't have to have a bunch of kids because so many of them are likely to die before adulthood are the ones who have stable or even shrinking populations.

Anyway, this is certainly not to say that we shouldn't be seeking ways to reduce our impact on the planet and be as efficiant as possible, but as I mentioned earlier that can only get you so far. Just ask the folks on Tikopia.

[CorruptUser]

That someone that invaded before you got there has no reason not to invade you too. If you have too few people to defend your territory, you get conquered by the people with too many to fit in theirs. War is the natural state of mankind; historically the only areas that knew peace were those on the inside of a larger expanding empire. There are several reasons the world is not currently in total war, of course "our citizens aren't at risk of starvation" being one of those reasons.

Which was true when there was no nuclear deterrent. And where did you get the idea that we aren't constantly at war? There has never been a period in the modern era when we weren't at war, either economic, of with guns and bullets, or both. But the cost for total war involving guns and bullets is high. So mostly we fight economically. We also use proxy's, I'll cite Vietnam as an example.

I never said that "not starving" was the only reason.

As a species, yes there is a war somewhere on the planet, but there are long periods today when individual countries are not at war. That wasn't always the case; go back to the late Renaissance, and try and find a time when a European country wasn't in the state of war, preparing for war, or recovering from one. Oh, sure, the Swiss pretend to be permanently neutral, but plenty of their citizens became mercenaries. The only reason their neighbors didn't invade Switzerland was because any combat there devolved into a contest to see whose army was more delicious.

We don't really fight economically. Yes, there is conflict, but I don't believe in economic warfare. We gain too much from trade with China to try and fight them; that's the beauty of trade, where you gain more trading than by pillaging.

[LaserGuy]

Many fields of science, who are advanced by primarily by 1 or 2 or 3 researchers, would simply cease to exist.

This is kind of an aside, but what fields of science are these? Just so I know where I should be doing my thesis

The total population is still growing. Japan is below replacement levels and most industrial nations are near it. China is estimated to plateau in the next 50 years or so.

There's also the problem that the typical figure necessary for replacement birth rate will probably decrease as life expectancy continues to increase. If life expectancy were to jump from an average of 80 years to an average of 120 years, countries that are currently looking to plateau their populations would suddenly enter a growth phase again.

[CorruptUser]

There's also the problem that the typical figure necessary for replacement birth rate will probably decrease as life expectancy continues to increase. If life expectancy were to jump from an average of 80 years to an average of 120 years, countries that are currently looking to plateau their populations would suddenly enter a growth phase again.

Yes and no. The total population may grow, but it will grow linearly not exponentially. You still need 2 viable children per person in order for replacement to be met. The old geezers aren't producing more children as a result of living to 120 instead of 80, after all.

Unless you are including things like fewer people dying prior to procreation. Then yeah, the birthrate has to decline slightly.

[LaserGuy]

There's also the problem that the typical figure necessary for replacement birth rate will probably decrease as life expectancy continues to increase. If life expectancy were to jump from an average of 80 years to an average of 120 years, countries that are currently looking to plateau their populations would suddenly enter a growth phase again.

Yes and no. The total population may grow, but it will grow linearly not exponentially. You still need 2 viable children per person in order for replacement to be met. The old geezers aren't producing more children as a result of living to 120 instead of 80, after all.

Unless you are including things like fewer people dying prior to procreation. Then yeah, the birthrate has to decline slightly.

Well, there's more total population around at any given time. If everyone lives to 120, you have ~5 generations worth of people all alive at the same time. If everyone lives to 80, you have ~3 generations of people around at the same time. If life expectancy is increasing rapidly, then the number of births will exceed the number of deaths, and the population will grow.

[gmalivuk]

Still, as CorruptUser said, that would be linear rather than exponential growth, if the fertility rate stays the same.

[morriswalters]

Isn't the replacement birth rate greater than two. And I thought that it was reflected in the average age of the population. The fewer births the older the average age. This is what is happening in Japan. But in any case the actual population is not important. Over population isn't about the number of bodies, rather it's about resources.

I never said that "not starving" was the only reason.

As a species, yes there is a war somewhere on the planet, but there are long periods today when individual countries are not at war. That wasn't always the case; go back to the late Renaissance, and try and find a time when a European country wasn't in the state of war, preparing for war, or recovering from one. Oh, sure, the Swiss pretend to be permanently neutral, but plenty of their citizens became mercenaries. The only reason their neighbors didn't invade Switzerland was because any combat there devolved into a contest to see whose army was more delicious.

We don't really fight economically. Yes, there is conflict, but I don't believe in economic warfare. We gain too much from trade with China to try and fight them; that's the beauty of trade, where you gain more trading than by pillaging.

Well that's an optimistic statement. What do you think will happen as China and the US find themselves wanting resources that are insufficient for both of them. Use oil for example, if it is indeed a limited resource and demand exceeds supplies what do you think the outcome will be? Again overpopulation is about resources.

[addams]

Some time back, on this thread, water was being discussed as a limiting factor for quality of human life.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17775211
"The amount of storage in those basins is equivalent to 75m thickness of water across that area - it's a huge amount."

Does that help?

[gmalivuk]

Isn't the replacement birth rate greater than two.

Well yeah, it's two plus twice the fraction of people who don't make it to reproductive maturity. But in developed countries with low infant mortality and fairly safe childhood, it can be rounded to 2.0.

I thought that it was reflected in the average age of the population. The fewer births the older the average age.

Yes, but also the greater the life expectancy the older the average age. And we're specifically talking about a hypothetical population where fertility rate is held constant, but people don't die as early. Which would mean the average age grows.

Let's make this hypothetical explicit: We start out with 80 million people in a country, where everyone lives until they're exactly 80, and all women have exactly 2 children on average (this is the fertility rate). This is a stable population with a rectangular age distribution (1 million people for each age, 0 through 79), life expectancy of 80, and average age of 40. There are a million births and deaths every year, or 12.5 per 1000 people (this is the birth rate)

Now suppose they eliminate death entirely. The death rate is now 0 per 1000 people and life expectancy is infinite. Then there are still a million people born every year, because we're assuming women still have 2.0 kids each. But the population starts growing at a (completely linear) 1,000,000 people per year, and the average age starts growing at 0.5 years per year (after the first year, there are 81 million people and the average age is 40.5, after the next year there are 82 million and the average is 41, and so on). And the birth rate falls as well. It's 12.35 per 1000 people the first year after death is eliminated, 12.20 the next, then 12.05 and so on. After 20 years, it's fallen to 10. After 120, it's only 5, but by that time the population is 200 million, with no sign of growth stopping (because we're imagining that no one dies, ever).

But it's *linear* growth, as said a couple times now.

Some time back, on this thread, water was being discussed as a limiting factor for quality of human life.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17775211
"The amount of storage in those basins is equivalent to 75m thickness of water across that area - it's a huge amount."

Does that help?

Hm, if that pans out, that's heartening news indeed. But of course there's still the matter of obtaining said water and keeping it fit for drinking, which are not always especially simple problems.

[The Great Hippo]

Err, yeah, and it's full of war. All the European nations were either at war, recovering from war, or preparing for the next war. France and Britain had not one, but two hundred years wars.

Contrary to their name, neither of the Hundred Years' War represent a single unbroken chain of conflict lasting over a hundred years. They're basically just shorthand for 'France and England don't get along'.

You said war is the natural state of mankind. This represents an enormous oversimplification of a very complex relationship we have with violence and war. War is not our natural state--why else would so many of us, much like horses, require a period of acclimation before we're capable of doing violence to each other? If we clonked a hundred people on the head until they got amnesia, dumped them on a deserted tropical island with adequate resources for survival, and checked back in a year, what would you expect to find--a cooperative village or multiple tribes waging a savage campaign of conquest against each another?

Humanity's natural state is one of survival. We do what it takes to live. Wars can be a means to this end, but not always--there are plenty of wars fought not so people could eat, but just because a king didn't like the cut of another king's jib. Wars are also a way to quell discontent (soldiers get ornery unless they're looting and pillaging, and you don't want ornery soldiers hanging around the palace), so there's an incentive to wage them.

You also said that there are no areas that knew peace unless they were inside a larger expanding empire. So, what--do you think there aren't countries that are neither empires nor active participants in wars (either as a defender or an aggressor)? Do you think that, in all of history, there's never been a group--isolated or otherwise--of people who have avoided the ravages of war? Do you think there aren't large swathes of the population--both now and in history--who were born, grew old, and died without ever knowing what it's like to take someone else's life?

Also, please watch your cites. Ancient Chinese census figures are known to be tricky. Saying 1 in 7 people on earth died in the Lushan Rebellion is irresponsible; we don't know that. For example, did the Mongol hordes kill 60 million Chinese people? If we take the census at face value, then the answer is yes. But most historians are reasonable enough to understand we shouldn't do that.

[morriswalters]

I had just taken it to mean that the only relevant way of looking at a particular population was by looking at the average age. A population that is growing will reflect that in the average age moving downward. The part of the population that is breeding is the only part that would be interesting in this discussion. In terms of if the rise is linear or exponential I'll take your word for it. It still is not germane to the issue at hand.

Let us look at the article on the Sub Saharan aquifers. I don't care if they start pumping tomorrow. But if they do sooner or later it will be gone. And once gone it won't be available again. Using it without a coherent plan will be disastrous for them. Build up agriculture by using it and what do you do when it runs out? Hell we could tow icebergs there. But if it doesn't rain what's the point? Water is a resource, if you don't have it and can't continue to get it then you either reduce your population to match what is available or your suffer the effects of overpopulation.

[gmalivuk]

do you think there aren't countries that are neither empires nor active participants in wars (either as a defender or an aggressor)? Do you think that, in all of history, there's never been a group--isolated or otherwise--of people who have avoided the ravages of war?

This is related to a point I brought up in an LSR thread, of all places: If you're defining "war" in a modern sense of states going up against each other on a battlefield, then it's absurd to say we've been warring since the dawn of time or whatever. The extent of conflict through most of human history was probably tribal skirmishing between small groups. Even in the unlikely event that one group wiped out another (which even now is the exception rather than the rule), the groups would have been small enough that there wasn't much of an impact either way.

In addition, here's an article I was linked to in that other thread, about how sweet-tempered and peaceful human beings really are, compared with pretty much everything else alive.

I had just taken it to mean that the only relevant way of looking at a particular population was by looking at the average age. A population that is growing will reflect that in the average age moving downward.

Did you read my example? It was of a growing population where the average age moved *upward*. And a shrinking population can have the average age move downward just as easily, because one baby born for every two old people who die lowers both the average and the overall population.

[CorruptUser]

The replacement rate is above 2 because not all children live to adulthood and/or produce children of their own. If your son comes out of the closet, don't expect too many grandkids.

[buddy431]

The replacement rate is above 2 because not all children live to adulthood and/or produce children of their own. If your son comes out of the closet,
don't expect too many grandkids.

A: Fertility rate is defined only for women (how many children you expect a woman to have over her child-bearing lifespan). It doesn't matter whether your son is gay or whether he's Casanova.

B: Fertility rate is defined for all women of childbearing age (it's an average). It includes women who don't have children, for any reason. The replacement rate isn't affected by what percentage of women don't have children - it describes the average number of children that women should have (it's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea). If you live in a society where half the women are lesbians, the replacement rate would still be the same, but the women who actually are bearing children would need to pick up the slack.

Replacement rate is mostly affected by mortality, and then gender imbalances (negligible in most places, but significant in a few).

[lutzj]

I think what Corruptuser means is that you need >2 people to form a childbearing couple because not everybody is able or willing to join a childbearing couple, which means you need >2 children/woman to keep a family line going. In a large population, this can still be balanced out by the above-average fertility of those women who do reproduce. A population with a fertility level of 2, no pre-procreation deaths, and no other weird phenomena like gender imbalance is stable almost by definition.

[morriswalters]

Did you read my example? It was of a growing population where the average age moved *upward*. And a shrinking population can have the average age move downward just as easily, because one baby born for every two old people who die lowers both the average and the overall population.

Yes I read it. As a rule of thumb looking at the average age provides a useful if imprecise metric. But I'll use any metric that suits you that is as useful given the data sets available. Also as to your description of the population growth as being linear, doesn't it seem to fit a yeast growth curve better?

But no matter the population, the limiting factors are resources. Five people can be overpopulation under some circumstances. Also why we fight wars is irrelevant, the only important thing is that we do fight them. The top three countries, population wise are nuclear powers. India now has joined China and the US in having the capability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.

[gmalivuk]

Also as to your description of the population growth as being linear, doesn't it seem to fit a yeast growth curve better?

Does yeast grow completely linearly? Because the toy example I came up with has a population that grows by exactly 1,000,000 people per year, every single year until the end of time. Which is perfectly linear, rather than exponential or logistic or boom-and-bust or whatever other more realistic model you prefer.

Also why we fight wars is irrelevant, the only important thing is that we do fight them.

No, why we fight wars is incredibly relevant, because by understanding why they happen we can try to prevent the circumstances that cause them, and thus to end them altogether.

[CorruptUser]

No, why we fight wars is incredibly relevant, because by understanding why they happen we can try to prevent the circumstances that cause them, and thus to end them altogether.

And what if the reason is because people exist? As in too many people, since this is a topic about too many people? I wouldn't suggest culling the population, and I would be extremely paranoid about any government-run population controls. My only suggestion on that matter was to stop subsidizing additional children (no additional child benefits after the second child).

[morriswalters]

Also as to your description of the population growth as being linear, doesn't it seem to fit a yeast growth curve better?

Does yeast grow completely linearly? Because the toy example I came up with has a population that grows by exactly 1,000,000 people per year, every single year until the end of time. Which is perfectly linear, rather than exponential or logistic or boom-and-bust or whatever other more realistic model you prefer.

Also why we fight wars is irrelevant, the only important thing is that we do fight them.

No, why we fight wars is incredibly relevant, because by understanding why they happen we can try to prevent the circumstances that cause them, and thus to end them altogether.

OK. I thought we were discussing the real world where resources are the limiting function. A closed system. A yeast curve would be almost linear under the circumstances you describe. I don't understand the utility but I will accept your point. As to why wars start, you will find me in agreement on the theoretical ideal of finding the why of it, but until you do then the why is not what we need to worry about. We know that competition for resources, can and has, helped cause wars.

Right now you can look at three areas and find ample cause for war. Limited energy resources. Limited water resources. And limited food resources. Water and food would be local conflicts, but energy could become global.

[gmalivuk]

I don't understand the utility but I will accept your point.

The utility of the point I've been arguing with you about has only ever been that average age, by itself, doesn't tell you anything particularly interesting about a population. Average age and total population can go up or down independent of each other, depending on other things like birth rate and life expectancy.

[morriswalters]

I don't know that I am competent to either agree or disagree with you. Tell me how to interpret this. Here is an excerpt.

Of these two forces, it is declining fertility that is the largest contributor to population ageing in the world today.[5] More specifically, it is the large decline in the overall fertility rate over the last half century that is primarily responsible for the population ageing in the world’s most developed countries. Because many developing countries are going through faster fertility transitions, they will experience even faster population ageing than the currently developed countries in the future.

[CorruptUser]

Right now you can look at three areas and find ample cause for war. Limited energy resources. Limited water resources. And limited food resources. Water and food would be local conflicts, but energy could become global.

Nothing good ol' new technology can't fix. In specific, recycling. If you use 1 ton of paper a year, and can turn 1 ton of tree into 1 ton of paper, you need 1 ton of tree a year. But if you recycle the paper once so that a half ton of tree turns into 1 ton of paper, you a half ton of tree a year. If you recycle indefinitely, a toothpick is an infinite amount of paper.

Same thing with water, "natural recycling" of wastewater draining to the ocean, evaporation, and the raining was the traditional method. But a lot of wastewater can be treated and re-used. If it's recycled instantly after it's used, you effectively have unlimited water; not looking at a world where the majority of water is located within the writhing mass of a quadrillion humans or something like that of course.

We don't even come close to harvesting the amount of energy we could. Maybe the limit for nuclear or fossil fuels, we use up quite a bit and it's not sustainable short of mining Uranus for methane. We could easily fit more wind farms and solar towers just about everywhere.

Just imagine the ways when we have nanobots that make up our products. Imagine a car made with nanobots; as soon as you are finished with your BMW, the nanobots reassemble into a Porsche. In such a world, you have effectively infinite wealth. Today you have marble counter tops, press a few buttons and you now have marble counter tops. Your 130 inch television turns into a grand piano when you are bored with the millions of channels to choose from. Your library consists of every book ever written, and if Terry Pratchett is right, even some of the books that have yet to be written. Your dining room becomes your grand bedroom as needed. Your home has every single product that has ever existed, yet it would not require every single resource on Earth to do so.

Like I said earlier, in the Middle Ages Britain was starving with 2 million people, now they are obese with 60 million.

[morriswalters]

Same thing with water, "natural recycling" of wastewater draining to the ocean, evaporation, and the raining was the traditional method. But a lot of wastewater can be treated and re-used. If it's recycled instantly after it's used, you effectively have unlimited water; not looking at a world where the majority of water is located within the writhing mass of a quadrillion humans or something like that of course.

We don't even come close to harvesting the amount of energy we could. Maybe the limit for nuclear or fossil fuels, we use up quite a bit and it's not sustainable short of mining Uranus for methane. We could easily fit more wind farms and solar towers just about everywhere.

Just imagine the ways when we have nanobots that make up our products. Imagine a car made with nanobots; as soon as you are finished with your BMW, the nanobots reassemble into a Porsche. In such a world, you have effectively infinite wealth. Today you have marble counter tops, press a few buttons and you now have marble counter tops. Your 130 inch television turns into a grand piano when you are bored with the millions of channels to choose from. Your library consists of every book ever written, and if Terry Pratchett is right, even some of the books that have yet to be written. Your dining room becomes your grand bedroom as needed. Your home has every single product that has ever existed, yet it would not require every single resource on Earth to do so.

On water. Later in that same article is this.

It is estimated that 8% of worldwide water use is for household purposes.

Statement 2 is a vast understatement. True only if the cost of the power generated is affordable. An interesting aside is that there is growing fear in China that a combination of greed, graft, and corruption in addition to the difficulty training enough people to work in, manage, and oversee Nuclear reactors that are being built at a breakneck pace will lead to a catastrophe.

Would you care to offer a timeline on any of these advances? Can we count on them when we need them?

[The Great Hippo]

In addition, here's an article I was linked to in that other thread, about how sweet-tempered and peaceful human beings really are, compared with pretty much everything else alive.

Thanks for the link; it was an interesting read.

And what if the reason is because people exist?

Both population density and overall population have gone up and up in the past centuries--and the amount of people killed by violence has gone down and down¹. If people existing is the reason war happens, you'd expect that as more people come to be, war would increase; we actually see the opposite.

There might be a lot of reasons for this. As time goes on, we've figured out better ways to use available resources, reducing need. We've increased the infrastructure of communication (language and culture are no longer significant barriers). A lot of our governments and economies have grown co-dependent (the US would be fucked if China tanked, so it's in our interest to keep China running smoothly).

But the overall point is this: Populations are rising. Wars are diminishing. Population density and wars are not intrinsically linked data points, not until you add in scarcity (real or artificial) of resources.².



¹ One notable exception, mostly unrelated to war: Dense populations with lopsided male-to-female ratios (far more men than women) historically show a massive spike in violence.

² Point in fact; what are some of the most war-torn regions of the world? Several countries in Africa come to mind. What are the problems in those countries? An abundance of people, a scarcity of resources, or some combination of both?

[gmalivuk]

What are the problems in those countries? An abundance of people, a scarcity of resources, or some combination of both?

How about an abundance of resources that are valuable for their use in luxury goods manufactured by the countries that colonized those parts of Africa in the first place? Somalia isn't the only currently fucked up place in that continent, after all.

[CorruptUser]

And what if the reason is because people exist?

Both population density and overall population have gone up and up in the past centuries--and the amount of people killed by violence has gone down and down¹. If people existing is the reason war happens, you'd expect that as more people come to be, war would increase; we actually see the opposite.

There might be a lot of reasons for this. As time goes on, we've figured out better ways to use available resources, reducing need. We've increased the infrastructure of communication (language and culture are no longer significant barriers). A lot of our governments and economies have grown co-dependent (the US would be fucked if China tanked, so it's in our interest to keep China running smoothly).

But the overall point is this: Populations are rising. Wars are diminishing. Population density and wars are not intrinsically linked data points, not until you add in scarcity (real or artificial) of resources.².



¹ One notable exception, mostly unrelated to war: Dense populations with lopsided male-to-female ratios (far more men than women) historically show a massive spike in violence.

² Point in fact; what are some of the most war-torn regions of the world? Several countries in Africa come to mind. What are the problems in those countries? An abundance of people, a scarcity of resources, or some combination of both?

I know, it's what I've been saying too. I was just bringing "people are the problem" as a bit of a nasty retort to "eliminating the cause for war". The world isn't so simple that you can just clap your hands and a problem is solved. I mean, what if the reason for the war is conflicting philosophies, i.e., a religious war? If the source of the conflict is a violently oppressive ideology, as an external force you can't eliminate the reason for the war without violently oppressing the violently oppressive ideology.

Also, with regards to male to female ratios, I started a thread that talks about that a while back. Well, polygyny causing that problem, anyway.

[The Great Hippo]

How about an abundance of resources that are valuable for their use in luxury goods manufactured by the countries that colonized those parts of Africa in the first place? Somalia isn't the only currently fucked up place in that continent, after all.

I'd file that under 'artificial scarcity', but the issue is probably more complex than that. But yes, the reason behind wars can often more complex than a scarcity of resources in the region--I beg pardon if I implied otherwise.

I know, it's what I've been saying too. I was just bringing "people are the problem" as a bit of a nasty retort to "eliminating the cause for war". The world isn't so simple that you can just clap your hands and a problem is solved. I mean, what if the reason for the war is conflicting philosophies, i.e., a religious war?

Then I beg pardon, as I thought you were saying that population density is a large factor in causing war. Nevertheless, I do see enormous benefits to a reduced population--although there are very few means of accomplishing this that I find morally tolerable. Gentle incentive programs to encourage smaller families is one.

[CorruptUser]

I don't see the reduced population as a true benefit long-term. The world was always overpopulated; each new breakthrough that led to increased economic output just meant more people, so people generally lived in the same amount of squalor from ancient times until the mid 18th century, when economic breakthroughs occurred faster than people could breed. Personally, I believe this was because we had more people to make those breakthroughs.

Think of it this way, 1 in 100,000 people is a great scientist discovers a single thing that increases total output by just 1%, through some discovery like crop rotation or new medicine, whatever. So roughly every 100,000 people who have lived, the carrying capacity increases by 1%. Generation 1 has 100,000 people, it can now support 101,000. Generation 2 has 1.01 breakthroughs for a total of 2.01 breakthroughs, so now it can support 100,000(1.01^2.01) or 102,020 people. It is not growing by a true exponential each generation but by a towering exponential [kinda simplified the math, the formula will be something like POP(t) = (POP(0)e^(kt)^(kt))], which can overtake regular exponentials. Skip to the generation with 20,000,000 people. It now has room for 140,630,000 people. But unless every couple has more than 14 kids, then the capacity has increased by more than the population can possibly grow. So now, finally, people can begin to move out of squalor. Which is what has happened.

So more people = more science.

There are several ways to help this further. Let's assume all people are equally likely to be said great scientists, but women aren't allowed to do so. By eliminating sexism, you double the growth rate of tech. Same goes for racism or other forms of bigotry which deny me my jet-packs, dammit! Proper education which further increases the chances a potential great scientist becomes one, is another way. So yay for public education. A third way is genetically selecting for citizens that would most likely become the great scientists, but I can't foresee that ending well.

[lutzj]

A third way is genetically selecting for citizens that would most likely become the great scientists, but I can't foresee that ending well.

Part of the reason is that, like sexism/racism, eugenics that selects for science could reduce the talent pool available for leaders, artists, or people resistant to The Virus.

[The Great Hippo]

Think of it this way, 1 in 100,000 people is a great scientist discovers a single thing that increases total output by just 1%, through some discovery like crop rotation or new medicine, whatever. So roughly every 100,000 people who have lived, the carrying capacity increases by 1%. Generation 1 has 100,000 people, it can now support 101,000. Generation 2 has 1.01 breakthroughs for a total of 2.01 breakthroughs, so now it can support 100,000(1.01^2.01) or 102,020 people. It is not growing by a true exponential each generation but by a towering exponential [kinda simplified the math, the formula will be something like POP(t) = (POP(0)e^(kt)^(kt))], which can overtake regular exponentials. Skip to the generation with 20,000,000 people. It now has room for 140,630,000 people. But unless every couple has more than 14 kids, then the capacity has increased by more than the population can possibly grow. So now, finally, people can begin to move out of squalor. Which is what has happened.

So more people = more science.

That's an enormously naive oversimplification. That one great scientist is a product of a complex network of factors, one of which is the resources available to that one great scientist. A reduction of population frees up those resources. Resources that allow us to train great scientists--produce great scientists--and give great scientists the tools they need to do great science.

EDIT: Sorry if I'm phrasing that a little mean-ishly, it's just that I think you're glossing over a lot of nuance.

[lutzj]

That's an enormously naive oversimplification. That one great scientist is a product of a complex network of factors, one of which is the resources available to that one great scientist. A reduction of population frees up those resources. Resources that allow us to train great scientists--produce great scientists--and give great scientists the tools they need to do great science.

EDIT: Sorry if I'm phrasing that a little mean-ishly, it's just that I think you're glossing over a lot of nuance.

Perhaps, but you get diminishing returns throwing money at a small pool of scientists. Having more scientists has proven historically to consistently increase the amount of science done.

[The Great Hippo]

Perhaps, but you get diminishing returns throwing money at a small pool of scientists. Having more scientists has proven historically to consistently increase the amount of science done.

Wouldn't having more resources to train scientists lead to a higher ratio of science?

I think there's probably a happy medium somewhere between 'not enough people to run a sustainable society' and 'so many people that you're causing social problems'. Gentle incentives to push us toward that medium seems like a step in a positive direction (by gentle incentives, I mean programs that offer encouragements for smaller, more industrious families).

[morriswalters]

Carrying Capacity (Food supply and consumption)

Agricultural capability on Earth expanded in the last quarter of the 20th century. But now there are many projections of a continuation of the decline in world agricultural capability (and hence carrying capacity) which began in the 1990s. Most conspicuously, China's food production is forecast to decline by 37% by the last half of the 21st century, placing a strain on the entire carrying capacity of the world, as China's population could expand to about 1.5 billion people by the year 2050. This reduction in China's agricultural capability (as in other world regions) is largely due to the world water crisis and especially due to mining groundwater beyond sustainable yield, which has been happening in China since the mid-20th century.

Is there a technological fix for this?

[elasto]

Carrying Capacity (Food supply and consumption)

Agricultural capability on Earth expanded in the last quarter of the 20th century. But now there are many projections of a continuation of the decline in world agricultural capability (and hence carrying capacity) which began in the 1990s. Most conspicuously, China's food production is forecast to decline by 37% by the last half of the 21st century, placing a strain on the entire carrying capacity of the world, as China's population could expand to about 1.5 billion people by the year 2050. This reduction in China's agricultural capability (as in other world regions) is largely due to the world water crisis and especially due to mining groundwater beyond sustainable yield, which has been happening in China since the mid-20th century.

Is there a technological fix for this?

No reason there couldn't be - eg genetic modification of foodcrops to require less water to grow. It's why forecasts such as the above have very little value in terms of predictive power. They are useful for governments and companies in order to know where to pump research dollars but useful for very little else.

[lutzj]

Perhaps, but you get diminishing returns throwing money at a small pool of scientists. Having more scientists has proven historically to consistently increase the amount of science done.

Wouldn't having more resources to train scientists lead to a higher ratio of science?

Yeah, but that's never been a strong enough effect to matter in practice. Maybe if we're dealing with a world population of 15-20 billion and struggle to provide every scientist with basic materials that will change, but until we start running into serious resource problems it's going to be better to have more people doing stuff, especially since the benefits we reap from science often make the resource problems go away.

Carrying Capacity (Food supply and consumption)

Agricultural capability on Earth expanded in the last quarter of the 20th century. But now there are many projections of a continuation of the decline in world agricultural capability (and hence carrying capacity) which began in the 1990s. Most conspicuously, China's food production is forecast to decline by 37% by the last half of the 21st century, placing a strain on the entire carrying capacity of the world, as China's population could expand to about 1.5 billion people by the year 2050. This reduction in China's agricultural capability (as in other world regions) is largely due to the world water crisis and especially due to mining groundwater beyond sustainable yield, which has been happening in China since the mid-20th century.

Is there a technological fix for this?

(mildly ninja'd) Yeah; more efficient irrigation, crop varieties (including GM crops) that need less water, better transportation and communication infrastructure so that fewer crops are wasted, and mechanization of rural farms would all go a long way.

[The Great Hippo]

That being said--even if there is a technological fix, is it responsible behavior to rely on non-available technology to solve problems we have the tools to address now?

Yeah, but that's never been a strong enough effect to matter in practice. Maybe if we're dealing with a world population of 15-20 billion and struggle to provide every scientist with basic materials that will change, but until we start running into serious resource problems it's going to be better to have more people doing stuff, especially since the benefits we reap from science often make the resource problems go away.

Which do you think would be of a greater benefit to science: More scientists, or more resources for existing scientists to use (and more resources dedicated to training future scientists, and increasing the quality of pre-existing ones)?

[lutzj]

That being said--even if there is a technological fix, is it responsible behavior to rely on non-available technology to solve problems we have the tools to address now?

In the case of rural China, there is a lot of technology that exists but hasn't been implemented yet because of a lack of investment and other issues.

[The Great Hippo]

In the case of rural China, there is a lot of technology that exists but hasn't been implemented yet because of a lack of investment and other issues.

Oh? Still, a lot of thoughts in this thread seem to go along the lines of 'yes, there might be problems, but science will overcome'. We might have the means to address the problems of population for the next ten years, but what about the next ten years after that? Or the next ten years after that? Why not take steps now to address that problem? Also, doesn't this case--a situation where 'we have the technology, just not enough resources to apply it'--strike you as yet another case of 'enough people in the field, but not enough resources to make a difference'?

Slowly reducing our population to a more manageable, sustainable level--this seems to me like a very responsible thing to do. I'm not talking about drastic population reduction, but incentivizing smaller families and taking steps to decrease populations and increase the quality of those populations--how is this a bad idea? How is it not a good idea?

[CorruptUser]

In the case of rural China, there is a lot of technology that exists but hasn't been implemented yet because of a lack of investment and other issues.

Yes and no. The reason for their massive growth in recent decades is the massive investment in (i.e., copying of) technology. They are currently at the low end of the Solow Growth Model, and once they are technologically 'caught up' with the industrialized world their growth will slow to the ~2% of developed nations. But like I said so many times before, I'm cautiously optimistic about China catching up; once it does and begins doing research of its own, we will have a pool of 1.4 Billion people for inventors and scientists to appear from.

That's an enormously naive oversimplification. That one great scientist is a product of a complex network of factors, one of which is the resources available to that one great scientist. A reduction of population frees up those resources. Resources that allow us to train great scientists--produce great scientists--and give great scientists the tools they need to do great science.

It's supposed to be a simplification, to explain the general idea. In reality, science can be diminishing returns. Or exponential returns. It's very erratic; a discovery could be made after 10 hours or 10 decades. An earlier scientist may have found the 'easy' discoveries so it may take twenty scientists to find a breakthrough on the equivalent level. But the general idea is that more people has meant more scientists which has meant more tech more quickly, which broke the cycle of permanent squalor.

Resources that allow for training are not as scarce as you seem to think. A poor country can hire a teacher for much cheaper than a rich country, so the resources go farther. A great scientist could be trained almost as well in a crapsack where people are barely fed as in a relative Eden where obesity is a serious concern; look at the USSR vs the US; both produced quite a bit of scientists yet had a huge gulf in the available resources.

The problem I see in the US is that a lot of brilliant minds end up in Finance rather than, say, Chemistry, because the pay is so much better. That is the greatest obstacle I see; how to value scientists at what they are truly worth to society so that economic output is maximized, rather than just monetary output.

[elasto]

We might have the means to address the problems of population for the next ten years, but what about the next ten years after that? Or the next ten years after that? Why not take steps now to address that problem?

Because the problems that we'll actually have in the decades after this one will likely not be the ones we thought we'd have.

Take the Horse Manure Crisis of the last century:

We commonly read or hear reports to the effect that “If trend X continues, the result will be disaster.” The subject can be almost anything, but the pattern of these stories is identical. These reports take a current trend and extrapolate it into the future as the basis for their gloomy prognostications. The conclusion is, to quote a character from a famous British sitcom, “We’re doomed, I tell you. We’re doomed!” Unless, that is, we mend our ways according to the author’s prescription. This almost invariably involves restrictions on personal liberty.

These prophets of doom rely on one thing—that their audience will not check the record of such predictions. In fact, the history of prophecy is one of failure and oversight. Many predictions (usually of doom) have not come to pass, while other things have happened that nobody foresaw. Even brief research will turn up numerous examples of both, such as the many predictions in the 1930s—about a decade before the baby boom began—that the populations of most Western countries were about to enter a terminal decline. In other cases, people have made predictions that have turned out to be laughably overmodest, such as the nineteenth-century editor’s much-ridiculed forecast that by 1950 every town in America would have a telephone, or Bill Gates’s remark a few years ago that 64 kilobytes of memory is enough for anyone.

The fundamental problem with most predictions of this kind, and particularly the gloomy ones, is that they make a critical, false assumption: that things will go on as they are. This assumption in turn comes from overlooking one of the basic insights of economics: that people respond to incentives. In a system of free exchange, people receive all kinds of signals that lead them to solve problems. The prophets of doom come to their despondent conclusions because in their world, nobody has any kind of creativity or independence of thought—except for themselves of course.

A classic example of this is a problem that was getting steadily worse about a hundred years ago, so much so that it drove most observers to despair. This was the great horse-manure crisis.

Nineteenth-century cities depended on thousands of horses for their daily functioning. All transport, whether of goods or people, was drawn by horses. London in 1900 had 11,000 cabs, all horse-powered. There were also several thousand buses, each of which required 12 horses per day, a total of more than 50,000 horses. In addition, there were countless carts, drays, and wains, all working constantly to deliver the goods needed by the rapidly growing population of what was then the largest city in the world. Similar figures could be produced for any great city of the time.*

The problem of course was that all these horses produced huge amounts of manure. A horse will on average produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day. Consequently, the streets of nineteenth-century cities were covered by horse manure. This in turn attracted huge numbers of flies, and the dried and ground-up manure was blown everywhere. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of.

In 1898 the first international urban-planning conference convened in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output.

The problem did indeed seem intractable. The larger and richer that cities became, the more horses they needed to function. The more horses, the more manure. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure. Moreover, all these horses had to be stabled, which used up ever-larger areas of increasingly valuable land. And as the number of horses grew, ever-more land had to be devoted to producing hay to feed them (rather than producing food for people), and this had to be brought into cities and distributed—by horse-drawn vehicles. It seemed that urban civilization was doomed.

Of course, urban civilization was not buried in manure. The great crisis vanished when millions of horses were replaced by motor vehicles. This was possible because of the ingenuity of inventors and entrepreneurs such as Gottlieb Daimler and Henry Ford, and a system that gave them the freedom to put their ideas into practice. Even more important, however, was the existence of the price mechanism. The problems described earlier meant that the price of horse-drawn transport rose steadily as the cost of feeding and housing horses increased. This created strong incentives for people to find alternatives.

No doubt in the Paleolithic era there was panic about the growing exhaustion of flint supplies. Somehow the great flint crisis, like the great horse-manure crisis, never came to pass.

The closest modern counterpart to the late nineteenth-century panic about horse manure is agitation about the future course of oil prices. The price of crude oil is rising, partly due to political uncertainty, but primarily because of rapid growth in China and India. This has led to a spate of articles predicting that oil production will soon peak, that prices will rise, and that, given the central part played by oil products in the modern economy, we are facing intractable problems. We’re doomed!

What this misses is that in a competitive market economy, as any resource becomes more costly, human ingenuity will find alternatives.

We should draw two lessons from this. First, human beings, left to their own devices, will usually find solutions to problems, but only if they are allowed to; that is, if they have economic institutions, such as property rights and free exchange, that create the right incentives and give them the freedom to respond. If these are absent or are replaced by political mechanisms, problems will not be solved.

Second, the sheer difficulty of predicting the future, and in particular of foreseeing the outcome of human creativity, is yet another reason for rejecting the planning or controlling of people’s choices. Above all, we should reject the currently fashionable “precautionary principle,” which would forbid the use of any technology until proved absolutely harmless.

Left to themselves, our grandparents solved the great horse-manure problem. If things had been left to the urban planners, they would almost certainly have turned out worse.

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