If you believe that the world is over-populated...

[scorpiomover]

I had a thought the other day:

If the world is truly over-populated, then surely anyone who kills lots of people, is doing the world a favour, right?

So then surely those who believe the world is over-populated, must be in favour of legalising murder, right?

If you disagree and believe that malthusians are opposed to murder, then how would you resolve the contradiction between "do not murder" and "the world has too many people"?

 

[birdsnestfern]

I mean, I recognize that governments do this under the guise of wars, medicine, AI drones, and even nature does this as survival of the fittest. I am not corrupt like that, and its really POWER HUNGRY entities that are not connected to their inner power that think they need to get it by exerting power on others in a twisted sense, that is the worst.

I think the universe is conscious of everything, and my psyche doesn't want the karma associated with the false notion of control. On the other hand, I do have a vigilante self, but it is in the spirit world. In this world, use the do no harm, but take no shit motto and let everyone have the same motto equally.

We are NOT in control, we never were! Free yourself of the notion, you are on a river through time, enjoy the ride.

However, if there is a real reason for my vigilante self, I will fight something on a different dimension, not physically, but in other ways.

No, why should I, a little powerless individual care about taking on the issue of population, its not my purpose. I think nature will balance itself without my help. If I have to self protect, thats different.

 

[Black Rose]

my IQ is below 125 so I might be too stupid to figure it out but I think that the economy is what determines the carrying capacity of the earth.

if we had the right technology we could make people have sustainability.

that requires we manufacture it.

the problem is in the coordination effort.

last time we tried to coordinate we got gulags and death camps.

the coordination needs to be voluntary.

 

[birdsnestfern]

This Solar Geoengineering looks absolutely nightmarish. Injecting chemicals into space to black out the sun? OMG!
Why are so many scary power hungry people doing such harmful things to people and animals? Its awful.
They think this will reduce greenhouse gases, but you know very well it will harm everything.

Solar radiation modification - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Mexico bans solar geoengineering after rogue experiment

The Mexican government announced measures to crack down on solar geoengineering after a US startup carried out an unauthorised trial

www.climatechangenews.com

 

[Black Rose]

A.I. teachers will be on every child's phone in 5 years.

 

[Cognisant]

When do the ends justify the means?

I think they do when it's a matter of long term vs short term, going with the example of over-population and assuming population growth is inflexible (which isn't the case in reality) then the dilemma is a choice between killing some people now or more people later. The smaller the population is the smaller the number of people that need to be killed to counteract population growth.

 

[Black Rose]

The smaller the population is the smaller the number of people that need to be killed to counteract population growth.

Which population group needs culling?

Doesn't that turn racist really fast?

Remember my IQ is less than 125.

 

[Cognisant]

It's a hypothetical, in reality population growth is declining, we don't need to cull anybody.

Hypothetically the population that needs culling is the crew of an interstellar generation ship, a ship so large that several generations will live out their entire lives aboard it before it reaches the destination. But this ship has a limited capacity, its life support systems can only support so many people, but births keep happening and this population growth poses an existential threat to everyone aboard the ship.

If there's too many people there won't be enough oxygen and everyone will die.

So do we wait until there's almost too many people then cull 5% of the population (the eldest) or do we cull 5% of the population now?

Let's say the current population is 5000 people, the ship's total capacity is 10,000 people and population is 5% per year. If we start killing people now while the population is only 5000 people then we only need to kill 250 per year to keep the population from growing further. Whereas if we wait until the population has reached 9990 we will need to kill about 500 people to keep it from reaching the 10,000 limit.

Indeed if we start by reducing the population down to 2000 people then 5% of 2000 is only 100, that's 150 less deaths per year than if the population of 5000, so after 20yrs (3000/150) the initial deficit is accounted for and we're killing 150 less people each year henceforth than if we had kept the population at 5000.

 

[Black Rose]

can't we just hypothetical stop reproduction on the spaceship instead of killing the old people?

what if longevity technology exists and old people are young as 25-year-olds? it would then be less ethical to kill them than stop reproduction.

but then who would the people on the spaceship need to be sterilized? everyone?

 

[birdsnestfern]

True, just make everyone get a hysterectomy or vascectomy after two children and give people incentive like cash if they get surgery before having kids at all.

 

[Cognisant]

It's a thought experiment pertaining to when the ends justify the means, when it's justified to kill to save lives, you're not supposed to pick apart the premise.

Would you nitpick Plato's allegory of the cave for being unrealistic?

 

[Black Rose]

Would you nitpick Plato's allegory of the cave for being unrealistic?

I would turn it into a movie.

Then it would be realistic.

 

[onesteptwostep]

I think the problem with population isn't necessary the numbers but whether that population number can create an economy that is relatively fair for all.

Because combined with technology you do not require as much labor, meaning people have to resort to work that's outside the core economy.

I think another way to put it is that after a certain number, it is difficult to provide meaningful jobs because of the efficiency that is alloted by technologies and innovations. Let's say you need 100 people to efficiently run all the necessities for 1000 people. What are the other 900 going to do?

I mean if we want to be pendatic about the history of this, people back then had to have slaves or more kids or more servants to run their agriculture. In some ways there was a profession that was always in need of more people- there always was space for scaling.

But in today's economy, and with the current population and tech? Take a look at China. I mean if 1 million people disappeared in China I highly think that it would be absolutely negligible to their economy.

Food I think is easy to solve, but providing meaningful jobs? Not such an easy situation to solve. I think people are well educated on how to grow families and to take care of oneself. I think the next step is to learn how to grow a healthily functioning society that can healthily sustain itself.

 

[Black Rose]

As I said before, the two groups that have the greatest difference in opinion on the matter are those with high abstract thinking and those with spatial thinking. rural vs urban, the urban abstract thinkers view resources as scarce, while the other group sees them as plentiful. It takes a certain type of IQ to believe resources will last forever and it takes another level to see that people are not the problem.

Lowest IQ < Highest IQ

nothing is wrong we have enough
<
everything is going to die no matter what we do
<
we need to kill enough people to live sustainably
<
we can stop what we are doing and use technology to solve this problem.

The highest IQ people are at NASA and the national science foundation.

They created technology to save the planet, I hear they are using it now.

 

[sushi]

birth control is better than mass murder.

 

[dr froyd]

most people are not immortal, so you could also reduce fertility rates

 

[ZenRaiden]

I think the world is over populated.
I think killing and telling people not to procreate is immoral.
It is against my own belief that we need to do anything.

The right course of action is to simply have less children.
Because if there is too many people, we also require more resources.
The other problem is the more resources we have to split between people the lesser quality of life we will have.
Because there is less space, more resources needed for higher quality of life, means each individual will use more plastic, more timber, more metal, will consumer more energy and more food.

Thus the solution to this problem is more temperance, but billions of us living will not be as temperate as we can be to reduce the consumption.

Humans have natural directive to pass on our genes.
This directive is hardwired into us.
However when we run low on resources we also have hardwired need to compete, and to fight and to behave immorally, and to kill and genocide rivals.
We also have hardwired Machiavellian dynamics when we are insecure about our resources and safety.

We already see dark side of this Machiavellian dynamic in today's population and we have plenty more than ever before in history.

Imagine how brutal will people be if they lack water and food.

It is thus better we live high tech modern and high quality lives rather than murder each other over crumbs.

Kind like choosing between being a high elf with magic or an orc raging over pot of stew.

 

[ZenRaiden]

IQ to believe resources will last forever and it takes another level to see that people are not the problem.

You hit the nail on the head with the word "believe".
What we believe is actually irrelevant.
Its the fact we don't know, and we are essentially gambling with humanities future, because there is not single high IQ individual who can enumerate our resources and figure out how seven or 10 billion people will collectively spread them out so we can make it, and at the same time how we are going to overcome struggles with overpopulation if it comes to that, where we can genuinely feel safe, and secure in our future economic projections.
I mean we have no means of telling what will happen if we grow larger economy than is already now.
We have a massive economy and massive population.
I heard the idea that the more people exists, the more resources we get.
Which is fundamentally true, but there is finite amount of certain resources, including habitable, arable land and potable water, and how much mining can be done safely.

So smart people who believe in infinite growth are biased. That kind of bias is dangerous, because if infinite growth fails, we can end up all extinct species, just like millions of species went extinct before us.
We are not above evolution just because we have sophisticated math, or better ability to manipulate our environment.
We are very fragile beings, who will kill each other if it comes to resource scarcity, and we will go medieval on each other.
Most of our human history is mired with brutal war, because of resource scarcity.
The Mongols felt justified in conquering the world, because Mongolia provided nothing in return for their existence.

They made a game about this dystopian future.

 

[scorpiomover]

As I said before, the two groups that have the greatest difference in opinion on the matter are those with high abstract thinking and those with spatial thinking. rural vs urban, the urban abstract thinkers view resources as scarce, while the other group sees them as plentiful. It takes a certain type of IQ to believe resources will last forever and it takes another level to see that people are not the problem.

Lowest IQ < Highest IQ

nothing is wrong we have enough
<
everything is going to die no matter what we do
<
we need to kill enough people to live sustainably
<
we can stop what we are doing and use technology to solve this problem.

The highest IQ people are at NASA and the national science foundation.

They created technology to save the planet, I hear they are using it now.

If the highest IQ people believe:
"we can stop what we are doing and use technology to solve this problem.
The highest IQ people are at NASA and the national science foundation.
They created technology to save the planet, I hear they are using it now."

=> The highest IQ people believe:
"We can stop what we are doing and use technology to solve this problem.
I am at NASA and the national science foundation. I created technology to save the planet, I am using it now."
=> "I already solved the problem"
=> "Nothing is wrong.
I know we have enough, because I have already solved the problem.
I know that we don't need to kill anyone to live sustainably, because I have already solved the problem"

Do you agree? If not, why not?

So it has to be the lowest IQ people who believe that there is a problem, that we might need to kill lots of people unless the clever people at NASA come up with a way to use technology to solve the problem.

Do you agree? If not, why not?

 

[Black Rose]

smart people who believe in infinite growth

Then don't grow infinitely and use the resources in a different way essentially.