You’d also have less criminals needing to be put through the justice system. If everything were broken down exactly as statistically equal as your example, everything would remain the same, only with smaller numbers.
Why would a post-apocalyptic world be likely just because there were less people around?
All I said was that they had the possibility of being more equitable, not that they would be. You’ll get no argument out of this cynic.
Because that moral repugnance is what stops people from doing what needs to be done.
Perhaps not, but it would help.
And how many other people think that way? It isn’t your, or anyone’s, right to waste things (funny how you can remove your sense of morality from that issue but not others), but that, along with this “I can’t see the end of the tunnel yet so let’s just keep on digging” mentality are topics for another thread.
Well, it’d be good to know that as my cells eat one another at least my gums will be healthy.
I have, as a matter of fact, made preparations. What does that mean? Were you waiting for me to say no so that you could call me a hypocrite? Pretty disingenuous of you…
No, why would they be?
Ah, I thought the reference to a eulogy would be answer enough. Yes, Mr. Hawking would have been euthanized. I thought that since you seemed to know so much about him and admired him so you might want to be the one to give his eulogy.
Someone who was injured and wished aid would have it, why would they not?
No, Mr. Hawking would not be “dumped out of his chair onto the floor and left to perish.” I’m aware you are morally opposed to the idea, and that’s just fine, but there’s no reason to try to make the prospect sound uncouth and barbaric to justify your repulsion; it’s okay to simply disagree.
That is the crux of our disagreement, I believe that this is one of those times.
If global warming is one of the issues you feel is important, wouldn’t a reduced population go towards helping solve it? There would be less people adding fluorocarbons to the air, less methane producing cattle needing to be raised, less automobiles on the road, etc.
You wouldn’t see that in India or China, either, but they’ve still been very worried about overpopulation for a long time. (China, in particular, seems to have overreacted to the problem.)
Not really. Assuming the world population was cut from six to three billion, wouldn’t that lead to all (or most) of those three billion demanding and receiving the standard of living currently enjoyed by the small minority living mostly in the westernized democracies? Picture the Chinese population reduced to a mere 500 million, but all of them driving cars, having lunch at McDonald’s, using riding mowers on their lawns…
My personal preferred strategy to combat pollution is more nuclear power, edging up to distributed controlled fusion, coupled with hybrid and then fully-electric cars.
:dubious: How exactly are you defining those? If it means people who could not survive in the environment Mitochondrial Eve inhabited . . . that probably includes most of humanity.
Would it? Fewer mouths to feed means fewer hands to work.
“Dysgenic pressure” remains an unproven theory. Have you any cite that our average genetic quality really is deteriorating any particular respect? (I think there’s at least one scientist – forget his name – who has demonstrated that average IQ, at least, is actually rising; though that could be due to non-hereditary factors.)
And if it is problem, we don’t need natural (or artificial) selection to fix it; we can just drop our taboo on genetic engineering. We might end up with something like GATTACCA, but at least the problems you’re worried about would be solved. Tradeoffs, you know.
Well, Paul Ehrlich is continuing to dig in his heels, pointing out that the world’s population has indeed grown by 2.8 billion since he published The Population Bomb in 1968. But certainly the disastrous effects of this he predicted have not come to pass.
True. Which implies nothing about how humans ought to behave or think. Furthermore, a sense of ethics might well be one of our species’ unique biological specialties, like speech and manipulation and abstract thought.
And 99% fewer cops. Look at both sides of the equation!
What, you mean psychological predispositions? “Common knowledge” is often false. Until maybe 100 years ago it would have been generally assumed that if an Irish baby and an English baby were switched at birth, the English baby would irritate his Irish family by growing up to be a stiff, bloodless, rigidly proper but brave and honest prig; while the Irish baby would astonish his English family by growing up to be an ungovernable, passionate, hard-drinking, two-fisted poet. Likewise if you switched babies born to parents of different social classes. Some people still seem to think this kind of thinking is at least plausible enough on which to base a comedy, but it ain’t necessarily so. E.g., “twin studies” (of identical twins separated at birth and raised by different families) show environment is at least as important than heredity in forming psychological characteristics. See here. That doesn’t mean heredity is irrelevant to such characteristics; but it’s not important enough a factor, IMO, to form a basis for any public policy decison.
Of course we humans not above the laws of nature – just try pretending gravity doesn’t exist. But we are much better than any other species at using those laws to our own advantage. Again, one of our biological specialties.
Remember, also, that the “laws of nature” are in all instances descriptive, not prescriptive.
Having an opinion that has no basis in fact is pretty much the definition of ignorant. Several facts to which I have already alluded and which inform my opinion include:
The fact that projections by people who actually study population growth have determined that the Earth’s population will stablize by the middle of this century. You can play the games and the assumptions, yourself on the UN World Population web page. However, you should note, if you choose to lean toward the “high varint” model that the “medium variant” model originally predicted 6.5 billion people by 2000. In 2000, we only reached 6 billion and it was not until this year that we actually hit 6.5 billion and they have had to adjust their estimates downward in order to stay nearly on track.
The fact that there has not been a famine in the 20th or 21st century that was not directly caused by government interference (China, 1930s, squabbling warlords disrupt food distribution; USSR, 1930s, food deliberately collected and not redistributed by Stalin; India, 1940s, food hoarded by British colonial government; China, 1950s, Marxist centrally directed economy distupted food distribution; sub-Sahara Africa 1970s-1990s, civil wars and foreign invasions disrupt food production and distribution). The cause of famine has been established by Amartya Sen, whose work I have already mentioned, and there is no evidence that we are out of food, now or that we are in danger of needing to take food from anyone to give it to anyone else based strictly on population. (Wars are a separate issue, but population is not; the British quite successfully managed to create and exacerbate a famine (through stupidity, not malice) in Ireland way back in the 19th century based on an insistence that tenant farmers continue planting a failing crop and prohibiting them from switching to a crop that would allow them to feed themselves.)
Now, it is true, as BrainGlutton has cited, that Paul Erlich still holds on to his beliefs, but they are beliefs, Every single dire forecast or prediction of doom that Erlich has pronounced since 1968 has failed to occur. The fact that he continues to drag out isolated factoids (that tend to be well below his earlier predictions) marks him as a true beliver and not a scientist.
You have too limited an understanding of morality. All decisions that affect life and death or quality of life are moral decisions, regardless whether the person who makes the decision is considered to be a “moral” person. Making those decisions (which is what people do) is the very nature of morality.
Well, you made the claim that
If you are now disavowing that claim, that is fine, but I provided examples of events that caused death that had nothing to do with Natural Selection. You are the one who claimed that it was THE determiner of life and death.
Yes, that’s what I said. The burden would feel the same.
Remember, a general die-off would include law enforcement officials. In my town, we have, say, 100 cops for 30,000 citizens. If 99% of the population died, that would leave 1 cop for three hundred. Numbers-wise it’s the same proportion, but that will be cold comfort to the sole law-enforcement officer left to control a panicked and traumatized population.
The same applies to doctors. What if the sole doctor left is a pediatrist?
Well, the answer depends upon whether the die-off is gradual or sudden. If it’s gradual, the whole question is moot because by the time it took for 99% of the population to be decreased by war, neglect and selective eugenics, mankind might have evolved into a totally different animal.
If it’s sudden, human nature tells me it won’t be a pretty sight. Humans crave status, wealth and power. Warlords will emerge, and we’ll most likely regress to a feudal system. (Democracy requires wealth and stability.)
Some people like to work and some don’t. When supplies start to get scarce, some people are going to prefer to steal food than farm. Some people just like to rape and kill, and with no criminal justice to stop them, they can indulge as much as they like.
And I disagree that it needs doing. Really, what’s it to you if the worst case scenario happens: that we starve because we bred too much, and our offspring are weak, helpless victims of fucked-up genes? You won’t be around to see it, and neither will the foreseeable future.
That’s also part of natural selection. Think about a predator introduced into a new ecosystem which isn’t prepared to deal with it. The predator gorges on the helpless prey and breeds profusely. But, the food supply dwindles, because the predator is over-exploiting the prey. The predator goes through a die-off because it can no longer be supported by the environment.
Why should humans strive to deny this natural flux?
This is almost identical to that old-lady-pissing-in-the-sea joke. As I said before, drastic times call for drastic measures. I have yet to see any indication whatsoever that we are yet in drastic times.
You’ve only a nodding acquaintance with the notion of “sarcasm”, I see.
You’re a funny guy.
Did you think so? I thought it was as blunt as a hammer, but I’ll take “disingenuous.”
I’m not trying to be flip, but why are you sticking around now? How you justify your current existance if you’re part of the problem? (No, I am not suggetsing that you kill yourself. I’m asking an honest question.)
Because, as I said, patching them up is likely going to cost society more than they will contribute.
Stephen Hawking’s life is more valuable than my own. He has done more for mankind than I, or for that matter, you, will ever do. I find it repulsive to place the only worth of a human being on their physical abilites.
It is uncouth and barbaric to deny sustenence and care to people when it is within our means to do so and they want to live. Christ on the crapper, man, even Neandertals cared for their wounded, malformed and aged. There is no way to impliment a population control plan which involves intentionally allowing people to die that is not uncouth and barbaric.
Actually, a question I don’t see answered here from Soulmurk is what exactly is meant by ‘natural selection’? He (I assume gender here) seems to believe that ‘natural selection’ will take care of the problem but never defines how that would be acheived. In what way would natural selection express itself? Shut down food distribution? Medical access and hospitals? What? By what magical means does natural selection take it upon itself to lower the population?
Because, regardless of his answer, I would posit that we are currently controlled by natural selection. Yes, we builds homes and farms and hospitals to offset certain causes of death. But these actions are completely natural for a social, learning species such as ourselves. We could no more help it than we could fly unassisted because it is natural for us to do so.
Just as it’s natural for beavers to make dams and alter their environment or for birds to build nests for protection of their young.
Altering environment and elimination of external threats to personal and species existence is as natural as breathing. We do it. Other species do it. The world goes on its merry course.
Oh, and on an earlier point: count the Chance household as one of those the resented the explosive growth of a major metropolitan area (east coast of the US) into our previously rural neighborhood. We sold out and moved to a small town in rural Ohio to raise the kids.
Some opinions are purely about personal taste or belief, and ignorance is an unapplicable term because there are no facts. Some people worship deities they’ve no physical evidence of, does that make them ignorant? It’s a scientific fact that carrots are good for you, so does not liking them mean someone is ignorant?
We have different definitions of overpopulation is all. You look at the numbers and statistics to show that, yes, the planet can and will support the current number of people, so logically, we’re not overpopulated. I don’t disagree with the facts (which, your link is broken BTW) as such, but rather with the widely held opinion that just because it’s theoretically possible (with the aforementioned fix to distribution problems) to house and feed every human out there means we should. That the moment of overpopulation is the moment that, under a perfect system, there are still people who go hungry or have no home.
I’m uncertain why you keep attempting to link me with Paul Erlich’s doomsday predictions.
Not all decisions that affect life and death are moral decisions. Manslaughter while acting in self-defense, for example. There is no moral decision, it’s kill or be killed.
I see what you’re saying, but I steadfastly disagree. Morality is a personal system of judging right from wrong. Holding someone else to your standards doesn’t make them any more or less moral. This is why it doesn’t belong in the discussion.
If, hypothetically speaking, it could be agreed that there were too many people on the planet and that something needed to be done about it, why should a legitimate alternative such as allowing nature to assist in deciding who lives and who dies, rather than trying to save everyone, be completely dismissed just because some (alright, most) people morally object? For logistical reasons, sure, but because it makes some people sqeamish?
Well, no. What I said was that since I was somehow appointed the defender of the argument for it as the sole means of population control, I’d play devil’s advocate. I didn’t mean to imply that natural selection was the only way a person might die, merely that natural disasters, war and famine aren’t reliable means of population control.
He shoots, he scores!