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Forget about overpopulation, soon there will be too few humans

48 pointsby lawrencechenabout 1 year ago

29 comments

dangabout 1 year ago
Related ongoing thread:<p><i>Selfish reasons to want more humans</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39497686">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39497686</a> - Feb 2024 (214 comments)
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A_D_E_P_Tabout 1 year ago
I&#x27;ve spent an awful lot of time in both Croatia and Japan, and the problem looks more or less the same in both places.<p>Croatia has had sub-replacement fertility for decades -- plus the migration of young people to other EU countries that offer higher salaries, or to Zagreb if they can&#x27;t find a job in Denmark or Germany.<p>Japan has had sub-replacement fertility for decades -- plus the migration of young people from smaller cities and towns to Tokyo.<p>The end result is that small towns are, quite literally, dying. Small cities are emptying out. Rural regions are beginning to resemble retirement estates, complete with hobby farms.<p>The &quot;solution&quot; is immigration -- if you believe that people are perfectly fungible and that an Indonesian man will become accepted as Japanese, or a Lebanese man will become accepted as Croatian. I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s going to happen in <i>either</i> place. In Croatia, I know a bunch of Chicagoans of Croatian descent who moved &quot;back to the homeland.&quot; Nobody in Croatia accepts them as &quot;real Croatians.&quot; They&#x27;re going to be part of some expat community for life. It&#x27;s going to be even worse with culturally distinct foreigners. And it&#x27;s going to lead to trouble. If there&#x27;s an elegant way to manage this, I&#x27;m not aware of it.
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mrkeenabout 1 year ago
Too many humans or too few. Why can&#x27;t it be both?<p>My loose understanding is that modern humanity is a pyramid scheme where we always need more young workers to support fewer retirees - not enough people.<p>Meanwhile we&#x27;re consuming resources faster than they can be replenished [1] - too many people.<p>Without data to back this up, I suspect India, China and Africa are going to start consuming more resources (behaving more like the US) faster than the US (and the rest of the west) is going to cut back consumption, even accounting for shrinking birthrates.<p>So on balance, I&#x27;m still more worried about the &#x27;too many people&#x27; case.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;overshoot.footprintnetwork.org&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;country-overshoot-days&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;overshoot.footprintnetwork.org&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;country-over...</a>
philipsabout 1 year ago
The article is heavy on criticism of population decline and light on an argument of why it is so bad.<p>As a parent in the USA I also don’t buy the argument that it is all education and birth control driving these changes. Many of my acquaintances simply cannot afford the costs of multiple children. And for others climate anxiety makes them question the future.
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tonis2about 1 year ago
&quot;The more people there are, the more solutions to problems will be found.&quot; Has not been true so far, I wonder at what population amount, will this start working ?
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ang_cireabout 1 year ago
&gt; Forget About Overpopulation, Soon There Will Be Too Few Humans<p>This can be easily and summarily dismissed if you know anything about minimum population numbers. Humans will never, through simple declining birth rates, reach the low-or-sub-1000s numbers that would result in there being too few humans to maintain genetic diversity.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.livescience.com&#x2F;minimum-people-to-survive-apocalypse.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.livescience.com&#x2F;minimum-people-to-survive-apocal...</a><p>&gt; how many people would it take to keep our species going? The short answer is, it depends.<p>&gt; &quot;With populations in the low hundreds, you can probably survive for many centuries. And many small populations of that kind have survived for centuries and perhaps millennia,&quot; Cameron Smith, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University in Oregon, told Live Science.<p>What the article is really just arguing is that scientific advancement relies on larger populations, which, cool story bro. Having more kids in economically or ecologically untenable situations just to keep new tech being sold, is not a serious argument that people who are choosing not to have kids are going to be receptive to.
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questinthrowabout 1 year ago
Yes yes, more people means more progress which means line goes up which means we will all live in a utopia or something like that. That&#x27;s why everyone is trying to escape their country and conduct a huge trek to reach countries like uhh India, China and so on and so forth.
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nielsbotabout 1 year ago
Too few humans? I see this said a lot but it’s so counter-intuitive to me that humankind will be worse off in the long term with fewer of us around.
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ncclporterrorabout 1 year ago
Birth rate is not a law of nature that can be naively extrapolated. Increased pace of technological development implies an increased pace of societal changes, which will impact birth rate.<p>Predicting birth rate for 2060 from today might be roughly equivalent to someone in 1850 trying to extrapolate birth rate to 1950. They would have been completely wrong because there was no way they could predict the level of development.<p>Even ignoring that, shouldn&#x27;t we expect birth rate to be autocorrelated, as the impact of having children, and therefore people&#x27;s decisions to do so, would depend on the population count itself?
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r0ckarongabout 1 year ago
When the article starts with &quot;my scientific hero ... and why I think I am smarter than them&quot; I&#x27;m having a really hard time following the rest of your argument, especially if there is little to no evidence, data or, substance to back whatever youre saying.
whydoineedthisabout 1 year ago
The world population in 1900 was only 1.6 Billion. We&#x27;re at 8 Billion now, and they predict capping at 10-11 Billion.<p>Even if the cap is true (and it&#x27;s all theory at this point), I think the words &quot;too few humans&quot; does not mean what they think it means.
RetroTechieabout 1 year ago
From my (limited) understanding, scientific progress <i>roughly</i> derives from human-years put in.<p>Some scientific &#x2F; technological advance takes X human-years to achieve. Low-hanging fruit like Newton&#x27;s laws or the printing press took a few human years. Nuclear fusion or landing a rover on Mars, takes many more.<p>Note this is a drastic simplified view of how science progresses in real life.<p>Large population: yes, advances can be quicker. But it still takes time to run experiments, have discoveries filter down in scientific community, and new tech to get built, tested &amp; deployed at scale. In the meanwhile, people will live (and thus, consume resources) like they&#x27;re used to.<p>Small population: <i>roughly</i> same # of human-years required to achieve a similar state of science &amp; technology. But with population consuming resources at a lower rate, there&#x27;s more time for new tech to be applied.<p>This reminds me of the behaviour of an electronic amplifier circuit: with fast-enough responding circuit (or slow-enough changing input), output signal closely tracks the input (the &quot;small population&quot; case).<p>With too-slow responding circuit (too long delay, damping not appropriate etc), output does NOT track input well and makes wild swings: over- and undershoot (the &quot;large population&quot; case).<p>Humanity&#x27;s case looks much like the latter.<p>So: yes, I understand author&#x27;s argument. But all in all, I doubt the &quot;large population&quot; is a net benefit long-term. Aren&#x27;t we <i>seeing</i> various types of planet-wide over- and undershoot right now?
hiddencostabout 1 year ago
I had a long conversation with an anthropologist so studied the emergence of agriculture, who argued that it wasn&#x27;t invented but instead adopted by necessity.<p>He pointed out the huge host of health problems that came with agriculture: hard labor; poor quality food; diseases from living densely.<p>Life expectancy dropped from the adoption of agriculture until well into the industrial revolution, with the adoption of public health.
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sylwareabout 1 year ago
In my country, roughly speaking, only the really poor with state assistance seems to be able to afford having multiple children (or I guess, people who are members of powerful network of &quot;in-betweeners&quot; with translates to a near state assistance level). People seems to adapt their choices and behavior based on that fact. For instance, middle class women usually would not pick a socialy and economically risky father, this is an expected behavior. I guess &quot;solid&quot; fathers are more and more rare.
DandyDevabout 1 year ago
This article reinforces my knee-jerk dislike of philosophy. This article - like many works produced by philosophers - provides some contrarian ideas with zero evidence to back them up.<p>I think it confuses causation and correlation by claiming that having more people, faster population growth, leads to finding solutions to major problems humanity deals with faster. I don’t buy that. In fact, I’d say our inventiveness has been the _cause_ of both population decline and solving the major issues the article mentions (like progressing agriculture to use less resources)<p>I also think it takes a too anthropocentric stance. In the beginning of the article it claims that population decline is bad for the planet, but surely humanity going extinct does not have a net negative effect on the planet. As many climate change critics are prone to point out, nature will do what it wants despite the influence of humans and nature will adapt with or without us.
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sersheabout 1 year ago
I think the negative is the birth rates falling too fast, resulting in an &quot;unbalanced&quot; population pyramid. If the birth rates were falling slowly, and stabilized at replacement, does it really matter where within reasonable range the population ends up?
DoreenMicheleabout 1 year ago
It&#x27;s got some interesting data that I haven&#x27;t seen before on falling fertility rates and projected future populations. I don&#x27;t agree fully with the claim that a growing population is all upside. Nutrient density of produce has been falling for decades, so there are some problems that I don&#x27;t personally see as something that can reasonably be hand-waved off.<p>But if you are someone terrified about the future and one of your pain points is overpopulation, the argument seems to make the case that populations are likely to begin falling at some point. (Granted I didn&#x27;t click through to any of the cited links, so I am basically taking their word for it.&#x2F;pedant)
jugabout 1 year ago
Alright. So the tldr of this article is that the more we are, the more we can commit to research in eg shrinking agriculture area per capita, which will be less hard on Earth. That we need a large population because it&#x27;s cross discipline research and besides... More Researchers, right?<p>The author simply assumes we still have much to do there so the argument heavily hinges on that assumption.<p>The author makes no effort to counter this with the innate ease on Earth by simply being less people around? Surely, this factor may or may not be even more powerful than optimizing agriculture further than where we already are in a very advanced society.<p>Or did I miss something? If I didn&#x27;t, this article is biased.<p>Besides, isn&#x27;t there a risk that research made us more harmful for Earth? He points to reduced agricultural footprints but the cost for this has been monocultures that damage Earth and require use of antibiotics which damage Earth (humans included).<p>So I don&#x27;t think more research innately lends to a healthier planet either.
somewhereoutthabout 1 year ago
There are 3 fundamental problems facing humanity at this point:<p>- climate change<p>- wealth inequality<p>- declining birthrates.<p>The problems are interlinked, and solving the first two would go a long way to dealing with the last.
asadotzlerabout 1 year ago
This article is brainless and attempts to make no argument other than &quot;The more people there are, the more solutions to problems will be found&quot; which hasn&#x27;t happened yet despite massive population growth over the last 75 years. This kind of low quality content seems pervasive here lately. I can only presume it&#x27;s the result of a generally lower quality of participant here lately.
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logtempoabout 1 year ago
I heavily disagree.<p>It does have good arguments, but I think the reasoning take in account only a part of the problem, which lead to a wrong conclusion.<p>From my understanding, the statement is: Overpopulation is not a problem, it&#x27;s the solution, because statistically we have more smart young people that improve and optimize resources available through discovery, reducing its impact on the environment (climate included).<p>It throw some arguments and datas:<p>- If we’d gone on as 1950[s] organic farmers, we’d have needed 82 percent of the world’s land area for cultivation, as opposed to the 38 percent that we farm at the moment.”<p>- resources are becoming more abundant and cheaper as the world population grows<p>- Especially since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been drastically shrinking their cropland use per capita, and there is no reason to believe this progress can’t continue.<p>----------<p>On this later arguments, it falacious as cropland increased A LOT since industrial revolution.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;grapher&#x2F;land-use-over-the-long-term">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;grapher&#x2F;land-use-over-the-long-te...</a><p>Also, from the same source, it seems that optimization of land is not moving a lot since a decade or two.<p>----------<p>But then, to make all of this viable, because the author know about climate change, he make a very brave, optimistic at best irrealistic at worse, asumption:<p>- With clean energy technologies, we can completely decouple material well-being from CO2 emissions, for the first time in history.<p>This single assumption make its whole arguments vanish. It&#x27;s the only argument that is not scientific, yet so important in its theory.<p>----------<p>And never ever he is talking about the environmental debt that allowed this productivity progress, that don&#x27;t show up in the graphics he use. It only talks about short terms, not long term. Only about science, not about economy. Economy that is really linked to productivity and consumption, and debt. It avoid to talk about tipping point where things fall apart. It avoid the role of oil and gas in the productivity.<p>Author should read the story of the [hen that laid the golden eggs](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Hen_That_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Hen_That_Laid_the_Golden_E...</a>): the production methods are killing the chicken, soon we&#x27;ll not have golden eggs anymore.
Depuratorabout 1 year ago
These are shallow arguments built on the good old techno-optimist view that technology will solve all our problems by perfecting resource extraction.<p>&quot;<i>With novel technologies like precision fermentation and vertical farming, we could further shrink our “foodprint” by at least three quarters, thus freeing up more space for nature to flourish.</i>&quot;<p>That is just silly speculation. For example, vertical farming may just be a vehicle for impact investors in silicon valley to diversity their portfolio into the new hot mega trend of saving the planet.<p>Its hard to justify a high-tech intensive verticle potato farm as net effective than just having half the mouths to feed from a traditional potato field.
thriftwyabout 1 year ago
Quite obvious, I want there to be more people if my culture around, whereas I do not mind whether the rest of the cultures dwindle to the numbers more appropriate for them.<p>Everybody is more or less like that, and here is where the issue roots.<p>Right now, some influential cultures, but not all of them, feel existentially endangered.
jacknewsabout 1 year ago
Too few humans for the infrastructure we&#x27;ve built, perhaps
defrostabout 1 year ago
See:<p><i>Selfish reasons to want more humans</i> (rootsofprogress.org)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39497686">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39497686</a><p>119 points by pr337h4m 6 hours ago | flag | hide | past | favorite | 215 comments<p>this is yet another variation on the same arguments from yet another roots of progress writer:<p><pre><code> Published first in Quillette. Many thanks to all my Roots of Progress fellows for their inspiration and feedback, in particular ...</code></pre>
M95Dabout 1 year ago
I&#x27;ll just leave this link here and not comment anything.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;1067138&#x2F;population-united-states-historical&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;1067138&#x2F;population-unite...</a>
Zetobalabout 1 year ago
Ok I have to ask but why is HN flooded with pseudo scientific climate change&#x2F; population control far right bullshit today?
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johneaabout 1 year ago
More neoliberal bullshit.<p>The human world survived just fine when there was 1% of the current population.<p>The whole idea that we &quot;can&#x27;t afford to take care of so many old people&quot; is premised on the assumption that Elon and Bozo need 2&#x2F;3 of the world&#x27;s economic output, and the other 1&#x2F;3 should be spent bombing each other.<p>The idea that the consumption&#x2F;person is declining is also bullshit. As 3rd world countries see how 1st world populations are living, they also want these opulent lifestyles.<p>The physical world (you know, the one that &quot;might be a simulation&quot; and is ignored in favor of twerk tic and fortnight) cannot support the world&#x27;s 3rd world residents going through the same consumption bender that the 1st world has gone through in the last 50-100 years.<p>We need to stop breeding people, just like we need to stop breeding dogs and cows...<p>In 100 years when the population is back below 1 billion, then we can worry about under-population...
rich_sashaabout 1 year ago
I never thought about it this way, but perhaps what we&#x27;re seeing is the &quot;lower classes&quot; becoming extinct. I say this with no pleasure.<p>We&#x27;re in a world where low productivity jobs are rapidly being replaced by robots, operated by the society&#x27;s richest. These aren&#x27;t different species, of course, but the effect is the same. The newly-low-productivity jobs do not provide enough to afford offspring in the new reality, and only the fewer, elite humans can afford them. They will breed smart, well educated and endowed, if spoilt and brattish offspring, who will, perhaps, continue to thrive.<p>It sounds brutal and Darwinistic, but at the same time we&#x27;re angsting about what humans will do post-AI. Well, perhaps the answer is, they won&#x27;t be born.
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