Want to Help the Planet? Just Die!

[LadyCrimson]

This wouldn't be a problem if we knew that it would neccesarily lead to a (very) markedly improved life for the rest of the people on the planet, but we know nothing and as such it is a simplistic theory based on assumptions that only you support.

 

But we wouldn't know if the reduced population theory was true or not, unless we try it, no?

 

Typically the richer nations have less children - so if we spread the wealth out more evenly, it's fairly possible that eventually most people would just have less children by lifestyle choice. Unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon.

[Moatilliatta]

The problem with looking into the future and making extreme decision is that most of our predictions about the future have shown themselves to be flawed in that the future doesn't neccesarily happen the way we expect and, as such I propose that we shouldn't do things that we otherwise wouldn't do. The greatest achievements of humanity come from us humans chilling and doing what we always do, so chill guys and start worrying about stuff that matters now and which we have knowledge about now.

 

Also the internet needs to see a psycologist about its apparent fixation on anything to do with the Nazies and the holocaust.

 

But we wouldn't know if the reduced population theory was true or not, unless we try it, no?

We won't know if nuking China will bring net-happiness upon the globe, but that doesn't mean that we should try it "just in case".

Edited May 16, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Xard]

You are advocating not having children that people would otherwise have and that is robbing the potentiality of life from certain potential people. This wouldn't be a problem if we knew that it would neccesarily lead to a (very) markedly improved life for the rest of the people on the planet, but we know nothing and as such it is a simplistic theory based on assumptions that only you support.

 

Guys seriously, I'm talking of potentialities. READ.

 

We already ****ed up in 20th century. China's population was doubled during Mao's reign from 500 million to one billion for example

 

Really, this planet can't take even billion more human beings, as it is we're already exceeted the limit by far. Only reason we don't see it already so clearly is the ridiculously uneven share of goods.

Edited May 16, 2008 by Xard

[Guard Dog]

The VHEMT group and it's goals are a little laughable. It is a distortion of the entire green movement. Instead of saving the Earth FOR the humans they envision saving it FROM the humans. And they are legit, I did some snooping with google about them.

 

The only thing that would be scary would be if a group such as this one were ever to come into any political power or influence. It is not hard to imagine a group of fanatics pushing for coerced abortions or involuntary sterilization under the dubious premise of it being for the "common good".

[Moatilliatta]

Reminds me of Deep Ecology (especially the extremists). All of these people forget that nature has little worth in and of itself and most (if not all) of its worth is given by relations to humans.

[LadyCrimson]

We won't know if nuking China will bring net-happiness upon the globe, but that doesn't mean that we should try it "just in case".

Oh good grief. That is hardly a comparable theoretical scenario to, say, trying governmental programs that restrict number of children per family/couple/person/reward those who have less children, or something.

Edited May 17, 2008 by LadyCrimson

[Moatilliatta]

That wasn't my point. My point was that your argument for trying it was not a good argument, as simply not knowing whether it will provide a good or bad result isn't a reason for trying it, as my extreme example showed.

 

edit: edited for friendlyness.

Edited May 17, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[LadyCrimson]

Yes, well my original point was that your point for not even trying something wasn't a good argument, either.

Which basically means trying to argue points for/against theoretical actions, at least in this case, is pointless.

Edited May 17, 2008 by LadyCrimson

[Moatilliatta]

I'd like to see this point if you believe that you've made it. Edit: Didn't see your edit, but rest of the post still matters.

Reducing our population growth could easily affect our economy negatively (we already lack smart people, and we would have an even larger burden of elderly people compared to young productive people) and we don't know if reducing our population through having little to no children will actually produce the desired result. The people born today won't pollute heavily for quite some time (when they start doing stuff like having an extremely expensive and ineffecient car for each family member and similar ****), so any possible benefits would probably lie in the future when for all we know things could be much different. For all we know the damage to the western economies could be directly detrimental to inventing stuff like fusion energy as a reliable source of energy.

 

All I'm saying is that you guys are basing your theory on a lot of guesswork and ignoring the bad sideeffects of reduced population. If we don't know anything then we shouldn't act, basic conservatism (NOT the political "ideology" but rather the idea that you shouldn't act unless you know why you're acting and what your act will bring).

Edited May 17, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Moatilliatta]

Double posting because I can't forget how eerily apropiate this piece of gaming history seems:

 

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

 

Sand, Xard and Lady Crimson would totally have been eaten by the Grue.

[Dark_Raven]

Humanity's way of natural selection.

 

[LadyCrimson]

If a path we're on doesn't seem to be a good one, not being willing to try something else for a while to see if that might produce better results, out of fear alone, is...ah...well, I disagree with that way of thinking. imo, a lot of our inventions and advances would never have come about if we all thought that way. Such "arguments" resound with people on an emotional level, since they're emotional arguments, but beyond exercises in theoretical "what ifs", there's no validity to using them as a "never do" argument, before there's proof (from trying and failing) that something actually is harmful.

 

Nuking, to our dismay, was proven to be harmful, not only to immediate human life (which was hopefully obvious from the beginning) but to environment/people for many years after, thus that 'comeback' wasn't valid, imo. Reducing population over time has not been proven to be harmful. I can understand your fear of messing with the unknown and all its variables, but that's life, and I don't see it as an argument in of itself.

 

Beyond that, slowly introducing birthing restrictions would not cause the population to drop overnight. There would be time for people to adapt to having less people in the world, both economically (workforce, product demand) and whatever else. I believe restriction programs were at least partially tried in certain countries (Japan I think? I don't remember), without any horrendous (visible) disaster as a result. I don't know if it was truly "successful" either (it might have been voluntary monetary incentives), but it didn't result in calamity either.

 

I hope I'm making sense...I'm cooking dinner and my brain is divided...although that's mostly an excuse, since my brain is usually divided anyway.

[Gorth]

Saying that a constant growth of the human population isn't a problem is ridiculous.

 

Earth is about 510227657730000 square meter (give or take a few)

 

You can squeeze about 3 people into each square meter.

 

Lets say scyscrapers makes up for the part covered by oceans.

 

Thats about 1530682973190000 people, that you can physically fit in there (not leaving any land for farming or production).

 

Trust me, it will be a problem eventually

 

(reminds me of the old joke about whether hell is endoterm or exoterm...)

[Moatilliatta]

If a path we're on doesn't seem to be a good one, not being willing to try something else for a while to see if that might produce better results, out of fear alone, is...ah...well, I disagree with that way of thinking. imo, a lot of our inventions and advances would never have come about if we all thought that way. Such "arguments" resound with people on an emotional level, since they're emotional arguments, but beyond exercises in theoretical "what ifs", there's no validity to using them as a "never do" argument, before there's proof (from trying and failing) that something actually is harmful.

 

Beyond that, slowly introducing birthing restrictions would not cause the population to drop overnight. There would be time for people to adapt to having less people in the world, both economically (workforce, product demand) and whatever else. I believe restriction programs were at least partially tried in certain countries (Japan I think? I don't remember), without any horrendous (visible) disaster as a result. I don't know if it was truly "successful" either (it might have been voluntary monetary incentives), but it didn't result in calamity either.

Actually you're wrong. (I betcha you'd never have guessed that would be my opening remark. ) My argument doesn't rely on emotion like the ones of political conservatives or philosophical conservatives, but rather on the point of my Grue post, if you're wandering about in the darkness and is likely to be eaten by a Grue (make a mistake based on lack of info), then the smartest solution is to find the lightsource (the info that would show that you or I is correct). This is what our established fields of science is based upon and what has brought us the things that you attribute to blind stumbling about in the dark.

 

Once again I shall hold the opinion that we know little of what your theory would lead us into and as such we should not do anything except research possible solutions to our current problems. If research show with a reasonable certainty that we need to restrict our population growth to achieve maximum ahppiness of all existing humans then it is a decision that could be justified, it isn't there yet.

 

As to the second argument, how slow? The current lack of clever people in the west and the burden fo elderly in the exact same place has been introduced slowly and society hasn't really evolved to properly deal with it and as such I can't find the merit in your 'steady does it' argument. And you're right, these ideas have been tried in China (don't know about Japan) and China is a whole different ball of soup as they have a much more severe problem than we will ever have on account of our population already shrinking.

 

I hope I'm making sense...I'm cooking dinner and my brain is divided...although that's mostly an excuse, since my brain is usually divided anyway.

I know the feeling as I'm always on here in my free time and as such my brain is both divided and not really willing to think too much.

 

@Gorth:

You're assuming that the natural way of things is unlimited growth, it isn't so, as shown by the abysmall birthrates in the west.

Edited May 17, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Gorth]

@Gorth:

You're assuming that the natural way of things is unlimited growth, it isn't so, as shown by the abysmall birthrates in the west.

I was only being semi-serious. I do believe that the human population as a whole has an upper limit for sustainability though

[LadyCrimson]

but rather on the point of my Grue post, if you're wandering about in the darkness and is likely to be eaten by a Grue (make a mistake based on lack of info), then the smartest solution is to find the lightsource (the info that would show that you or I is correct). This is what our established fields of science is based upon and what has brought us the things that you attribute to blind stumbling about in the dark.

 

I do see your point of view (I think...)...but if you think a lack of info puts you in potential danger and you want more info to prevent/stop/prove it, you generally have to have one of two things: an already-in-place knowledge base of info to get that mistake-preventing info from, or the willingness to experiment to gather/learn that info. To learn we must try, and to try means sometimes we discover something we originally thought was going to be a boon is a mistake - or the other way around. So far, I guess China is the current experiment that we will learn from.

 

As to the second argument, how slow? The current lack of clever people in the west and the burden fo elderly in the exact same place has been introduced slowly and society hasn't really evolved to properly deal with it and as such I can't find the merit in your 'steady does it' argument.

I'm not sure what your source is on having a serious lack of "clever people" may be, but I'm not sure I'd agree with that either. It may not be a lack of "clever" people...perhaps the "clever" people just don't care to be clever for everyone else, or their interests lie in areas that don't include advancing mankind/public attention/awards. Or a lot of other potential reasons.

 

As to slow ... I said people would have time to adapt to it. Whether they wish to/decide to is always another matter. Typically, humans/governments don't like to adapt/give up anything unless there is an easily noticeable benefit to themselves...(their paycheck is immediately bigger, more food on the table right now, not in 10 years, etc)...that is very true.

 

Hmm...I believe population growth tends to shrink, eventually, when enough people become wealthy enough...I think there's some seeming general correlation between wealth and childbirth rates? So if you could eliminate poverty and bring everyone onto the same economic/tech level as US or Europe or whatever, it's quite possible the population would decline dramatically after a few centuries anyway, and all the "what ifs" you're considering might come to pass regardless...unless we keep billions poor on purpose...which some say we do already. Conspiracies everywhere... Problem is, (human) environmentally speaking, I'm not sure we can wait that long - for time needed for the poor nations to become wealthy/more even distribution of wealth, and the time for the possible decline.

 

Well, anyway, I digress, and we'll probably just keep disagreeing on that original "point" till doomsday, so I suppose that's enough of that for me. We could always just wait for a deadly incurable plague/asteroid impact to kill 3/4 of humanity, and that way we don't have to be responsible for it.

Edited May 17, 2008 by LadyCrimson

[thepixiesrock]

What video game did you harvest that opinion from?

 

No video game, but simple logic. If we want to remove food shortages and not use up so much fossil fuels we need to lower our population. Currently we have around 6 billion people on this lil' mudball so if we drop our population by half it goes to reason that we would use up half as much resources, therefore not have any shortages.

 

It's commonly known that it isn't a food shortage problem, it's a distribution problem.

[Sand]

Not if you read the papers. Nearly every paper around where I live is yelling how using corn for ethanol and other biofuels instead of food is driving up prices and making a food shortage as well making it too expensive for the poor to buy. Of course if there was less people to distribute the food to distribution would be easier.

[thepixiesrock]

And less people to manufacture and distribute it.

[Sand]

And less people to manufacture and distribute it.

 

That's why we work on using automated systems. If we have the tech of having a robot to vaccuum my floor or mow my lawn, in the next decade or two we may see the rise of automated farms.

[Gorth]

I can recommend Soylent Green. Very tasty!

[Sand]

*Sand begins to sing*

 

People are people

so why should it be

that they are made

into Soylent Green?

 

[Gorth]

[thepixiesrock]

And less people to manufacture and distribute it.

 

That's why we work on using automated systems. If we have the tech of having a robot to vaccuum my floor or mow my lawn, in the next decade or two we may see the rise of automated farms.

 

And Mars colonies, and flying cars that run on recycled trash fuel, and all of the contries of the world working together in peace and harmony.

 

Assuming that science is going to work the problem out itself isn't a solution to the problem Hades.

[Sand]

True enough, but I don't think there will ever be a solution that will be acceptable to everyone.