Resonate with this line right here: "Instead of trying to convince educated yuppies to have more babies, we should create policies that help people who already exist - through greater immigration and / or aid + trade."
Agree with the core point, the ethnicity framing, and helping those who already exist through immigration (I’m a beneficiary of such values).
However, it would still be good to hear the perspective that large population is a strength more often.
Growing up in India, everyone’s solution to every problem turned Malthusian very quickly.
- Bad Infrastructure? -> control population growth
- Too few jobs? -> control population growth
- poor education system? -> control population growth
It took me a really long to grasp that we all had it backwards. Every individual is a brain, not just a stomach. We are producers and inventors not just consumers.
I think a lot of people expect that as countries with higher fertility rates develop economically, their populations will also drop.
Re whether there being a lot of people is good or not, it was Joe Henrich’s anthropological work that convinced that it is (leaving population ethics stuff aside). Humans aren’t really that smart on the individual level; we make fast progress because we can share knowledge with each other and improve on it. Having fewer people is like having fewer neurons in a brain - less processing power, less chance for variation, less retention, etc. At too few people, a society can actually regress technologically (henrich points to evidence of this happening in, eg, Tasmania).
Resonate with this line right here: "Instead of trying to convince educated yuppies to have more babies, we should create policies that help people who already exist - through greater immigration and / or aid + trade."
Agree with the core point, the ethnicity framing, and helping those who already exist through immigration (I’m a beneficiary of such values).
However, it would still be good to hear the perspective that large population is a strength more often.
Growing up in India, everyone’s solution to every problem turned Malthusian very quickly.
- Bad Infrastructure? -> control population growth
- Too few jobs? -> control population growth
- poor education system? -> control population growth
It took me a really long to grasp that we all had it backwards. Every individual is a brain, not just a stomach. We are producers and inventors not just consumers.
100%. I hope my loathing of Ehrlich and his modern acolytes come through in my writing.
I think a lot of people expect that as countries with higher fertility rates develop economically, their populations will also drop.
Re whether there being a lot of people is good or not, it was Joe Henrich’s anthropological work that convinced that it is (leaving population ethics stuff aside). Humans aren’t really that smart on the individual level; we make fast progress because we can share knowledge with each other and improve on it. Having fewer people is like having fewer neurons in a brain - less processing power, less chance for variation, less retention, etc. At too few people, a society can actually regress technologically (henrich points to evidence of this happening in, eg, Tasmania).
Yeah, a friend of ours has long been a fan of maximizing humanity's potential by having more intelligence.
I would think this would argue for better integration of current people, not just more people in our current world.
And how will future AI affect this argument?