Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.
-lazarus longback
1 comments
Think how many offspring you could spawn in a thousand years.
There would probably be laws against that. If people were immortal, perhaps the law would say every two humans can have one child between them; that way population could only double once.
I'd let them do the snippity-snip in exchange for living to 150. Seriously, I want to see what happens, and I'm not interested in kids. Would rather adopt one if that bug ever bites, but I doubt it will.
Doubt it. Population control laws are too unpopular and anybody over ~300 is probably very rich thanks if nothing else, due to the magic of compound interest. Since rich = powerful, it is unlikely that any population control measure would hold up well.
If lots of people get "rich and powerful" all of a sudden, then the criteria for being considered "rich and powerful" will go up.
Right. And even if the docs make you get snipped in exchange for the immortality treatments, by then we'll be able to induce meiosis, combine and crossover genes with another and produce offspring anyhow, for the right price.
Hard to tell if you are arguing against my point through sarcasm or supporting my point by covering a contingency. Weird.
I call it hyper-cynicism, both of those points exist in a kind of quantum superposition.
I was supporting your point. What made it sarcastic, the use of "Right?"
Why would one want population to stop growing?
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource
Because, unlike Julian Simon, some people know that the planet is made of matter, and they know about the Law of Matter/Energy Conservation, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and other physical properties of the Universe, any of which by itself would make it impossible for natural resources to be infinite.
Some people have also heard the story of Rapa Nui, whose inhabitants discovered that natural resources are NOT infinite, shortly before their deaths.
Would it matter if humans were also creative of resources, rather than simply consumptive of resources?
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR0...
Our whole evolution up to this point shows that human groups spontaneously evolve patterns of behavior, as well as patterns of training people for that behavior, which tend on balance to lead people to create rather than destroy. Humans are, on net balance, builders rather than destroyers. The evidence is clear: the civilization which our ancestors have bequeathed to us contains more created works than the civilization they were bequeathed.
In short, humankind has evolved into creators and problem-solvers. Our constructive behavior has counted for more than our using-up and destructive behavior, as seen in our increasing length of life and richness of consumption.
This view of the average human as builder conflicts with the view of the average human as destroyer which underlies the thought of many doomsdayers. From the latter view derive such statements as "The U.S. has 5 percent of the population, and uses 40 percent of resources," without reference to the creation of resources by the same U.S. population. (Also involved here is a view of resources as physical quantities waiting for the plucking, rather than as the services that humankind derives from some combination of knowledge with physical conditions.) If one notices only the using-up and destructive activities of humankind, without understanding that constructive patterns of behavior must have been the dominant part of our individual-cum-social nature in order for us to have survived to this point, then it is not surprising that one would arrive at the conclusion that resources will grow scarcer in the future.
We don't really create-- we merely transform physical resources from one form to another, increasing total entropy in the process. Because entropy can only increase and never decrease, our creative activities are outweighed by the destruction that is a direct consequence of it.
In other words, the only ways we can be "creative of resources" are to create energy from nothing, create matter from nothing, or to reduce entropy without increasing it elsewhere. All three of these are known to be impossible.
We don't really create-- we merely transform physical resources from one form to another
If I were to give you an equal mass of rocks in exchange for everything that you own, would you be equally wealthy (equally secure)?
If society were instantly given equal masses of rock and mud in echange for all of the artifacts that it had created over the past 100,000 years, and if in the same instant all of any otherwise technology gains of the past 100,000 years were also lost, would the 6.7 billion people alive today be equally as secure as before that instant change? If not, why not?
If humans have been able, over the past 100,000 years, to transform matter and energy into forms that better serve their security, why might they suddenly no longer be able to do that?
If nothing has been created, the how is it that 6.7 billion people today exist in relatively high security where previously only a handful of thousands could exist and in relatively low security? http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080425101050.cni2ks3...
Regarding energy:
Did our developed energy resources exist before humans created them? Are they imminently running out? Is general entropy imminent?
.
The matter/energy that exists naturally tends to either be too general to best serve human security, or if specific tends to be so in suboptimal directions. Do humans not improve their own security by transforming general and chaotically-specific resources into specific and orderly ones tailored to their own security needs? Are humans running out of general resources and chaos with which to transform into security-enhancing resources? Are humans running out of the creativity that has been driving this 100,000+ -year-long improvement in human security?