As crazy as the prophet Malthus sounded, some people continuously try to heed his warning, thankfully we’re learning how to coordinate our population growth to support a good life within the limited carrying capacity of our natural resources better and better over time. Time and time again, a wizard makes a new gizmo and we all get away with it.
The modified version of your first paragraph from above feels as or more accurate to me. I’d be curious to hear why you think it won’t always be like this (besides X-risk, which I totally understand would lead to a “not always like this” situation).
(Well yeah, eventually we’re going to draw a black ball out of the urn. Coal and gas weren’t shit next to some of the coordination challenges that’re coming up, I’m sure. x-risks aside, space is going to be a mess. I can’t wait for kessler syndrome to set in)
thankfully we’re learning how to coordinate our population growth to support a good life within the limited carrying capacity of our natural resources better and better over time
In some ways, we are (our technology seems to be greening), but in maybe the most important ways, we haven’t changed anything. The global population is still growing faster than ever. Growth seems to slow down under certain conditions, but (and I felt really stupid when I realised this) if a person thinks the utterly mysterious effects of those conditions will sustain for more than three generations, they have forgotten something very basic about what biological organisms are and how they came to be, and if we let it go that way, the problem is going to come back a lot stronger, and our chances of solving it with that different set of people will be close to zero.
I don’t like talking about this.
But I’m starting to get the sense that there might be something important down here that nobody is looking at with clear eyes.
The modified version of your first paragraph from above feels as or more accurate to me. I’d be curious to hear why you think it won’t always be like this (besides X-risk, which I totally understand would lead to a “not always like this” situation).
Heh.
(Well yeah, eventually we’re going to draw a black ball out of the urn. Coal and gas weren’t shit next to some of the coordination challenges that’re coming up, I’m sure. x-risks aside, space is going to be a mess. I can’t wait for kessler syndrome to set in)
In some ways, we are (our technology seems to be greening), but in maybe the most important ways, we haven’t changed anything. The global population is still growing faster than ever. Growth seems to slow down under certain conditions, but (and I felt really stupid when I realised this) if a person thinks the utterly mysterious effects of those conditions will sustain for more than three generations, they have forgotten something very basic about what biological organisms are and how they came to be, and if we let it go that way, the problem is going to come back a lot stronger, and our chances of solving it with that different set of people will be close to zero.
I don’t like talking about this.
But I’m starting to get the sense that there might be something important down here that nobody is looking at with clear eyes.
Thanks for sharing your perspective!