A slightly deeper musing on the future of the planet? (PopN)

[Visitor Q]

Right then kiddies, as a destraction from my work i want to see viable solutions to the REAL problem facing humanity.

Overpopulation.

First, have a brief read of this wiki page about Malthusian crisis, then consider all the current environmental drives.

Sustainable power, renewable energy, ban on GMO, ban on fishing etc

These to my mind would only work with a REDUCED population, but since every bugger is out to cure the few diseases we have left... we're going to start running into problems. What feasible solutions would you suggest, taken into account ethics if you fancy as well. Or provide one ethical feasible idea, and one less ethical.

My ideas are all slightly pessimistic sadly. With current economic and health growth, population inevitably follows.
As has been seen in China, population caps and limits to child birth tend to evoke very emotive responses from the world, and would have to be enforced globally, leading to outrages on humanitarian free will grounds.
An aldous huxley-esque 'permit' to child birth would also work, but under a long period of civil unrest when implemented, which would discourage introduction. Also contraception would have to be enforced, thus removing free will. This would, however, stop the trend (satarised in Idiocracy) of negative correlation between IQ and offspring production (ie the lower your IQ, the more children you produce in general)
Removing healthcare to those beyong a certain age would hasten the turnover, mitigating the unnatural disparty between Birth & Death rates. This again would be very unsavoury to implement, as well as setting in motion something similar to Logan's Run, where the age drops and people are actively removed at a certain age. However this would discourage economic productivity, as the carrot of a lifetimes work is the promise of retirement (by which point you're too old to enjoy it, youth is wasted on the young etc).

To my mind however, the BEST thing that could happen to humanity would be a recurrence of something similar to the 1918 spanish flu. Incredibly virulent, killing most who caught it and spreading throughout the globe quickly (without the aid of air travel). A recurrence of something similar, with air travel speeding up the distribution of index cases throughout the globe, assuming it had variable mortality due to some positive or at least non-random trait would thin down the population both massively and rapidly. This would leave a large enough population to be genetically viable with immunity from the disease to inherit the earth without any population caps.
Of course that is quite rose tinted, it could favour the old or young, both with inherent problems. It could be sex linked or just have a 100% mortality rate (although im yet to see ANY disease which hasnt had some -maybe few- people who survive infection), both of which would stop its utility obviously. Plus the killing of 95% of the earth population say, would leave 6 Billion bodies to be buried least they decompose and cause secondary epidemics.

Anyone else got any tenable solutions? As mentioned GMO and Nuclear/Zero point (if we can get it to work) may buy us another 100-200 years, but eventually a solution would need to be found (in the unlikely event a rampant infection hadnt arisen within those 2 centuries)
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From September 2014 to January/February 2015 I will not be using any English, nor reading any. As such, I won't be on here. PM at will, but I won't be checking/posting unless in emergencies. Certainly not for the first couple of months. Please berate me savagely if I break that rule...

[Visitor Q]

Oh, and please avoid the 'colonise mars' type bollocks.

Even IF (a big if) the technology does come around in time for its use, the economic feasability to use it on a large scale (even displacing millions of people would be a drop in the ocean) nullifies its implementation.
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China traffic/travel bike vid - When I make a sweeping statement, please add the word 'statistically' in to the sentence before you bitch...
From September 2014 to January/February 2015 I will not be using any English, nor reading any. As such, I won't be on here. PM at will, but I won't be checking/posting unless in emergencies. Certainly not for the first couple of months. Please berate me savagely if I break that rule...

[Itchy]

Although I skipped over lots of your post

#1 war a big one, resources etc

I personally think China maybe involved in a civil war shortly due to the wealth inequity gap becoming enourmous with '300mil middle class' still leaves 900mil in poverty who are abused and often have their land stolen or wages unpaid when factory owners abscond. The law allows people there to be paid in one lump sum at the end of the year.

As Hetz says the ruling elite realise this and want to secure resources for themselves , the Russians have lots of resources,

Note China has a massive population due to lack of high tech weapons and thus relied upon the infantry rush, which sounds silly to us but if you have enough lives to waste it actually works imagine the somme but increase the half million men with 50 million men rushing the german lines.

#2 convient nuclear accidents why do YOU think the government wants lots of nuclear power everywhere? , population gets too high whoops convient nuclear accident occurs.

#3 Bird flu pandemic , as some comentators have said we've not had our big pandemic yet which occurs every so often much like San Francisco and Tokyo expecting a gigantic earth quake.
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Spain 2008France 2007Big one 2009 We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. In the end, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

[Itchy]

[Hetzer]

A big fat war/cataclysm.
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"There's the horizon! Ride hard, ride fast and cut down all who stand in your way!"

[silky666]

[Visitor Q]

[UrbanRacer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TboJUxTIaC4

[silky666]

[D O G]

Big war is definitely overdue.

It would most certainly have the desired effect - millions would be killed I would have thought, and reduction in procreation whilst men off fighting etc.

Would also help people put life in perspective a bit more, instead of being vacuous self absorbed, materially obsessed shitkickers that the majority of people are today.

[killa]

Yeah, im unclear what the aim of this topic is.

Humans suck, dirty cunts.

On the topic of global warming, saving the planet. No one actually mentiones the planet wil be fine for another 4.5billions years, its us who are fucked.
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Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
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[Visitor Q]

[Hetzer]

Ok, I'll try to be serious as this is a subject of great interest to me.

Firstly, you need a firm foundation of metaphysic, philosophy and guiding principle.

The metaphysic gives a broad purpose/understanding of the point of all creation.

The philosophy instructs purpose and morality.

The guiding principle instructs day-to-day deployment of the above.

If we accept that the purpose of life is pleasure the rest follows easily.

Too many people = deprivation = lack of pleasure (for the majority).

However, radical de-population (euthanasia or war for example) = misery, so it's not on.

There is also the issue of the mean IQ, it's not high enough for a utopian society/civilisation to be viable.

Solutions require advanced technology, which require energy. In the absence of Zero-Point energy the best we've got is nuclear, which is, as Bonny says, entirely doable.

Genetic engineering can overcome the mean-IQ issue.

Social engineering can address the issue of over-population in the long term (have less babies, the population will decrease to a sustainable level).

So, reduce the population, deploy automated systems of manufacture (includes food production) and make mankind's goal the escape from our single-planet situation. Increased longevity wouldn't be a bad thing either, at the moment our life-span makes life a game rather than anything inherently 'important'.

That's my rough outline, I'm going to get back to counting my money.
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"There's the horizon! Ride hard, ride fast and cut down all who stand in your way!"

[Itchy]

[Itchy]

This brings me back to this old old article I read in GQ way back in the 90s.

Which I paraphrase ....

it said that in Japan they pioneered an experiment where they recycled human excrement into burger type patties and processed them in an unknown manner.

They then took these 'burgers' to some chefs in Japan and 8/10 couldn't tell the difference.

Which leads to the idea in K240 in that K240 is a game set in the dar future where fresh food costs too much so they feed people mulch, of Algae growths which is processed in the same manner as reclaimed meat and reformed into sausages burgers or what not..

Also the erm energy effect , in that it is SUPPOSED to be more efficient to have humans eat veg instead of have a cow run around a field hoovering up the grass turning it into meat and us eating the meat, thus we could all turn veg which would ease the food supply problem.
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Spain 2008France 2007Big one 2009 We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. In the end, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

[Visitor Q]

[Visitor Q]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Firstly, what is a reasonable population level?

Assuming cutting the population down is a chosen option I don't think war is a particularly good method. Leads to too much long term social problems. Added to which it tend to be the men that are killed and frankly it doesn't take many men to repopulate a region.

Disease? Well could be pretty random and essentially fair. However it relies on a natural disease. Any kind of unnatural one created for this would just cause a war.

Euthenasia of the elderly? Not viable. Especially when those getting towards being regarded as elderly and to be culled would also be at the peak of their power and thus in a position to cull others.

Long term only real solution is to cut down on breeding. While the Chinese example gets a lot of flak for breeding spoilt brats and for resulting in a bias towards male children. First is difficult to solve. Second is just making the process more effective in the short term and should solve itself in the long term.

How to cut down on breeding is the real question.

All the best

Keith
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[pwntifex]

Gosh, there are some real personality disorders at work in this thread.
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the warped one: This is a follow up from the thread 'my willy hurts'

[cestrian]

It would appear the indigenous Brits are not adding to this problem of over-population. Our reproduction rate (per couple) is somewhat less than the required number for simple replacement.

Can we identify which groups of people are adding to the problem? Perhaps then we can look at solutions.

Regards

[JonB]

Cestrian you show such little knowledge of culture it's unbelievable.

Take our country, we have less children, but people live a lot longer due to better technology, resources etc.

Go to India and your typical working class community, many children, many will not live beyond 60.

It's our aging population that is truly the problem, not people having more babies, 100 years ago 10+ children was noway uncommon, yet there was a lower population.

A recent report reckons by the year 2050 people living to 120 will not be uncommon at the current rate of growth, bearing in mind even if the retirement age was increased to 80 years old, that's still 40 years of someone contributing very little to a community as a whole, yet still using Earths dwindling food and fuel supplies.

It's controversial, but a cure for cancer and heart disease would be devastating in the long term.
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[pa_broon74]

[Itchy]

[Itchy]

[colin1]

We are not over populated, and the earth can take a lot more of us.

As countries go, england is pretty denseley populated, but even here, most of the country is sparselly pouplated, with only major towns having people fairly closely packed.

If our entire land mass was as denseley poulated as london, we could hold a huge number of people.

Thats an extreme example and its not going to happen, but it would work fine, we would just import all our food as we wouldnt have any farms left.

Obviously, we still need to have enough farm land somewhere in the world to support the cities, but if EU farmers werent so well protected against foreign competition, imports would be a lot cheaper, and third world countries could develop off the money from exporting farm produce.

So if managed properly, huge populatsions could be supported.
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