The Need to Breed

[The Grand Nudger]

Water and food are tied at the hip. No one problem is worse than any other as soon as we've gone down the hypothetical of reaching our limits by all means available.

I've said it before on these boards, but I'd rather kill every living thing that breathes, takes up space, eats food, and consumes water on this planet that isn't a human being before I so much as begin to consider population control as a solution. A last resort should be just that...the last thing you try. Now, one might say "but what sort of life would that leave us with? Everything gone and dead, the world crowded with people, not so much as a bird singing, that sounds awful" Oh yeah? Worse than culling our own children? Shit and shit sandwiches being all that's on the table I'll take whichever plate has human beings alive and breathing on it.

I'm with the poster that said we need to get of this rock. I don't know about yall, but I think it's high time that the cruel boot of human oppression extend its reach out into the solar system and beyond. There's plenty of water out there....just for starters.

[Epimethean]

Actually, I agree with the poster who suggested sterilization. I simply do not see enough people being high-minded enough to take the hit. Politics and power aside (and thereby at least one remove from reality), are we capable of taking on our biological imperative intellectually enough to circumvent it? And on the subject of killing off everything before we off ourselves, I don't think it should come to that-if we are better than the rest of the animal kingdom. Gods aside, I wonder whether we can show this level of moral development on the grand scale.

[Cinjin]

Water and food are tied at the hip. No one problem is worse than any other as soon as we've gone down the hypothetical of reaching our limits by all means available.

I've said it before on these boards, but I'd rather kill every living thing that breathes, takes up space, eats food, and consumes water on this planet that isn't a human being before I so much as begin to consider population control as a solution. A last resort should be just that...the last thing you try. Now, one might say "but what sort of life would that leave us with? Everything gone and dead, the world crowded with people, not so much as a bird singing, that sounds awful" Oh yeah? Worse than culling our own children? Shit and shit sandwiches being all that's on the table I'll take whichever plate has human beings alive and breathing on it.

I'm with the poster that said we need to get of this rock. I don't know about yall, but I think it's high time that the cruel boot of human oppression extend its reach out into the solar system and beyond. There's plenty of water out there....just for starters.

Although I disagree with the "kill every last living thing except humans" idea, I do agree, that finding another habitable planet would be ideal. However, like I told Rant, putting hope in non-existent technologies, especially ones with such mammoth hurdles to overcome is not something I would be willing to bet the human race on.

First we have to find a planet that can support human life. Than we have to figure out how to travel at light speed. Confirm that the planet is safe enough to send humans to. Than we have to build a spaceship that can house thousands of people for a very long duration and can tolerate the massive bombardment of radiation found in space. Also, we really need to be able to get people to said planet at least within a few years, otherwise, what's the point? Don't forget that the nearest planets that are only 20 to 30 light years away still take 20 to 30 years to get to. A round trip of approx. 50 years would put us at 2 trips per century.

If we as a species were able to build 10 ships that carried 10,000 people each (a highly unlikely reality), it would still take us 1000 years just to get only 2,000,000 people off this rock. Meanwhile, our planets population is growing and the global warming may have already destroyed us. Think how much damage we've done in only 200 years ... 1000 would likely be completely devastating.

Wouldn't it be easier just to stop demanding the right to make babies?

[The Grand Nudger]

Is putting hope into non-existent technologies any different than putting hope into non-existent displays of human behavior, or the boot of the state? Of the three, I'll go with tech, personally. Waiting for human beings to wake up some day and align themselves -globally- to your ideas of what constitutes well reasoned or well educated (and specifically with regards to this issue) is akin to waiting for it to rain gumdrops. The day our state forces sterilization or summary executions of "surplus" personnel is the day I dust off my assault rifle (wait...wait....I think we've found a solution, a violent and bloody insurgency against a state that wishes to enforce population controls may just do the trick...and we might even be offing exactly the sorts of people that need to be offed- BONUS!). Again though, things like this in first world countries won't do much, because we already have a very low number of children on average, so I guess I'd need to buy a plane ticket and re-familiarize myself with shithole-ese.

[jackman]

time to vote for newt in 2016!!
let's get those moon colonies going.

[Cinjin]

Is putting hope into non-existent technologies any different than putting hope into non-existent displays of human behavior, or the boot of the state?

I don't really put hope in anything. I'm merely trying to determine what the best chance of survival is, and a sci-fi pipe dream has piss-poor odds. That being said, I don't condone killing anyone. I offered the killer pandemic scenario as an option that a government might consider, and if they do, well, your assault rifle isn't going to help you.

Of the three, I'll go with tech, personally. Waiting for human beings to wake up some day and align themselves -globally- to your ideas of what constitutes well reasoned or well educated (and specifically with regards to this issue) is akin to waiting for it to rain gumdrops. The day our state forces sterilization or summary executions of "surplus" personnel is the day I dust off my assault rifle (wait...wait....I think we've found a solution, a violent and bloody insurgency against a state that wishes to enforce population controls may just do the trick...and we might even be offing exactly the sorts of people that need to be offed- BONUS!). Again though, things like this in first world countries won't do much, because we already have a very low number of children on average, so I guess I'd need to buy a plane ticket and re-familiarize myself with shithole-ese.

I'm amazed that simply asking someone not to have children in order to insure survival of an entire species engages such a hostile reaction from you. As if children are some god-given right. Even if only the majority understand and comply for a few generations, it might be enough to keep from mandating sterilization - which I've already said I'm against. If the minority, the religious fundy hold-outs and those that simply do not seem to comprehend the importance of not overrunning our planet with people, refuse to stop making babies, we may still be able to thin the herd enough to significantly reduce our need for fossil fuels, water, food, and all the other resources we require.

or I can pretend that we're Battlestar Galactica and cold fusion is scientific fact rather than a theoretical long-shot.
Lets fix problems that are fixable. Use our superior intellect and forgo having children for a bit. Difficult yes, but not anywhere NEAR as difficult as distant planets, light speed, worm holes and all manner of things cooked up by Gene Roddenberry.

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time to vote for newt in 2016!!
let's get those moon colonies going.

yeah, lol, so we can spend billions to send food and water to a rock that has not a single natural resource.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm amazed that simply asking someone not to have children in order to insure survival of an entire species engages such a hostile reaction from you. As if children are some god-given right. Even if only the majority understand and comply for a few generations, it might be enough to keep from mandating sterilization - which I've already said I'm against. If the minority, the religious fundy hold-outs and those that simply do not seem to comprehend the importance of not overrunning our planet with people, refuse to stop making babies, we may still be able to thin the herd enough to significantly reduce our need for fossil fuels, water, food, and all the other resources we require.

or I can pretend that we're Battlestar Galactica and cold fusion is scientific fact rather than a theoretical long-shot.
Lets fix problems that are fixable. Use our superior intellect and forgo having children for a bit. Difficult yes, but not anywhere NEAR as difficult as distant planets, light speed, worm holes and all manner of things cooked up by Gene Roddenberry.

It doesn't. Asking people not to have children -in order to insure the survival of our species- gets a polite LOL and a "No thanks, I'm not interested in what you're selling". I've simply decided to take it further. Asking clearly doesn't work that well. We could ask all of the folks in prisons to stop committing crimes, but I don't think that would help much. That's a much easier argument to make, "don't shoot that guy because" as opposed to "don't have children because" and yet we don't seem to be able to pull that off.

At the core of this our opinions on the matter probably aren't that different. At some point, given enough people, this finite planet with it's finite amount of resources will be unsuitable for further growth. Now, my hostility towards the notion doesn't arise from this, not in the least. What gets my goat is the willingness to propose population controls before we have exhausted all other options, or "praying for a pandemic". I've repeatedly expressed my opinion on this matter. Those of us who have 1 child on average per family consume resources at a greater rate and quantity than those of us who have 10. There is a uniform and well demonstrated relationship between development and prosperity and smaller family sizes, even with immigrant populations. If those of us who already engage in unintentional population control work curb our rates of consumption, and we help to spread this prosperity to others then we would be looking at a decidedly different scenario.

As it stands it's a bunch of people with all the benefits of citizenship in developed nations (including those benefits gleaned from the backs of undeveloped nations) gorging themselves on the resources available while telling those poor fuckers over there that they shouldn't be having any more children because the earth can't take the strain. What population control would amount to in the current scenario is a campaign of purging the poor orchestrated and carried out by the wealthy, plain and simple. All of this while ignoring that population control as practiced unintentionally by developed nations does not seem to be helping. Clearly some other requirements need to be met before population control can even be workable as a solution, and the question I keep asking is that if these requirements where met, wouldn't we be looking at different numbers? Maybe we could stay the execution, at least for a time. There's no shame in stalling when the solutions you feel that you have available to you at endgame are all different shades of terrible.

I know, I know, you just want to ask people to stop having kids. I'm going to repeat myself again, that probably won't work (and you don't actually have to do that in developed/developing nations -we're already doing it). If you want this to work it has to be policy, it has be law, and it has to be enforced. Now we've opened a can of worms. Who writes this policy, who decides who does and does not have children? Who enforces this, how do they enforce this? What sorts of oversights are we going to establish (or what sorts of oversights can we imagine) to prevent people from gaming the system, to curb corruption and inequity. Finally....suppose we pull it off, and we get our pandemic anyhow, we get our impact event anyhow, we get climate-apocalypse anyhow. What have we done?

I really don't see any benefit to population control at this point. None. I don't see anyone who has a workable argument to sell it with. Now, it probably won't be that way forever. I'm an optimist, I like to think that someday we'll handle our shit, so to speak, and whether or not John and Jane have a kid will become the most pressing environmental concern we have to deal with. If/when we rech that point than the options on the table and our relative perception of the issue is likely to be vastly different from what it is now. I don't think we're there yet, and honestly, I think we have damned long way to go till we get there if we do anything about it at all.

Why would it surprise you that I would rather plug the holes in the boat first and stall for time hoping that someone has a better idea than to start pitching my fellow castaways overboard in the here and now? What am I supposed to say? "I'm sorry, but since there are only ten slices of cake aboard this ship, and my single child eats 9 slices to your ten children's 1, there just isn't any more room for you and yours here"? I refuse to consider this as a solution at all. Don't get me wrong, I'd probably pitch somebody overboard in practice if it was my kid or theirs, but I wouldn't argue that it was the right thing to do, or pretend that I'm just trying to "save the world". Keep in mind here, that this scenario is an easy one, the metrics are solid (mine or his -definitively) and I still don't think I;d have an argument.

[Shell B]

Well, ignoring this spat

Saying you are ignoring something is quite the opposite of actually ignoring something.

I think, ultimately, what this world needs is a predator that is a match for man. It's not customary to think in these terms, but a virus, bacteria, self-destructive set of memes, famine or other deadly shortage would probably be the most expeditious.

We have these. They do an okay job of curtailing population growth, but we are a global species. I do agree, though. These are exactly what will keep our population in check, if they spread far enough. That means, they have to happen in places where people travel globally. The Spanish Flu worked because it hit soldiers from around the world.

If the phenotype of the psychopath is largely genetically caused, perhaps a race of psychopaths. There's also a few possibilities that are hard to predict. We may have sufficient knowledge of genes or brains within the relevant window to redesign humanity to rectify the problem. Unlikely that such would be expeditiously implemented, but perhaps if the re-engineered human also doubled as a predator, it might work.

*whistles and walks away quickly*

[Cinjin]

Rhythm, a fair argument for the most part. That is to say with exception to your closer: There's a pretty substantial difference between throwing a child off the boat and simply demanding that the sailors stop making more of them.

That being said, I will digress, as you have explained your point sufficiently. I think the next 15 years of human history will be very telling. Perhaps we'll find a solution. Perhaps we won't.

[Violet]

Slightly amused at how much my view on this has changed since I was 14 XD From 'exterminate them all' to 'don't panic' and all the way down to 'If it happens, adapt. Still don't panic.'

I desire six kids, I do... and if I was fish you couldn't stop me from having most of them. Instead, I get to adopt them all... my plus one's talked me down to 3, but I'll be damned if I don't still yearn for more. Being poor and working 2 jobs and a partial in a city slum? Totally worth it. Being absolutely destitute in Alaska and doing my best to live off the land? I'd enjoy that a good bit. We'd certainly never run out of firewood and various meats.

But I'll adjust to whatever. It's not so much where and how I live, it's that I am surviving and doing my best according to the territory. Children are an amazing potential investment, when you're old and spent, they will sometimes keep you around. With more children: you've got a higher chance that one of them will help provide for you after you've lost the ability to provide adequately for yourself. Entirely off of that, poor people should have as many children as possible... in vein of probable prosperity; after all: you probably don't want your *one* child to be a tremendous failure.

We'll get to space eventually, even if it's off the backs of billions of corpses. Starvation, epidemics, wars... all of that'll happen to keep our population 'manageable' (a 'meager' million humans is still a fantastic population). We will probably not be going extinct anytime soon, and frankly: every child born (especially in developed countries!) stands a chance of being a scientist partially responsible for bringing us to the space scene. In the meantime, why not capitalize upon our current 'good fortune' and further emphasize the technological development of our species? I don't see us losing any ground, new knowledge about our world is constantly coming up, and new technology follows in adapting to said familiarity.

There is no Library of Alexandria to burn, our technology level is following a growth more incredible than our population's by far. We're pretty freaking amazing, and even in the case that most of us die on the way: our progress is far from lost.