Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:04 am Post subject:
linlithgowoil wrote:
MonteQuest wrote:
You go to front of the "first to go" list. Sometimes I thinking "culling the herd" will be easy.
Obvious humor aside, technology is what caused us to exceed our limits so soon. Didn't you read the Tragedy of the Commons? There are no techno-fixes for this
You obviously have something against the human race if you refer to it as a herd and think it needs to be culled. I suppose you think you should be the guy chosing who dies then eh? And obviously you wouldn't be one of the unlucky ones who have to die .... thought so.
He might have been joking, since he said so. But I'm not.
When quantity must go, save quality. If disaster must come, then turn it as much as possible to advantage. Who lives needn't be so much decided as discovered -- in the same manner that the winner of an honest sporting event is discovered, and not decided beforehand.
Let there be "Olympics," of mind and character, as well as body. Let's see who is the most superior of intelligence, of ability to function in danger/while hurt/under pressure, of sensory acuity, strength, speed and muscle coordination. And of basic morals. The top 10% of humanity will be found by competition, and they might earn with their victories a place in the Lifeboat. The losers shall stay in the old William Brown.
Because of the way heredity works, quality can replicate any desired quantity faster than the reverse, and so when one must be sacrificed to save the other, jettison quantity, keep quality, and the race will profit.
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 9:06 am Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
gg3 wrote:
Meanwhile, back to "freedom to breed."
Determine the sustainable population for Earth and the number of years at most before that level must be reached in order to avoid tipping the planet into more than a +2 Celsius scenario. [check]
Subtract that number from the current 6.5 billion, to arrive at the population decrease needed. [check]
Calculate, based on likely death rates, the maximum number of births per year that will meet the goal. [check]
Divide births by households, to arrive at the permissible number of babies [per household] per year. [ch... uh, NO!]
Ration the babies via a lottery in each locale. [NO!]
You win the lottery, you get to make a baby. [NO!] You can keep entering until you win, and then you're not eligible to re-enter the lottery for some number of years thereafter.
Problem solved. [More like: Opportunity wasted.]
If only humans were quite so rational... [Sarcastic retort withheld]
When quantity must go, save quality. Do not apportion births by lottery; apportion them by merit, as measured by competitive challenges. You want the best people to breed, so that the humanity of the future will be smarter, stronger, healthier, better coordinated, and better behaved than was the humanity of the past. Heredity has at least some influence on all these attributes, and quality can regenerate quantity if it becomes necessary or advantageous to increase the population later.
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 9:59 am Post subject:
Wildwell wrote:
The reason I mention immigration is because that’s where the rise in population is mostly coming from in the west. If you argue that we must limit population growth, we must also limit immigration. You cannot say to the indigenous population you cannot have children, but we’ll still allow people into the country.
Correct so far.
Wildwell wrote:
Now, the point is that has political consequences and immigration is needed to maintain growth for pensions (investments require growth) and so on. So no pensions, means people will have to start looking after their elderly relatives again, not shipping them off to some home or letting the state look after them. That has serious ramifications for the way people live now, with both parents working and the population being so dispersed.
Look for lower-cost care. Such as a babysitter. Make sure he/she is someone you can trust with your frail old Ma or Pa. There are such as will work for little money because they have nothing better to do.
Wildwell wrote:
The population question is a red hering. The vast majority of the world’s population use little or no fossil fuel energy. It’s far more sensible to look at the energy intensive activities of people in the west, and I’m afraid that comes down to personal transport and aviation as well as trading blocks, globalisation and so on. As for the third world, they should start by using renewable energy and not make the mistakes the west has.
Although the West must power down, it isn't true that the Third World uses "little or no fossil fuel energy." Everyone who eats, except those who eat only wild and homegrown organic foods, cultivated with hand-tools by farmers with the same dietary restriction, uses fossil fuel energy. The Green Revolution was all about using fossil fuels for tractor fuel and fertilizers. It will be reversed as fossil fuel supplies decline. More fossil fuels are used to transport foods across oceans and across land to the people who end up buying and eating it.
South Africa and Rhodesia used to feed Africa. Now the USA and Argentina do. Soon China will outbid everyone else for food on the global market, and Africa will starve. Subsequently, shortages of food in the countries that once supplied it to the global markets will force them to stop doing so, and China will starve - though it might try a conquest of the countries to its south, west, and northwest, to steal their food and farmland.
Last edited by Jenab6 on Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:24 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:17 am Post subject:
EnergySpin wrote:
Wildwell If you want to talk about immigration by all means start the conversation yourself. I chose not to talk about immigration because securing infrastructure world wide will require people to move from the West to the developed world and probably vice versa. We are in this together. Permit me to have a more liberal view on this subject ...
We are "in this together" in the sense that we are on the same planet and must draw on the same pool of global resources to sustain our existence. But that doesn't mean that everybody has the same access to those resources. Access varies. It must. That is how it should be. Fairness isn't a moral imperative; it is a moral luxury that we can no longer afford. The result of apportioning resources in "equal shares" (e.g., of calories), if that could even be done, would only result in everyone starving, fairly, together.
Think of Earth as a sinking ship with too few lifeboats to get everyone away. An attempt to save all will kill all when the overcrowded lifeboats sink, too. So some must die. When quantity cannot be sustained, preserve quality, or at least try to do the best you can in that regard.
Joined: Oct 04, 2007 Posts: 213 Location: North-East USA
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:33 am Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
lmao 5 posts in a row
you love this thread more than i do
basically what i got from all your posts is
"quality > quantity"
yes, that is the very simple concept that everyone nods their heads in agreement to and then goes and impregnates their wife
its simple in theory but extremely messy to implement, which is why in the end i believe only nature is going to have the cojones to get the job done
breeding for 'quality' you referred to is Eugenics and has been practiced by tribal societies since time immemorial, some people seem to think that eugenics is a new concept, it is not, some of the most successful (in terms of population fitness) tribes have practiced it, including Spartans who basically copied the idea and applied it to an agricultural society to great effect; the Nazis adopted it from the US
however i consider our 'quantity' so high that any breeding at all, no matter how quality, should not be taking place right now; once the population evens out ( at about 50mil /world ) that would certainly be a viable practice _________________ Tyler_JC:
"I love how every conversation on this website, given enough time, will turn into a discussion of cannibalism."
““Life is on the wire…the rest is just waiting””
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:18 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
Doom! Despair! And agony on them.
Deep, dark depression at Mother Nature's whim.
If it weren't for bad luck, they'd have no luck at all.
Doom! Despair! And agony on them.
A lot of pretty smart people leave the logic of population increase incomplete. We evolved in the pre-technological past, where wars were won by big armies composed of men with swords or clubs. The day will again come when wars will be won by big armies composed of men with swords or clubs.
Nations that have big populations can field bigger armies than those that have only small populations. A nation that attempts to behave in an ecologically responsible manner by curtailing its breeding will acquire the weakness of being at a military (numerical) disadvantage. Some faster-breeding nation will notice that weakness, and will attack, and will win, and will destroy the "responsible" nation.
Attempting to limit or reverse population growth will result in the biological elimination of any good intentions to deal responsibly with population size. Opportunities for conquest by irresponsible warlike neighbor nations will impose an inevitable tragedy in the commons for any other nation who is so foolishly "responsible."
The same thing applies at the individual level. Even if there were no aggressive, overpopulated foreign nations to guard against, the plain fact is that some people will heed calls to limit their breeding, but other people won't. The responsible people who limit their breeding will become extinct. The selfish people who kept on making babies will emerge as their replacement, the new human type. Social responsibility in breeding is thus culled out of the population.
The only means of population control that does not defeat itself is warfare, carried out in a non-technological era, by men armed with swords and clubs. More often than not, the survivors of such a war are the men with the greatest strength and agility and with the most stamina and tactical cleverness. These are heritable virtues. War, absent technology, not only reduces population, it also improves the human breed.
This is not to say that the smart people are wrong about the necessity of global population reduction. I'm only pointing out that an attempt to achieve that reduction will defeat itself if it is based on behavior that is conventionally regarded as "responsible."
As desirable as it might be to reduce the world's population voluntarily, so that nature doesn't reduce it much more traumatically, the simple fact is that any nation that reduces its numbers, ahead of the global population crash, will become numerically inferior to neighbors who did not likewise reduce.
Those neighbor states will have more people, hence more infantry, and their leaders might choose to implement its own population reduction by sending lots of soldiers into the birth-control-practicing country to take it over and exterminate the birth-control-practicers, if they can.
On the other hand, if the invasion fails because the defender used Mighty Big Technology, then the numerous country can always replace their losses in a few years, if they choose to, and attack the Zippigees again.
Some people speak of a "demographic transition," in which countries have reduced their populations without recourse to war. Of course, this remains (as yet) an era of high-technology, and, while that era lasts, technology can supplant the need for a large population from which large armies can be mobilized. But once the energy is gone, the technology won't work, and political power will swing immediately to the heavily populated countries with the big armies. It seems logical that leaders with big armies will see any plums that are ripe for plucking, and rich countries that made the "demographic transition," but which are no longer guarded by technology, will be among the very ripest.
Most of us have no difficulty understanding the principles of natural selection. The traits of behavior, as much as those of mind and physique, are selected on the basis of what survives. Voluntary attempts to reduce the population are carried out by people who produce fewer children. Meanwhile, the "irresponsible ones," the thoughtless breeders, produce a disproportionately large fraction of the next generation. Over time, the capacity for feeling responsible, at least in regard to self-restraint in breeding, is culled out of the population.
Understanding this is easy as long as we look at this tree and that tree and this tree and that tree and this tree and that tree and this tree and that tree and... All I've done is deal with the forests (nations) as the sum of all their trees (individual members).
To be sure, developed nations can, at present, reduce their numbers. But as they do, aliens will encroach upon their lands from elsewhere, and the only change will be resource transfers from the downsizing group to the invading group. If the invaders are confident, they might challenge the Zippigees (Zero Population Growth birth control practicers) with overt military attacks. Otherwise, they will invade more furtively, using pretexts and propaganda to hide their longterm intentions.
So, voluntary efforts at population control (birth control, celibacy) do not work because natural selection favors the non-participants.
Technological wars kill off the best people for the same reason that one bulldozer can out-shovel the strongest human diggers. Fossil fuels enable the lesser men to kill the greater ones, provided that they control the technology that transforms fossil fuel energy into mass destruction. That's one of the things that happens when the measure of man moves from the genes to the bank accounts.
So, need I repeat?
The only means of population control that does not defeat itself is warfare, carried out in a non-technological era, by men armed with swords and clubs.
Last edited by Jenab6 on Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:30 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:24 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
I thought that I'd read something along the lines of the idea that voluntary population reduction programs select against the inclination to volunteer. It was in Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons" and in his 1977 essay, "Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity."
Hardin (1968): Conscience is self-eliminating. It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience. Charles Galton Darwin made this point when he spoke on the centennial of the publication of his grandfather's great book. The argument is straightforward and Darwinian.
Hardin (1968): People vary. Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some people will undoubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The differences will be accentuated, generation by generation.
Hardin (1968): In C. G. Darwin's words: "It may well be that it would take hundreds of generations for the progenitive instinct to develop in this way, but if it should do so, nature would have taken her revenge, and the variety Homo contracipiens would become extinct and would be replaced by the variety Homo progenitivus.
Hardin (1977): For more than three centuries intellectual and emotional fashions have increasingly veered toward the global outlook. Our thoughts have been significantly molded by John Donne's "No man is an island . . ." and Karl Marx's ". . . to each according to his needs." The thoughts engendered by these banners are generous thoughts, whereas speaking of local responsibility for local environments seems to many to be a miserly and selfish way of looking at the world's problems. There are a thousand to praise generosity for every one who has a kind word to say for selfishness. Yet biology clearly tells us that survival requires a respect for carrying capacity, and points to the utility of territorial behavior in protecting the environment and insuring the survival of populations. Surely posterity matters. Surely there's something to be said for selfishness.
Joined: Oct 04, 2007 Posts: 213 Location: North-East USA
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:59 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
Jenab6 wrote:
[align=center]
A lot of pretty smart people leave the logic of population increase incomplete. We evolved in the pre-technological past, where wars were won by big armies composed of men with swords or clubs. The day will again come when wars will be won by big armies composed of men with swords or clubs.
Nations that have big populations can field bigger armies than those that have only small populations. A nation that attempts to behave in an ecologically responsible manner by curtailing its breeding will acquire the weakness of being at a military (numerical) disadvantage. Some faster-breeding nation will notice that weakness, and will attack, and will win, and will destroy the "responsible" nation.
no, we evolved in small tribes that constantly fought each other in SMALL SKIRMISHES, hundreds of thousands of years before big armies and nations even existed (big armies are largely a product of civilization (pastoralism or agriculture); also swords are an entirely modern weapon (its hard to manufacture and in efficiency much worse than a spear for the average untrained user)
as for thinking that large numbers are militarily superior is a folly; quality of warriors > quantity; hordes of peasants will not defeat a regiment of professional soldiers practicing guerilla tactics; this is why nations throughout history often could not defeat nomadic and tribal peoples using vastly superior quantities of troops and vastly superior technology; one example i can think of since i was just reading about it is russian conquest of the Caucacus, which is depending on how you look at it going on for more than 2 centuries now, but in the 19th century Russia could not take them for DECADES with over 10x the troop numbers and vast superiority in technology
your also assuming that the concept of 'nations' will survive in a post-peak dieoff; i for one am not so optimistic; in order to survive as a nation in a post-peak world a large chunk of the population is going to have to be put to labor in the agricultural sector, and not the clean kind of work either, i dont see that happening, its much more likely for massive wars and revolutions to break out than for people to put down their laptops and PDAs and go till the fields
never forget that civilization and nations are 10 thousand years old AT BEST, while our brains are evolutionary speaking much much older; agriculture is not sustainable in the long term and leads to overpopulation for the reasons you mentioned, which means sooner or later we're going to abandon it as radical as that sounds and go back to hunting/ scavenging/ pastoralism, most likely as a series of wars and starvation/disease outbreaks
we think like paleo man, and in time of great crisis we ALWAYS resort to tribal methods, the bonds of nations, religion and other large-scale constructs break down almost immediately because they are artificial creations and take large amounts of energy to simply maintain in existence _________________ Tyler_JC:
"I love how every conversation on this website, given enough time, will turn into a discussion of cannibalism."
““Life is on the wire…the rest is just waiting””
Last edited by anarky321 on Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:05 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
Jenab6, you're ignoring the war of memes. Give food to people with random genes; as long as the memes that they think are the ones that I consider more worthy. So yes, the "only" population control that works is war, but one of memes. You're actually on the loosing end, because of your tribalistic and inferior intentionality with regards to human population control. _________________ anagami.net
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12582 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
anarky321 wrote:
no, we evolved in small tribes that constantly fought each other in SMALL SKIRMISHES, hundreds of thousands of years before big armies and nations even existed (big armies are largely a product of civilization (pastoralism or agriculture);
I agree (except about the "constantly" part). Skirmishes were fought periodically to reestablish territorial boundaries. Several (possibly many, but several we know of) tribes developed territorial disputes which were mostly symbolic (the Plains tribes are the best known example). These symbolic fights were still tough, and a lot of folks probably got pretty badly hurt during them, but we don't need to hold onto the idea that non-civilized people were constantly running around hitting each other over the head with clubs. That's just not an efficient use of resources or a practical way of life.
Populations were also limited through such less glamorous means as abortion and infanticide. _________________ No original ideas are contained in this post.
Joined: Oct 04, 2007 Posts: 213 Location: North-East USA
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:37 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
i disagree with you on tribal warfare
i firmly believe that it was very low intensity but almost CONSTANT warfare between neighboring tribes
not only as a method of reducing population burden (much more preferable to kill the other tribe than kill your own), but also as a right of passage for males (did i mention its great entertainment especially when there is no electricity, no tv, no video games, no sports, your only options for excitement are sex, war and hunting/gathering/scavenging), you can only have so much hunting and sex....but the search for entertainment is endless
we are a violence-loving species; today we are repressed by effective law enforcement, lack of reasons to fight and other outlets for our inherent violence (contact sports, video games, etc.), but when you have small groups living near each other that directly compete for food with little to do for entertainment the males (and not surprisingly females also) in the society quickly resort to violence, especially since murder of other tribes was glorified and encouraged (good times)
as for infanticide, i came up with several interesting conclusions; not only was the male-female ration skewed severely, but it was skewed something like 2-1 (i believe even more); one interesting point this brings up is female competition for males, which i believe was nonexistent in pre-history (which would explain the reason women are so competitive, cruel and spiteful with other women when it comes to mates they have to compete for)
ill save my theories on polygamy for another post ...i have a rant on monogamy about 10 pages long stored up in my head
where are my sources to back this up? i dont have any, but tribal groups would favor high male-female ratios, even more so than agricultural societies, and with monogamy and marriage absent in early tribes (as in paleolithic and earlier) this would make a very very efficient tribal structure
no female-female competition for mates (polygamy + highly skewed male/female ratio), no male-male competition for mates (polygamy + captive females from other tribes), high numbers of males for warfare, small numbers of females are a natural form of birth control (one woman can only squeeze one, maybe 2 out in a year)
add in eugenics in the form of only fit and war-proven tribe members being allowed to breed and you have one VERY efficient structure for a tribal society
any tribal abortion recipes you care to share?
also, does anyone get a "no posts on this page" message on the last page of the thread? its really annoying _________________ Tyler_JC:
"I love how every conversation on this website, given enough time, will turn into a discussion of cannibalism."
““Life is on the wire…the rest is just waiting””
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:11 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
Jenab6 wrote:
Nations that have big populations can field bigger armies than those that have only small populations. A nation that attempts to behave in an ecologically responsible manner by curtailing its breeding will acquire the weakness of being at a military (numerical) disadvantage. Some faster-breeding nation will notice that weakness, and will attack, and will win, and will destroy the "responsible" nation.
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:34 pm Post subject: Re: The Freedom to Breed
Ludi wrote:
anarky321 wrote:
no, we evolved in small tribes that constantly fought each other in SMALL SKIRMISHES, hundreds of thousands of years before big armies and nations even existed (big armies are largely a product of civilization (pastoralism or agriculture);
I agree (except about the "constantly" part). Skirmishes were fought periodically to reestablish territorial boundaries. Several (possibly many, but several we know of) tribes developed territorial disputes which were mostly symbolic (the Plains tribes are the best known example). These symbolic fights were still tough, and a lot of folks probably got pretty badly hurt during them, but we don't need to hold onto the idea that non-civilized people were constantly running around hitting each other over the head with clubs. That's just not an efficient use of resources or a practical way of life.
Populations were also limited through such less glamorous means as abortion and infanticide.
I might not have been clear on one point. My focus for much of what I wrote concerned the period just preceding and during the die-off. There will be nations that reduced their populations well ahead of this period, and there will be nations that did not. The nations that reduced their populations - underwent the "demographic transition" - will be those that depended on technology to manage their defense for them. The nations that did not reduce will be those with abundant reserve manpower either for farming or for infantry.
Where the reserve manpower is far in excess of that which can be productively used as labor because some other resource is causing a bottleneck in production, such as aquifers gone dry, these human reserves place a strain on their home economy, and it would seem logical to their leaders to shape them into an army and send them off against some much smaller country whose defense technology now does not work for want of energy. The leaders can promise their soldiers that they will have first claim on any farmland they conquer. That's one way in which a populous country might manage its downsizing: sending armies every which way to conquer if they can, and no big deal if they fail, since another army can be assembled for another try.
Once the die-off has run its course, whichever humans remain will go back to tribal skirmishes for the reasons you and others have mentioned, with swords if they have them, with clubs if they don't have swords.
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...i have a rant on monogamy about 10 pages long stored up in my head
