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Comment by gepi79 | Hacker News Reader

IMO the problem today is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation.

I can not imagine that lack of babies could ever become a problem for humanity until humans decide to build humans so that the "natural human species" dies out.

The solution for the aging population:

- Automation.

- Biochemical solutions and genetic engineering to remain/become capable. Replacement of natural body parts by machine body parts.

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> IMO the problem today is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation.

Worrying about overpopulation is short-sighted. Also, no matter what kind of problems overpopulation brings, it's hard to imagine how that could lead to extinction, which is what we were discussing.

Overpopulation is a problem right now. I mentioned overpopulation as reply to the fear of too few babies.

I hope that poverty and the culture to have as many children as possible will not exist anymore after 2030 CE.

I would view the comfortable lives of humans in the developed world as a very peculiar circumstance, not as something which will persist as the norm. Life expands to consume all available resources. Humans are part of the lineage that we call life. That we are poorly adapted to modern life is just a temporary state of affairs. Though many people are opting out of large families, not all are. And the people who aren't are the future of the species.

Overpopulation is frequently the cause of steep popuation decline (90+%) in ecology due to input resource depletion and the building of toxins that are the end products of that species metabolism.

Pollution and resource scarcity are the obvious limits that can send population numbers off a cliff.

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