Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoofusOfDeath | Hacker News Reader

It may be unpopular, but I agree 100%.

I don't want people to suffer unnecessarily. But the more people we add to the planet, the more we exacerbate problems with food, water, Co2 emissions, etc.

In the end, something will curtail human population growth. I really hope it's voluntary and painless.

View on HN

Exactly, let it be our educated decision not starvation, senseless wars and poverty. And the more the human population rose it took into other populations, it led to numerous extinctions, etc

I hope the trend stays like this. It’s not like there are 1000 people left, there are still billions extra

Following this logic (and ignoring the increase of suffering as a raw product of addition) it's totally possible there'd be less suffering if we stayed in loosely connected hunter-gatherer societies.

Following this logic further, we might be best off if we reduced the population to a single person whose ideal, perfectly happy life is that of a hermit.

Philosophers have given this a lot of thought: the "repugnant conclusion" is what to Google for.

Maybe, but we didnt, so here we are and I don’t see any megafauna to hunt near me. In the future we may wish to think more about our changes.

Most of the United States is unpopulated. We can easily double our population and be fine.

That's not the bottleneck. At present consumption levels, doubling the population of the United States would be disastrous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com