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Comment by chromaton | Hacker News Reader

More people means more geniuses who can help fix what's wrong.

There is a much better way to have more geniuses: Increased access to education worldwide. 10% of adults worldwide still can't read (probably around 500M people), and 60% did not go further than secondary education.

This has the big advantage of not just increasing the raw number of "geniuses" but also the ratio of geniuses.

This is also good. And also having more of a network effect for people to interact and cooperate helps as well.

Not sure if this is a serious statement.

More people most of all means more people who can and necessarily will break things, which are very hard to repair. Like climate stuff. The chance of having some super geniuses, that we would otherwise have missed out on, who then repair a broken climate is ... vanishingly small.

I understand that you're pessimistic about this, but overall the human condition has gotten better as the population has grown.

Situation of an individual is a very short term view. We are living on credit here and while it seems, that the conditions have become better, we are utterly unprepared for the backlash, which will happen, if we continue down this path.

I am more looking at the long term effects here, because I care about future generations too.

Another problem with your view is, that you are totally disregarding other species on planet Earth, which are going extinct or become endangered species in this very moment, in which we enjoy that our "condition is better than ever".

Yes, humans are #1 in my book. But consider that as technology advances we have less need to disturb the natural environment.

I don't think we're living on credit forever as productivity/technology has improved over time.

Your second point is irrelevant. Biodiversity is not an intrinsic good.

Might be more accurate to say that population has grown since living conditions have gotten better.

Maybe. Can you provide an example?

In the same vein: more idiots that screw up everything.

Productivity of geniuses seems to exceed the ability of idiots to screw things up so far.

We've been generally on positive trend.

Conversely fewer people means fewer problems to solve...

We have emission targets to return to year 2000 or year 1980s levels.

We can have similar targets for pops: 1900s or 1960s, before we had fast doublings of populations, obviously through natural reduction rather than forced.

Maybe. Problems on a global scale would be divided up among fewer people, which would mean that each person would bear a greater burden.

We don’t need more geniuses. We need take power away from psychopaths who run the world.

You can have both.

Who will build the systems that are psychopath-resistant if not for people who have seen things as they are meant to be?

Indigenous people learned how to deal with psychopaths. Our culture lacks the safeguards against greed and antisocial behavior. In fact, we encourage those disorders, for the sake of “progress”.

https://aeon.co/essays/why-inequality-bothers-people-more-th...

I really question your fractional population 'genius' model.

Can you provide a counterexample, hypothesis, or anything concrete?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...

(note of course I dont agree with everything said here)

Of course we must also build an environment where everyone can flourish. Not mutually exclusive.

Ya but what im saying is that in the future you could a population way smaller with way more 'genius' or just general smart people.

The datapoint I linked to above would be completely impossible in a %P genius model.

Yes, having a smarter population is likely a good thing and almost certainly possible.

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