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The distinction between the two scenarios is the original, theoretical scenario did not foresee the negative feedback loops that actually occurred. It's a pretty glaring miss when you're trying to make predictions.

This is why I was always skeptical of dystopias that depend on overpopulation. If life is so miserable why would people continue to have so many children?

“life is so miserable” and yet “so many children” was basically most of human history

This was well before birth control became widespread. When you can decouple the fun part from the responsibility that comes with it, you do so. Hence, why the fertility rate has been falling below replacement around the developed world.

Infant and child mortality was very high. Empirically the high birth rate did not always lead to overpopulation - overpopulation waxed and waned despite the persistently high birth rate.

The sci-fi dystopias about overpopulation never really come up with a mechanism by which the birth rate remains high despite low infant and child mortality and low economic need for human labor. It always seems to boil down to "people are controlled by irrational instincts".

There's an old cemetery in Redwood City. Very roughly speaking it was active for about 100 years between 1850 and 1950.

There are multiple grave markers listing children that died under the age of 10. Like a family had a 4 year old die, then had a baby 2 years later and then 3 years later buried that baby in the same grave as their older sibling.

>If life is so miserable why would people continue to have so many children?

This right here is why I'm child free.

First, My own upbringing did nothing to equip me to properly raise a child. I simply cannot trust myself to do a good job.

Second, why would I bring a child into a world where each year will only be worst than the last, and their lot in life is to suffer the decline of the natural world and perhaps civilization as we know it until they themselves have to make the same choice? I'm sure someday the future will look brighter but it sure as heck isn't today, or any time in the next 50 years.

> First, My own upbringing did nothing to equip me to properly raise a child. I simply cannot trust myself to do a good job.

With this realisation alone you might be in the top percentiles of the population.

> I'm sure someday the future will look brighter but it sure as heck isn't today, or any time in the next 50 years.

And yet it still might be better than at least 99.98% of human history (50 out of 300k+ years).

Isn't this the exact premise of the movie Idiocracy?

Don't worry, I'm one of the idiots.

> the original, theoretical scenario did not foresee the negative feedback loops that actually occurred

Several of those feedback loops came from people seeing the theoretical scenario and the evidence for it mounting. Like literally the phrase "if we don't do something - this will happen" is the rallying cry. It's silly to say it was an oversight in the model that shows that things need to be done.

> If life is so miserable why would people continue to have so many children?

Something humans like to do to escape misery is: sex.

LtG summary from the intro:

> 1. If the present growth trends... continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years...

> 2. It is possible to alter these growth trends...

> 3. If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success

Far from "missing the negative feedback loops", I think that amplifying that feedback was the whole point.

Also, we're only halfway through the original period, so it seems premature to declare victory.

It might be more like the "dark ages". The people got along we don't know what they were doing but the result was the "renaissance".

The growth in power of megacorporations has been coined a new type of feudalism, so dark ages might not be a bad description.

They were called such due to the decline of written material: the written record went "dark" compared to antiquity and then modernity.

Definitely in another dark age in that sense, due to the postmodern decline of meaningful written communication on paper.

That is what I see. The amount of disposable content has made actual information hard to see.

I've been playing Fortnite almost every night for 5+ years because it is more interesting than doomscrolling on my phone!

> The world is still trending toward a dystopian hellscape, but the dystopian hellscape is not a barren planet where nothing grows and we've stripped everything bare, it's a dystopian hellscape of everybody glued to their device and ignoring social interaction or family formation because Fortnite is more interesting.

Even though your statement is meant to be evocative, as opposed to factually descriptive, it sure feels to me like it captures the zeitgeist.

Which is... disappointing, upsetting, sad.

I suspect that, like me, you hope you're wrong.