Hacker News Reader

Comment by tbrownaw | Hacker News Reader

> People are destructive to the planet in every way possible,

Are we already on track to cause our planet to no longer be a planet?

> It's not as if we'll solve the mysteries of existence twice as fast by having twice as many people

Imagine if the people at ASML (or your favorite other one-of-a-kind cutting edge place) had twice as many hours in their days. Or alternatively, if there were twice as many of them. Shouldn't that make them able to do more cool things?

View on HN

You conveniently ignored the part where I noted that having double the consequential pollution will halve the speed of discovery. And yes, the pollution will double because more humans means more pollution that accumulates without getting recycled. Plastics, PFAS, CO2, etc. are all examples of pollutants that do not get recycled. It harms brains, aging them prematurely. A cleaner environment without strong financial pressure for survival is a much better way to do more cool things. Once the CO2 exceeds 800 ppm, brains will be tired all of the time, too tired to invent anything cool.

> You conveniently ignored the part where I noted that having double the consequential pollution will halve the speed of discovery.

You claimed it, without evidence, without even argument.

Given that history (as I read it) does not support your statement, and you didn't support it either, why shouldn't we ignore it?

Have you traveled to third world countries with very high population densities? Have you breathed the air on their streets? Travel to China, India, parts of the Middle East, other parts of Asia, and realize just how foul the air there is to breathe. That's what you want for the US? The evidence is already strong that plastics, PFAS, and CO2 are not recycled; they just keep piling on in the environment and in the human body. You can literally smell plastic burning in the air in those countries and regions, and the immune system reacts very strongly to it in a negative way. Developing anything cool will be the last thing on the mind at that time.

> Travel to China, India, parts of the Middle East, other parts of Asia, and realize just how foul the air there is to breathe. That's what you want for the US?

I'll go out on a limb and predict that their answer to that would be "no". I don't think you're assuming good faith here.

I am assuming bad faith for a good reason, which is that the parent comment failed to acknowledge the obvious, which is that the listed pollutants keep accumulating in the environment, proportional to the number of people that exist. In fact, the parent comment even rejected this established knowledge, thereby proving its bad faith.

You are assuming bad faith because you are reading things into my words that are not there.

I do not deny that (some) pollutants accumulate. I also do not deny that pollution is quite bad in some places.

I am specifically questioning your claim that doubling pollution would specifically halve the rate of innovation. I was pointing out that you have not supported that statement. You claimed it twice, you still haven't supported it, and I'm pretty sure that you can't support it.

Stop trying to read into my statement wild claims that aren't there. Can you support your claim?

Yes, microplastics accumulate in the brain over the years [PMID: 38765967]. They cause anxiety [PMID: 37269995] and brain inflammation [DOI: 10.3390/ijms241512308]. There is a lot more research on them than I am quoting here.

When someone is suffering from crippling anxiety, if you have ever suffered from it, the last thing on their mind will be to develop anything cool.

Moreover, microplastics accumulate and harm various organs, not only the brain. They also cause generational infertility due to the pervasive co-presence of toxins like phthalate in them [PMID: 39446714].

Similarly, higher CO2 levels are detrimental to cognition. This has been known for years and is established knowledge.

First, these studies merely suggest that microplastics have these effects in humans, yet you state them as fact. However, I don't want to argue that microplastics are harmless or that pollution is not an issue. Neither do I want to defend the point that doubling the population doubles the "speed of discovery". But even if all of your points are accurate, you would still have to show that these negative effects outweigh the benefit of a priori doubling productivity. In fact, you make the even stronger claim that doubling the population will actually cut the "speed of discovery" in half. None of this is substantiated by your argument.

How is it that despite the vast population, we no longer have geniuses like Newton, Leibnitz, Gauss, Maxwell, Einstein, etc.? If they existed today, they would just be selling ads and stocks.

You don't even have to travel that far. The air between middle of nowhere US and everywhere else USA is very different. It is amazing how quickly we get used to our local environments (order days/weeks).

> Travel to China... other parts of Asia

I hope you're not thinking of Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea because the air is fine there and we live the longest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

I meant more like India, China, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand, Iran, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com