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Comment by bolder88 | Hacker News Reader

Those things are also about increasing our problems down the line IMHO

The world population has doubled in the last 30 years. Doesn't that scare anyone else?

Sure, you could save a few million poorly educated people from dying. Then what? They're all going to need food, energy, education, housing, etc etc.

Saving people from dying is no good at all if they still have a shitty life and die from something else anyway.

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> The world population has doubled in the last 30 years. Doesn't that scare anyone else?

Not that greatly. Birth rates in near enough every country are dropping after having peaked. 7 billion in 2011, 8 billion in 2025, 9 billion in 2043, 10 billion in 2083 is what UNFPA predicts. As education improves and the relative value of each life, and as people live longer on average, the Malthusian catastrophe is one I would think we will avoid. In fact it is this stabilisation of the population that worries me because without any immediate pressure from something else, with no race, no competition and no Sturm and no Drang in progress, will we be destined to find the answer to the Fermi Paradox through our own fate?

Look at this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Populatio... and then consider that while the case of Japan seems about to be a portent for other countries. Doesn't this scare you even more - the thought of the human race ending with a whimper? Or will each of us be, by our current standards, a god among machines living a life a hundred times more valuable than those of their ancestors in their grasp over the earth. If anything these kinds of questions should probably keep you more awake than the thought of a Malthusian catastrophe at this point.

>Saving people from dying is no good at all if they still have a shitty life and die from something else anyway.

Wow. That's ultra-elitist.

So, let's say you are diagnosed with a rare disease and the doctor gives you two weeks to live unless you get a medicine that costs $1000 which let's assume you can't afford. And you're going to die someday, anyway. Does that mean you have a shitty life and you deserve to die now?

So, amount of money = value of life? Is that your point??

So, I own 10x more money than you (assume) and hence compared to my standards, I think you live a shitty life and you deserve to die. How do you feel now?

Life is invaluable. Money has nothing to do with it.

Death is a natural, and essential part of evolution, and is crucial for the survival of the species.

If you could magically save everyone from dying tomorrow, then well done! You've just killed everyone from overcrowding.

Since your basis for morality seems to be "evolution" and "nature" (in quotes), would you be in favor of shutting down all hospitals immediately?

"Immortality" is really about 1000-2000 years. In that time, accidental death will catch up with you.

Funny thing is, we "know" relatively good, what the maximum of earths population will be and why. And we know (also relatively good) how fast we will lift people from poverty, given the actual and historical numbers.

Hans Rosling showed it quite well in a TED talk he gave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78

I'm all for having less humans around, but actually, educating women, eradicating poverty, and lowering death rates has shown to be the best way to reduce a country's birth rate. It just takes a generation or two. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

Middle class (by developing world standards) life is the most effective brake on population. Give people basic health care, Internet, TV, a phone, and literate daughters and watch the population growth rate fall to replacement level or lower.

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