Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   rogerc2738 (rogerc2738@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 19:57:28 JST rogerc2738

   Eating Our Way to Extinction: How Capitalism is Destroying the World | ENDEVR Documentary

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFT-441Vrxg

   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 19:57:24 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • monarchist
     @monarchist @rogerc2738 Mathusian nihilism; I should dig this up, I read this hand-wringing ~10 pages from Carl Sagan in the 70s about how the world population was approaching four billion and we couldn't *possibly* support four billion people on the earth.
   • Embed this notice
     monarchist (monarchist@na.social)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Jul-2025 19:57:25 JST monarchist

     in reply to

     @rogerc2738

     Sounds like overpopulation is the real problem.

   • Embed this notice
     monarchist (monarchist@na.social)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 00:42:12 JST monarchist

     in reply to

     • pistolero

     @p @rogerc2738

     Sagan got a lot of things wrong because he was more of a follower than a leader.

     But it's sort of like arguing if a toilet is full up with shit yet. At some point, it reaches capacity.

     With a billion people, we get to avoid ecocide.

     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 00:53:10 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • monarchist
     @monarchist @rogerc2738 Which things are creating the ecocide, if we assume the premise that there is one? It's mostly selling shit people don't need and the massive disposable-everything industry.
     
     There's this famous observation that once a record in some sport gets broken, one that looked unachievable for years, before too long it'll be normal that people pass the old record. There's nothing supernatural at play: we just have way more people. Someone will get lucky and roll the right stats. There's a good reason to have more people; there is nothing firm to make the case that there should be fewer.
     
     Before it is possible to take seriously any suggestion that there are too many people, you need some real figures. Malthus was wringing his hands two hundred years ago. There is no hard data on overpopulation, just hand-waving and FUD, because no one actually knows. Sagan wrote that piece and he said we couldn't feed four billion people and with *double* that population, we have *less* global starvation than we did fifty years ago when he wrote that.
   • Embed this notice
     Judge Dread (judgedread@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 01:16:13 JST Judge Dread

     in reply to

     • pistolero
     @p I was interested to discover that anti-malthusianism is a common belief among 'effective altruists' and similar technophiles, based on something like what you're saying - more people, more outliers, more solutions.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 01:17:07 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • Judge Dread
     @judgedread
     
     > I was interested to discover that anti-malthusianism is a common belief among 'effective altruists' and similar technophiles
     
     Yeah, I think I have seen it from that crowd; I have only brushed against them, like reading some of Scott Alexander's stuff. But I was thinking about this because of Berkson's Paradox. (I spent a few hours before bed two or three months ago reading statistical paradoxes on wikkypeeja and a local mirror of the C2 wiki. It is possible that this just connected dots or it's a trivial conclusion if you look at a bell curve.) I think the "effective altruism" crowd is atheists trying to use math to derive an excuse to do Christianity, as far as I can tell; not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that but it doesn't align with my values.
   • Embed this notice
     Judge Dread (judgedread@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 02:38:27 JST Judge Dread

     in reply to

     • pistolero
     @p The premise is that innovation has slowed. The decline in fertility is the supposed explanation.
     
     My interpretation is there are more people - by a lot - so there should still be more innovation. There are even more White people, despite a recent reversal, so a shortage of White people can't be the explanation either.
     
     The 'low hanging fruit is gone' explanation strikes me as a possible cope to avoid grappling with the decline of civilization visible in many other metrics, but it's always possible that all the easy wins are taken. You can only find out for sure in retrospect if things get moving again.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 02:48:40 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • Judge Dread
     @judgedread
     
     > The premise is that innovation has slowed. The decline in fertility is the supposed explanation.
     
     Ah, I have heard the first part. I think the second part is more of a late imperial court problem; innovation thrives when the weirdos can be weird (cf. Hamming's remarks.) and when there's a need (e.g., a war or a pile of money or some other stick/carrot). Financial security is low, social/political tension is high.
     
     > The 'low hanging fruit is gone' explanation strikes me as a possible cope
     
     I'm inclined to agree. The former "gifted children" of Twitter love that argument.
     formergifted.jpg
   • Embed this notice
     Judge Dread (judgedread@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 14:36:52 JST Judge Dread

     in reply to

     • pistolero
     @p There's not a lot of innovation from the prisoners of daycare, which is how adults are treated now.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 14:40:00 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • Judge Dread
     • laurel
     @laurel @judgedread Fascinating; can you point me to where that bit is?
   • Embed this notice
     laurel (laurel@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 14:40:02 JST laurel

     in reply to

     • Judge Dread
     • pistolero
     @p @judgedread
     
     >a late imperial court problem
     Btw, Malthusianism gaining popularity can also be a late imperial court problem. It is a very old idea among the upper classes. Aristotle in his politics mentions how various city state rulers wanted to control the size of their population, with a particular city state keeping men separate from women in everyday life to incentivize homosexuality.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 14:40:34 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • Judge Dread
     @judgedread Yeah, that's completely it. Then toss in that creative people are most likely to transgress and when everything is disposable and rented, it means that the people likely to invent something are conscious of always teetering.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 16:00:42 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • monarchist
     @monarchist @rogerc2738 There's not a good definition of overpopulation.
     
     You can say "Here are some undesirable things" but there's not a causal link between any of those things and the current poulation level. The urbanization isn't caused by overpopulation: the small towns are gutted and the countryside is owned by feds and Monsanto. We'd not have any pollution if we just lived in the trees and only came down to shit or catch fish.
   • Embed this notice
     monarchist (monarchist@na.social)'s status on Thursday, 03-Jul-2025 16:00:43 JST monarchist

     in reply to

     • pistolero

     @p @rogerc2738

     I would look at land use and the 60% urbanization we are approaching, plus obvious signs of overpopulation like pollution, species loss, and increasing herd panic.

     It's not a question of feeding people, but of the consequences of having so many. Lots of urban heat islands and microplastics. Species in decline and extinctions accelerating. That kind of thing.

   • Embed this notice
     laurel (laurel@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Friday, 04-Jul-2025 12:06:07 JST laurel

     in reply to

     • Judge Dread
     • pistolero
     @p @judgedread
     
     It's in Book 2 towards the end:
     https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.2.two.html
     >he likewise encourages the separation of men from women, lest they should have too many children, and the companionship of men with one another
     > καὶ πρὸς τὴν διάζευξιν τῶν γυναικῶν, ἵνα μὴ πολυτεκνῶσι, τὴν πρὸς τοὺς ἄρρενας ποιήσας ὁμιλίαν,
     ομιλίαν = companionship https://lsj.gr/wiki/%E1%BD%81%CE%BC%CE%B9%CE%BB%CE%AF%CE%B1
     
     Generally about population control:
     >One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Pheidon the Corinthian, who was one of the most ardent legislators, thought that the families and the number of citizens ought to remain the same, although originally all the lots may have been of different sizes: but in the Laws the opposite principle is maintained. What in our opinion is the right arrangement will have to be explained hereafter.
     
     The whole of Book 2 is quite interesting because he criticizes Plato's Republic coming to the conclusion that its combination of sharing of property and women with a strict class based system is basically a mechanism to turn citizens into slaves.
     
     >For friendship we believe to be the greatest good of states and the preservative of them against revolutions; neither is there anything which Socrates so greatly lauds as the unity of the state which he and all the world declare to be created by friendship. But the unity which he commends would be like that of the lovers in the Symposium, who, as Aristophanes says, desire to grow together in the excess of their affection, and from being two to become one, in which case one or both would certainly perish. Whereas in a state having women and children common, love will be watery; and the father will certainly not say 'my son,' or the son 'my father.' As a little sweet wine mingled with a great deal of water is imperceptible in the mixture, so, in this sort of community, the idea of relationship which is based upon these names will be lost; there is no reason why the so-called father should care about the son, or the son about the father, or brothers about one another. Of the two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection- that a thing is your own and that it is your only one-neither can exist in such a state as this.
     
     >The artisans, and the husbandmen, and the warriors, all have a share in the government. But the husbandmen have no arms, and the artisans neither arms nor land, and therefore they become all but slaves of the warrior class.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Friday, 04-Jul-2025 12:16:19 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • Judge Dread
     • laurel
     @laurel @judgedread That is A *really* interesting account.
     
     > Some people think that the qualifications of a statesman, king, householder, and master are the same, and that they differ, not in kind, but only in the number of their subjects. [...] But all this is a mistake;