The population of Earth is over seven billion now. It's not possible to calculate the exact number of humans that the Earth can safely support, but I feel strongly that we are reaching the upper limit if we haven't already overtaken it. We are producing too much waste, over-fishing the oceans, destroying too much plant life, and many other negative things that make it hard to keep the current population healthy in the future.
I had heard that the countries with the greatest population growth were also the countries with the highest populations (India being a prime example). I decided to do a brief analysis to see what the relationship is between population and population growth. I took the population growth rate according to the UN, 2005-2010 and compared it with the population of most countries. I organized it in a spreadsheet to attempt to draw conclusions.
Pictured below is the population on the x axis and the population growth rate on the y axis:
The problem with this graph is that it weighs the population growth rate of small countries as much as larger countries for drawing the trendline. Here is a graph which shows the same data when we weight each country's Y value according to it's X value:
Now, there is definitely a bias that the countries with the largest populations also have the highest population growth rates.edit - this method doesn't work as I originally intended so you can disregard this conclusion. I also tried scaling the x axis by taking the logarithm of the population of each country, but the resulting trendline is misleading. So what do we do about this unfortunate trend towards overpopulation? In 1978 China implemented a One Child Policy in an effort to control the growing population. I've heard of many negative side effects of this policy such as newborn children being killed if they don't meet the criteria of the parents. Many people even feel that the government has no right to tell you how many children you can have. Personally, I hate the idea of the government telling me I can't have more than X children, or that I can't have children with Y person because of Z reason. It seems like an Orwellion control that spells doom for society if allowed to perpetuate. Next, they'll be telling us who our wives/husbands will be, how many children we can have, and that we need to abort one and go again because the child has a 50% chance of needing glasses or having asthma.
On the other hand, we have some serious problems that must be dealt with... and on an international scale. If we, as a global community, don't start to discuss taboo subjects such as preventing the spread of genetic diseases and preventing overpopulation, nature will take care of the problem for us (it always does). At the moment we live in a society where Darwinism plays only a small role in human development. Social Darwinism has taken over as a driving force of sorts. It won't stay this way forever, or at least not with our current course.
Most people agree that incest is not acceptable (a light form of eugenics). I think more people should start to think about less extreme cases like whether or not two profoundly deaf people should be allowed to naturally have a child, even if their child is highly likely to be deaf as well. They should also think about the rising rates of other genetic disorders that we make no attempt to prevent. Sure, we don't fully understand the emergence of autism, or many other problems. But if we wait until we 100% understand every ailment in humans it will be too late to prevent any of the problems that await us. The eugenics taboo needs to be re-evaluated carefully.
The same thing must be said for population growth. As much as I want to give families the freedom to have as many children as they want, this isn't currently working. The problem is less well-to-do families that enjoy having and supporting a large number of children, and more the result of bad family planning by poor individuals. Tackling overpopulation requires much less of a global paradigm shift than discussing eugenics does. Which of the two problems is more substantial, I can not say.
hi, if you show graphs you should explain the axis, in particular how your growth rate is defined. I'm sure it is explained in the UN refrence, but writing it yourself would ease reading.
On May 07 2012 00:39 aqui wrote: hi, if you show graphs you should explain the axis, in particular how your growth rate is defined. I'm sure it is explained in the UN refrence, but writing it yourself would ease reading.
The first graph is a straight population growth rate (and yes I provided the links for those who want to read more about it).
The second graph, as I said, weights the data points according to their x value so I honestly don't even know how to label the y axis. It's the population growth rate times the population, divided by the total population of all the countries.
Given the state of the world right now, I think it is simply responsible behavior for couples to have no more than 2 children. Ideally, people would make that choice by themselves rather than having it forced upon them by legal or economic restrictions, but that may ultimately be the only option.
Naturally, people are leery of heading down the eugenics road. But, as you note, it is already practiced to an extent. Where you draw the line in the great big gray area is almost arbitrary.
by the way, I just did a test: what happens if you remove China/India? The answer is there is still a significant upward trend... the larger the population the larger the population growth.
Doesn't the first graph argue the opposite, or that population size has a negative relationship with population growth? Ignoring any problems with the model, the negative coefficient of the x indicates that as x (population size) increases, the population growth rate decreases.
On May 07 2012 01:15 goldrush wrote: Doesn't the first graph argue the opposite, or that population size has a negative relationship with population growth? Ignoring any problems with the model, the negative coefficient of the x indicates that as x (population size) increases, the population growth rate decreases.
Yes, if you allow a country with a population of less than 1 million to weigh into the calculation as much as a country with a population of over 1 billion.
I don't consider this to be that influential, though.
On May 07 2012 01:15 goldrush wrote: Doesn't the first graph argue the opposite, or that population size has a negative relationship with population growth? Ignoring any problems with the model, the negative coefficient of the x indicates that as x (population size) increases, the population growth rate decreases.
Yes, if you allow a country with a population of less than 1 million to weigh into the calculation as much as a country with a population of over 1 billion.
I don't consider this to be that influential, though.
The US has been funding population control programs for a while. Couple of unpleasant things have resulted:
1) Third world dictatorships, if given tangible rewards for achieving a quota of sterilizations, etc. will generally be dishonest to their populace and/or use force to ensure that people undergo population control measures.
2) Safety is sacrificed -- devices that would not meet FDA approval would be distributed to other countries
3) Governments like using population control as a weapon versus ethnic groups they didn't like (untouchables in India, Albanians in Serbia, etc. etc.)
But I guess I will leave you with the statement of a Kenyan official. You can find the testimony in the 106th Congressional Record:
Our health sector is collapsed. Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of malaria, the treatment of which costs a few cents, in health facilities whose shelves are stocked to the ceiling with millions of dollars’ worth of pills, IUDs, Norplant, Depo-Provera, and so on, most of which are supplied with American money.... Special operating theaters fully serviced and not lacking in instruments are opened in hospitals for the sterilization of women. While in the same hospitals, emergency surgery cannot be done for lack of basic operating instruments and supplies.
But hey, on a utilitarian scale, all worth it, right?
There's a vague theoretical humanitarian benefit from population control...but all I can see is the suffering caused from the programs already implemented, and it seems like such a tragic waste.
Remember Ehrlich's The Population Bomb?
I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self sufficient in food by 1971, if ever...we must allow [India] to slip down the drain.
I guess the fact that this and many other Malthusian predictions never came true gives me a natural skepticism toward the idea that population control is imperative.
Hippo's routinely kill infants when the herd gets over populated or their habitat shrinks... it isn't an uncommon practice among animals.
The thing that gives me solace though is the universe doesn't need us. Nature will correct itself over time... in the end everything is going to work out. Is the world over populated? Yes. Does it suck? Totally.
The worst part, is the answer to this problem stairs right at us yet we decided to cut back it's funding.
I speak of course of the Space Program... I mean if the earth is running out of resources it only makes sense that we're going to have to one day leave this planet to acquire more... cutting the funding to NASA was America's deathknell... I mean seriously, do you realize how many technologies the modern world owes to the space program?
This is super bad... to use a SC2 analogy.... we have two tech labs that aren't producing... you all know where that leads.
There's going to be a big war hopefully to equal things out.
On May 07 2012 01:15 goldrush wrote: Doesn't the first graph argue the opposite, or that population size has a negative relationship with population growth? Ignoring any problems with the model, the negative coefficient of the x indicates that as x (population size) increases, the population growth rate decreases.
Yes, if you allow a country with a population of less than 1 million to weigh into the calculation as much as a country with a population of over 1 billion.
I don't consider this to be that influential, though.
Why do you need to reweight it?
For the same reason why each state has a different weight into the house of representatives of the USA, and why each state gets a number of electoral votes proportional to the number of people (roughly) living in the state.
Whether or not I include/exclude really small countries should not have a significant impact on the conclusions drawn from the data, but unless I weight the data according to population they do.
On May 07 2012 01:23 419 wrote: The US has been funding population control programs for a while. Couple of unpleasant things have resulted:
1) Third world dictatorships, if given tangible rewards for achieving a quota of sterilizations, etc. will generally be dishonest to their populace and/or use force to ensure that people undergo population control measures.
2) Safety is sacrificed -- devices that would not meet FDA approval would be distributed to other countries
3) Governments like using population control as a weapon versus ethnic groups they didn't like (untouchables in India, Albanians in Serbia, etc. etc.)
But I guess I will leave you with the statement of a Kenyan official. You can find the testimony in the 106th Congressional Record:
Our health sector is collapsed. Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of malaria, the treatment of which costs a few cents, in health facilities whose shelves are stocked to the ceiling with millions of dollars’ worth of pills, IUDs, Norplant, Depo-Provera, and so on, most of which are supplied with American money.... Special operating theaters fully serviced and not lacking in instruments are opened in hospitals for the sterilization of women. While in the same hospitals, emergency surgery cannot be done for lack of basic operating instruments and supplies.
But hey, on a utilitarian scale, all worth it, right?
There's a vague theoretical humanitarian benefit from population control...but all I can see is the suffering caused from the programs already implemented, and it seems like such a tragic waste.
I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self sufficient in food by 1971, if ever...we must allow [India] to slip down the drain.
I guess the fact that this and many other Malthusian predictions never came true gives me a natural skepticism toward the idea that population control is imperative.
This is unexplored territory, so I wouldn't rely too heavily on historical data to try to predict the future on this issue.
Yes, there are many problems with what has been done so far to try to deal with the possible problems to be caused by overpopulation... but that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss it more. The problem doesn't go away because previous attempts to solve it were terrible. That makes me think of someone who would say "No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was a disaster; it didn't help school children in the USA at all. Now we should just give up on education"
The biggest problem I see is that people who don't want to have children or clearly can't support them still have them. They often make abusive or negligent parents which transfers over to their children and just spirals out of control.
A possible solution would be to make everyone sterile by default and then introduce a straightforward and uncomplicated parenthood test where couples state they actually want a kid and that they are able to cover the bare necessities of raising one. After checking for potentially debilitating genetic predispositions, the guy gets injected with a neutralizing agent and is made fertile for X months.
There, I just solved the issues of abortion, teenage pregnancy and domestic abuse all in one ^_^
Although the problem is for a big part caused by the well developed countries, I don't think it's too much to just ask people to not make kids if they can't feed them. People know about contraception too. If they don't idk what the hell have they done with all the foreign aid money for the last 50 years.
After that it comes down to abolishing gods & cultures and that would be stepping my line as an equal being. So, to whoever is going to try changing beliefs or cultures: good luck. Changing those is like trying to change a living language.
Of course there is the higher God we can use to control: money. We would need a system that would provide people with greater benefits than children working essentially for free. For this we would need money and I assume the influx of money would need to grow exponentially from the systems inception. Donations and private sector would never be enough so we would need big government money. People wouldn't want to give away from their own welfare so it would have to come from something useless such as military budgets. But we can't save millions of people from starvation with that because it's important to be ready to kill millions of people at any time.
I think everything comes down to multiple fundamental weaknesses in the human nature. Hope someone proves me wrong or space-age technology saves the current and future generations.
On May 07 2012 01:15 goldrush wrote: Doesn't the first graph argue the opposite, or that population size has a negative relationship with population growth? Ignoring any problems with the model, the negative coefficient of the x indicates that as x (population size) increases, the population growth rate decreases.
Yes, if you allow a country with a population of less than 1 million to weigh into the calculation as much as a country with a population of over 1 billion.
I don't consider this to be that influential, though.
Why do you need to reweight it?
For the same reason why each state has a different weight into the house of representatives of the USA, and why each state gets a number of electoral votes proportional to the number of people (roughly) living in the state.
Whether or not I include/exclude really small countries should not have a significant impact on the conclusions drawn from the data, but unless I weight the data according to population they do.
Your units in this analysis are the countries, not the people in the countries. This is different from the USA electoral system, where the units are the number of people.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by rescaling the population growth by the population size, the second graph basically says that the more populated the country, the larger the absolute (not relative) increase in the total number of people. Which is obvious, right? 1% population growth of 1 billion people is 10 million, while 1% population growth of 1 million is 10 thousand.
I saw this video many years ago, and it really captivated me and made me think about rates of growth in the every day situation. The guy goes over some of the problems with overpopulation and consumption that relate back to a small amount of growth doubling over time. The classic water bottle example is used. It goes on for 8 parts. I promise it's a worthy watch.
Personally on the issue we need to get more gay people out. Less of them trying to be straight/get married/have kids, less population already.
On May 07 2012 01:15 goldrush wrote: Doesn't the first graph argue the opposite, or that population size has a negative relationship with population growth? Ignoring any problems with the model, the negative coefficient of the x indicates that as x (population size) increases, the population growth rate decreases.
Yes, if you allow a country with a population of less than 1 million to weigh into the calculation as much as a country with a population of over 1 billion.
I don't consider this to be that influential, though.
Why do you need to reweight it?
For the same reason why each state has a different weight into the house of representatives of the USA, and why each state gets a number of electoral votes proportional to the number of people (roughly) living in the state.
Whether or not I include/exclude really small countries should not have a significant impact on the conclusions drawn from the data, but unless I weight the data according to population they do.
Your units in this analysis are the countries, not the people in the countries. This is different from the USA electoral system, where the units are the number of people.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by rescaling the population growth by the population size, the second graph basically says that the more populated the country, the larger the absolute (not relative) increase in the total number of people. Which is obvious, right? 1% population growth of 1 billion people is 10 million, while 1% population growth of 1 million is 10 thousand.
I don't believe that is what happened when I weighted the data. If anyone else can chime in and verify whether or not that is essentially what happened please let us know.
This is, and will always be, a socioeconomic problem.
The countries with the highest birth rates are always poorer and less educated (especially women). This in turn causes people to have lower life expectancies. Due to the lower life expectancies and higher child mortality, people have more children. In these same countries, agriculture is a lot more important on an individual scale. Agriculture is very labour intensive without powered machinery so people have more children in order to help out.These children then also grow up poor and uneducated and repeat the cycle.
The "give man a fish/teach a man to fish" metaphor is very relevant. A lot of the poorest countries are given tons of foreign aid but its just a bandaid that is continuously applied. Just throwing money at the situation doesn't solve the problem. You need to educate people if you expect them to ever be self sufficient. There's enough data out there showing the relationship between people who are better educated have less children.
On May 07 2012 01:15 goldrush wrote: Doesn't the first graph argue the opposite, or that population size has a negative relationship with population growth? Ignoring any problems with the model, the negative coefficient of the x indicates that as x (population size) increases, the population growth rate decreases.
Yes, if you allow a country with a population of less than 1 million to weigh into the calculation as much as a country with a population of over 1 billion.
I don't consider this to be that influential, though.
Why do you need to reweight it?
For the same reason why each state has a different weight into the house of representatives of the USA, and why each state gets a number of electoral votes proportional to the number of people (roughly) living in the state.
Whether or not I include/exclude really small countries should not have a significant impact on the conclusions drawn from the data, but unless I weight the data according to population they do.
Your units in this analysis are the countries, not the people in the countries. This is different from the USA electoral system, where the units are the number of people.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but by rescaling the population growth by the population size, the second graph basically says that the more populated the country, the larger the absolute (not relative) increase in the total number of people. Which is obvious, right? 1% population growth of 1 billion people is 10 million, while 1% population growth of 1 million is 10 thousand.
I don't believe that is what happened when I weighted the data. If anyone else can chime in and verify whether or not that is essentially what happened please let us know.
Could you please look into your spreadsheet and then add up all of the scaled population growth rates for all of the countries? If it's doing what I think it's doing, it'll be equal (or approximately equal to) the world population growth rate, if you also have that. It won't be exactly the same as the world population growth rate given by wiki for sure though.
Yeah, I'm almost 100% sure that's what is happening now.
Country 1: 5 initial pop, 6 end pop. +20% growth rate Country 2: 15 initial pop, 18 end pop. +20% growth rate
This corresponds to your first graph.
After rescaling (note: 6/24= 0.25, 18/24=0.75)
Country 1: 'adjusted' growth rate of +5% Country 2: 'adjusted' growth rate of +15%
Thus, on your graph 2, you would have: Country 1: 6 end pop, +5% Country 2: 18 end pop, +15%
Therefore, the positive correlation seen would be entirely due to larger absolute numbers growth in country 2.
While you were doing that I did a similar analysis using 6 fictitious countries, most of which have populations of <10, two of which have populations of over one million. The results confirmed what you are saying. I'll go back and edit the OP a bit.
edit: I still feel the first graph is misleading... I'm just not sure what method would make sense for showing this. Small countries should count less, but a straight up weighted average doesn't work.
On May 07 2012 02:25 micronesia wrote: While you were doing that I did a similar analysis using 6 fictitious countries, most of which have populations of <10, two of which have populations of over one million. The results confirmed what you are saying. I'll go back and edit the OP a bit.
edit: I still feel the first graph is misleading... I'm just not sure what method would make sense for showing this. Small countries should count less, but a straight up weighted average doesn't work.
Your hypothesis is: The larger a country's population, the faster its relative population growth.
Therefore, your unit of analysis is countries, so in my opinion, small countries shouldn't count any less than the larger countries.
What about the other variables that could affect population growth? For example, if Country A, a country with low technological progress, high child mortality, and low average education, has higher population growth than Country B, a country with high technological progress, low child mortality, and high average education levels. It doesn't make much sense to just compare population size and population growth when there are many, many other factors that are probably more relevant.
On May 07 2012 02:25 micronesia wrote: While you were doing that I did a similar analysis using 6 fictitious countries, most of which have populations of <10, two of which have populations of over one million. The results confirmed what you are saying. I'll go back and edit the OP a bit.
edit: I still feel the first graph is misleading... I'm just not sure what method would make sense for showing this. Small countries should count less, but a straight up weighted average doesn't work.
Your hypothesis is: The larger a country's population, the faster its relative population growth.
Therefore, your unit of analysis is countries, so in my opinion, small countries shouldn't count any less than the larger countries.
What about the other variables that could affect population growth? For example, if Country A, a country with low technological progress, high child mortality, and low average education, has higher population growth than Country B, a country with high technological progress, low child mortality, and high average education levels. It doesn't make much sense to just compare population size and population growth when there are many, many other factors that are probably more relevant.
The problem (using my original method) is the statistical variations... small countries vary much more than larger ones.
But as you are pointing out, the other factors are more important than size. As someone else pointed out in this thread, the people who are having the most children are doing it for the wrong reasons, and this is irrelevant to the size of their country.
They talk about how evolution has actually sped up, not slowed down, due to the change in environment and the massive increase in population (more people = larger, broader gene pool = faster evolution). The subject is about as taboo as eugenics, because to accept that we have continued to evolve would be accepting implicitly that people from different races are actually different in ways other than the color of skin.
On May 07 2012 02:25 micronesia wrote: While you were doing that I did a similar analysis using 6 fictitious countries, most of which have populations of <10, two of which have populations of over one million. The results confirmed what you are saying. I'll go back and edit the OP a bit.
edit: I still feel the first graph is misleading... I'm just not sure what method would make sense for showing this. Small countries should count less, but a straight up weighted average doesn't work.
Your hypothesis is: The larger a country's population, the faster its relative population growth.
Therefore, your unit of analysis is countries, so in my opinion, small countries shouldn't count any less than the larger countries.
What about the other variables that could affect population growth? For example, if Country A, a country with low technological progress, high child mortality, and low average education, has higher population growth than Country B, a country with high technological progress, low child mortality, and high average education levels. It doesn't make much sense to just compare population size and population growth when there are many, many other factors that are probably more relevant.
The problem (using my original method) is the statistical variations... small countries vary much more than larger ones.
But as you are pointing out, the other factors are more important than size. As someone else pointed out in this thread, the people who are having the most children are doing it for the wrong reasons, and this is irrelevant to the size of their country.
If population growth in the smaller countries varies quite a bit year to year in the same country, then you might have a point in saying that it's volatile due to the small population. If so, one way to get around it would be explicitly ignore any countries below a certain size (though this is somewhat arbitrary).
On the other hand, if population growth is stable from year to year in the same country, but varies quite a bit between countries, it could just point to other factors being more important than population size. But that doesn't mean that they're any less important than the others.
I don't think there's a need to adopt unsavory reproductive control practices. Governments in the 3rd world just need to get with the 21st century. Once a country becomes industrialized and wealthy the birthrate plummets naturally. Looking at East Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and Singapore for example, women used to pop out babies by the litter, but with the modernization of those countries came a decrease in birth rate to the point where they encourage couples to have more children.
On May 07 2012 00:54 HwangjaeTerran wrote: If the Earth can't support any more people, wouldn't the problem solve itself ?
Don't know if anything needs to be done.
I wouldn't argue that it's better to avoid taboo subjects than to avoid the drawn-out starvation of billions of innocent people.
The issue is that it's more of a distribution issue than a production issue. ALthough population is certainliy of growing concern, we have seen birth rates decline 30-40 years after indistralization. Although we don't know the trend will continue, that is what has historically happened.
How can you examine overpopulation without looking at goods/resources distribution. You examine only one factor of the two so your argument is invalid.
On May 07 2012 03:10 Steveling wrote: How can you examine overpopulation without looking at goods/resources distribution. You examine only one factor of the two so your argument is invalid.
Which argument in particular is invalid? I was trying to inspire that we should discuss rather than avoid certain issues. I did not at any point set out to prove anything about overpopulation, or eugenics.
That quote says otherwise "I feel strongly that we are reaching the upper limit if we haven't already overtaken it". You show that the population is reaching heights it never did before. You are not providing facts as to why this is overpopulating or if we can support another 30 billion.
On May 07 2012 03:49 Steveling wrote: That quote says otherwise "I feel strongly that we are reaching the upper limit if we haven't already overtaken it".
That's my opinion.
You show that the population is reaching heights it never did before.
I agree.
You are not providing facts as to why this is overpopulating or if we can support another 30 billion.
Yes, it would be a very difficult thing to prove that we have reached the point of overpopulation, or are nearly there. I did not try to prove it.
I would just like to say you example of two profoundly deaf people having a good chance of having a deaf child is ridiculous, because there are over 53 different genetic issues that can cause deafness (and both parents must have the same gene defect to have a chance of a deaf child), as well as many people being caused deafness by illness or accident. Also that the most Deaf people and hearing people who know them do not consider deafness a disability, but rather something called Deafgain, which is a positive attribute.
Anyway, the problem with this line of thinking is that not everyone has the same values of disabled and 'normal'. Right now plenty of parents are faced with choices about keeping or aborting a child with a disability or genetic disease. Different families make different choices.
I think education and monetary benefits are a good direction to take this kind of issue. It's not a quick fix, but in the long run those kind of solutions produce changes in they way people think about the topic and social norms, rather than something everyone is just forced to do by the government.
If you're worried about the global population, which seems fair, your best bet is figure out what has made countries like mane in northern Europe slow their birth rates so dramatically. If you can identify that, it's possible to impliment social and economic policies to that end, and to funnel international aid through similar channels.
Eugenic policies are not only cruel and impossible/very difficult to enforce, but they may be detrimental to the long-term success of the species. With eugenics, you get to eliminate undesirable traits, but you end up limiting genetic diversity, Increasing genetic diversity is key in the long run.
The point is that even if everyone (and I mean everyone) was behind the eugenics, thus eliminating the cruelty and enforcement issues, it would still be a bad idea. We don't know nearly enough about genetics to start choosing which traits can be safely eliminated or reduced without harming the overall population.
Personally, I hate the idea of the government telling me I can't have more than X children, or that I can't have children with Y person because of Z reason. It seems like an Orwellion control that spells doom for society if allowed to perpetuate. Next, they'll be telling us who our wives/husbands will be, how many children we can have, and that we need to abort one and go again because the child has a 50% chance of needing glasses or having asthma.
That's quite the slippery slope you're applying.
If anything, China's facing a demographic crisis because they didn't apply any controls beyond a child limit, when they certainly could have.
On May 07 2012 05:16 RedJustice wrote: I would just like to say you example of two profoundly deaf people having a good chance of having a deaf child is ridiculous, because there are over 53 different genetic issues that can cause deafness (and both parents must have the same gene defect to have a chance of a deaf child), as well as many people being caused deafness by illness or accident. Also that the most Deaf people and hearing people who know them do not consider deafness a disability, but rather something called Deafgain, which is a positive attribute.
You may be right about the genetics behind being born deaf... I honestly don't know what the numbers are on that. I apologize if I misrepresented the challenge facing deaf couples. However, it's not just a matter of whether we consider being born deaf an advantage or a disadvantage. In schools near me, more money is spent on deaf students than students who can hear, everything else being equal.
On May 07 2012 05:46 Omnipresent wrote: The point is that even if everyone (and I mean everyone) was behind the eugenics, thus eliminating the cruelty and enforcement issues, it would still be a bad idea. We don't know nearly enough about genetics to start choosing which traits can be safely eliminated or reduced without harming the overall population.
As long as it's okay for people to study/research this decision more without being the 'bad guy'...
Are you worried about overpopulation first and see eugenics as the best way to prevent it, or would you like to see eugenics to improve the overall gene pool and want to use overpopulation as an argument to get people to consider it?
Because if overpopulation is your main concern there are better ways to tackle the issue.
There's a reason why eugenics is taboo. It's inherently risky, it creates social tension and it weakens social forces that keep our societies relatively peaceful.
Reducing poverty will solve the problem - oddly enough the poorer the conditions, the greater the reproduction. Even though many social Darwinists would try to theorize the opposite, reality isn't on their side.
As mentioned above, population control should be independent issue of genetic control. As for genetic control, so far it seems genes (at birth) would end up just not as important as initially thought, so why even bother.
On May 07 2012 08:40 hypercube wrote: Are you worried about overpopulation first and see eugenics as the best way to prevent it, or would you like to see eugenics to improve the overall gene pool and want to use overpopulation as an argument to get people to consider it?
Because if overpopulation is your main concern there are better ways to tackle the issue.
There's a reason why eugenics is taboo. It's inherently risky, it creates social tension and it weakens social forces that keep our societies relatively peaceful.
They aren't unrelated, but one doesn't imply the other. The two issues just have some similarities.
Quality education and increased socio-economic opportunities for women seems to control population growth pretty well. Too well, if you ask some people. Population growth might become a problem if unchecked, but I don't think there's any need to raise the specter of eugenics.
On May 07 2012 08:40 hypercube wrote: Are you worried about overpopulation first and see eugenics as the best way to prevent it, or would you like to see eugenics to improve the overall gene pool and want to use overpopulation as an argument to get people to consider it?
Because if overpopulation is your main concern there are better ways to tackle the issue.
There's a reason why eugenics is taboo. It's inherently risky, it creates social tension and it weakens social forces that keep our societies relatively peaceful.
They aren't unrelated, but one doesn't imply the other. The two issues just have some similarities.
You'll need to be much clearer than that. TBH, I'm still not sure if you are advocating eugenics as a means of population control. Some posters certainly thought you were.
You're saying "we shouldn't avoid discussing eugenics". Fine. Just don't ask for some sort of blank slate. People are still responsible for whatever solution they suggest, even if discussing the issue in general is ok.
On May 07 2012 08:40 hypercube wrote: Are you worried about overpopulation first and see eugenics as the best way to prevent it, or would you like to see eugenics to improve the overall gene pool and want to use overpopulation as an argument to get people to consider it?
Because if overpopulation is your main concern there are better ways to tackle the issue.
There's a reason why eugenics is taboo. It's inherently risky, it creates social tension and it weakens social forces that keep our societies relatively peaceful.
They aren't unrelated, but one doesn't imply the other. The two issues just have some similarities.
You'll need to be much clearer than that. TBH, I'm still not sure if you are advocating eugenics as a means of population control. Some posters certainly thought you were.
At no point did I say or imply that eugenics is how we should combat overpopulation. The OP is fairly clear if it is read carefully.
You're saying "we shouldn't avoid discussing eugenics". Fine. Just don't ask for some sort of blank slate. People are still responsible for whatever solution they suggest, even if discussing the issue in general is ok.
On May 07 2012 08:40 hypercube wrote: Are you worried about overpopulation first and see eugenics as the best way to prevent it, or would you like to see eugenics to improve the overall gene pool and want to use overpopulation as an argument to get people to consider it?
Because if overpopulation is your main concern there are better ways to tackle the issue.
There's a reason why eugenics is taboo. It's inherently risky, it creates social tension and it weakens social forces that keep our societies relatively peaceful.
They aren't unrelated, but one doesn't imply the other. The two issues just have some similarities.
You'll need to be much clearer than that. TBH, I'm still not sure if you are advocating eugenics as a means of population control. Some posters certainly thought you were.
At no point did I say or imply that eugenics is how we should combat overpopulation. The OP is fairly clear if it is read carefully.
I think you need to do some rewriting or clarification.
You discuss overpopulation. -> Discuss a 'solution' currently in place (China's one-child policy). -> State you don't find this to be the best solution. -> State that the problem is too big to be ignored. -> State that issues like eugenics need to start being discussed again.
Your sequence of thoughts runs together, and is easily interpreted to mean you feel eugenics could be a solution if someone is not paying very careful attention to a few small word choices. The way you transition from one topic to another is deceptively connected. If you don't want people to confuse this you need to make a clear division.
Clarity will hopefully lead to better discussion.
EDIT: And your title of course can be interpreted to connect those two as problem and solution rather than two problems. That could lead people to read your blog that way.
Just a quickie for micronesia (didn't read past OP) I think you are in a little bit of a leftist mindset here. If there are no social secutity services, aid organisations, wealth redistribution schemes and the like there would be no overpopulation, since most overgrowth is generated by the poor. Basically they would just die if there are too many people living in a particular area. If you remove life support from unviable people there is no need for social engineering, population control, eugenics(you know what I mean, in the Idiocracy movie sense...)
The other issue is maintaining peace and social cohesion in societies with high income disparity. This is why all these leftist policies we have in place today have emerged. You would need to find a way to keep cohesion while abandoning redistribution schemes. Will this lead to class warfare? Maybe but is it for the better?
On May 07 2012 08:40 hypercube wrote: Are you worried about overpopulation first and see eugenics as the best way to prevent it, or would you like to see eugenics to improve the overall gene pool and want to use overpopulation as an argument to get people to consider it?
Because if overpopulation is your main concern there are better ways to tackle the issue.
There's a reason why eugenics is taboo. It's inherently risky, it creates social tension and it weakens social forces that keep our societies relatively peaceful.
They aren't unrelated, but one doesn't imply the other. The two issues just have some similarities.
You'll need to be much clearer than that. TBH, I'm still not sure if you are advocating eugenics as a means of population control. Some posters certainly thought you were.
At no point did I say or imply that eugenics is how we should combat overpopulation. The OP is fairly clear if it is read carefully.
I never said you did. I just said I wasn't sure. I could have been more clear to avoid confusion. That's my whole point.
You're saying "we shouldn't avoid discussing eugenics". Fine. Just don't ask for some sort of blank slate. People are still responsible for whatever solution they suggest, even if discussing the issue in general is ok.
I don't understand what you are saying here.[/QUOTE]
I'm saying if you're going to suggest that certain people shouldn't reproduce, without giving a very strong argument why it's absolutely necessary, you WILL be condemned.
On May 07 2012 16:26 50bani wrote: since most overgrowth is generated by the poor.
This part made me want to reply. It is true that the poor have a bigger impact on the growth, however other things also affect it.
As a lot of you may know, the Church isn't too keen on contraception. Part of this taboo, results that religious families in the past used to have a lot more children as the protection of a condom etc wasn't "allowed". Now that the trends are changing and people become less attached this slowly shifts towards two children per family. I see this with my own family aswell. My greatgrandfather had like 13 children, my grandma had five children and I have one brother.
This trend is changing that growth in the long run, as we'd run out of space if this wouldn't have happened in the last years. Do not dismiss a major portion of the growth in the world by only pointing at the less wealthy. =)
On May 07 2012 16:26 50bani wrote: since most overgrowth is generated by the poor.
This part made me want to reply. It is true that the poor have a bigger impact on the growth, however other things also affect it.
As a lot of you may know, the Church isn't too keen on contraception. Part of this taboo, results that religious families in the past used to have a lot more children as the protection of a condom etc wasn't "allowed". Now that the trends are changing and people become less attached this slowly shifts towards two children per family. I see this with my own family aswell. My greatgrandfather had like 13 children, my grandma had five children and I have one brother.
This trend is changing that growth in the long run, as we'd run out of space if this wouldn't have happened in the last years. Do not dismiss a major portion of the growth in the world by only pointing at the less wealthy. =)
People also have less children because the survival rate is higher. The change over time is probably part planned AND part unplanned.
I don't think you should be allowed to have any input in our future genepool since astigmatism is considered to be hereditary to a high extent. So people like you should be left out of our evolution process, prohibited to procreate and further pollute the DNA.
How tall are you? Hows your teeth? You can't even construct a proper graph, what's your IQ?
Should white people even be allowed to exist since their IQ averages are often well below Asian? I don't know, maybe you shouldn't sign your own death warrant.
I'm pretty sure China is expected to experience a negative population growth in the near future. I don't think overpopulation is as much of a problem as you think it is. Resource management is far more important.
On May 08 2012 01:20 ecstatica wrote: I don't think you should be allowed to have any input in our future genepool since astigmatism is considered to be hereditary to a high extent. So people like you should be left out of our evolution process, prohibited to procreate and further pollute the DNA.
How tall are you? Hows your teeth? You can't even construct a proper graph, what's your IQ?
Should white people even be allowed to exist since their IQ averages are often well below Asian? I don't know, maybe you shouldn't sign your own death warrant.
I'm pretty sure China is expected to experience a negative population growth in the near future. I don't think overpopulation is as much of a problem as you think it is. Resource management is far more important.
Regarding how much of a problem overpopulation is, you are certainly entitled to disagree with me (I even said it's more of an opinion on my part than anything else).
Most of the questions you are asking, I assume to imply that eugenics is a horrible thing to even consider, are much more extreme than anything I personally would want to consider. It's certainly not "all or nothing." I also have no plans to procreate right now so this type of shock tactic isn't going to work on me :p
EPT
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