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United Kingdom3482 Posts
On January 27 2013 10:54 Khul Sadukar wrote:
There are many things that are a plague on the planet. None of them belong here either.
People need to stop listening to these idiot technocrats. He's a nobody and shouldn't be given the attention.
You aren't going to get very far trying to argue that David Attenborough is a nobody.
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On January 27 2013 05:31 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2013 16:15 Zahir wrote:
He also gives specific mention to one of the world's more vulnerable countries, hinting at the typical euro-centric attitude of forcing others to conform to our ideals in a manner most beneficial to ourselves, not so much for them. It's the same strain running through colonialism, neoliberalism, etc. Let's just get together and use our traditional methods for controlling the world to force other nations (and we all know exactly which ones it'll be, not any western ones that's for sure) into not having many kids, not developing industries, not tampering with rainforests, etc. Nevermind that most industrialized nations have already burned through their natural resources and developed mammoth populations that consume and pollute like crazy. No one else should have the right to develop, only us. Ethiopia should remain a nice wildlife preserve for privileged explorers and conservationists from the civilized parts of the globe to visit, how dare they keep breeding, what a filthy plague, etc. And so many kids in this thread seem to be down with this, because they have a negative view on humanity, not realizing that their blithe agreement that humans are a plague plays right into the hands of people who want to make the problem worse. I'm pretty sure that he wants to concentrate on the areas in which shit hasn't already been wrecked irrevocably is because in the areas that shit has already been wrecked irrevocably shit has already been wrecked irrevocably. I don't doubt that he would happily see a return to the oak forests of England and the non eradication of wolves but we chopped down our forests and we killed our wolves. It seems a massive leap to your conclusion "fuck the blacks" when the areas the conservationists are interested in are the areas with things to conserve. Also the idea that we'd pressure them to act in ways that we want at their expense is nonsense. Nobody is invading these places and evicting local populations from wildlife preserves or anything. What we have is campaigns for western businesses to act ethically in our eyes and things such as the fairtrade and organic trends in which we reward shit we like. Your objection is nonsense. You damn him as a racist and a hypocrite for suggesting that population control to prevent the hypothetical lives of hypothetical people in foreign countries is good while not simultaneously advocating the slaughter of the living people in Western countries who exist because we didn't enact population control generations ago. The two are not comparable, there is no hypocrisy, you are talking complete and utter bollocks.
I get that you feel the need to defend Attenborough, but its clouding your judgement. There's no need for population control - which has an extremely dark history, from infanticide to compulsory sterilization to extreme coercion by totalitarian regimes - when it's still easily within humanity's power to feed, clothe and house everyone. Corruption, waste and misallocation of resources/production are a MUCH bigger problem than population growth, which is actually expected to taper off thanks to increasing education, wealth, opportunity, access to contraception, and other factors which have been consistently shown to reduce birth rates.
Also, while Attenborough himself has done as good a job as can be expected of advocating his cause in only the most gentle, fairy tale terms, the groups he's founded haven't had the luxury of operating above petty details like how you manage population control without resort to coercion. Here's a nice look at what population control advocates sound like when not speaking to a camera: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/01/noted_darwinist068561.html.
But you can't be too hard on them, after all, one can't talk seriously about population control (which Attenborough refuses to do by, for example, putting forth an actual plan) without running into fundamental problems. For one thing, reducing birth rates causes a demographic shift towards the elderly - and in developing countries, very likely a gender imbalance and increased infanticide. Another is that you have to use either coercion or incentives; coercion causes unrest (thus requiring heavy handed control) for reasons that should be self explanatory, ie, human reproductive rights. Meanwhile, given how taxes work, a government incentivizing something really just means punishing everyone who doesn't take the incentivized action... In this case, families with large numbers of children. Which, you will note, are often those in most need of financial assistance. Or are only poor families going to be encouraged to have children, while the well off who have kids pay for everyone else's decisions? Congrats, now we are back to eugenics. This is why Attenborough knows better than to delve into details, he knows the reality of treating people like ignorant shit is much harder to swallow than some chic generalized phrases about humanity being a disease.
The man talks in misanthropic generalities about humanity being a plague which must be controlled, rather than give his attention and join his voice to the ongoing effort to raise standards of living around the globe, an effort which is, in relatively short order, going to not only reduce birth rates, but make the population "problem" completely irrelevant by increasing available resources and productive capacity.
So yeah, while I admire his work, I'm not giving him a pass, and I encourage everyone here to actually think about what population control entails before simply affirming what this guy is saying.
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On January 27 2013 10:29 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:
The problem isn't just too many humans to support, but also resource exploitation. Sadly, most resources don't just magically regenerate like ore mining nodes in an RPG...
Society has evolved so much faster than humans.
We are still driven by animalistic desires and are fairly unintelligent.
A nation utilizing clean energy, utilizing all farmable space-- with an emphasis on urban farming--, and tossing out all of the processed garbage and sticking to a light diet of whole foods. Hell, livestock gets fed enough food to feed every person on the planet.
But, humans are petty creatures incapable of coherent or rational thought. They are driven by primal emotions and desires, and are utterly selfish. The future is quite bleak.
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On January 27 2013 12:46 decado90 wrote:
humans are petty creatures incapable of coherent or rational thought. They are driven by primal emotions and desires, and are utterly selfish. The future is quite bleak.
You're confusing humans with men :p.
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On January 27 2013 16:09 HeatEXTEND wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 12:46 decado90 wrote:
humans are petty creatures incapable of coherent or rational thought. They are driven by primal emotions and desires, and are utterly selfish. The future is quite bleak. You're confusing humans with men :p.
You're confusing men with boys
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On January 26 2013 08:38 sunprince wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 21:56 smokeyhoodoo wrote:On January 25 2013 21:45 sunprince wrote:On January 25 2013 21:25 smokeyhoodoo wrote:On January 25 2013 20:39 sunprince wrote:On January 25 2013 17:26 sam!zdat wrote:
I was answering your question...
edit: food is irrelevant (what is relevant is the environmental impact of the way we produce food). Actually the problem is too much food, the so-called "Green Revolution" (keep in mind that the population of Rwanda tripled in the decades leading up to the genocide). We need less, but healthier and more sustainable and robust, food. We need fewer mouths to feed. Places like Rwanda are as bad as they are because they're caught in a Malthusian trap. More food just results in a bigger population, exacerbating all the other economic, environmental, and political problems. On January 25 2013 19:56 Ysellian wrote:
It's so infuriatingly dumb that our 10000 year old ancestors had better lives than we do today and only because agriculture put us in a spot we can no longer escape from. This statement is absurd. Our ancestors from 10,000 years ago had nasty, brutal, short lives. Less than 25% of people even made it to age 15. The death toll from giving birth alone was unimaginably high at 14% per birth. It's ridiculous that you think a people without antibiotics, running water, and military/police to protect them from genocidal neighboring tribes, had better lives than we do now. If you seriously believe their lives were better, then I encourage you to move to a third-world country, which is still probably a better life than that of prehistoric humans. I'm sure there were some who lived fairly long lives. One of superior strength, cunning, and hunting skills would eat like a king, screw many women, slay one's rivals, and live into their forties before dying in battle. Sounds better than the coddled existence you've described. Real life isn't your little fairy tale. No amount of superior strength, cunning, or hunting skills could protect you from dying before you're even born because c-sections didn't exist. Nor could they protect you from being felled by an infectious disease (which you consider an evil spirit possession) because hygiene, antibiotics, and refrigeration don't exist. But of course, you're full of hypocritical bullshit right now. If you really believe all that is better than the "coddled existence" we have, get off the Internet and move to Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Afghanistan. I dare you. Population was so sparse there really wouldn't be much infectious disease. Infectious diseases aren't limited to epidemics. There are numerous diseases you can pick up from biological vectors such as insects, from cuts that you pick up during hunting and battles, infected food/water, and all those women you're screwing. Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 21:56 smokeyhoodoo wrote:
The probability of ourselves having come into existence is astronomically small anyway, trillions of universal factors had to fall into place by sheer chance outside of our control as we didn't exist. Your point is moot. Your argument makes no sense. "We have little control of our existence, therefore it wouldn't make a difference if we have a low chance of surviving to adulthood." Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 21:56 smokeyhoodoo wrote:
Besides, I have fine hunting grounds where I currently live, and there are plenty of places I would prefer to the one's you outlined. Maybe when I become bored and feel like pursuing exotic beasts. You live in the United States, where you benefit from all of the "coddled" aspects of modern society including the police and military to keep you safe from other people. Being a "hunter-gatherer" in the United States doesn't resemble the nasty, brutish, and short life span of our ancestors in the slightest. The closest simulation to the violent struggles to survive you claim to be so fond of would be backwards third world countries, not the American wilderness.
Yea but I have to pay taxes. So not worth it, sign me up for rampant disease.
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On January 27 2013 12:33 Zahir wrote: There's no need for population control
The FACT is that all ecosystems have maximum populations before problems occur and the population is forced to plateau. It's already occurring in some places such as Africa.
The question is what is the optimal point (time) to curb such things before it causes natural damages.
While mandated sterilization or killing is obviously a bit extreme, what's wrong with simply promoting smaller families?
Do people really need lots of children? there's no need to have lots of children aside from a desire for a sort of power and/or human instinct of reproducing. Neither of those things are relevant to the success of humankind, and can be in fact detrimental.
Certainly the most important thing is being conservatory and allowing human lifestyle to be sustainable, but aside from that, one still need to have some sort of limit set for populations or the limit will impose itself in nasty nasty ways (things like global warming). If everyone consumed less sure there'd be less problems for a while, but then when people just keep reproducing, their population will offset for that reduced consumption/impact.
The fact is that with a positive population growth, there is absolutely no sustainability— it's simple impossible (at least with regards to a limited space such as the planet earth).
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On January 27 2013 20:43 Xapti wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 12:33 Zahir wrote: There's no need for population control The FACT is that all ecosystems have maximum populations before problems occur and the population is forced to plateau. It's already occurring in some places such as Africa. The question is what is the optimal point (time) to curb such things before it causes natural damages. While mandated sterilization or killing is obviously a bit extreme, what's wrong with simply promoting smaller families? Do people really need lots of children? there's no need to have lots of children aside from a desire for a sort of power and/or human instinct of reproducing. Neither of those things are relevant to the success of humankind, and can be in fact detrimental. Certainly the most important thing is being conservatory and allowing human lifestyle to be sustainable, but aside from that, one still need to have some sort of limit set for populations or the limit will impose itself in nasty nasty ways (things like global warming). If everyone consumed less sure there'd be less problems for a while, but then when people just keep reproducing, their population will offset for that reduced consumption/impact. The fact is that with a positive population growth, there is absolutely no sustainability— it's simple impossible (at least with regards to a limited space such as the planet earth).
Dude, move to some place where population is already declining. May i humbly suggest Russia?
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On January 27 2013 20:43 Xapti wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 12:33 Zahir wrote: There's no need for population control The FACT is that all ecosystems have maximum populations before problems occur and the population is forced to plateau. It's already occurring in some places such as Africa. The question is what is the optimal point (time) to curb such things before it causes natural damages. While mandated sterilization or killing is obviously a bit extreme, what's wrong with simply promoting smaller families? Do people really need lots of children? there's no need to have lots of children aside from a desire for a sort of power and/or human instinct of reproducing. Neither of those things are relevant to the success of humankind, and can be in fact detrimental. Certainly the most important thing is being conservatory and allowing human lifestyle to be sustainable, but aside from that, one still need to have some sort of limit set for populations or the limit will impose itself in nasty nasty ways (things like global warming). If everyone consumed less sure there'd be less problems for a while, but then when people just keep reproducing, their population will offset for that reduced consumption/impact. The fact is that with a positive population growth, there is absolutely no sustainability— it's simple impossible (at least with regards to a limited space such as the planet earth).
Did you miss the part where population growth rates have already peaked and are declining? A lot of long term forecasts expect global population itself to eventually begin declining several decades from now as standards of living, education, access to contraception, economic opportunity all increase.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
So your argument about the inevitability of the need for population control is hardly grounded in facts. The idea that population growth is spiraling out of control is a myth, the global growth rates are in decline. And what you said about ecosystems is irrelevant - humans can migrate, hell, we can terraform and create new ecosystems as needed. Getting rid of some the currently existing waste and corruption will give us plenty of centuries worth of breathing room to solve the problems you're presenting as insoluble.
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Population control is not an option.
All species who had a negative growth figure for a longer time have died out.
In the verry long run we like to have a positive growth figure, limiting population growth should always be temporarely, and never a long term philosophy.
The more humans there are, the better our change to survive, and we should strive to eventually populate the whole universe. Luckily that drive is encoded well into our genes.
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If you have been there to see it, and I have, you know it is mankind's nature to destroy itself. So mock as you will. Nobody will listen until we start piling the bodies of our families into mass graves. Your grandchildren will face this. Globalization is one huge pyramid scheme, what happens when all the countries locked in a trade scheme go to war? Economies crumble. What happens when economies crumble? People starve. I may be dumbing it down a bit, but there really isn't anything scholarly about it. We will all soon be broke and at war, and millions will die as a result.
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On January 28 2013 09:00 dirtydurb82 wrote:
If you have been there to see it, and I have, you know it is mankind's nature to destroy itself. So mock as you will. Nobody will listen until we start piling the bodies of our families into mass graves. Your grandchildren will face this. Globalization is one huge pyramid scheme, what happens when all the countries locked in a trade scheme go to war? Economies crumble. What happens when economies crumble? People starve. I may be dumbing it down a bit, but there really isn't anything scholarly about it. We will all soon be broke and at war, and millions will die as a result.
That's one reason why they won't go to war - it's against their economic interests.
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On January 28 2013 09:00 dirtydurb82 wrote:
If you have been there to see it, and I have, you know it is mankind's nature to destroy itself. So mock as you will. Nobody will listen until we start piling the bodies of our families into mass graves. Your grandchildren will face this. Globalization is one huge pyramid scheme, what happens when all the countries locked in a trade scheme go to war? Economies crumble. What happens when economies crumble? People starve. I may be dumbing it down a bit, but there really isn't anything scholarly about it. We will all soon be broke and at war, and millions will die as a result.
If push comes to shove the north would fuck the south over across the globe right now. Probably minor military conflicts, but mostly major, and more obvious, economic abuse.
Why get fucked when you can fuck someone else over instead? Mmm, humanity.
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http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/01/noted_darwinist068561.html.
"(talking about members of the populist movement commiting suicide in old age) I presume that they felt this was an act of generosity to the overburdened earth, when they had reached an age when they could not contribute as much as they desired to humanity's future. What a supreme act of integrity and courage!" [Val Stevens, "The Tragedy of the Commons and other matters: A Tribute to Garrett Hardin,"
These people are loons. I dont have a problem with population control as long as it isnt compulsary. As for the situation in Ethiopia, it is rather tragic. However unlike others in this thread I believe that they actually NEED globalization. These people are probably willing to work for a few dollars a day to buy food. Id take Extortion over starvation any day.
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United Arab Emirates5090 Posts
Humans are naturally greedy and selfish. That has helped us out pretty well so far with competitive markets and the global economy, but in the end, natural resources dictates that it actually IS a zero sum game.
The whole mentality of "every man for himself" where the world is in a constant power struggle for oil and other resources is a wasteful mindset. We are all stuck on the same little piece of rock floating in space, it is time we stopped putting so much of our scarce materials into weapons systems.
But of course, if we all embraced each other and truly created world peace, we wouldn't be human anymore.
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ugh so many negative nancies in the world. Man everything will be just fine. Its great to point out problems, but be like "aw man, we're all screwed" isnt gonna get us anywhere.
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On January 28 2013 11:06 pyrogenetix wrote:
Humans are naturally greedy and selfish. That has helped us out pretty well so far with competitive markets and the global economy, but in the end, natural resources dictates that it actually IS a zero sum game.
The whole mentality of "every man for himself" where the world is in a constant power struggle for oil and other resources is a wasteful mindset. We are all stuck on the same little piece of rock floating in space, it is time we stopped putting so much of our scarce materials into weapons systems.
But of course, if we all embraced each other and truly created world peace, we wouldn't be human anymore.
Natural resources like the sun? What about finding alternatives to natural resources like artificial production of hydrocarbons? What about mining asteroids, even though there are no minerals on earth even close to being exhausted? Arable land then, what about that? Hmm, hydroponics maybe? Uses much less water and space then current methods of food production. Lack of living space can be dealt with by building underground, and vertically, as well as by settling space or other planets. More food can be grown without the sun by using uv lamps powered by geothermal and nuclear fusion generators. None of these limits are even close to being reached and I've outlined technical solutions to all of them. Just because you don't have the creative capacity to solve these problems doesn't mean others don't. Far more greedy and selfish people than you will figure it out, and you'll hate them all the more for it.
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On January 27 2013 16:09 HeatEXTEND wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 12:46 decado90 wrote:
humans are petty creatures incapable of coherent or rational thought. They are driven by primal emotions and desires, and are utterly selfish. The future is quite bleak. You're confusing humans with men :p.
What kind of bullshit is this. You are sexist btw.
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On January 29 2013 00:19 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 16:09 HeatEXTEND wrote:On January 27 2013 12:46 decado90 wrote:
humans are petty creatures incapable of coherent or rational thought. They are driven by primal emotions and desires, and are utterly selfish. The future is quite bleak. You're confusing humans with men :p. What kind of bullshit is this. You are sexist btw.
Lol, I'm sure we all had experiences that indicates that women are quite selfish as well.
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On January 29 2013 00:19 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 16:09 HeatEXTEND wrote:On January 27 2013 12:46 decado90 wrote:
humans are petty creatures incapable of coherent or rational thought. They are driven by primal emotions and desires, and are utterly selfish. The future is quite bleak. You're confusing humans with men :p. What kind of bullshit is this. You are sexist btw.
This bullshit is saying that individual human beings aren't the same thing as mankind in general.
Oh wait, should I have said womankind ? No wait, that would be sexist as well. Guess I'm screwed.
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