immortalfrieza said:
Therumancer said:
If you're going to advocate something, try to advocate something that actually has a chance in hell of actually succeeding. You might be right, the only way to preserve the human race might be to simply kill off most everybody, but we both know that if that ever happens it won't be until we're already so far past the point of no return that we literally have no other choice.
I still don't think you're correct though, what you advocate might be the simplest way and in the end the necessary way, but I don't think it's the only way and it won't really fix anything in the end anyway. It would just set humanity back from the deaths and destruction it would require and we are just going to start breeding back up again until resource pressures force us to do it again, and again, and again until there's nothing worthwhile left. Even for your plan to work would require an unrealistically massive shift in the way society functions just to reach the mass killing stage, not to mention afterwards.
Besides, the only way we'd pull that off is either state sanctioned murder across the entire planet or massive nuclear war, the former would never be allowed to come to pass and the latter could just as well result in the mass extinction of the entire human race defeating the purpose.
I also think we have a lot longer than a few decades.
Well actually it has a good chance of succeeding to be honest, the key element is to prevent a baby boom after the events that reduce the population, that is where draconian regulation is more likely to come into play.
As far as the practicality of killing off 90% of the human race without causing extinction, that's pretty simple actually. The biggest boundary is simply morality. We honestly don't need nukes, WMDS, or other assorted things to do the job, conventional bombs, missiles, etc... work just fine. The problem is that the first world that has most of these weapons in general does not use them, even when they should be doing so, at the best of times. We pretty much downsized the military in the US for example because we could eliminate entire civilizations rapidly without needing WMDs, making the need for conventional troops less important if we were challenged. The idea being that if something like 9-11 happened we'd just flat out wreck The Middle East and call it a day. In reality however morality got in the way and we pretty much broke the country trying to rebuild our troop numbers, intelligence services, and similar things while sending reserves out to fight in ways they were never intended to simply because of morality.
See at the end of the day I simply believe a nation like the USA, that at least has the idealogy in a textbook sense to lead to the formation of a functional world government when the smoke clears, needs to pursue it's own interests to the point of starting World War III on terms where it can still win. Right now we have the missile interception technology to render the threat of WMDs almost obsolete (a point that upset Russia as it violates deals made with the now-defunct USSR not to do that, and also fueled some of the problems during the Georgia incident due to Poland hosting missile interception bases that severely limit the ability of Russia to get missiles out of their own air space and leverage the EU that way... requiring they pretty much invade Poland in order to take out the missile base(s) before they could even consider threatening the EU with WMDs at the moment).
Hence why I pretty much figure we might as well push China back hard instead of always backing down, in order to demand they obey international IP laws and such. I see World War III as being inevitable to begin with, and it simply comes down as to whether it happens quickly enough to save humanity, and of course who seizes the initiative and winds up winning as that very much defines the path the world will take for human survivors after that point. The big thing in such a war is more about fighting to break cultures and civilizations rather than simply attacking military infrastructure (which can always be rebuild). Basically we need militaries made up of the equivalent of Arthur "Bomber" Harris with similar hawks calling the shots, rather than diplomats and polliticians more concerned with moral principle than bringing about any kind of lasting, positive, change.
Understand we will NOT agree here and this isn't the kind of discussion that really applies to the intent of this thread. The bottom line is that at the end of the day your an idealist that seems to believe things will just work out if we continue to stick to a moral high ground. I'm more of a pessimist that believes in reality it all comes down to who the biggest bastard happens to be, and the "good guys" are all dependent on who gets to write the history afterwards which is why when you look back on almost any bit of history and dig far enough you will come to the conclusion almost everyone who did anything was a giant jerk at the very least. It's depressing, but there you are. Nobody cares if you stood for the right things, because after the smoke clears your not the ones who get to write the records.
I very much believe that unfortunately the greater good, and the best possible future for the human race, involves truly terrible things having to happen pretty much right now, or in the very near future. Not because I want to wallow in blood, but because the world sucks, understand in all likelihood what I'm saying means I die as well. I do not believe we can rely on some magical 11th hour save, actually what I'm advocating is in the scope of humanity close tot hat already, beyond a certain point, any change of course becomes more or less impossible which is half the problem.
But as I said, we are not going to agree, and I try not to focus on my own depressing take on things because it tends to annoy some people who just haven't yet had their idealism totally smashed by reality, and/or who think I have some kind of motivation behind what I'm saying rather than ironically... humanitarianism, since it comes down to what's best for our species and having the brightest possible future ahead of us.
