Poll: Would you support a human Genophage?

[rutger5000]

This really isn't a yes or no question. Right now I'm extremly tempted to say yes, for I loath humanity as a whole. (Individuals are great, groups mostly aren't for humans generally don't handle authority very well.)
So I'm all about less people in general, regardless we might have a over population problem at all.
However I feel I should actually try to contribute to the conversation, instead of just propogating my extremist opinion.
I for one am not entirely convinced the overpopulation problem is such an enormous problem. The Earth is strong, and humans are cunning. Whatever happens we'll both survive.
Besides that this is not the first time that overpopulation was said to be the inmpending doom of us all. In the early 20th century the "Club of Rome" was very highly respected group of men, who predicted the exact same senarios we are fearing now for the exact same reason, and who where wrong for the exact same reason I believe people today are wrong.
They too thought the humanity had grown to large to fast, they too doubted that the earth and world economy could support such a high population, and they too miscalculated the human treat that has brought us where we are today: Human ingunity, which sparks technological progress. They too underestimated technological breakthroughs waiting to happen. They too feared that the farms would't yield enough crops, even though back then the signs of artificial fertalisers where there. Just like right now the signs for genetically modified crops are here today. They too feared that the coal and natrual recourses based economy couldn't support the world economy enough, even though the signs of a stonger oil based economy where there. Just like right now the signs for a substainable / nuclear fission and fussion are here. (learn this people,for it will become important someday, fission might have some minor (but very scary) negative side-effects, nuclear fussion has not, and it will be the future).
They too feared that the dense population would breed new and terrible disseases that would wreck humanity. Even though the signs of antibiotics were there. Just like right now the signs for genetics applied in medicine are here.
Some of you might fear the developments I mentioned, but I'm more then confident that they will happen. They are the path of least resistance, and that's the path humanity always takes. Besides they are not as scary as you might think.
Space exploration will be for the next century (the 22nd), as right now it's scientifically un(possible/reasonable) and there's no rush yet.
Mark my words a small century from now people will have the exact same discussion, and there will be some historically smartass (a smartass that uses history to make his/her point, not necessarily a smartass who will be as historically awesome as I) who'll tell you not to worry and uses the exact same arguments as I did.

 

[rutger5000]

heh its called war people, the only natural predator for man is man, hence why racism and national separation still exist in our so called enlightened, civilized world. we are the same creature we where when we where killing each other with rocks and sticks in the stone age, we just use guns and bombs now, and wear jeans. nothing hunts us anymore though, we killed off most of the worlds apex predators, the only place you will see a gray wolf or a tiger is a zoo, instead of worrying about overpopulation we should worry about how we will fight world war 3 without nukes. personally i think world peace, overpopulation, and the irresponsible draining of natural resources can be solved in one fell swoop, all the worlds governments fight every other world governments in a giant battle royal. winner take all, the rules are simple. no wmds, no guerrilla tactics, only open war and the result will be a reduced population, one government, and enough resources for said population.

Honestly I doubt that would have the desired effect. I doubt that a great deal more then over a 1000000000 people have been killed in all the wars combined, not even a fifth of the current population. Besides war consumes enormous recourses, and is quiet often followed by a population boom.
The nukes will be a problem in WW3, as they will be used eventually. Humans lack the common sense to not use them. But if we're lucky fission bombs would have gone out of style by then. Which leaves us with nice clean fussion bombs (no fallout). If we're starting with those then the population might actually be significantly reduced to say a billion or so. (Only the cities will be bombed, because the bombs could be intercepted before impact, therefor bombing anything that isn't a city is too much of a risk)

 

[Tipsy Giant]

nah, we just need to rid the world of religion, that would result in birth control and boom smaller families

 

[rutger5000]

We'd rather make ourselves infertile than cut back on our wasteful and consumerist insanity..?

Not entirely sure, but I think yes. I'm not quiet sure which is more stubborn human nature or evolution. I'm putting my money on human nature = only taking the path of least resistance, and only looking a few years (at the very most) ahead.

 

[rutger5000]

People have been saying that we're going to run out of food and room since the 19th century, and probably long before that. The way people talk about this, it's like we're suddenly going to clock 8 billion babies, and suddenly all the worlds food will disappear. No, that's absurd.

If we do start running out of food, it'll be a slow gradual thing, and humans are very good with slow, gradual things. We're great adapters, and we will adapt. Maybe our culture will become less focused on makin' babbies, maybe we'll invent new, more efficient ways of growing food. Call me a hopeless optimist, but we'll survive, we'll adapt. We always do.

And you mention exploitation and wholesale destruction of our ecology, you think those things are new? The wholesale destruction of our ecology thing hasn't come about because of overpopulation, it's because of new technological developments that were exploited way too much before we really understood their implications. The exploitation thing is a result of our imperialism days.

This. A much more efficient way of stating the exact same thing I said.

 

[KnowYourOnion]

Really? I suppose if your only concern is whether the earth remains fit for supporting human life then we have a fair way to go. But since we have polluted our oceans and air, overused land, killed off many natural species, and destroyed most forests, I'd say that there is at least some pressing issue. Sure there's a good chance we'll survive to colonize other worlds, but that wasn't really my main concern.

The human race is my main concern, and to put it bluntly it should be yours too. If I had to choose between inflicting a genophage on humanity and driving 90% of the other current forms of life on the planet to extinction (though I see no reason to believe that it would ever come to that), I wouldn't think twice. My own species is my priority.

Then you're an idiot, sorry that's just the truth of it. Humanity doesn't have some special place in the world, we don't have the right to wipe other species out to save a few million of our own kind. With sentience comes the responsibility to move past our bestial selfish instincts. To look at this from a colder, more logical point of view we have no idea what some of the species we'll wipe out could possibly offer us, it simply doesn't make sense to wipe them out simply because we want a few of our own to survive.

You say it 'it should be yours to' but you don't explain why

 

[RN7]

I'd honestly rather whole-sale, massive bombings that kill at least 4 billion people. That should extend the planet's longevity for a bit.

Alternatively we can get rid of China

Although with any luck nature will wipe humanity of the planet before it gets to the point where we exhaust all non-renewable resources with no efficient and usable alternatives. If not, it's eat or be eaten and kill or be killed.

 

[Vuljatar]

Then you're an idiot, sorry that's just the truth of it. Humanity doesn't have some special place in the world, we don't have the right to wipe other species out to save a few million of our own kind.

We have a special place in the world because we are the world's only sentient species. We have the right to wipe out other species to save our own kind because we are sentient and the other species are not. I am proud to say that I value human life over non-human life.

To look at this from a colder, more logical point of view we have no idea what some of the species we'll wipe out could possibly offer us, it simply doesn't make sense to wipe them out simply because we want a few of our own to survive.

That is exactly why we should preserve as many other species as possible.

You say it 'it should be yours to' but you don't explain why

I thought that would be obvious. Humanity should be your priority because you are a human.

 

[mikey7339]

It's not really a point of contention that there are (or soon will be) more humans than the planet can comfortably sustain.

[citation needed]

Seriously, this "overpopulation" hysteria is about as accurate and realistic as a Mayan apocalypse prediction. We've got, at a minimum, hundreds of generations before it would become a real concern--barring the very likely event of some sort of technological advancement that renders the point entirely moot. And either way, by then we'll have colonized other worlds.

There are more people alive on the planet right now than have died in the ENTIRE HUMAN HISTORY. Here, let me paint a better picture for you.

People that deny this is a problem are just as bad as global warming deniers. We are killing off species at a faster rate than the last mass extinction event, we are changing our environment faster than any geological time period and we havn't even been using plastic for a century but we already created sub-continent sized piles of plastic in the ocean. And you REALLY think things won't be a problem for hundreds of more generations? We've fucking quadrupled our global population in just a handful of generations.

Go back to burying your head in the sand and thinking happy thoughts now.

EDIT: And colonizing other worlds? We took a few excursions to the moon ONLY for political reasons and now the space budget has been all but eliminated. If you really think we will be able to colonize other planets, let alone get to one in your lifetime then you are unbelievably deluded.

 

[nathan-dts]

But what if we don't find the necessary resources on Mars? We won't find more food or water. At best materials to fuel our first world lifestyle.

No matter what we can convert things into energy which is the biggest problem we face.

 

[RN7]

Then you're an idiot, sorry that's just the truth of it. Humanity doesn't have some special place in the world, we don't have the right to wipe other species out to save a few million of our own kind.

We have a special place in the world because we are the world's only sentient species. We have the right to wipe out other species to save our own kind because we are sentient and the other species are not. I am proud to say that I value human life over non-human life.

To look at this from a colder, more logical point of view we have no idea what some of the species we'll wipe out could possibly offer us, it simply doesn't make sense to wipe them out simply because we want a few of our own to survive.

That is exactly why we should preserve as many other species as possible.

You say it 'it should be yours to' but you don't explain why

I thought that would be obvious. Humanity should be your priority because you are a human.

Not everyone likes humans though. I mean, a good bunch of them are stupid, wasteful, foolish, belligerent, ignorant, purposeless and just plain boring. I honestly wouldn't mind seeing them die out provided some of the more interesting organisms survive. Like the platypuses. Everyone loves platypuses.

 

[stonethered]

Humans can get past this problem by taking all the miltaries funding and putting it into space exploration and colonisation. LETS GO TO FUCKING MARS ALREADY! btw, The krogans only had a genophage cause they were rebelling and trying to kill everyone, overcrowding had nothing to do with it. Nobody is doing anything to my junk unless it involves several beatiful people and some whippy cream.

Well first of all, the former wouldn't help at all given that Mars is a barren world incapable of sustaining human life. In essence any colonization of Mars would only result in more space to put our growing population without addressing the real concern about the resources needed to maintain a population of that size. The problem would in fact be exacerbated by the fact that you'd have the population of two planets dependant on the resources of one.

Second: You're kinda ignoring the lore of Mass Effect. The Krogan rebellions were a direct result of the Krogan's incredibly high birthrate and their need for rapid expansion to sustain it, leading them to conquer planets belonging to other races so that the ever increasing population would have the resources needed to survive. While it is true that the genophage would never have been deployed were it not for the Krogan rebellions, the rebellions were a direct result of the krogan's population issues.

First off, I repeat my point of Mars is where all the prothean shit is, and its the first planet that I thought of,
Second, While you're largely correct and I did overlook a coupla points there, the main reason for Krogan genophage was The unchecked birthrate would have been bad And had to be checked by the very model of a scientist salarian or it would have effected species Turian, Asari and Batarian. The fact of the gentics (as the subset of biology) would have been rendered moot. Seriously, I'm an expert (which I know is a tautology). The salarian xenoscience studies ranging from urban to agrarian all pointed to the choice between genocide or genophage, but this was all due to the militant tendencies Krogans possess. Humans don't so genophage isn't particularly neccessary for us. I am the very model of a Scientist Salarian.

Nice, Love how you worked that in there.

How 'bout no? The earth will balance us out just fine. We will not exceed an unsustainable population on this planet for very long, and it won't be an issue. We'll either ship the excess off to other planets, or we'll blast ourselves back into the stone age before it ever approaches.

I guess we'd rather get a bunch of totalitarian systems and solve the nutrition problem Soylent Green style.

Oh, and genocides over genocides, of course.

How the Hell did it take that long for someone to reference that movie? I mean really people?


Anyways. Personally, I'm in with the Colonize Mars, ..., Profit community here. We have space issues? Get more space. We have food issues? Stop building houses on arable land, find more arable land, and work on the tech needed to make protein resyncquinization(SP) feasible. But for the love of God, the solution to overpopulation is not to take away people's ability to have kids. There is never an excuse for castration, scientific or otherwise; execute the poor man (or woman) first.

Besides, we have a better chance of becoming an interstellar power than of preventing people from finding ways to get around any system we come up with.

 

[Ziame]

as Gandhi said, there's enough to satisfy everyone's needs but not greed.

we won't starve OP. we will just lower our level of life.

problem is that we have TOO MUCH and we (West) squander it.

also, people live way too long. i wouldnt even want to be like 70 yo.

let the end come, i aint Hitler to decide who lives and who dies.

it all wont matter anyway cause reapers just got here.

 

[renegade7]

No. Human population follows the same basic biological principal as do all populations: the number of offspring is limited by the amount of resources to keep the population stable. The human birth rate for the whole planet will at some point stabilize itself well before a crash is a risk.

 

[xPixelatedx]

I have a better solution.

Let us once again introduce the 'law of natural selection' by genetically engineering one of those "monsters" every horror movie says we will one day make if we ever decide to "Play God". Pretty much all of our natural predators are gone, and the few we have left are no match for our guns. Lets make some things that are

Also this:
I remember seeing this when I was 8 years old... holy crap!

 

[FateOrFatality]

It's not really a point of contention that there are (or soon will be) more humans than the planet can comfortably sustain.

[citation needed]

Seriously, this "overpopulation" hysteria is about as accurate and realistic as a Mayan apocalypse prediction. We've got, at a minimum, hundreds of generations before it would become a real concern--barring the very likely event of some sort of technological advancement that renders the point entirely moot. And either way, by then we'll have colonized other worlds.

This, mostly.

In addition, if you applied the genophage to many first world countries they would just collapse from the low birth rates. Some European countries birth rates are already close to zero as it is. Only places where overpopulation is a problem the genophage could fix is Asia/Africa, and then you'd have WWIII on your hands about selectively applying the genophace to specific people.

So yeah, the genophage isn't a one size fits all cure to overpopulation, nor does it really need a cure at the moment.