so the earth is F***ed aparently..

[Therumancer]

snip

90%?...a good thing?

its not just about me or my loved ones...its the fact I find killing inocent people a rather awful concept..anyway, HOW would you make people regress tehcnologically and to what extent?

anyway...I think capitalism "works" (in that it gives us all thease amazing advancments) because fundamentlaly we are selfish, it harnesses that selfishness and chanels it into somthing productive

EDIT: [quote/]Of course a lot of people don't really want to look at things that rationally,

genocide is not rational...its barberic[/quote]

I wouldn't make people regress technologically. I actually disagreed with that point.

The issue is simply overpopulation, too many people, and for them all to have high standards of living that they would be happy with would require too much space and resources. We're already depleting the resources faster than the planet can replentish them, and the global population is shrinking.

You kill 90% of the people off, and then stabilize the population there, at least until we have the technology to colonize other planets and spread out our population, and then everyone has a decent amount of living space, and there are enough resources for everyone to maintain an adequete standard of living.

Reducing the population also allows us to use more, and better, technology. Right now there are issues with things like medical technology, genetic engineering, and things like that in part because people living healthier and longer lives is a bad idea when we already have too many people, the ones we have living longer simply increases the number of people around as attrition from death simply becomes slower.

It's rational because it happens to be the best thing for the species as a whole, pure logic. The repugnance you, and others, feel is an emotional reaction, as it is a terrible thing for that many sentinent beings, many of whom did nothing wrong but exist, being snuffed out.

To my way of thinking, people were warned about this generations ago. Zero population growth, or population reduction. We chose not to do so, and the population increased as did medical sence, with people remaining alive longer and more capably. We've already gotten into the problem of generations being "Skipped" as far as societal contribution (Generation X is the "lost generation" for a reason) due to their father's generation being unwilling to step down and able to work longer in the same jobs from medical technology, in addition to the other problems.

In the end if you really think about it, a huge number of the world's problems simply come down to the bottom line of there being too many bloody people.

Ideally when the world population was decimated after WW II we should have taken efforts as a species to prevent the resulting "baby boom" and kept the population at post-war figures. We blew that oppertunity, we need for another massive population reduction to happen, but to learn from our mistakes and to control the population numbers.

I will also say (before someone else mentions it) that aside from resources there are issues with simple living space. A lot of liberals like to point to the deserts, arctic tundra, etc... and say "look at all that space" but understand that contentment is part of this, as is the issue with resources. Those are NOT nice places to live and take more resources invested to sustain people when resources are depleting. Even if we somehow DID manage to put people out there, the people there wouldn't exactly be happy, and that kind of discontent is a lot of what breeds conflict. See, the idea being that if you reduce the population by 90% everyone can thus live comfortable, have a decent personal living space, and the creature comforts to be comfortable. Nobody would wind up sharing a single room apartment with three other families and taking turns sleeping "hot bed" on the floor matresses due to space being at a premium. That kind of thing is what leads to anger and resentment. Right now China's been talking about invading other nations internally when it's military has built up far enough simply for living space, and honestly if you lived in the hell
of the majority of their population you might be thinking the same damn thing. I think part of the problem with those who disagree with me, is that they don't entirely see the big picture, it's easy to dismiss a point like this when your sitting comfortably at a desk, tapping at a computer, in the first world. Your happy an comfortable, so why do you want to see billions of people die? I think most Americans comfortable enough to get on The Internet labour under an emotional delusion of everyone having it like they do, even if they rationally know otherwise. When your personally happy and content it's easy to dismiss needing to do anything unpleasant... and really I think that's part of why the US has been failing (beyond this discussion) we've fallen into comfortable decadence and self-delusion.

 

[Vault101]

You kill 90% of the people off, and then stabilize the population there, at least until we have the technology to colonize other planets and spread out our population, and then everyone has a decent amount of living space, and there are enough resources for everyone to maintain an adequete standard of living.

It's rational because it happens to be the best thing for the species as a whole, pure logic. The repugnance you, and others, feel is an emotional reaction, as it is a terrible thing for that many sentinent beings, many of whom did nothing wrong but exist, being snuffed out.

its not fucking rational..YES it would solve all our problems but don't for a second think that because you can justify in your head that its rational..thats what people like Hitler are made of....nobody calls the marauding raiders in post apocolyptic scenarios rational...yes your advocating killing on a much larger scale

you know what they call people who don;t have empathy? sociopaths..but yeah I really do apologise for being all silly and emotional, and I'm sure your proud of yourself for resisting the emotional aspect but theres not point to causeing 90% of the world to die/suffer

anyway point is IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, I mean aside from some big global catastrophe no one is going to say "yeah, this is a good Idea"

if you like the Idea so much then hypothetically if I had the power to make it happen and I said to you "I'll do it if you take a shotgun and personally kill every person you lever loved/liked, then yourself" then you'd need to do that without a second thought...thats what we are dealing with here



[quote/]To my way of thinking, people were warned about this generations ago. Zero population growth, or population reduction. We chose not to do so[/quote]
we did not CHOOSE anything all the people in the world do not make concious hive-mind decisions



[quote/]. Even if we somehow DID manage to put people out there, the people there wouldn't exactly be happy,[/quote]
why not? isnt dubai in the middle of a desert? if we had some far-fetched technology that made getting rescoures (food/water) out there possible people would be perfectly fine, I wouldnt mind as long as I had a comfortabl house and internet


[quote/] I think part of the problem with those who disagree with me, is that they don't entirely see the big picture,[/quote]
no..see they are not sociopaths, or at least would rather not have millions of innocents killed, mabye thats incredibly hard for you to understand because you can only see "the big picture" whereas I see myself looking out the window one day only to see blinding white light from a nuke because some nutter pushed a button in the name of the bigger picture if wer are all going to suffer in the end whats the point? I'd rather humans die out than have to kill off 90%



[quote/]it's easy to dismiss a point like this when your sitting comfortably at a desk, tapping at a computer, in the first world. Your happy an comfortable, so why do you want to see billions of people die? I think most Americans comfortable enough to get on The Internet labour under an emotional delusion of everyone having it like they do, even if they rationally know otherwise. When your personally happy and content it's easy to dismiss needing to do anything unpleasant... and really I think that's part of why the US has been failing (beyond this discussion) we've fallen into comfortable decadence and self-delusion.[/quote]
the fuck do YOU get to decide who deserves to live and die?

honestly I don't think I can continue this argument without getting myself banned

 

[Giftfromme]

snippety snip

LOL what are you talking about brother. This makes no sense whatsoever, and ignores every single thing we know to be true about our development, psychology and well everything else.

Why on Earth would having fewer people make them better off, or able to use the resources more efficiently?

"You kill 90% of the people off, and then stabilize the population there, at least until we have the technology to colonize other planets and spread out our population, and then everyone has a decent amount of living space, and there are enough resources for everyone to maintain an adequete standard of living."

LOL you actually believe that? Come on brother, surely you can do better? Surely? You do know crowding existed even in Roman times. That was 2000 years ago when the population of the Earth was 200 million or something like that. Overcrowding. Understand? There are many places on Earth right now where there is no overcrowding, and Canberra is one of them. Simply put, people like being where other people are. Hence why you could have overcrowded cities 2000 years ago. Getting rid of people doesn't fix that

You might want to revise everything you have said in that post and rethink how you, well think about things lol. I shall pray for your speedy recovery my brother

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Back in the 1900's the human race was expected to starve to death by the 1930's because of a lack of nutrient soils, and look where we are today.
We need more technology and science if anything to solve this.

Because of the emergency work of my hero this didnt happen. It was fucking close though. This ONE MAN got his shit together and created the technology to save more lives from starvation than have ever died in all wars. Ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug

Seriously if you have an aptitude for science get your ass in gear and do what this man did. Now. Fast. No more whining or complaining or hopelessness. Action. Learn how to do your stuff well and effectively and get out there fixing stuff IMMEDIATELY.

As long as people like this man are born into our world who literally cant live without helping the world with their knowledge we will never be fucked. You just gotta be motivated to make it happen and work your ass off for a fairly modest reward. Even if you dont change the world you might set the stage for the next person to use your research to do so, so its all worth it.

We can save ourselves with technology. It just seems silly to expect someone ELSE to do it if you have the ability to try yourself. Thus i follow the career path of my hero.

 

[The Lugz]

time to speed up our space program so we can colonize other worlds. The sooner we get off this rock, the sooner we dont have to worry about some random event wiping all mankind out.

^ this, precisely
the world IS fucked and only going to get worse it's also extremely hard if not impossible to repair, sure it's still inhabitable but who wants acid rain typhoon season in city's? no one.

the sooner we can find a replacement planet the better then we can let this one die and suck out all it's resources
before it becomes entirely toxic

building a new world allows you to have completely efficient systems throughout that wont waste the tremendous amount of resources our current one does
we waste billions of gallons of water, millions of tons of food and produce so many toxic landfills and ruined landscape,
just because of the way our civilization produces and transports it's resources
that could be Completely recovered with a more efficient system

it's entirely plausible if we start now the big issue is actually finding a planet that wont kill us getting to,
or living on it possibly a super colony ship could be the answer but that has it's own issues

 

[BrassButtons]

Alright first off "and nature in fact hates us", it does not hate us, it created us and we destroy it with pollution. So, please explain to me how nature hates us if it gives us almost everything that we need
.

Nature hates everything

Mother Nature is not a kind nurturing mother...she is a cold sociapathic ***** who WILL drink your milshake and boil your pet rabbit,

oh yes..she is beautiful no doubt, and some peopel are fooled by her beuty and aparent nurtering ways.That is a lie.nature is pure chaos, nature has no concept of morality, life in the wild is short and brutal at best unless your some kind of lower lifeform

Nature provides yes, but to what end? so she can enjoy watching her creations kill and eat each other in an endless cyle

Mother Nature sits...watching us patiently...she knows in the end she will have the last laugh

Paleontologist Peter Ward came up with the Medea hypothesis as a counter to the Gaia hypothesis, stating that if we look at life as a superorganism it's goal is suicide.

OT, I'm noticing that while plenty of people are arguing over whether or not the earth is fucked, nobody seems to be mentioning what a healthy ecosystem would look like and how they know. It's as if people think this is an easy question with an obvious answer, and not something scientists have actually been arguing over for decades (the Gaia vs Medea thing is part of that argument--does earth tend toward stable systems or unstable ones? If instability is the norm attempting to "fix" an unstable ecosystem is acting against nature, not with it).

 

[Doclector]

I can tell you one reason, one simple reason why the earth is, as of current, fucked. And it has little to do with our enviroment.

Simply put, we have got to the point where money, something entirely of our own invention, can end the world. Where it can cause hunger that lasts generations even where there is plenty of fertile land and livestock. Where debts are so huge, they can start wars. Where countries can sink into anarchy because one group of people has more little pieces of metal and paper then another.

I'm not saying money is a bad thing. I can't imagine people going back to bartering, and it would send us way back. But right now, money has a grip on the world which can loosen or become crushingly tight at any moment. This must not be allowed to happen.

 

[aba1]

You kill 90% of the people off, and then stabilize the population there, at least until we have the technology to colonize other planets and spread out our population, and then everyone has a decent amount of living space, and there are enough resources for everyone to maintain an adequete standard of living.

It's rational because it happens to be the best thing for the species as a whole, pure logic. The repugnance you, and others, feel is an emotional reaction, as it is a terrible thing for that many sentinent beings, many of whom did nothing wrong but exist, being snuffed out.

its not fucking rational..YES it would solve all our problems but don't for a second think that because you can justify in your head that its rational..thats what people like Hitler are made of....nobody calls the marauding raiders in post apocolyptic scenarios rational...yes your advocating killing on a much larger scale

you know what they call people who don;t have empathy? sociopaths..but yeah I really do apologise for being all silly and emotional, and I'm sure your proud of yourself for resisting the emotional aspect but theres not point to causeing 90% of the world to die/suffer

anyway point is IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, I mean aside from some big global catastrophe no one is going to say "yeah, this is a good Idea"

if you like the Idea so much then hypothetically if I had the power to make it happen and I said to you "I'll do it if you take a shotgun and personally kill every person you lever loved/liked, then yourself" then you'd need to do that without a second thought...thats what we are dealing with here

It is rational, it just isn't ethical. It is logically the best thing to do but it is also a cold, terrible, inhuman thing to do as well. Rational but unethical.

 

[Ryotknife]

I dont have kids, my dog will only live for another ten years.
SO, as long as the earth is not ending in the next 30 year, I am not concerned with what happens to it.

time to speed up our space program so we can colonize other worlds. The sooner we get off this rock, the sooner we dont have to worry about some random event wiping all mankind out.

These two thought processes are HORRIFYING. Either A) Whatever, not my problem man! or B) Whatever, we'll just move on and strip mine other worlds, no biggie.


Both thoughts are absurdly selfish, the first being "Why should I change my life because future humans will suffer? I mean it's not me!", which seems to miss the concept of humans being part of a whole rather than just individuals. And the second is not only short-sighted (as it's not that likely we'll even make it off earth, given that would require terraforming technology, which we're not even sure is possible. Example: the word isn't even in this sites dictionary.), it's terribly selfish because then the concept is that we destroy this planet and move on to destroy other planets (in other words missing the concept that all of reality is part of a whole which humans are included in) Again: Horrifying.

"Angie7F", you could use some more compassion, and "Ryotknife", you could use some more logic. No offense intended, just trying to show you guys how both of these 'don't care' attitudes are both toxic and come from a place of seperation from our reality rather than being in sync with it. Because we perceive, at the moment, only our own lives doesn't mean that only our own lives matter to us or that they are the only lives we'll live.

Angie, imagine if rebirth is a very real thing. This means that when you die you'll move on to live the life of one of those suffering humans who is unfortunate enough to live in the age of desolation that we're creating with our current age of greed.

Ryo, what if we find out there is no way to terraform other planets and as such the nearest inhabitable (as in we can grow food on it and it has natural oxygen and water) is so far away we could never hope to reach it before earths end? Or worse yet, we do forge such a space-station but it takes ages to get to that new world, ages of inbreeding and suffering on a cold ship floating through space, and if we even make it is a harsh impossible world... I think we'd be much better off putting all our effort in to the planet under our feet that has nurtured us from the very beginning.


Sadly, most people agree with one of you two, which is why we're in this current state. Mind you, I'm not talking about just everyday people. Everyday people are able to think what they want without it affecting the world, the people I'm talking about who would agree with your views are our leaders and politicians sadly.


OT: Not sure about this guy's science but a lot of what he is saying is just common sense. What I'm saying is I agree with him, but I doubt he has hard evidence.

my solution is the logical AND PRACTICAL solution to the problem (in the long term) for many reasons:

1. The reducing our strain on the planet to a significant enough degree will probably require murdering billions of poeple if relocation is off the table. Even if you somehow found a way now, it wont work when the population doubles and doubles again in a few short generations.

2. by colonizing other planets, we can spread out of population, significantly reducing the strain the earth in terms of polultants AND resources.

3. we can actually ADD resources to earth from outer space

4. Even if some fairy godmother granted your wish and humanity no longer puts a strain on the earth (that will scale with our growing population) and reverse the irreversible damage, still doesnt prevent some random non-environment related event from wiping out mankind. And we are kinda overdue for an extinction level event.

to top it off, there are huge monotary incentives for colonization, so governments and corporations can get behind it. Until mankind is staring down the barrel of its own imminent extinction, dont expect the government or corporations to lift a finger. At best all you can hope for is some brilliant scientist who wants to save the world, but this is probably beyond what one person can do.

 

[Callate]

Sustaining our current population levels requires the use of technology well above individual subsistence levels. Giving up the infrastructure we use in agriculture and transport would probably result in the death of a billion people or more. So we'd better hope he's wrong, or that Lunar/Martian colonies get up and running tout suite.

 

[megaadair]

Sounds to me that governments are too short sighted and greedy, and the general population are the same. Manage the population and through them manage the planet. Problem is no one will ever agree to sacrifice their freedoms to be managed properly and there's no one trustworhty enough for the job anyway. Either we fix the planet through technology in the future and expand away from it, or the human race will eat itself.

 

[Therumancer]

snippety snip

LOL what are you talking about brother. This makes no sense whatsoever, and ignores every single thing we know to be true about our development, psychology and well everything else.

Why on Earth would having fewer people make them better off, or able to use the resources more efficiently?

"You kill 90% of the people off, and then stabilize the population there, at least until we have the technology to colonize other planets and spread out our population, and then everyone has a decent amount of living space, and there are enough resources for everyone to maintain an adequete standard of living."

LOL you actually believe that? Come on brother, surely you can do better? Surely? You do know crowding existed even in Roman times. That was 2000 years ago when the population of the Earth was 200 million or something like that. Overcrowding. Understand? There are many places on Earth right now where there is no overcrowding, and Canberra is one of them. Simply put, people like being where other people are. Hence why you could have overcrowded cities 2000 years ago. Getting rid of people doesn't fix that

You might want to revise everything you have said in that post and rethink how you, well think about things lol. I shall pray for your speedy recovery my brother

It's not so much a matter of using resources more efficiently so much as having enough resources to begin with. The Romans and such did not deplete the planet itself beyond it's abillity to recover and sustain humanity.

Yes, people will indeed tend to crowd together, but that doesn't change the simple fact that in overall terms there are far too many people on earth right now. No one is saying that killing 90% of the people will end all problems or lead to a utopia, BUT it will make things much better and reduce or solve a lot of problems, as well as open the door for the long term surivival and expsnasion of our species due to things like space travel. One of our big problems right now is that the sheer weight of our population has lead to us being forced to grapple with staving off unsolvable, short term problems right now, as opposed to being able to use the resources to expand into space where we'll be able to obtain more resources (minerals from the Asteroid Belt for example) and eventually set up colonies to expand our population.

 

[Therumancer]

You kill 90% of the people off, and then stabilize the population there, at least until we have the technology to colonize other planets and spread out our population, and then everyone has a decent amount of living space, and there are enough resources for everyone to maintain an adequete standard of living.

It's rational because it happens to be the best thing for the species as a whole, pure logic. The repugnance you, and others, feel is an emotional reaction, as it is a terrible thing for that many sentinent beings, many of whom did nothing wrong but exist, being snuffed out.

its not fucking rational..YES it would solve all our problems but don't for a second think that because you can justify in your head that its rational..thats what people like Hitler are made of....nobody calls the marauding raiders in post apocolyptic scenarios rational...yes your advocating killing on a much larger scale

you know what they call people who don;t have empathy? sociopaths..but yeah I really do apologise for being all silly and emotional, and I'm sure your proud of yourself for resisting the emotional aspect but theres not point to causeing 90% of the world to die/suffer

anyway point is IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, I mean aside from some big global catastrophe no one is going to say "yeah, this is a good Idea"

if you like the Idea so much then hypothetically if I had the power to make it happen and I said to you "I'll do it if you take a shotgun and personally kill every person you lever loved/liked, then yourself" then you'd need to do that without a second thought...thats what we are dealing with here

It is rational, it just isn't ethical. It is logically the best thing to do but it is also a cold, terrible, inhuman thing to do as well. Rational but unethical.

Not entirely true, if you've ever taken Ethics you'd know that this is perfectly ethical by many ethical systems. In the long run since this benefits humanity and more people when viewed in the long term of generations yet to be born and how they live, it fits perfectly within many ethical systems. Indeed it could be argued within a number of systems that it's fundementally evil, or unethical, to NOT indulge in mass murder given the current problems, since maintaining the status quo hurts more people in terms of the big picture than it protects with it's short term gains.

In short argueing against me is basically saying "I don't want to put this much blood on my hands right now, and just want to live my own life peacefully, and hope something happens to make these problems go away or become irrelevent", not caring about the damage done for personal comfort and short term gain. That's pretty bloody selfish.

It comes down to things like utilitarianism, which is "right and wrong being dictated by what benefits the most people" and absolutism where "right and wrong are unchanging principles regardless of what benefits the majority", and of course stances like mine which are between those poles (which would take a long time to spell out). Both utilitarianism and absolutism lead to their own forms of tyranny depending on the specifics, and the fact that right and wrong can be defined so many differant ways means that most conflicts in reality take place between perspectives which are doing the right thing from their own point of view.

Speaking for myself, my basic attitude is that what I'm saying really sucks. Not to mention the simple numbers mean that any individual looking at the facts is going to realize that they are liable (9 out of 10 chances) going to die, and simple self preservation and self interest cause people to not want to accept this even when people realize the truth of what's being said and what the greater good demands. Those who argue against what I'm saying are being incredibly self interested and unethical.

My basic attitude DOES include some absolutism, but here flows greatly towards the utilitarian aspect of things, with the survivial of the species and it's long term progression being more important than anyone's life. It's sort of like the question of whether you'd kill one person to save a thousand, the right thing to do is obvious, it's just that in this case most of the people being saved are those yet to come in future generations, viewed in the long term, with the weight of time. Killing a few billion people now setting the stage for the future success of untold trillions that we know are going to come. It's a forward thinking way of saying "kill a few, save a lot".

 

[Therumancer]

[
its not fucking rational..YES it would solve all our problems but don't for a second think that because you can justify in your head that its rational..thats what people like Hitler are made of....nobody calls the marauding raiders in post apocolyptic scenarios rational...yes your advocating killing on a much larger scale

you know what they call people who don;t have empathy? sociopaths..but yeah I really do apologise for being all silly and emotional, and I'm sure your proud of yourself for resisting the emotional aspect but theres not point to causeing 90% of the world to die/suffer

the fuck do YOU get to decide who deserves to live and die?

honestly I don't think I can continue this argument without getting myself banned

Just calm down, I debate things all the time that get me upset, remember this is just the internet.

At any rate, it's perfectly rational as several people have explained, and you kind of concede the point that it would solve our problems, so there is no point in further debating that. I'm going to address a couple of other things though.

First off, I AM someone with sociopathic tendencies, and as such I have done a lot of research into them. A sociopath is someone who is guided entirely by self interest. A lack of empathy has little to do with whether someone is a sociopath or not. It's possible for sociopaths to become "monsters" if they also have things like sadistic tendencies (as in deriving pleasure from the suffering of others), with them placing their own needs before those of others. You might want to actually read up on it, as someone with brain damage, I've probably done more reading and research on certain aspects of psychology (beyond what I've learned in college) than many professionals as a way of monitoring my own problems.

At any rate, what I'm suggesting isn't even remotely sociopathic, after all I would personally not derive any real benefit from this happening. The payoffs are going to occur long after my own demise (even if from natural causes), and my very arguements likely lead to my own death. As such this is exactly the opposite of "sociopathic", unless it was combined with a number of other disorders which I can assure you I don't suffer from, and would amount to things very differant from simply what I suggest here.

To be honest plenty of people have come to the same conclusions, it's just a rather dark, and depressing realization. It's more a matter of rational deep thinking and an actual understanding of the problems. It shouldn't surprise you that in such a borked world, any way of making things better is going to be borked to the extreme. Or to state it without 80s lingo "Things need to get worse before they can get better" we've ignored the problems so long and let them compound where the price of fixing them is not absolutly terrifying, and it's just going to get steeper as more time goes on. Ignoring these problems though amounts to the deaths of everyone, and not even hope for the species in the future, a slow, but complete eradication being even worse than the elimination of 90% of the population through warfare.

As far as who gets to make this desician, I'm hardly leader material, but the bottom line is someone has to make it, and the question of "who gave you that right" can be leveled at absolutly anyone who makes the hard choice. In the end though it comes down more to a consensus of a lot of people (which we do not yet have, tghe point of posts like this is to get people to think in the right directions) rather than one person acting as a dictator.

To be honest as time goes on the odds of some group of people getting enough control to pull that trigger on their terms increase. To be honest I think American principles (though not nessicarly the current American goverment) represent the best chance for the future of humanity to become something better. Other philsophies could hold things together, but if say China or the USSR eventually winds up pulling that trigger and then creating the new world order under their philsophy I think it will be pretty bad. Thinking in the long term, I honestly think it would have the most long term benefit if the USA started the apocolypse, and guided it's course, and the reconstruction afterwards. Then again I *AM* an American, I'm sure people in other countries feel the same way about their own people when they come to the same conclusions. In the end though I suppose it's better for anyone to pull the trigger than nobody to do it, since survival outweights resource depletion without the hope of getting more, and the inevitable death of the species.

 

[funnydude6556]

time to speed up our space program so we can colonize other worlds. The sooner we get off this rock, the sooner we dont have to worry about some random event wiping all mankind out.

Where do we go though? Earth is the only planet we know that has a hospitable atmosphere and the furthest we've ever gone is Mars and that's not even with actual living people. Also the martians called dibs on Mars.