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A comment on For the first time there's more people worldwide aged 65+ than aged 5 & younger. Parent comment

Re:For the first time there's more people worldwide aged 65+... by aylmao on Thursday May 02, 2019 @01:23PM (#19810222)
> If extraordinary ability is a function of a percentile of the population, then a smaller population will have fewer geniuses and prodigies in art, literature, science, and politics

I doubt it is, but if so, and education just "exposes" natural talent, I wouldn't be worried. We already have a lot of natural talent in the developed world that's untapped. India alone should have 4x more geniuses than the USA.

> A smaller population leaves us poorer and less capable.

I'd like to discuss this with HN. Less capable to do what? We won. Nature won't kill us any more, we have no predators, we know how to produce more food than we need [1], transportation is so easy we get access to things from all over the world and communication so seamless we can stay in touch with anyone.

What do we need more people for?

Our largest existential enemy right now is unsustainability.

> There's no reason our current (or a larger) population isn't sustainable by changing how we generate energy or dispose of waste.

I don't think anyone really knows this to be true, and in fact I suspect it might apply to small communities, but not to the world at large.

Even if we could continue growing for now, eventually we'll reach a limit. But in any case, why do we want to keep growing?

[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/world-hunger_n_1463429

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:For the first time there's more people worldwide aged 65+... by lurquer on Thursday May 02, 2019 @04:24PM (#19812443)
>Our largest existential enemy right now is unsustainability.

When has 'unsustainabilty' ever caused the destruction of a large portion of a human population? Seriously. Can you think of any?

The two existential threats -- the two things that can, have, and will -- wipe out millions are War and Disease.

Everything else -- asteroids, climate change, sustainability -- are speculative. But, evidence-based analysis clearly points to War and Disease.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:For the first time there's more people worldwide aged 65+... by Para2016 on Thursday May 02, 2019 @07:23PM (#19813979)
The destruction of the Western Roman Empire due to enormous migrations comes to mind. Those migrations were due to 'unsustainability'.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:For the first time there's more people worldwide aged 65+... by Gibbon1 on Thursday May 02, 2019 @07:46PM (#19814144)
The Late Bronze age Collapse and the Classic Maya Collapse as well.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:For the first time there's more people worldwide aged 65+... by drak0n1c on Thursday May 02, 2019 @01:51PM (#19810525)
Slate Star Codex recently did an analysis of technological progress and income growth and found that the most correlated variable was population growth.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-sing...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:For the first time there's more people worldwide aged 65+... by seba_dos1 on Thursday May 02, 2019 @04:34PM (#19812583)
> Nature won't kill us any more

I wouldn't be so sure about that ;) Everything seems to suggest that we're about to have a bad time.

[ Parent | on HN ]