>There has to be some ecological capacity, but I don’t think we’re near it. Life keeps getting better for future generations, not worse
I think this statement oversimplifies ecological capacity. At an extreme there is a theoretical maximum ecological capacity if every human being ate vat-grown mold to absolutely maximize calorie production, but that is unrealistic. More practical ecological capacity has increased markedly with advances in irrigation, GMOs, mechanized agriculture, fertilizer, pesticides etc., leading us to have more arable land and it being more productive than ever before.
However, this isn't free. Maximizing agricultural productivity entails significant environmental side effects in terms of destroying old growth forests, fertilizer runoff etc. which are simply mandatory to maintain our current population, let alone grow it. A smaller population could live at an ecological capacity for a lower level of agricultural development, whereas we force ourselves to live at a harmful high level of agricultural development.
There's a pretty fundamental philosophical onjection that undermines a lot of these arguments. Welfare doesn't exist in abstract, it's always welfare for some person. A person who isn't born doesn't exist, they have no welfare to count. If a parent is wondering whether to have one child or two, in the future where there is only one child, the child that wasn't born isn't disadvantaged as they don't exist. A world with 100 billion people does not yet exist, those potential excess people aren't harmed by not coming into existence because there is no person to harm.
Furthermore, moving to a future with a lot less people is more sustainable for the human resource base. Our current lifestyle relies on finite resources that become more costly to extract every year. Not to mention the loss of forest, animals etc
Perhaps one of those days, I'll get to laying out the comprehensive case for the average utilitarism. For now, let me just note that there is an important difference between so called repugnant conclusion and so called sadistic conclusion: while repugnant conclusion applies to this world, sadistic conclusion applies only to some platonic hypothetical world.
Moral theories are, at their core, prescriptions on how to act in this world. They cannot be meaningfully evaluated outside of their social context.
Aug 13, 2022·edited Aug 13, 2022Liked by Ives Parr
Excellent post. Merging two of your points: worries about dysgenics and demographic change are related. The global negative correlation between traits like IQ and conscientiousness, on one hand, and fertility, on the other, are rooted in which countries have growing populations and which have shrinking populations (the correlation within countries is small, though also real).
And these are not natural facts. These trends are happening because of government policies and NGO practices, most of which originate from the aftermath of WW2, in some cases reflecting a kind of myopic, pathological altruism from Westerners.
One argument that is seldom mentioned is the economy: What is a low-growth economy really like to live-in? It is a mundane question compared to the extinction of humanity, but it is also easier to study: Japan has lived without population growth for some decades now and the result doesn't seem entirely encouraging.
Basically, in an economy without population growth, investment becomes much more risky. If there is population growth, demand will always increase. So building a new, more efficient shoe factory is rather likely to pay off: the new factory can exist alongside the already existent factories. The new one if more efficient but the old one is already built, so they can compete for a while.
If there is zero population growth, one factory will more or less have to outcompete the old factory at once. They can't exist side by side for a while. That puts the threshold for investment higher. In Japan they could partially escape this problem through exporting to economies with still-growing populations. But what will it be like when Europe or the US as a whole becomes like Japan? Interesting times lie ahead.
It is very easy to make an argument that we currently have a at least a sufficiently large population for our current technology and ability to extract resources https://www.overshootday.org/
Further, to avoid ecological degradation we need to make some pretty drastic changes to the way we power our society, we basically need to double the amount of electricity that is generated, and we need to do this in a carbon neutral fashion. These kinds of changes are difficult but not impossible to make.
Once we have progressed to a stage where we are better at living sustainably I would be surprised if population does not start trending upwards again, personally I know a lot of people (x-gen and younger) who have chosen to have smaller families due to worries about ecological degradation.
Regarding happiness and population, are more densely populated cities and countries happier?
I think there are already a lot of people who are less happy due to ongoing environmental destruction, animal extinction and climate change. Growing the population before we know how to slow down or reverse these processes will only increase happiness. Sure, maybe we could support a much higher population in a bladerunner world where the entire planet is covered in greenhouses, wastelands and industry and wild animals remain only as fairy tales. https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/03/tom-hegen-almeria-greenhouses/
But, are you even human at that point? We evolved together with the ecology that we live in, I believe a lot of our emotional well being is grounded in the natural world.
Regarding the need for a larger population for increased innovation… Are more densely populated countries more innovative? How many people have “bullshit jobs”?
>There has to be some ecological capacity, but I don’t think we’re near it. Life keeps getting better for future generations, not worse
I think this statement oversimplifies ecological capacity. At an extreme there is a theoretical maximum ecological capacity if every human being ate vat-grown mold to absolutely maximize calorie production, but that is unrealistic. More practical ecological capacity has increased markedly with advances in irrigation, GMOs, mechanized agriculture, fertilizer, pesticides etc., leading us to have more arable land and it being more productive than ever before.
However, this isn't free. Maximizing agricultural productivity entails significant environmental side effects in terms of destroying old growth forests, fertilizer runoff etc. which are simply mandatory to maintain our current population, let alone grow it. A smaller population could live at an ecological capacity for a lower level of agricultural development, whereas we force ourselves to live at a harmful high level of agricultural development.
There's a pretty fundamental philosophical onjection that undermines a lot of these arguments. Welfare doesn't exist in abstract, it's always welfare for some person. A person who isn't born doesn't exist, they have no welfare to count. If a parent is wondering whether to have one child or two, in the future where there is only one child, the child that wasn't born isn't disadvantaged as they don't exist. A world with 100 billion people does not yet exist, those potential excess people aren't harmed by not coming into existence because there is no person to harm.
Furthermore, moving to a future with a lot less people is more sustainable for the human resource base. Our current lifestyle relies on finite resources that become more costly to extract every year. Not to mention the loss of forest, animals etc
Well done! I really appreciated this thorough post.
When you say you are an intuitionist, in what sense do you mean it? That's a word with many different shades of meaning in this context.
Perhaps one of those days, I'll get to laying out the comprehensive case for the average utilitarism. For now, let me just note that there is an important difference between so called repugnant conclusion and so called sadistic conclusion: while repugnant conclusion applies to this world, sadistic conclusion applies only to some platonic hypothetical world.
Moral theories are, at their core, prescriptions on how to act in this world. They cannot be meaningfully evaluated outside of their social context.
Excellent post. Merging two of your points: worries about dysgenics and demographic change are related. The global negative correlation between traits like IQ and conscientiousness, on one hand, and fertility, on the other, are rooted in which countries have growing populations and which have shrinking populations (the correlation within countries is small, though also real).
And these are not natural facts. These trends are happening because of government policies and NGO practices, most of which originate from the aftermath of WW2, in some cases reflecting a kind of myopic, pathological altruism from Westerners.
One argument that is seldom mentioned is the economy: What is a low-growth economy really like to live-in? It is a mundane question compared to the extinction of humanity, but it is also easier to study: Japan has lived without population growth for some decades now and the result doesn't seem entirely encouraging.
Basically, in an economy without population growth, investment becomes much more risky. If there is population growth, demand will always increase. So building a new, more efficient shoe factory is rather likely to pay off: the new factory can exist alongside the already existent factories. The new one if more efficient but the old one is already built, so they can compete for a while.
If there is zero population growth, one factory will more or less have to outcompete the old factory at once. They can't exist side by side for a while. That puts the threshold for investment higher. In Japan they could partially escape this problem through exporting to economies with still-growing populations. But what will it be like when Europe or the US as a whole becomes like Japan? Interesting times lie ahead.
It is very easy to make an argument that we currently have a at least a sufficiently large population for our current technology and ability to extract resources https://www.overshootday.org/
Further, to avoid ecological degradation we need to make some pretty drastic changes to the way we power our society, we basically need to double the amount of electricity that is generated, and we need to do this in a carbon neutral fashion. These kinds of changes are difficult but not impossible to make.
Once we have progressed to a stage where we are better at living sustainably I would be surprised if population does not start trending upwards again, personally I know a lot of people (x-gen and younger) who have chosen to have smaller families due to worries about ecological degradation.
Regarding happiness and population, are more densely populated cities and countries happier?
I think there are already a lot of people who are less happy due to ongoing environmental destruction, animal extinction and climate change. Growing the population before we know how to slow down or reverse these processes will only increase happiness. Sure, maybe we could support a much higher population in a bladerunner world where the entire planet is covered in greenhouses, wastelands and industry and wild animals remain only as fairy tales. https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/03/tom-hegen-almeria-greenhouses/
But, are you even human at that point? We evolved together with the ecology that we live in, I believe a lot of our emotional well being is grounded in the natural world.
Regarding the need for a larger population for increased innovation… Are more densely populated countries more innovative? How many people have “bullshit jobs”?