/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9959439
I think, much like Thanos, you can't do math.

Even if you wiped out half the population now, you'd still have a magnitudes higher population than you did just a few centuries before, and continue right on growing from that point at that same agricultural-industrial accelerated rate.

More importantly, most of the population growth slowing we are seeing now is the result of cultural changes (eg. women with careers). Which is why the undeveloped world isn't slowing at the same rate as the west. That could easily change, say, for instance, if Islam took over.

>>8661367
Overpopulation. There's already too many people on this planet, we need to stop people in third world countries from shitting out babies

Hey /sci/ how many people can the earth support right now? 10 billion 7 billion?

>>6488310
>Come on man, just let people fuck and have a good time.

>1) Do you think that overpopulation is a problem?
Yes. If unrestricted, populations will grow until there are literally as many people as could possibly exist. This is not necessarily the number at which everyone is happiest.

Imagine you are on a 1 km2 island and adequate food is regularly supplied by helicopter. What would you prefer, to live with maybe 10 other people, or to live with 999.999 other people so that each of you has only 1 square meter of space, even though you all get just enough food to live (even if not particularly comfortably or healthily)?


>2) Do you think it will become worse in the coming decades or is there a chance that population will start falling
Yes because medicine and technology are constantly increasing both how many people can be kept alive in a unit area. Meanwhile, practically no advances are being made in social areas such as politics and law to handle this much larger populace, and human psychology (eg. what population density we are happiest at) is not changing at all.

Also, it is always the shittiest places that grow the most, while the most developed countries grow the slowest, so the population growth by itself is a regressive force.

>3) How do we curb population growth?
No realistic way. The only hope is that technology and automation increase to the point that the poor literally cannot afford to feed themselves or pay for vital medical services, so that they will die to starvation and disease. But for this, world governments must become drastically capitalist - the opposite direction to the one we're headed in.

>4) Would you agree with 1-child policy for the overcrowded places?
Yes, but it would never happen. The only way to do it is have 1st world militaries come in and forcibly sterilize people, but then everyone will complain that it's racist.