Bay 12 Games Forum

Exactly. Saying that they're not is like saying humans weren't aren't primates.

(of course the other primates probably would probably take that as a compliment)

Compulsive fixing go~!

Got 50% off a valve game and 25% off Dues Ex:Human Revolution. Any offers?

Pnx is pointing out the hypocrisy involved in saying it's level of development that decides whether it's assumed to be morally acceptable to abort, I believe. It's not intelligence* (i.e. brain development, i.e. level of fetus development), because we happily slaughter creatures more intelligent than human babies (and especially developing, in the womb ones) en masse.

But yeah, Salmon pretty much hit the rest on the head. I gots ninja'd~

*Which is just about the only thing approaching unique about the human species.

Posting to watch, ha. I think my goal for this election is to not see a single bit of it on TV, because gods only know that would do naught but incite me to rage.

Also registered democrat, so I don't think the republican primary means much to me, in a participation sense. *twiddles thumbs, waits for something to do*

There will be issues. There will be starvation. There will be a lot of shit.

To none of that will overpopulation be anything but a aggravating factor.

Not to mention your crys of doom of the human race are very very unrealistic.

This would be my point of disagreement. Resource use is absolutely the base cause of bloody everything, as I see it, and population is the base cause of resource use. Logic says, then, that population is the root issue from which all others stem. When we can't deal with the base issues that arise from having a smaller population (and we've been having problems for a long bloody time~), having this buggeroff huge population isn't just an 'aggravating factor,' unless you're using the term similar to saying fire is the aggravating factor in a burning building. It's the root cause, and everything else is symptomatic.

As for the second; no, it's not 'unrealistic', it's inevitable. (Sun's going to go out eventually! If we can avoid that, then heat death of the universe later on.) The goal is to stave it off as long as possible. My goal is try to try to, at least in some minor way (and I bloody well don't expect my contribution to be anything even remotely approaching more than vanishingly small), help stave it off a really rotterdamn long time. I want another 200k years at minimum, not the less-than-millennia we're pushing toward.

Unless, of course, you count 'unrealistic' as attempting to plan and influence for periods beyond a generation or two. Which... hell, frankly, I agree with you, to a large extent. Almost entirely. I seriously doubt it's even possible and am damn sure it's not even remotely likely. But, yanno' what? Damnitall, I want our species to be aiming for being there when the sun goes out. The only way that's even going to be remotely possible (especially without a buggeryall huge amount of not-even-remotely-necessary suffering) is with genuinely longterm planning. Which we either refuse to do or are incapable of.

Also, some of you are misunderstanding how population growth works yet again. Overpopulation, as Criptfiend said, is not a thing that modernized countries have to worry about. Indeed, it is not something anyone outside of Africa has to worry about because the only countries that could realistically overshoot their carrying capacity, or already have, are in Africa.

Yeah, the problem with [that outlook]?

The world has finite resources. I really can't emphasis that g'damn enough. 7 billion people on the planet is not a 'third world problem' it's a 'going to fucking kill all of us' problem. Sticking our heads beneath the sand in our fenced community doesn't help anything.

That's the issue. The whole freaking bloody thing. Resources == finite. Growth =/= infinite. Global situation == not-freaking-ignorable. The belief that those three are somehow untrue is going to kill our species if it doesn't change, or something more direct (i.e. boom) doesn't intervene.

Populations naturally even out.

That's... basically, it's one of my points. Population can even out. Resource constraints cause it to (it's a lot more expensive to raise a child in an industrial nation than an agricultural one.). The growth period during that time before it evens out can also completely destroy the local environment, or, if you prefer a less extreme view, render a great deal of it unusable. In the most extreme situation, it can render the entire area unsuitable for the species's occupation, resulting in either a massive die off or localized extinction. We've seen this many times with non-humans, and it's killed some of them completely. Personally, I don't want to risk it on something that can possibly result in either a massive population death or extinction, when we can be proactive about it and lessen the chances of disaster.

TL;DR: We're going to be fine, so calm down already.

Pretty much my major point: This is utterly untrue. There's nothing 'fine' in doing crap, right now, that is going to be continuing to have negative repercussions hundreds of years from now and completely ignoring that fact, not trying to mitigate that fact, and basically screwing ourselves over.

Our generation is going to be fine. The next one, probably the same. The one after that, and after that? Hell, sure, I wouldn't be surprised if they do alright, too. But give it enough time and the absolute refusal of most of our species to even attempt to curtail the actions that have multigenerational impact, and things are going to snowball. Snowball to the point that folks then are entirely likely to not be able to do anything about it, whereas we, right now, can.

Won't, but can.

Right now, most of our species reaction to the issue is sticking our fingers in our ears and yelling 'science will save us' really, really loudly. That's treating the symptoms (in most cases.). Doesn't help with the cause any.

You know, I'm suprised Toady hasn't been summoned on this for our derailing.

Hey, we've stuck to 'end of the world' pretty well

... which turns it back around to racial death by stupidity. Or, if you'd prefer, suicidal shortsightedness. Being fair, I wouldn't except longterm thinking to be promoted by an eschatological (apocalypse-centered) theology, but that doesn't change the fact that that's going to get our species killed if something else doesn't beat the unsustainable systems to it.

Hell, I'm not saying force people to do it, I'm saying find a way to get folks to do so willingly. If religious and/or cultural upbringing is blinding people to the repercussions of their actions, well, that's something we've got to find a way to work around. I also am saying that they're probably not bloody going to, and it's going to kill us. Probably not in my lifetime, no, but in a very, very short period as history and (even more so) geology measures things.

I'll share the dirty secret. I'd like to see our species last more than a day on the metaphorical geological calender. From what I remember, we haven't even hit a minute, yet.

Yeah... all I can really say to that is well bloody said. M'saving that for future consumption and possible sharing.