I generally agree with your overall stance and your arguments, but you haven't really addressed any objections. You and I approach this from an "abundance mindset," where more people and choices and matching is a good thing, but people who object and don't agree with the underlying arguments and assumptions approach it from a stability mindset, where they want to ensure that they keep the things and advantages they've clawed from reality with long effort and strenuousness.
Their objections would go something like this:
1. More competition - the world is already a vicious Red Queen's Race - adding 2x, 5x, 10x more people just makes it that much more competitive and difficult to succeed. The arms race for Ivy schools ALREADY starts at "we need to get precious Jayden into the right pre-school and then grind furiously and non-stop for 18 years, or their chances at getting into Harvard are *ruined!*"
Now turn that up 10x. Are people happier in this society?
What about housing? Already in dreadfully short supply anyone wants to live - if you had the (mis)pleasure of buying real estate during Covid, you got to directly experience bidding wars going $50k, $100k, $120k all cash with no inspection or contingencies, over the asking price. Imagine that 10x, in any city people can actually want to live or get a real job.
2. Status is relative - if you add a lot more people, and there's a lot more geniuses and elites and athletes and truly competitive and successful people, there will be more people who are unhappy because they compare themselves and can't measure up. You also make the relative competition for status much worse, because you're competing against more people, who have legitimate advantages *I* (the median dumbass) won't have!
3. What about the environmental impact? We're already cooking the planet, and having kids is the most environmentally harmful decision anyone can individually choose. Now you want to 2,5,10x this impact?? Monster!
Etc. I mean, like I said, I don't really worry about these, but I'm basically elite already, and think I'd hold onto most of my advantages, and get further advantages with better matching and employees and whatever. If you're talking to regular people, it's a much harder sell.
I think the points are valid, but I'd also add that not all people are interested in more, more, more. People who enjoy minimalism and simplicity, and their own space, and are content with a moderate and pleasant version of "progress", and not having to work/compete so much would not benefit.
Also regarding people not having kids because it sucks, I can offer my own experience so far being a dad, and I can say that when my life was complicated and I had to work all the time, having kids super sucked, but once I managed to get rid of those, then kids became super-awesome and easy. I'd like the optimal population that continues to support my ability to to live a uncomplicated life and without having to work so much. I'm not sure if that's a bigger or smaller population compared to now.
It seems there is a narrow line between optimistic and delusional. “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” You are suggesting adding more fuel to the bloody bonfire. What evidence is there for any of your predictions?
I read this piece hoping to find something persuasive, but coming from an ecology background, I find the points made for increasing population to be a bit out of touch. It also relies heavily on the classic “technology will save us” approach.
The study of population dynamics for a species in an ecosystem does conclude there is optimal population size—and the consequences of exceeding your optimal look like: increased competition, hunger, disease, etc.
Moreover, the notion that more people means more geniuses, researchers…my first thought was, if the future world needs researchers, why not just build our smaller society into one where more people have access to high quality STEM education. You do not need more people, you just need the conditions to allow the people here to flourish.
And ultimately, this is where we diverge. More people doesn’t mean more “soul mates” (that’s an antiquated and unscientific notion of relationships that I think you’re using as purely an emotional argument), thai food, and bauhaus architecture—the goal should be quality of life. Your idea presents a sort of brutal math, seeking only the exceptional at the cost of the bell curve.
With fewer people, more resources can be invested into each person. By allowing individuals to reach their potential, society and the economy will benefit.
Yes but the research continually shows that people without kids are happier. So would we rather everyone be less happy, but they can teleport to their slightly better job, and have their slightly better friends? It doesn’t seem like enough of an upside for spending 20 years of our lives being parents. 🥰 At least for me who doesn’t want kids (and thinks that’s a huge point of progress that I can choose that!)
The More Geniuses point might cut both ways. In addition to benign geniuses, you also get more negatively divergent individuals, not to mention unethical geniuses. As the power for fewer people to do greater harm increases with technological progress, it can certainly be argued that the risk of existential threat from a growing pool of negatively divergent individuals/unethical geniuses also increases.
Even if your thesis is correct that a growing population is a net positive, your piece doesn’t address the reality that global total fertility rates are declining and tend to decrease as societies’ wealth and education (progress) increase.
If you only knew our entire system is set up to destroy genius. I just did a podcast on this topic. Every creative genius lives and dies in agony because of the system we live in. It does not want genius it wants slaves. That is why they want the numbers. It devalues us all.
fewer cures for fewer diseases is an odd phrasing. Fewer diseases should be a good thing so its about the relationship between the two (if diseases scaled much faster than cures your argument would break down)
I think it depends on where the larger population comes from and the opportunities available. For example, if the larger families are in deprived areas then even geniuses will struggle to break free.
I was quite pleased and surprised when this piece showed up on Hacker News, and the traditionally pro-natalist crowd pulled no punches on it. This piece makes several assumptions that go beyond unfounded into dangerous. The assumption that society will improve simply because the population grows. The assumption that the rate of progress can not only never go down, but must increase, always. The assumption that Jevons Paradox won't come back to haunt us with whatever innovation comes next. The assumption that energy and resource scarcity and our gross overshoot of 6/9 planetary tipping points and imminent overshoot of the other 3 are non-problems to the point that I don't even see a mention of them. The assumption that we have more than one planet to live on, based on the lack of acknowledgement of the previous assumption. The assumption that ingenuity will always pull a solution out of a neverending bag of technological tricks. At the foundation of all of these, the assumption that of all the times nature reveals exponential curves to be sigmoidal on a long enough timescale, humans are the *one place* where this won't, for some reason, be true.
Very interesting points and thank you for showing other aspects of this issue. However, it seems to express an opinion that AI can potentially make most of the reasons irrelevant, resulting in a smaller but AI-enhanced population.
I generally agree with your overall stance and your arguments, but you haven't really addressed any objections. You and I approach this from an "abundance mindset," where more people and choices and matching is a good thing, but people who object and don't agree with the underlying arguments and assumptions approach it from a stability mindset, where they want to ensure that they keep the things and advantages they've clawed from reality with long effort and strenuousness.
Their objections would go something like this:
1. More competition - the world is already a vicious Red Queen's Race - adding 2x, 5x, 10x more people just makes it that much more competitive and difficult to succeed. The arms race for Ivy schools ALREADY starts at "we need to get precious Jayden into the right pre-school and then grind furiously and non-stop for 18 years, or their chances at getting into Harvard are *ruined!*"
Now turn that up 10x. Are people happier in this society?
What about housing? Already in dreadfully short supply anyone wants to live - if you had the (mis)pleasure of buying real estate during Covid, you got to directly experience bidding wars going $50k, $100k, $120k all cash with no inspection or contingencies, over the asking price. Imagine that 10x, in any city people can actually want to live or get a real job.
2. Status is relative - if you add a lot more people, and there's a lot more geniuses and elites and athletes and truly competitive and successful people, there will be more people who are unhappy because they compare themselves and can't measure up. You also make the relative competition for status much worse, because you're competing against more people, who have legitimate advantages *I* (the median dumbass) won't have!
3. What about the environmental impact? We're already cooking the planet, and having kids is the most environmentally harmful decision anyone can individually choose. Now you want to 2,5,10x this impact?? Monster!
Etc. I mean, like I said, I don't really worry about these, but I'm basically elite already, and think I'd hold onto most of my advantages, and get further advantages with better matching and employees and whatever. If you're talking to regular people, it's a much harder sell.
I think the points are valid, but I'd also add that not all people are interested in more, more, more. People who enjoy minimalism and simplicity, and their own space, and are content with a moderate and pleasant version of "progress", and not having to work/compete so much would not benefit.
Also regarding people not having kids because it sucks, I can offer my own experience so far being a dad, and I can say that when my life was complicated and I had to work all the time, having kids super sucked, but once I managed to get rid of those, then kids became super-awesome and easy. I'd like the optimal population that continues to support my ability to to live a uncomplicated life and without having to work so much. I'm not sure if that's a bigger or smaller population compared to now.
It seems there is a narrow line between optimistic and delusional. “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” You are suggesting adding more fuel to the bloody bonfire. What evidence is there for any of your predictions?
I read this piece hoping to find something persuasive, but coming from an ecology background, I find the points made for increasing population to be a bit out of touch. It also relies heavily on the classic “technology will save us” approach.
The study of population dynamics for a species in an ecosystem does conclude there is optimal population size—and the consequences of exceeding your optimal look like: increased competition, hunger, disease, etc.
Moreover, the notion that more people means more geniuses, researchers…my first thought was, if the future world needs researchers, why not just build our smaller society into one where more people have access to high quality STEM education. You do not need more people, you just need the conditions to allow the people here to flourish.
And ultimately, this is where we diverge. More people doesn’t mean more “soul mates” (that’s an antiquated and unscientific notion of relationships that I think you’re using as purely an emotional argument), thai food, and bauhaus architecture—the goal should be quality of life. Your idea presents a sort of brutal math, seeking only the exceptional at the cost of the bell curve.
With fewer people, more resources can be invested into each person. By allowing individuals to reach their potential, society and the economy will benefit.
Hubris to the nth power.
Yes but the research continually shows that people without kids are happier. So would we rather everyone be less happy, but they can teleport to their slightly better job, and have their slightly better friends? It doesn’t seem like enough of an upside for spending 20 years of our lives being parents. 🥰 At least for me who doesn’t want kids (and thinks that’s a huge point of progress that I can choose that!)
The More Geniuses point might cut both ways. In addition to benign geniuses, you also get more negatively divergent individuals, not to mention unethical geniuses. As the power for fewer people to do greater harm increases with technological progress, it can certainly be argued that the risk of existential threat from a growing pool of negatively divergent individuals/unethical geniuses also increases.
Even if your thesis is correct that a growing population is a net positive, your piece doesn’t address the reality that global total fertility rates are declining and tend to decrease as societies’ wealth and education (progress) increase.
If you only knew our entire system is set up to destroy genius. I just did a podcast on this topic. Every creative genius lives and dies in agony because of the system we live in. It does not want genius it wants slaves. That is why they want the numbers. It devalues us all.
fewer cures for fewer diseases is an odd phrasing. Fewer diseases should be a good thing so its about the relationship between the two (if diseases scaled much faster than cures your argument would break down)
I think it depends on where the larger population comes from and the opportunities available. For example, if the larger families are in deprived areas then even geniuses will struggle to break free.
I was quite pleased and surprised when this piece showed up on Hacker News, and the traditionally pro-natalist crowd pulled no punches on it. This piece makes several assumptions that go beyond unfounded into dangerous. The assumption that society will improve simply because the population grows. The assumption that the rate of progress can not only never go down, but must increase, always. The assumption that Jevons Paradox won't come back to haunt us with whatever innovation comes next. The assumption that energy and resource scarcity and our gross overshoot of 6/9 planetary tipping points and imminent overshoot of the other 3 are non-problems to the point that I don't even see a mention of them. The assumption that we have more than one planet to live on, based on the lack of acknowledgement of the previous assumption. The assumption that ingenuity will always pull a solution out of a neverending bag of technological tricks. At the foundation of all of these, the assumption that of all the times nature reveals exponential curves to be sigmoidal on a long enough timescale, humans are the *one place* where this won't, for some reason, be true.
Very interesting points and thank you for showing other aspects of this issue. However, it seems to express an opinion that AI can potentially make most of the reasons irrelevant, resulting in a smaller but AI-enhanced population.