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Originally Posted by
The Atheist
I'll always stick my hand up for arrogance - it is a failing of mine!
Well, then we have something in common. ;)
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Lower death rates. That's it. People gradually became aware that hygiene and care brought about better chances of survival. The serious increases in population have all tended to come after technological advances, best evinced by population increases since the Industrial Revolution. It seems obvious to me that technology spurs growth in population rather than the opposite.
Yes, but the argument is that the technological develpments were pressured from a large population. I believe your underlining assumption is that the technological developments were happenstance, luck. What I'm saying is that larger population enabled greater competition, collaboration, customer base, infrastructure, wealth, and specialization which enbled technological advances. Perhaps I haven't been clear, but that's a direct statement of my claim.
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Originally Posted by Virgil
I put forth again, the earth's population was 1B in 1750, 2B in 1900, and 6.7B in 2000. And stanards of living across the world have gone up with each level of population growth.
But have they? Or is it the precise opposite? We know for sure that population exploded when agriculture became common; we know it did again recently as above.
Are you saying the standards of living have not gone up in the last two hundred years? I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with here.
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Even taking the most liberal view of what constitutes "war" deaths, the past 100 years have contained far more and far more proportionate death from wars than ever before. Not to get too close to politics, but Iraq is already up to (or over) 400,000 deaths from the war there. War has demonstrably been far more effective in the past 100 years than the previous 10,000.
I don't know about the 400,000 number, but yes i agree that the 20th century had more war deaths in total. But your claim to what I was responding was that greater populations had more wars, with the undlerlying implication that greater population tended to create more wars. I don't bvelieve that we have had more wars in the 20th century as opposed to less populated centuries, and i see no evidence why greater population would start more wars.
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You're talking about a major research project to refute it, and that's certainly not going to happen. I'm just looking at something objectively and seeing lots of reasons why the conclusion could be false without needing to test it.
Fair enough, I don't expect that. But the same goes from my end. But I am showing a huge population trend, I am supporting it with reasons why greater population leads to technological advances (from competition, collaboration, etc.). I am supporting the claim to some level. You just gave that post hoc fallacy argument. ;) I understand why some might not agree. It is counter intuitive.
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Hey, in the end, it might all be right, but one simple test is AGW, which seems to always be timely at the moment. Along with the vast bulk of the scientific cimmunity, I think the premise of AGW is correct - that man-made gases are overheating the planet. That alone must refute the argument; our current population is far greater than at any other time and this is only the second serious and global threat the world has ever seen.
I see you buy into the apocalypse. Even if AGW is correct, which I dispute and that could be a different argument for somewhere else, wouldn't the answer be to get away from greenhouse gases? While there may be a transitionary point where we have a drop in standard of living (i.e. gas prices) I hardly see this as a serious threat.
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The other was in 1962, also at a time of global population explosion (remember the baby-boom?).
What's 1962? Cuban missile crises?
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When did Britain renounce slavery? When did USA? The entire wealth of southern USA was built on the backs of an enormous slave force. I don't accept that those slaves in 1750 in Louisiana were better treated than those in 2000BC in Egypt. Interestingly, the things you describe - arts, music, middle class, luxury items, were all well and truly alive during the great days of Rome around 1AD, so I'm not sure that supports your hypothesis at all.
Yeah, but in the Roman world there was 1 slave for every 2 freemen. That's a huge ratio. I don't think in 1700 they had that kind of a ratio. But you may be right, the standard of living distinction beteen 1Ad and 1700 may not be great. But you picked 1AD which happened to be very good period in the Roman world. If you had picked 300BC or 300AD and compared it with 1700 I think 1700 would come out favorable. Also I limited my thinking to the Roman world of 1AD. If we looked at the world globally for those years, 1700 might still come out favorable.
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Yes, but it was followed by an immediate increase. Obviously, the plague deaths skew figures at the time.
Hmm, that is inteesting. I'm not sure how to think about that.
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Yep, we are on opposite sides of the same fence! :D
I think we are. :D
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No, that's completely wrong and easily refutable. Dawkins, Russell, Sagan, Einstein, Rutherford - rationalists to a man.
So if one claims to be a rationalist, does that mean you don't have waves of insight that leaps over logic.
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Nope. The parabolic increase is exactly typical of what populations of plants and animals go through before they consume their environment. Take a typical yeast culture - the explosion of yeast cells would nicely match human population growth. Once all the food is consumed, they die out. Be a pity of that's what we're doing.
Well, that's an anology that is a stretch. Yeast cultures don't have brains, and like the title of the article The Ultimate Source is the human brain.
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Maybe so, but when we're comparing population growth, there are no other models to look at. We are animals and [in my opinion] all human behaviour can be traced to evolutionary traits, so it doesn't seem too far fetched to compare us to other animalian population explosions.
We are animals. But we are animals with human brains, and with that there is no ananolgy. Even your fondness for rationalism shows that humans are exceptional. Hey we may blow ourselves up for good, I think that is a greater fear than population growth or global warming. Like Fifth points out, when a saturation point occurs, the population will adjust, either level off or shrink.
