Quote from: Tonyprep on Jun 02, 2024, 11:10 PMPopulation size alone is not the determinant of sustainability. If that were so, krill, for one example, would be unsustainable. However, population size can make formerly sustainable behaviour unsustainable.
Krill have predators. A million krill is a nice snack for a Blue Whale. When they overpopulate and eat up whatever it is they eat, they die off, a few survive and ocean currents blow them to a new neighborhood where they rinse and repeat.
Homo Sap is Apex predator on the planet now. We've even defeated many of the microscopic predators which used to keep our numbers in check. The only predator we have now is other Homo Saps. However,WMDs present the possibility of war bringing death to everyone, you can't really win with them. The small brush wars aren't a big enough killer to keep population in check, nor are even car accidents. Our population has apparently responded to this by becoming unwilling to reproduce at replacement level. How society will deal with this and the demographic problems attached are one of the big questions we face over the next 20 years.
QuoteThere is no solution to humans being a species. No species is more stupid than any other; they are all acting like species. And, OK, nature is not cruel, since it doesn't care one way or the other. But the way most creatures would end their days might be considered cruel to our civilised way of thinking.
We don't need a solution to being a species, we need more dead people faster. We'll get this solution one way or the other. The only question is how far the knockdown goes before population stabilizes and rebounds. The biggest death vector is likely to be famine. That's our predator, other people eating food we need, then us killing those people. Then the predator prey cycle takes over.
QuoteAs there is no solution, the best we can hope for is that the shit really hits the fan after we're dead (hopefully dying peacefully in our sleep).
Personally, I hope to be alive long enough to say "I told you so", then be eaten for dinner by the CNAs here in the Gulag.
QuoteI don't agree that awareness of inevitable death invariably leads to the cessation of all rational thought. This is partly because there is no such thing as rational thought; it only seems there is. Without free will there can be no rational thought process. But also because I think I'm thinking rationally yet I know my death is inevitable.
Not everybody is irrational. Plenty of rational people out there want to commit suicide. If you're still living an OK life, you're not homeless, not in horrible physical or mental anguish, it's rational to want to live also. But you don't stop driving your car, because nobody else is doing that, so society remains on a suicidal trajectory.
QuoteAll of the approaches to our predicament that might help will have no impact, mainly because rational approaches would never be accepted by humans. In particular, only primitive living could be sustainable and that definitely is something people don't want.
You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.
RE