[zmgsabst]

The more people, the more people.

I view human life as an inherently good thing to have more of — and certainly a higher priority than nebulous problems like “pollution”. You also didn’t give any reason why we should care about “pollution” more than human life.

Human life is beautiful and good.

[paskozdilar]

> You also didn’t give any reason why we should care about “pollution” more than human life.

The only reason anyone cares about pollution is because it endangers human life.

> Human life is beautiful and good.

I'm sure it is, if you only focus on the pleasantries.

[dhzhzjsbevs]

> The only reason anyone cares about pollution is because it endangers human life.

This is simply not true. There are many people who view humans like a plague or a cancer. That matrix line didn't come from nowhere.

These people don't stop to think their feelings through to a conclusion.

They don't even realise it but when you view humanity that way you're essentially advocating for genocide.

> I'm sure it is, if you only focus on the pleasantries.

You can see beauty in all forms of life. It doesn't have to be a pleasantry.

Part of what gives humananity its beauty is its complexity and contradictions. All that yin and yang stuff. You don't have the good without the bad.

[bheadmaster]

You don't really have any argument for humanity beyond "I think it's pretty".

Admittedly, neither do those who view humanity as a plague. But then again, I'd tell the same to them too.

Of course, you're entitled to your opinions and preferences, but it seems to me as if you're trying to represent your opinion (that human life is beautiful and should be preserved) as some kind of objective truth - going so far to claim that the opposite side is advocating for genocide. The anti-natalist movement also considers humans a plague, but doesn't advocate killing of any kind - only voluntary abstinence from procreation. Does that count as "genocide" in your book?

Personally, I don't consider humanity beautiful in itself, I've seen many kinds of evil that humans are capable of doing, and how much of it just passes with impunity. I think that every human being is inherently self-serving and will do everything within their power to assert their own will, and that it's only the fear of punishment that keeps them "good" and in check. If you were to magically remove all punishments from society, humans would start doing all kinds of horrible things, just because they can. Any and all kinds of "altruism" are either indirect self-benefit (e.g. helping friends in need makes it more likely they will help you when in need) or some kind of mental imprint from the past (e.g. being punished in childhood for selfishness can make humans become overly altruistic in order to avoid the inner critical voice).

So when you say "humanity is beautiful and should be preserved", all you actually say is "I feel good when I think about humans, therefore they should be around". That is pure self-interest.

[monkeywork]

To what end? When a population gets to a size where continued growth actively hurts or lowers quality of life shouldn't that be considered.

If you had an arc ship sending ppl to hopefully a new planet. That ship has limited space and resources, at what point do you stop expanding the population of the crew and passengers?

[zmgsabst]

No — I don’t think we’re anywhere near that and I think we lack the judgment to accurately assess.

I think we’ve heard the same end-of-humanity-death-cultism throughout history, and each time, continued growth led to a better humanity.

[Insanity]

Why do you think human life is beautiful and good? And is it more so than life of other species?

[adamisom]

I think you should answer your own questions - with the comment that if you don't think human life is instrinsically good, I'm really curious what the foundation of your ethics is, and if you think anything at all has value.

[kzrdude]

I think using human life as good is a good foundation for ethics. It doesn't follow that we need more humans from that alone.

[adamisom]

Good point.

To me it follows because the aggregation intuition seems right to me--human life good, more human lives more good--and to me things like 'the repugnant conclusion' mean only that more nuanced thinking in how you aggregate is required, but not that aggregation itself is inherently wrong.

I think our likely-common intuition that it's more tragic for an 8-year-old to die than an 80-year-old indicates that it's really hard to just deny that utilitarian aggregation is appropriate and required in ethics. I suppose it's possible to say "it's more tragic for the 8 year old to die only because of the social expectation that they don't, and thus the impact on their parents and society", but I just don't buy it; I think we all have the intuition it's more tragic for the child to die primarily because they're missing out on more of life than the elderly person.

[kzrdude]

I'll put myself at risk here and suggest that it's more tragic for the child to die because we feel empathy for the parents, who cannot bear to lose their child, or empathy in the sense of transferring the feeling to imagining our own children, if we have them, in the place of the dead child.

This is partly tied to social expectation about how close family feels about their children vs their parents.

[ako]

Pollution may destroy the ability for human life to exist, and you may end up with significant less human life if you keep adding more. Earth is like a boat, it’s great for a few passengers, but at some point you have too many and it sinks. And then you have zero passengers enjoying the boat.

[kzrdude]

Every species of organisms has potential for exponential growth - fill their niche. No organism has potential to grow without bound on just one planet, so there is a maximum number of individuals possible in the ecosystem. How many exactly depend on the environment and the other organisms in the ecosystem.

Human life is beautiful. Dolphin and butterfly life are beautiful. They are not in exactly in competition, but they have something in common which is that we can't grow their population size without bound.

[psyc]

Would you mind my asking what decade you were born in? I'm just curious.

Article is light on criteria. My criteria is misanthropy, personally.

[thirdmunky]

This is a reductionist take on a complicated question. More environmental damage may mean fewer people in the future. Is more people now worth fewer people or a lower quality of life later?

Also, consider non-humans: how many additional people would make destroying the Great Barrier Reef worth it? If clearcutting the Amazon rainforest would increase the population cap by N, for what values of N would you do it?

H̶u̶m̶a̶n̶ life is beautiful and good.

[zmgsabst]

Those aren’t necessarily contradictory goals. Nor did I imply it was easy to balance costs.

I was pointing out that more people is a goal in and of itself.

[adamisom]

Life may be beautiful and good, but I'm sure if we probed our respective ethical intuitions--even after subjecting them to reflection--we'd agree that an ant's life isn't as worthy of ethical consideration as a dog's, or a human's. In short, I believe life's value must be correlated with sentience or consciousness, and I also believe that everyone who is honestly venturing forth what they believe (rather than doubting someone else) also believes the same, and I'd love to see a counterexample of someone truly believing differently.

>how many additional people would make destroying the Great Barrier Reef worth it? If clearcutting the Amazon rainforest would increase the population cap by N, for what values of N would you do it?

Just want to say, I think we are all in just as much of a position to have to answer questions such as these as the parent commenter. We can't get away from tricky ethical questions simply because they're difficult.

We can even recognize that something's going wrong if we think we need to answer such stark utilitarian tradeoffs, but that's _still_ not a complete answer. Tricky questions like yours are inherent in the _world_, and it just so happens that the default "answer" to such questions is simply to cover one's eyes and pretend they don't exist.

[BeFlatXIII]

Pollution reduces the quality of existing human life.

[alophawen]

The planet is literally littered by people.

They are starving and out of homes.

[BEEdwards]

We can't take care of all the people we have now and they want to add more and more forever...