[bilsbie]

The more people we have the more specialization we can have. Do you want 1000 people designing a jet engine or 20?

What problems could we solve if we doubled the scientists and engineers working on it?

Plus every new birth is a lottery ticket for our civilization getting the next Einstein.

[CalRobert]

How many people is the ideal amount?

[bilsbie]

Great question. I feel more is better at this point and we’re not near any hard limit but I don’t know what a maximum would be.

[philwelch]

Our technology is keeping up with our “hard limits”. If we were politically willing to build more nuclear reactors, we’d have zero problems with energy or water (desalination). Mineral scarcity turned out not to be. Land scarcity isn’t a thing (the entire world population could live in single family homes in roughly the same land area as Texas or Ukraine). And at our current tech level and rate of innovation, we could start have undersea domes or O’Neill cylinders by the time we ran into any of those limits.