[cratermoon]

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.

[dylan604]

One of my favorite worded bits of machine logic about humans. All of the sci-fi tropes have it. The "I, Robot" movie has similar "my logic is undeniable" comment about the same conclusion of the humans being the problem. I just really liked Agent Smith's specific comments

[pocksuppet]

He is wrong, by the way. Most animals multiply until they exceed carrying capacity, then die off in massive numbers, then repeat. They may find a long-term equilibrium. The current boom in human population, and a subsequent die-off that has not yet happened, were predicted back in the 1970s.

[cratermoon]

This happened in rapid succession in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. First rodents and small scavengers multiplied rapidly, but then the easy food ran out and their predators showed up, and the cycle repeated. The zone is now roughly at equilibrium, we think, but it's isolated and surrounded by human activity so it's hard to be sure.

The Kaibab Plateau deer disaster from 1906 to 1939 also demonstrated boom and bust cycles.

[holowoodman]

It is also probably BS to assume a periodical die-off for humans in the near future. At the moment, humans are not showing any signs of a die-off, they are just not multiplying anymore. Humans do have something that animals do not, a culture. And this culture seems to have induced a downward variation in population.

[cratermoon]

We call human die-offs "war", "genocide", "drug epidemics", "pandemics".

There was a spike in 2021, of course, but the world death rate has been edging up slightly every year since then.

[masfuerte]

We will reach some kind of equilibrium. It is literally impossible for things to continue as they are.