[technoslut]

>I don't get the negativity in this thread. Bill Gates is trying to solve hard problems and people here are complaining.

I respect Bill Gates and think his cause is noble but they are partly childish because of the idealism and the hopes to cure disease. ilaksh's post on this thread is part of the reason why though I wanted to reply to your post instead of doing so to his. It will be far more controversial though.

David Attenborough recently said that human beings are a plague on Earth.

I'll present you with three stories:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906520/planet-earth-narra...

Peter Beard, in an interview with Alec Baldwin on 'Here's the Thing', said that AIDS was a good thing in Africa because of overpopulation and it caused quite a stir.

I listened to an All Things Considered story where, not only was there a slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks, but they would wait until more elephants would come back to mourn the slain and the poachers would kill them too. When asked, off the record, the poacher said he had to feed his family. The natural question I asked is "Why are you having kids you can't afford?" The question wasn't asked during the piece and it's something that isn't asked worldwide.

There are numerous examples of mankind ruining the environment. As the most intelligent life on this planet, we are to be the custodians and not expand like a virus.

Even if you took the approach of mankind over everything else we are now destroying the soil which we rely on and food shortages continue as the price for food continues to rise.

The answers don't come easy in this world. The best ones are the most difficult to make. I suspect Western countries will have to do the same in the coming years to limit population growth.

[MichaelGG]

Why exactly does Earth itself have any intrinsic value greater than humans? We evolved to expand; we're machines to replicate DNA. I'm not sure how you can state that we now must be custodians and not expand more.

I know you "can't get an ought from an is", and I can come up with several utility functions that have the effect of limiting humankind's impact, but I'm not sure there's any fundamental reason they're valid. You may want to save the environment so you can continue to live, but poaching elephants doesn't harm human survivability.

[DanBC]

We need Earth until we can survive without it. We're a long way from that point.

[technoslut]

>Why exactly does Earth itself have any intrinsic value greater than humans?

If you'd like to be arrogant about it then that's fine. However, we revolve around and are dependent on animals, insects and plants to provide us life.

>We evolved to expand; we're machines to replicate DNA.

You can expand as much as you want. Nature will fight back like it has with adaptive viruses and the Ice Age.

>You may want to save the environment so you can continue to live, but poaching elephants doesn't harm human survivability.

My comment dealt with saving humanity from humans. If you think it's fine to kill elephants while they hold a funeral then you've lost your humanity. Some already have. A bunch of 6 year-olds just got killed and NRA subscriptions went up during that span before any legislation.

[MichaelGG]

>You can expand as much as you want. Nature will fight back like it has with adaptive viruses and the Ice Age.

Ice Age? Can you point me to the theory that shows how Earth or "Nature" is somehow an entity that performs massive climate shifts in response to too-successful lifeforms?

There is no necessary balance in nature. It's a constant struggle and what you see just might be a somewhat stable state. If an actor in that system (like humans) finds a game-theoretic superior strategy, there's no fundamental reason why they won't "win" and destroy the rest of the ecosystem and go extinct. Plenty of other species go extinct all the time. That's nature.

Anyways, I'm not saying it's fine to kill elephants at all. Indeed, I find it disgusting, and it'd be fantastic if societies could figure out ways to ensure that poaching isn't a beneficial action. But I am pointing out there's no mandatory acceptance of any axioms that would generate an obligation to "take care of the Earth", whatever that means. And there's definitely no particular reason why a human killing elephants to feed his family is somehow invalid, whereas if lions do the same thing, it's OK.

[technoslut]

>Ice Age? Can you point me to the theory that shows how Earth or "Nature" is somehow an entity that performs massive climate shifts in response to too-successful lifeforms?

I can point to scientific theses about how it will occur in the future. Are you willing to bet against 95% of the scientific community?

>why a human killing elephants to feed his family is somehow invalid, whereas if lions do the same thing, it's OK.

Are lions wiping out a species?

[notahacker]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that criticisms of attempts to eradicate disease and suggestions that AIDs is a good thing because a tiny fraction of Africans participate in the ivory trade shows a lot more inhumanity than participating in the ivory trade (to feed ones family) itself.

[mathgladiator]

> However, we revolve around and are dependent on animals, insects and plants to provide us life.

That's because we are predators. There's no shame here; it's a simple truth.

> Nature will fight back

The way you put it sounds like nature is a person. Instead, nature is a set of rules that we don't fully understand yet. One day, we may understand those rules and control nature. OR, our bets fail and we are dead.

[jacoblyles]

In the 1500s we invented Humanism.

Now, finally, in this post-modern world we have invented Anti-Humanism. This allows truly clever humans to signal how truly clever they are. Because it takes a truly clever human to recognize the value of Anti-Humanism.

Simple folk still think humans are a good thing.

[derefr]

Simple folk also cause stock market bubbles. The point of "anti-humanism", as you term it, is not that there should be fewer humans forever--it's that there should be fewer simultaneously. Just like publicly-traded companies, people want to have more direct descendants--greater returns--today, even if it means their "company" (all descendants looking forward) will be worse off after another year/generation. Anti-humanism is basically a recommendation to maximize long-term, instead of short-term, gains: to have fewer children and provide each with more resources such that each child will be more likely to be able to have high-quality descendants of their own.

An interesting analogy can be drawn from dwarf wheat, the grain that allowed the agriculture industry to become exponentially more efficient and productive over the last several decades. Dwarf wheat is a "genetically modified" crop, but not in the way you would imagine; we didn't make it hardier, or higher-producing at its own expense, or anything else. All we did to get massive gains in wheat production, was to turn off the part of the wheat's genetic code that made each stalk of wheat attempt to grow taller than each other stalk of wheat, thus making every stalk expend the majority of its resources on (inedible) stalk, and relatively little on (both edible to us, and reproductively important to it) grain. Since all the wheat has the gene for competitive growth turned off, all the wheat ends up short--and so all the wheat stalks still end up getting just as much sunlight, but can use all the resources they would have put into growth upward to instead sprout hardier, more nutritious grain.

Humans--all animals [1]--have a competitive program of their own: absent certain status-signaling drives that arise in high-intelligence+education groups, each human attempts to have as many children as possible to ensure their line has as many opportunities as it can to be passed on. The length of our stalks is pretty ridiculous :)

[1] Okay, maybe not all animals. I'm sure some parthenogenetic lizard or other such beastie fails this test after careful thought.

[maxerickson]

Dwarf wheat handles fertilizer better (shorter, thicker stems can hold up a larger seed...):

http://books.google.com/books?id=22JBi4RC-HwC&lpg=PA55&#...

Any crop wheat has already been bamboozled into massively over-investing in each seed.

[jacoblyles]

The 1960s called. They want their failed Malthusian predictions back.

[derefr]

It seems odd to accuse someone of Malthusianism who specifically went out of their way to mention the mass-farming techniques that have stalled Malthusianism.

On the other hand, those farming techniques rely on heavy fertilizer loads--which then rely on either hydrocarbons (which we will run out of) or large masses of animal waste--which requires large numbers of animals--which requires feeding those large numbers of animals. And what do they eat? The majority of the mass-farmed crops. Just because it's stalled now, doesn't mean it's stalled forever. :)

[ctl]

So basically: overpopulation is bad, therefore human death is a good thing, therefore curing disease is bad.

This argument is simultaneously (1) viscerally horrifying and (2) completely wrong.

It is wrong because curing disease does not increase population growth rate. Birth rate is extremely well-correlated with infant mortality rate, and pretty well anticorrelated with both life expectancy and quality of life. That's why the countries with the highest population growth rates also have some of the highest mortality rates. If you want to stop overpopulation, you should target common causes of death, especially those that afflict young children.

Which is exactly what Bill Gates is doing.

[notJim]

There are a number of flawed assumptions here. The first one is that population growth is naturally unbounded, but that idea has been outdated for a long time. Population growth follows a logistic growth curve.

Another bad assumption you're making is that the West's population is growing rapidly, but it's not. In fact, populations in Western countries are barely growing, and often are only growing due to immigration, or due to higher birth rates among immigrant populations.

Finally, yet another bad assumption you're making is that we should limit population growth through draconian measures like… well murdering people, or allowing them to die unnecessarily. In fact, the best way to limit population growth is through education, better access to healthcare, and economic development. As people become more educated and financially successful, they naturally delay childbirth and have fewer children as a result. When people have access to health services like education, birth control and abortions, they can better make decisions about children.

You can google “overpopulation myth” or simply “overpopulation” to verify what I've written here.

[technoslut]

>There are a number of flawed assumptions here. The first one is that population growth is naturally unbounded, but that idea has been outdated for a long time. Population growth follows a logistic growth curve.

The curve is on an upward climb while available resources have been declining.

>Finally, yet another bad assumption you're making is that we should limit population growth through draconian measures like… well murdering people, or allowing them to die unnecessarily.

I never said murder anyone. Nature's been doing that for a very long time.

Ever been to Africa? Do you think that the tribes care about education.

If the world had enough jobs to support everyone, then Western countries would have low job rates. Maybe you should have read my replies to similar comments.

[corporalagumbo]

Man... Not trying to attack you, but I think you're in that terrible phase of life where you're a) educated enough to know a bit of history and a bit of social theory, and how to make nice sentences but b) not educated enough to have balanced, forgiving views about human society, so you just lapse into overwhelming, aggressive and largely-unfounded cynicism about everything. I feel for you. I've been through the same phase, and it sucks.

Keep reading though, and keep thinking. You'll get through it soon enough. In the meantime, try to find things worth appreciating. See the good in what people are doing. Go into a big box store, and instead of thinking "look at all this disgusting consumerism sucking up natural resources and destroying the world!" try thinking "wow, isn't it great we've managed to develop such efficient and powerful technologies that we can provide such a dizzying array of products for so cheap to so many people? And isn't it great that our society is so open and undiscriminating that we let anyone buy whatever they want, if they have the money?"

[SoftwareMaven]

The answer to that problem is education, not killing off an underclass. Educated societies have far fewer children than non, to the point that some first world countries are losing population.

The thing is, it's impossible to gain an education when you are constantly starving or sick. Solve that problem and you move towards solving the next.

[technoslut]

It's not about killing an underclass. Human beings are selfish.

>Educated societies have far fewer children than non, to the point that some first world countries are losing population.

You're citing statistics without understanding the reason why. Education means a higher household income which has become less so during the recent economic crisis. The traditional reasoning, while crude, of why poor people have more kids is because they have less money. What they can do is have more sex because they don't have the money to do anything else.

We are at the point now where college grads have a hard time finding a job. How is more college grads going to solve the problem?

The gap has been widening in the US between the rich and middle class ever since Reagan. The same is happening for other Western countries as well.

[erikpukinskis]

Education and income both seem to effect fertility independently. There is evidence that income correlates with higher fertility, even controlling for education: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/52/09/48/PDF/publi_p... and vice versa: http://csde.washington.edu/~scurran/files/readings/May12/Why...

That said, all of the science on the subject is measuring very specific things and should be interpreted narrowly. You can say income is broadly correlated with fertility, and rule out some specific measures of education as an explanation for that particular (small) piece of the variance pie, but you can't then just make up an explanation and pretend it's supported by science. Just-so stories like the one you're telling are at best food for thought, or fodder for future experimental hypotheses. There's no scientific basis that I know of for the kind of mechanism you're proposing. Though I'd be happy to see more studies on the subject.

[anu_gupta]

> What they can do is have more sex because they don't have the money to do anything else.

Not sure why you're trolling so hard, but that did make me laugh. Access to entertainment has killed sex!

[gyardley]

The Malthusian fear of overpopulation is unfounded. Most demographers expect the world population to peak between 2040 and 2050 and then begin declining.

This isn't a particularly new idea, although recently it's been popularized with articles like this:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/11/overcrowding-nah-the-wor...

We are doing just fine limiting population growth without any difficult choices, and so is the rest of the world. Even birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have been dropping like a stone.

[DLWormwood]

> The natural question I asked is "Why are you having kids you can't afford?" The question wasn't asked during the piece and it's something that isn't asked worldwide.

You are misusing the word “natural” there…

It could be from no access to contraception or abortion, either due to lack of wealth or social precepts? Social mores that disparage men who don’t have kids? Lack of biological and statistical understanding of how sex and procreation are related?

Even in the West, it was only until recently (the Enlightenment, maybe?) that the notion of “choosing to have children” even existed. It was either considered an uncontrollable instinct or something influenced by divine providence, with the actual question of sexual behavior being dodged outright.

[notahacker]

Having a family larger than you can consistently feed seems less crazy when you're in an environment where you'll be totally dependent on your surviving offspring in your old age, and you can reasonably expect some of your offspring not to outlive you.

[rooshdi]

While I agree there needs to be a responsible approach to population growth, there is research which indicates improved education results in reduced reproduction rates, increased economic growth, and better overall health. [1]

While you may view Bill's idealism and hopes as childish, the fact he's trying to optimize the measurement process of human progress shows an awareness and openness to adapt as the information changes. This is crucial to ensuring resources are continually distributed efficiently as our understanding evolves.

Are we humans selfish to some extent? Sure, but we're trying to live in an existence out to kill us. What can we do but fight?

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6042/587

[cadlin]

Why is it population that is the metric and not something else, e.g. energy use? The developed world may have lower population growth, but it uses much more energy and it makes as much sense to reduce that as the number of humans.

Westerners who think population growth are usually talking about people living in underdeveloped countries, and are doing so in a way that is both prejudiced and dehumanizing. To me it looks like nothing more than people with power and money advocating for blatant cruelty towards those without either.

[philwelch]

If you think we should do with fewer humans on this earth--you first.

[genwin]

It's predictable that you'd be downvoted by the hivemind. Overpopulation is still taboo to discuss, even though it's obviously the world biggest problem, and the root cause of a multitude of other big problems.

[dos1]

I agree with you to an extent. It's why I would choose different problems to solve than what Mr. Gates feels are important. However, I don't think the Gates Foundation and its efforts are in any way a net negative.

Perhaps the poacher from your story would not need to kill more elephants to feed his children if the general condition of his country were better, and the economy supported other endeavors more readily (and prosperously) than poaching. In fact, if you believe the Rand think-tank, "first world" inhabitants produce less offspring, and much of the developed world is facing a looming underpopulation crisis.

I know many Western European countries have a birthrate that is lower than the replacement rate. This may be the case for America as well, but last I heard our population was still rising, with immigration also being a contributing factor.

In any event, you're right in that the answers don't come easy. I think the fact that Mr. Gates is willing to make the attempt, and is showing some signs of success (whether it's the right success metric is certainly up for debate) is to be commended. More people should aspire to philanthropy and there are certainly worse role models than him.