janw@inmet.UUCP (09/08/86)
[Oded Feingold: oaf@mit-vax.UUCP] >With the human population burgeoning beyond all reasonable bounds, and >pushing the rest of creation into extinction, maybe what we really >need is freely available euthanasia, which people can and will (enthu- >siastically) self-administer. The premise is wrong: human population does not loom as large vis-a-vis the rest of creation as some of its members believe. If all the 5 billion of us were drowned in the Great Lakes, how much would the water level rise? A fraction of an inch. However, given the premise - and many people accept it - the conclusion is by far the best that can be made. Some people are so scared of babies they propose coercive population control - a conception police. Oded's proposal is non-coercive. But it is morally preferable even compared to encouraging volun- tary population control. What are the malthusians afraid of? That people may be brought into the world whose life will be not worth living? Well, let *them* be the judges of that. If it's not worth it, they can quit. If they are never born, they get no chance and no choice. The oaf plan makes the population problem completely self-regu- lating. Once it is implemented - cyanide over the counter or a suicide booth at the corner, and once the customs adapt to accept it - the world is guaranteed a population the *worst-off* part of which thinks life worth living. But these would be at the tail of the happiness distribution curve - which means, in any reasonable distribution, that the ma- jority would be well above that level. So let us adopt the plan. At any rate all population control advocates should embrace it, *unless* what really interests them is not overpopulation, but control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* die without permission, then they simply want total control over you - or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you. Jan Wasilewsky /* End of text from inmet:net.politics */
smdev@csustan.UUCP (09/09/86)
In article <> janw@inmet.UUCP writes: > >[Oded Feingold: oaf@mit-vax.UUCP] <>With the human population burgeoning beyond all reasonable bounds, and <>pushing the rest of creation into extinction, maybe what we really <>need is freely available euthanasia, which people can and will (enthu- <>siastically) self-administer. > >Oded's proposal is non-coercive. >But it is morally preferable even compared to encouraging volun- >tary population control. What are the malthusians afraid of? That >people may be brought into the world whose life will be not worth >living? Well, let *them* be the judges of that. I'm not afraid of someone else's quality of life declining, just my own. >If it's not worth it, they can quit. If they are never >born, they get no chance and no choice. I've heard this one before. I suppose you think masturbation and menstruation are wrong also...since all of those sperm and eggs "get no chance and no choice." >[...] - the world is guaranteed a population the *worst-off* part of >which thinks life worth living. [...] So let us adopt the plan. > >At any rate all population control advocates should embrace it, >*unless* what really interests them is not overpopulation, but >control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* >die without permission, then they simply want total control over >you - or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you. > > Jan Wasilewsky Agreed. Voluntary euthanasia, suicide if you will, should not be legally wrong. Also, then so should all other self-destructive activities that do not infringe on others. Of course, if self-destructiveness is a genetic trait, after a few generations this will fail as a a means of population control. But wait...start a religion! Convince people that it is there moral/ethical/spiritual duty to suicide! Why not just do it right from the start? Convince people to be smart instead of stupid...to look to the future instead of the past...to plan events rather than be carried along by events... Ahhhh, forget it. Let's go with voluntary suicide. It's easier. \scott -- Scott Hazen Mueller lll-crg.arpa!csustan!smdev City of Turlock work: (209) 668-5590 -or- 5628 901 South Walnut Avenue home: (209) 527-1203 Turlock, CA 95380 <Insert pithy saying here...>
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (09/12/86)
[Jan Wasilewsky] >Oded's proposal is non-coercive. But it is morally preferable even >compared to encouraging voluntary population control. What are the >malthusians afraid of? That people may be brought into the world >whose life will be not worth living? Well, let *them* be the judges >of that. The Malthusians are afraid of the prospect of a large number of people whose lives are much poorer, shorter, and less fulfilling than they need to be. Consider an African child born in the next century who faces an impoverished and malnourished life owing to overpopulation. Your response is to make suicide pills available -- presumably not through the government. Then, since this hypothetical person can freely choose to live or die, you consider that the situation is morally acceptable. Your view, evidently, is that a possible person is better off if he exists, so long as he is not so miserable as to take his own life, than if this possible person never comes to exist. Well, I can quote Sophocles as a distinguished authority against this view. But it is a very dubious one in any case. A possible person is not a real person who can be better or worse off. There is in fact no person until the moment the person comes into existence. There was no actual Jan before Jan came into existence, there were only possibilities. What you (the real Jan) are saying is that the fact that you choose to go on living now demonstrates that you are better off than if you had never existed. But this is fallacious, because it implies that if you had never existed, you would have regretted the fact and been deeply upset about it. Which is ridiculous, just as ridiculous as saying that fictional characters are to be pitied because they will never come to know the joys of real life as we do who are fortunate enough to exist. So when you say >If it's not worth it, they can quit. If they are never born, they get >no chance and no choice. you commit a philosophical solecism. If "they" are never born, i.e., if "they" never exist in the first place, then there is no "they" to be the subject of "they get no chance and no choice." It is nonsense to say that the "choice" of something nonexistent is constrained. Pity the poor unicorn, never to run and play in the fields like his four-footed counterparts who are lucky enough to exist -- what a colossal injustice has been perpetrated on the unicorn. So this argument in favor of unlimited population growth is absurd. My response to the question of the hypothetical 21st century African is that we should strive to keep the human population below levels at which this African may be expected to be miserable for a substantial part of his life. We ought to maximize the number of good, happy lives -- not the number of merely endurable lives. There is a great difference between merely going on living and living a truly happy and fulfilling life. See Parfit's *Reasons and Persons* for an exploration of the philosophical (particularly the ethical) problems in connection with future generations. >Some people are so scared of babies they propose coercive population >control - a conception police. This is a distortion. I have not "proposed" coercive population control measures, without qualification; rather, I have claimed that the moral acceptability or unacceptability, the wisdom or foolishness of coercive measures, *depends on both the particular type of coercive measures employed and the circumstances in which they are applied*. I am all for purely voluntary measures *unless* there is good reason to believe that they will not work. Most of the articles objecting to coercive measures (particularly from the libertarian camp) have been kneejerk reactions to the terms "coercive" and "coercion". I have already pointed out that one of the strong points of libertarianism is that you do not have to work very hard or study very long to understand it. Coercion is bad: now you understand moral and political philosophy. The rest of us have to beat our brains out on tough philosophical issues. >At any rate all population control advocates should embrace it, >*unless* what really interests them is not overpopulation, but >control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* die >without permission, then they simply want total control over you - >or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you. Even if my motives are to enslave the world and become dictator for life, that would be irrelevant to the philosophical and scientific issues we have been discussing. Speculation about one's opponents' motives is usually unhelpful. If you want to engage in a name-calling or motive-attribution contest, please do it somewhere else. What interests me is the welfare of the actually existing human beings of the present and future. Richard Carnes
radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) (09/15/86)
In article <559@gargoyle.UUCP>, carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes: > [Jan Wasilewsky] > >Oded's proposal [ easy euthenasia] is non-coercive. But it is morally > >preferable even > >compared to encouraging voluntary population control. What are the > >malthusians afraid of? That people may be brought into the world > >whose life will be not worth living? Well, let *them* be the judges > >of that. > > Your view, evidently, is that a possible person is better off if he > exists, so long as he is not so miserable as to take his own life, > than if this possible person never comes to exist. Well, I can quote > Sophocles as a distinguished authority against this view. But it is > a very dubious one in any case. A possible person is not a real > person who can be better or worse off. There is in fact no person > until the moment the person comes into existence. There was no > actual Jan before Jan came into existence, there were only > possibilities. > > ... > > >At any rate all population control advocates should embrace it, > >*unless* what really interests them is not overpopulation, but > >control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* die > >without permission, then they simply want total control over you - > >or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you. > > Even if my motives are to enslave the world and become dictator for > life, that would be irrelevant to the philosophical and scientific > issues we have been discussing.... > > Richard Carnes My guess is that Jan meant this as a satire on Carnes' utilitarian philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number. He points out that any person who doesn't commit suicide must in some sense have a positive quantity of happiness, so the utilitarian philosophy has difficulty in saying he shouldn't have been born. For those who don't believe Jan meant this as satire, I will point out that effective means of suicide have never been hard to come by, so this isn't much of a "proposal". I also note that the title of the posting, "A Modest Proposal", was first used by Jonathan Swift in advocating that Irish babies be eaten. Radford Neal
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (09/16/86)
>>[Jan Wasilewsky] >[Bob Hartman] >>The premise is wrong: human population does not loom as large >>vis-a-vis the rest of creation as some of its members believe. If >>all the 5 billion of us were drowned in the Great Lakes, how much >>would the water level rise? A fraction of an inch. > >This is true, but it's an improper measure. It's not the combined >volume of our bodies, but annual volume of food, fiber and fuel we >consume that are the limiting factors, along with the capacity of the >ecosystem to recycle our byproducts. Yes, obviously it's what humans do, not their volume or weight, that determines human impact on the environment. Here is one way in which this impact occurs: in general, more people ==> more land used and altered by people (particularly for agriculture) ==> more destruction of plant and animal habitats ==> more extinctions of species and (almost equally important) genetically diverse populations of species ==> in numerous ways an impoverished existence for humanity. Here is a more precise way of calculating human impact on the environment. The following is excerpted from an article by P.M. Vitousek et al., "Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis", *BioScience* 36: 368-373 (1986): *Homo sapiens* is only one of perhaps 5-30 million animal species on Earth, yet it controls a disproportionate share of the planet's resources. Evidence of human influence is everywhere: land-use patterns are readily visible from space, and the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other trace gases in the atmosphere are increasing as a consequence of human activities. Human beings are mobilizing a wide array of minerals at rates that rival or exceed geological rates. We examined human impact on the biosphere by calculating the fraction of net primary production (NPP) that humans have appropriated. NPP is the amount of energy left after subtracting the respiration of primary producers (mostly plants) from the total amount of energy (mostly solar) that is fixed biologically. NPP provides the basis for maintenance, growth, and reproduction of all heterotrophs (consumers and decomposers); it is the total food resource on Earth. We are interested in human use of this resource both for what it implies for other species, which must use the leftovers, and for what it could imply about limits to the number of people the earth can support. ... We calculated human influences in three ways. Our low estimate is simply the amount of NPP people use directly -- as food, fuel, fiber, or timber. Our intermediate estimate includes all the productivity of lands devoted entirely to human activities (such as the NPP of croplands, as opposed to the proportion of crops actually eaten). We also include here the energy human activity consumes, such as in setting fires to clear land. Our high estimate further includes productive capacity lost as a result of converting open land to cities and forests to pastures or because of desertification or overuse (overgrazing, excessive erosion). The high estimate seems a reasonable statement of human impact on the biosphere. ... ...[H]umans now appropriate nearly 40% of potential terrestrial productivity, or 25% of the potential global terrestrial and aquatic NPP. ... Furthermore, humans also affect much of the other 60% of terrestrial NPP, often heavily. ... ...[W]e believe some reasonable conclusions can be drawn from these estimates. First, human use of marine productivity is relatively small. Although even this low level may not be sustainable [see *Global 2000* Report to the President], it is unlikely to prove broadly catastrophic for oceanic ecosystems. ... On land the situation appears very different. We estimate that organic material equivalent to about 40% of the present net primary production in terrestrial ecosystems is being co-opted by human beings each year. People use this material directly or indirectly, it flows to different [nonhuman] consumers and decomposers than it otherwise would, or it is lost because of human-caused changes in land use. People and associated organisms use this organic material largely, but not entirely, at human direction, and the vast majority of other species must subsist on the remainder. An equivalent concentration of resources into one species and its satellites has probably not occurred since land plants first diversified. The co-option, diversion, and destruction of these terrestrial resources clearly contributes to human-caused extinctions of species and genetically distinct populations -- extinctions that could cause a greater reduction in organic diversity than occurred at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary 65 million years ago. This decimation of biotic resources will foreclose numerous options for humanity because of the loss of potentially useful species and the genetic impoverishment of others that may survive. The information presented here cannot be used directly to calculate the Earth's long-term carrying capacity for human beings because, among other things, carrying capacity depends on both the affluence of the population being supported and the technologies supporting it. But our results do indicate that with *current* patterns of exploitation, distribution, and consumption, a substantially larger human population -- half again its present size or more -- could not be supported without co-opting well over half of terrestrial NPP. Demographic projections based on today's population structures and growth rates point to at least that large an increase within a few decades and a considerable expansion beyond that. ... [Vitousek et al.] Richard Carnes
janw@inmet.UUCP (09/19/86)
>[carnes@gargoyle.UUCP ] >>Oded's proposal is non-coercive. But it is morally preferable even >>compared to encouraging voluntary population control. What are the >>malthusians afraid of? That people may be brought into the world >>whose life will be not worth living? Well, let *them* be the judges >>of that. >The Malthusians are afraid of the prospect of a large number of >people whose lives are much poorer, shorter, and less fulfilling than >they need to be. Consider an African child born in the next century >who faces an impoverished and malnourished life owing to >overpopulation. Your response is to make suicide pills available -- >presumably not through the government. Then, since this hypothetical >person can freely choose to live or die, you consider that the >situation is morally acceptable. More: the idea is that, under the "Modest Proposal", that level of misery would not even be reached. >Your view, evidently, is that a possible person is better off if he >exists, so long as he is not so miserable as to take his own life, >than if this possible person never comes to exist. Well, I can quote >Sophocles as a distinguished authority against this view. But that testimony *supports* the "Modest Proposal" - that would lower the threshold of misery. Are you arguing *few* people would take advantage of it? I expected the *opposite* objection... But even a few would contribute to population control... >But it is a very dubious one in any case. A possible person is >not a real person who can be better or worse off. There is in >fact no person until the moment the person comes into existence. Or *after* the person goes out of existence. The symmetry is complete. Neither are morally indifferent; we feel sympathy with those who no longer exist, and for those who are not born - and may never be. Test it: you wouldn't like a *zero* birth rate, would you? Whom would it affect adversely? Generations that wouldn't exist? It would be a pity to deprive them of the chance! But let's select a criterion both of us find acceptable: sum to- tal of human happiness. Then not only is it better to have happy people than unhappy ones, but it is better to have *more* happy people than fewer. Oded's scheme - assuming complete success in changing laws and mores - guarantees that (1) *only* not-unhappy people live, (2) most of them are happy (the bell-shaped curve takes care of that) and (3) a maximum number compatible with (1) and with pro- creative freedom, live. Whereas population control measures ensure neither (1) nor (2) nor (3). >We ought to maximize the number of good, happy >lives -- not the number of merely endurable lives. See (2) above. To quote a part of my original note: >>... the world is guaranteed a population the *worst-off* part of >>which thinks life worth living. >>But these would be at the tail of the happiness distribution >>curve - which means, in any reasonable distribution, that the ma- >>jority would be well above that level. You never answered that. >Pity the poor unicorn, never to run and play in the fields like >his four-footed counterparts who are lucky enough to exist -- >what a colossal injustice has been perpetrated on the unicorn. If it was up to us to create the unicorn or not, then that prob- lem would arise. And assuming a unicorn to have the greatest capacity for happiness of all imaginable creatures - it would be cruel of us not to create it. >My response to the question of the hypothetical 21st century >African is that we should strive to keep the human population >below levels at which this African may be expected to be miser- >able for a substantial part of his life. The "modest proposal" does it - automatically. Whereas you may overshoot the mark - and descend to *another* misery level. For you have no cause to assume misery to be a monotonic function of numbers. >>Some people are so scared of babies they propose coercive population >>control - a conception police. >This is a distortion. I have not "proposed" coercive population >control measures, without qualification; Have I named you? Have I ever been shy of naming my opponents? Some of the people you quote *do* make such recommendations. Some other people even try to carry them out. I meant them, not you - although a *similar* case can be built against your *conditional* acceptance of their proposals. >Most of the articles objecting to coercive measures (particularly >from the libertarian camp) have been kneejerk reactions to the terms >"coercive" and "coercion". I have already pointed out that one of >the strong points of libertarianism is that you do not have to work >very hard or study very long to understand it. Coercion is bad: now >you understand moral and political philosophy. The rest of us have >to beat our brains out on tough philosophical issues. An elementary principle like "coercion is bad" is not the end of wisdom - but a beginning of it. *If* it is true - then refusing to accept it (and I have never seen you accept it) undermines the sophisticated superstructures you build. *Accepting* it doesn't solve all problems either - tough philosophical issues still have to be tackled. To get to them, you can just stipulate agreement with the basic principle and ask tough questions. >>At any rate all population control advocates should embrace it, >>*unless* what really interests them is not overpopulation, but >>control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* die >>without permission, then they simply want total control over you - >>or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you. >Even if my motives are to enslave the world and become dictator for >life, that would be irrelevant to the philosophical and scientific >issues we have been discussing. Again, I was not addressing you (though I am always willing to argue with you). You could not be the hypothetical *they* in the *If* clause - because you had *not* rejected the "modest proposal". I was speaking of the internal logic of the position of a Malthu- sian who *would* reject it. Now, in the real world, do I mean that some people really want to control and own everyone? First of all, I mean not indi- viduals but a class - the mandarin class. Secondly, its members want power not just for themselves but for the whole class. Thirdly, all kinds of rationalizations are present in individual minds to justify that aim. Generally, they commit what Bertrand Russell called the Administrator's Fallacy. It works like this: suppose you contemplate what a good society would be like. If you unconsciously project yourself into the role of someone who organizes and runs it - quite natural, be- cause you are its *author* - then you tend to favor societies that are a pleasure to *run*, not those that are a pleasure to *live* in. Orderly, symmetrical societies are preferred - neither self- controlling ones that would make the administrator's job redun- dant, nor uncontrollable ones that would make it impossible. Most utopia authors commit this fallacy. Social theorists are also subject to it . >If you want to engage in a >name-calling or motive-attribution contest, please do it somewhere I do not. No name-calling without names! (Preferably none at all). The only name in my note was Oded's, and I did not call him names... Jan Wasilewsky
janw@inmet.UUCP (09/20/86)
[radford@calgary.UUCP ] >For those who don't believe Jan meant this as satire, I will point out >that effective means of suicide have never been hard to come by, so this >isn't much of a "proposal". A "decriminalized but not legalized" case. But I made my position clear many times. I like people; I welcome more of them around; I think they make more living space for each other than they take; but I also think birth and death ought to be private. I am not into social tinkering of either population- reducing, or population-increasing kind. The "proposal" is in the nature of a challenge to the other side of the debate: if you want that, say I, then you ought to prefer this. Utilitarianism is not my basic approach: but I believe that, con- sistently followed, it leads to libertarian conclusions, as it often did in the hands of Mill. >I also note that the title of the posting, >"A Modest Proposal", was first used by Jonathan Swift in advocating >that Irish babies be eaten. Exactly. That old essay is a staple of modern education. I expected readers to recollect it. To make it even clearer: I don't recommend or encourage suicide. If I did, I would do it for the sake of the person involved - not to relieve traffic congestion (like that governor who said old people have a duty to die). But even *that* is less heinous than imposed birth control. Jan Wasilewsky
janw@inmet.UUCP (09/22/86)
>[Bob Hartman, quoted by Richard Carnes] >>The premise is wrong: human population does not loom as large >>vis-a-vis the rest of creation as some of its members believe. If >>all the 5 billion of us were drowned in the Great Lakes, how much >>would the water level rise? A fraction of an inch. >This is true, but it's an improper measure. It's not the combined >volume of our bodies, but annual volume of food, fiber and fuel we >consume that are the limiting factors, along with the capacity of the >ecosystem to recycle our byproducts. I was answering an assertion that, by multiplying, we are crowd- ing out "the rest of creation". The volume of our bodies *is* ap- propriate to compare with the volume of other things in nature - which includes the Great Lakes. The amount of stuff we *process* is another measure; it can be compared to the amount of stuff moving about in nature. The answer would be the same - we are as yet a (physically) minor effect in creation. We are not crowding out the Gulf Stream or the monsoons, we have no influence on vol- canoes and earthquakes - and all of *these* are merely surface phenomena on one planet. As to the "capacity of the ecosystem to recycle our byproducts" - we are increasingly recycling them ourselves. But if an ecosystem cannot recycle something - then it *changes*. So what? Coral reefs aren't recycled - they grow. Why should humans deny humans what nature allows to polyps? And if eventually we become a *major* factor in the evolution of species - what is wrong with that? All air-breathing vertebrates are apparently descended from one fish species. If, some day, most of them are descended either from humans or from human-bred animals - need we wring our hands in advance? Maybe the change is for the better - whatever *that* means... No one can predict ecological changes with any accuracy. If some- one wants to disprove that, all they have to do is to establish a record of accurate long-term predictions. Failing that, acting on some phony predictions would be folly. All we can do is react to the situation as it changes. To be able to do so, we need not (necessarily) more untouched nature, but (certainly) more sci- ence and technology, more energy, greater information-processing capacity, a greater surplus GNP. Jan Wasilewsky
mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) (09/23/86)
In article <26500099@inmet> janw@inmet.UUCP writes: > . . . > I like people; I welcome > more of them around; I think they make more living space for each ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > other than they take; but I also think birth and death ought to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > be private. I am not into social tinkering of either population- > reducing, or population-increasing kind. I would appreciate elucidation of the above sentence; it doesn't seem to make sense. Precisely how do people "make more living space" than they take? Planetary resources are large but finite; they are also (for a multitude of reasons) poorly distributed geographically. Essentially every time people breed faster than local/regional resources allow, it has resulted in overcrowding, disease, and famine. Besides consumable resources, additional people strain housing stocks, overburden means of transportation, and screw up perfectly decent rural and natural areas. I like people too, in small and manageable quanities. I tend to agree that the government should stay out of social tinkering in general; nevertheless the government may wish quite rightfully to make laws that have an impact on the number of children people have (e.g., calculating welfare payments) Michael C. Berch ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb
karl@haddock (09/24/86)
inmet!janw (Jan Wasilewsky) writes: >And if eventually we become a *major* factor in the evolution of species - >what is wrong with that? All air-breathing vertebrates are apparently >descended from one fish species. If, some day, most of them are descended >either from humans or from human-bred animals - need we wring our hands in >advance? Maybe the change is for the better - whatever *that* means... Bravo! It's been estimated that 90% or more of all species that ever lived on Earth are now extinct (I suspect the true figure is higher). I'm not crying over the demise of the passenger pigeon or dodo; it doesn't bother me that my ancestors may have hunted the woolly mammoth to extinction; and good riddance to T. Rex! The whales do get my sympathy, since there's a chance they may be intelligent (whatever *that* means). On the flip side, I'd like to mention an extrapolation I saw once to compute an upper bound on human population, even assuming that (as I hope) we expand into space. Using the current rate of exponential growth, how long would it take before the entire mass of the galaxy is converted into human flesh? Would you believe a mere 6000 years? Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
janw@inmet.UUCP (09/26/86)
[Karl W. Z. Heuer : karl@haddock ] >>And if eventually we become a *major* factor in the evolution of species - >>what is wrong with that? All air-breathing vertebrates are apparently >>descended from one fish species. If, some day, most of them are descended >>either from humans or from human-bred animals - need we wring our hands in >>advance? Maybe the change is for the better - whatever *that* means... >Bravo! It's been estimated that 90% or more of all species that ever lived >on Earth are now extinct (I suspect the true figure is higher). I'm not >crying over the demise of the passenger pigeon or dodo; it doesn't bother me >that my ancestors may have hunted the woolly mammoth to extinction; and good >riddance to T. Rex! The whales do get my sympathy, since there's a chance >they may be intelligent (whatever *that* means). Thank you. Although the mammoth's exit does sadden me somewhat... But it would be foolish to blame our ancestors - too much was at stake for them with a giant store of protein like that, and an ex- cellent tool material, to boot. Had they been advanced enough, they might have tamed the mammoth - and have meat and tusks in abundance, plus a magnificent beast of burden. >On the flip side, I'd like to mention an extrapolation I saw once to compute >an upper bound on human population, even assuming that (as I hope) we expand >into space. Using the current rate of exponential growth, how long would it >take before the entire mass of the galaxy is converted into human flesh? >Would you believe a mere 6000 years? *That* kind of geometrical limitation is convincing. Assuming an expanding sphere of human occupation - the speed of expansion can't exceed the speed of light, so it can't stay exponential. Some science-fiction circumstances like parallel dimensions would have changed this - but of course are not to be expected to come true, much less planned for. They are modern fairy tales. But what *is* to be planned for? Will the universe as known 300 years from now be at all like the universe we know? No, if past experi- ence is any guide. Let us therefore not plan that far at all - but expand our knowledge and our resources - including our numbers. And then, using these assets, cross each bridge as we come to it. The future is *open*. Jan Wasilewsky
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (09/29/86)
[janw] >I was answering an assertion that, by multiplying, we are crowding >out "the rest of creation". The volume of our bodies *is* >appropriate to compare with the volume of other things in nature - >which includes the Great Lakes. The amount of stuff we *process* is >another measure; it can be compared to the amount of stuff moving >about in nature. The answer would be the same - we are as yet a >(physically) minor effect in creation. We are not crowding out the >Gulf Stream or the monsoons, we have no influence on volcanoes and >earthquakes - and all of *these* are merely surface phenomena on one >planet. Humans are influencing weather and climate, possibly disastrously, e.g., through deforestation and CO2 buildup -- evidently Jan has never heard of these effects. Humans have caused earthquakes by filling reservoirs such as Lake Mead. Humans are mobilizing minerals through erosion at rates comparable to geologic rates. Humans are turning rivers such as the Volga into a chain of reservoirs; by damming the Nile they have caused the Nile delta to be eroded by the sea. But in any case Jan misses the point, which is the nature of the effects that human activities are having on the BIOSPHERE, the totality of organisms and their sustaining environment. He might as well argue that we have had no effects on other galaxies -- true but irrelevant. I recently posted an article, apparently read by Jan, explaining (via long quotations from an article in *BioScience*) one of the best measures of human effects on the biosphere, the percentage of net primary productivity appropriated in various ways by humans. NPP is the basic energy resource for all organisms that do not photosynthesize. The article concluded that the human impact on the biosphere is enormous and increasing, and (given expected population increases during the next half century) likely to result in the extinction of huge numbers of species. If human population growth is "controlled" by a large-scale nuclear war, the impact on the biosphere is also likely to be immense, as the nuclear winter studies have investigated in detail. If Jan does not consider the extinction of a million or so species to be "crowding out the rest of creation", I would like to know what the phrase means to him. In any event I'm not sure how I ought to respond to someone who ignores the points I make. Richard Carnes