KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") (03/10/86)
From: jon@csvax.caltech.edu
Space colonies - even if obtained by dismantling all the rocky
bodies of the solar system - can only put off the day of reckoning for
so long.
True. My rough estimate is that the solar system can support ten to
the twentieth people, the galaxy can support ten to the thirtieth, and
the known universe can support ten to the fortieth. If population
grows at two percent per year, we will have filled the solar system by
the year 3200, the galaxy by the year 4400, and the whole universe
(the part known in the 20th century) by the year 5600. I don't for a
minute think that it will happen this way, but it shows us what we
have available.
It is obviously true that population cannot continue to expand
exponentially forever. Certainly not for more than 4000 years at the
present rate of increase, and the limit may be very much less.
But the question is, how high should it be? When there were just a
few dozen people on earth, they could have reasoned this same way and
decided that the population should not grow beyond 100. They might
have decided that since the Earth's carrying capacity, with their
lifestyle, was (lets say) one per square mile and since Olduvai gorge
was (lets say) 100 square miles, that this should be the permanent
limit. after all, nobody should be forced to live outside the gorge,
the birhtplace of mankind! Anyone who brought up an argument about
'eggs in one basket' would be informed that not even the biggest lion
could eat up 100 people. After all, they would have no comprehension
of any greater disaster. And if someone had told them that the gorge
was to turn arid and become uninhabitable in a million years, they
would have laughed. Obviously a million years is much too long to
worry about. So, had they reasoned the way you do, makind would have
become extinct after that million years, and would have been extinct
for many more millions of years by now.
I have several points to make:
1) 'Eggs in one basket'. No, I do not think there will be a nearby
supernova. But I don't know that for sure. Should we risk the
whole human race? Many other disasters are possible. A replay of
the asteroidal catastrophe that did in the dinosaurs. Nuclear war.
Alien attack. Something we have never thought of.
2) For the short term, the more people in space, the fewer are on
Earth messing up the wildlife. For the long term, mankind will
make available for life far more space and time than are available
on Earth. Possibly we will set up whole world-sized experimental
ecologies.
3) The more people there are the more geniuses there will be. There
will be more and better inventions, music, literature, software,
sculpture, paintings, etc. If with ten to the ninth people we have
one Newton or Mozart per century, with ten to the twentieth we
should have several dozen geniuses on a par with them each second.
I have no idea what this would be like, or what sort of super-
genius would appear just once per century on the high end of that
much taller bell curve, but I would like to find out.
4) Widely seperated cultures will be able to try a great variety of
cultural, political, economic, and religious experimentation. Let
the communists have a world of their own. The libertarians,
another. Those who think that everything would be better if
psychiatrists ran the world would also be free to band together and
give it a try.
5) Even if nobody ever actually lives in space, we could (with more
advanced robotics) have all our large factories there. And our
mines. And our farms. So Earth COULD then support a much higher
population density, equivalent to downtown Manhattan. Food, fuel,
computers, cars, furnished apartemnt buildings and office
buildings, would parachute down from space to the point where they
are needed when they are needed.
6) It will increase the economies of scale. If the world population
were only 1000, would there be any market for computers? For CD
players? For SF books? These things are only possible because
there are so many consumers. Just think what new things would be
possible if the population were a million times what it is. An
author who would have gotten just 100 dollars royalties because his
work appealed to so narrow a segment of the population would get
100 million dollars instead. Machines that interest only one
person in a million would be mass produced by the millions and
would cost just pennies.
7) The more people there are, the more will share your tastes,
sympathize with your problems, etc. There could be millions of
independant countries to live in, millions of seperate religions to
join, millions of TV channels to watch, billions of seperate
corporations to work for, billions of different books to read,
billions of different computer programs to run, trillions of
special interest clubs and societies to join, and trillions of
possible friends and lovers.
8) Life is enjoyable. Else why go on living? So why not share this
amazing boon with as many others as we can. How is it of any
benefit to anyone for worlds to remain barren of life, resources
unused, sunlight streaming pointlessly into empty space?
No, population will not grow exponentially forever, barring
something completely unexpected like travel to other dimensions,
travel to alternate universes, faster than light travel beyond the
redshift horizon, etc. But that is no reason to halt space
exploration. That is no reason to halt population growth. Not when
life would be so much better, and for so many more people, if there
were billions of people for every one alive today.
...KeithHOLSTEGE@SU-SUSHI.ARPA (Mary Holstege) (03/10/86)
Sorry to keep up with something not directly relevant to space, but Keith is SO misinformed, and I my message to him got bounced. The rest of you will just have to bear with me. The human race currently has a doubling time of about 20 years worldwide; this has shown no sign of slowing down. Currently humans consume ** 40 percent ** of the net productivity of the planet. Multiply it out. We're not talking millenia here, nor centuries, but DECADES until we have serious problems unless something is done RIGHT NOW. While birth rates have declined where the standard of living has increased, we're running against a hard limit on the carrying capacity of the Earth here: standards of living are NOT going to improve until there is a reduction in the number of human beings in this ecosystem. The situation is made worse by the fact that we are losing arable land at an alarming rate, thus reducing the net productivity of the planet. Going into space may well be a long term solution (one reason I'm for it), but we can't sit on our hands and wait for that, there just isn't time. You want to see the 21st century? Take a trip to the Sahel. -- Mary -------
KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") (03/11/86)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA>
Do we want Earth's human population to be that large??
Who is 'we'? You and I? Why should it be up to us? Governments?
Why should it be up to any government? It should be up to the
individuals involved, as it already is in all free countries.
...Keithandrew@cadomin.UUCP (Andrew Folkins) (03/14/86)
I agree with most of your points, and just want to add a couple of comments : In article <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].844652.860310.KFL> KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") writes: > >2) For the short term, the more people in space, the fewer are on > Earth messing up the wildlife. For the long term, mankind will > make available for life far more space and time than are available > on Earth. Possibly we will set up whole world-sized experimental > ecologies. > In quite a few notes lately, the implication seems to be that Earth will become less populated by emmigration to outer space. I don't dislike with the concept (I'd like to go myself), but it is not *practical*. There is no way to ship people off this planet fast enough to decrease the population (growing at how many *millions* per day?). The way to avoid the "Limits to Growth" scenario is to establish an extraterrestrial economy which can return enough wealth to this planet so that *everyone* becomes rich, especially the Third world countries where most of the growth is projected to occur. My point is that we cannot solve the Earth's population problems by exporting people to space, but one way we can slow the growth is to exploit (oh no! Exploitation!) the materials and power out there and increase the worldwide standard of living. Whoever does it will drag the rest of us along the road to prosperity along with him. > >5) Even if nobody ever actually lives in space, we could (with more > advanced robotics) have all our large factories there. And our > mines. And our farms. >>> So Earth COULD then support a much higher > population density, equivalent to downtown Manhattan. <<< Food, fuel, > computers, cars, furnished apartemnt buildings and office > buildings, would parachute down from space to the point where they > are needed when they are needed. > I hope not. Could you image downtown Manhattan *everywhere* you went? There is too much beauty on this planet to plaster it all over with buildings (unless, of course, we rename the planet "Trantor"). > >7) The more people there are, the more will share your tastes, > sympathize with your problems, etc. There could be millions of > independant countries to live in, millions of seperate religions to > join, millions of TV channels to watch, billions of seperate ^^^^^^^^ > corporations to work for, billions of different books to read, ^^^^^^^^ > billions of different computer programs to run, trillions of ^^^^^^^^ > special interest clubs and societies to join, and trillions of > possible friends and lovers. > You're not related to Carl Sagan by any chance, are you? >8) Life is enjoyable. Else why go on living? So why not share this > amazing boon with as many others as we can. How is it of any > benefit to anyone for worlds to remain barren of life, resources > unused, sunlight streaming pointlessly into empty space? > Enter dream state : pictures of solar power satellites beaming millions of dollars of electrical power back to Earth. Asteroid smelters producing billions of dollars of metals and volitiles for the habitats in Earth orbit and the asteriod belt . . . I've said it before and I'll say it again : someone is going to become *very* rich when an extraterrestrial economy gets going. Of course, his problem then is how to prevent the habitats from gaining independance and nationalizing everything. -- Andrew Folkins ...ihnp4!alberta!andrew "We humans think of ourselves as being rather good at reasoning, but at best we perform about a hundred logical inferences a second. We're talking about future expert systems that will be doing ten million inferences a second. What will it be like to put a hundred years thought in every decision? Knowledge is power." - Edward A. Feigenbaum
KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") (03/16/86)
From: Chuck Simmons <chuck%dartmouth.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
If the population stays the same size, but each
person's disposable income increases by a factor of a million, they would
buy enough goods to justify all sorts of economies of scale.
Not true. No matter how rich I was, I wouldn't buy two copies of
the same book. I wouldn't buy more food than I could eat. I wouldn't
buy more clothes than I could wear in a week. I wouldn't buy two
copies of the same CD. I wouldn't buy more computer power than I
could use. I wouldn't buy more than one calculator.
There is a BIG difference between a trillion people with $100,000
each and a billion people with $100,000,000 each.
Once we colonize space and make extensive use of the resources of
the solar system, we won't have to choose. We will be able to have a
trillion trillionaires.
Secondly, you are assuming that economies of scale will continue to exist.
I believe it may be possible that this is not the case. As an example, it
used to be that it would have been cheaper for a car maker to make 1
million cars that were each painted black. These days, it costs nearly the
same amount of money to make cars in lots of different colors.
Not a good example. It is still true that building a million cars
is nowehere near a million times as expensive as building one car.
Building a trillion cars would probably be even cheaper, per car.
There are only a few things where economy of scale does not apply.
Anything requiring personal service, of course. Electric power, since
the main cost now is fuel rather than plant. Land, for obvious
reasons.
Given robotics to do most of the boring and dangerous jobs, enormous
amounts of power and materials from space, and a much higher
population, I forsee an economy where the major occupations are
writer, programmer, philosopher, scientist, architect, artist,
entertainer, musician, etc.. All of these have nearly constant cost
regardless of audience. It doesn't cost any more to write a book if
there will be more readers. It is no harder to compose a symphony
if there will be more listeners. Discovering a new law of science is
no more difficult if it will be used by more people.
... During the current industrial
revolution, we are learning techniques for producing many similar but
unique items on a large scale.
I doesn't really matter whether everybody's space habitat is
absolutely identical or slightly different. Since these will be made
by robotics, the cost of food, shelter, air, water, and clothing will
be negligible.
...Keithweemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (03/16/86)
In article <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].851959.860315.KFL> KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") writes: > Once we colonize space and make extensive use of the resources of >the solar system, we won't have to choose. We will be able to have a >trillion trillionaires. But we will end up with a thousand sextillionaires instead. Or do you have some sort of inside information that the rest of us don't know about? > Secondly, you are assuming that economies of scale will continue to exist. > I believe it may be possible that this is not the case. As an example, it > used to be that it would have been cheaper for a car maker to make 1 > million cars that were each painted black. These days, it costs nearly the > same amount of money to make cars in lots of different colors. > > Not a good example. It is still true that building a million cars >is nowehere near a million times as expensive as building one car. >Building a trillion cars would probably be even cheaper, per car. Oh really? You are blithely ignoring transportation costs of getting cars from space factories to planet surfaces, increased pollution costs, etc. If you want to make straightforward linear sci-fi extrapolations, you can then conclude anything you want. But I think the actual story is going to be a lot more complicated (and expensive) than you or I or anyone else can even guess at the moment. It could be cheaper, or it could be the same, or it could be more expensive. That's about as accurate a statement as anyone can make about the future. And where the hell are you going to park all those cars? :-) > Given robotics to do most of the boring and dangerous jobs, enormous >amounts of power and materials from space, and a much higher >population, I forsee an economy where the major occupations are >writer, programmer, philosopher, scientist, architect, artist, >entertainer, musician, etc. With your view of a trillion trillionaires, I was expecting you to say the major occupation will be spoiled brat/bum. Why do I suspect all of the up and coming poets you are predicting in this glorious tomorrow are going to write at the level of Rod McKuen, if we are even that lucky? Do we really want to inflict that sort of mental blight on society? > Since these will be made >by robotics, the cost of food, shelter, air, water, and clothing will >be negligible. No. Only the labor will be negligible. The capital costs will still remain. And part of that capital will be software/hardware the likes we have never seen. Cheaper? More expensive? I don't know. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
chuck@dartvax.UUCP (Chuck Simmons) (03/16/86)
> But the question is, how [many people should there be]? > I have several points to make: > > 3) The more people there are the more geniuses there will be. There > will be more and better inventions, music, literature, software, > sculpture, paintings, etc. If with ten to the ninth people we have > one Newton or Mozart per century, with ten to the twentieth we > should have several dozen geniuses on a par with them each second. > I have no idea what this would be like, or what sort of super- > genius would appear just once per century on the high end of that > much taller bell curve, but I would like to find out. It took me a while to figure out the fallacy in this argument. Having a few dozen geniuses around each second is useless if they must spend all their time finding enough food to stay alive, or if they die before they are, say, five years old. Newton was not only a genius, but he was also relatively rich. He had enough money to spend some time thinking about the way the universe works. Also, there appears to be a strong correlation between intelligence and upbringing. Upperclass families tend to have more intelligent offspring because the offspring are subjected to a more intellectually stimulating environment during their early years, and they get enough to eat. > 6) It will increase the economies of scale. If the world population > were only 1000, would there be any market for computers? For CD > players? For SF books? These things are only possible because > there are so many consumers. Just think what new things would be > possible if the population were a million times what it is. An > author who would have gotten just 100 dollars royalties because his > work appealed to so narrow a segment of the population would get > 100 million dollars instead. Machines that interest only one > person in a million would be mass produced by the millions and > would cost just pennies. If we were capable of supporting a million times as many people, we would be capable of supporting the current population with a standard of living a million times what it currently is. We could sell Amigas to every person living in Ethiopia. An author who would currently get 100 dollars in royalties would get 1 million dollars instead because more people would be able to afford his book, and more people would be capable of reading it. > 8) Life is enjoyable. Else why go on living? So why not share this > amazing boon with as many others as we can. This is a good point. Is life enjoyable when you are starving? I would suggest that if governments and people want to encourage increased populations then they should first be able to guarantee that life will be enjoyable. They should guarantee that new people will be fed, clothed, housed, provided with medical care, given an education, and given a job. If these conditions cannot be met, then it is the moral responsibility of people everywhere to discourage increases in population. Chuck Simmons chuck@dartvax
KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") (03/17/86)
From: Chuck Simmons <c45103%d1%dartmouth.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
In your counterexample, I see that you have proposed increasing the
population by a factor of 1000 as well as increasing the disposable income
by a factor of 1000.
Umm, it is not so much that I am proposing doing anything. My main
point is that it should be up to the people involved to decide how
many children they should have, whether to live in space or on Earth,
how hard they want to work for the incremental dollar, etc. Nobody
should have the right to decide those things for others. I am not
saying that I should sit in a control room somewhere and set the
population and median income to some figure. I don't think that I or
any government has the power to do anything of the sort. And if
anyone did have such a power, they shouldn't. There is no point in
colonizing space, or even on living on Earth, unless we can be free.
My thesis is that increased population is a bad idea
unless you take steps to increase the standard of living of the current
population as well as take steps to maintain an acceptably high standard of
living for whatever future sized population you are encouraging.
How do you propose increasing the standard of living of the present
population in the short term? There is only so much wealth, and it
isn't going to increase by fiat. Only by long hard work by a lot of
people over a long period. And it cannot increase by more than a
factor of ten or so (very rough estimate) without considerable use of
space resources.
If you are saying we should not colonize space or do anything which
might make the people of the U.S. wealthier until we bring the rest of
the world up to our standards, all I can say is it isn't going to
happen, there isn't enough wealth to go around. What if Columbus was
not allowed to sail so long as there remained a slum in Europe?
Increasing the disposable income by a factor of 1000 would be an acceptable
increase in the standard of living as far as I am concerned.
Also notice that in your comparison of 1G people with 100M dollars that
each person could buy the equivalent of a Cray.
Well, I think that the whole nature of the economy would be so
different that this sort of linear comparison isn't really very
meaningful. Yes, I know I have been the main offender here. But what
is meant by the processing power of a Cray? Don't many of us already
have the processing power of a supercomputer of 20 years ago? Don't
you think it is likely that the micro of 20 years from now will exceed
the power of the Cray in many ways?
Twenty years ago, who would have believed that the average person
could ever afford to purchase ten million of anything? (i.e. on-chip
transistors in an average high-end micro.)
We run into the same sort of trouble when trying to compare the
current value of the dollar with its past value. Even over a period
of one year. There is a lot of dispute about what the current
inflation rate is, for instance. I believe it is around 8%. The
government is saying it is less than 1%. As for just how rich in
today's terms John Rockefeller (first dollar billionaire, around 1910)
was. At the time you could buy a good meal in a good restraunt for
ten cents. But you couldn't buy the processing power of an APPLE II
for any price. And central air conditioning would have cost hundreds
of thousands. And how much was Judas payed in terms of today's
currency?
In this future economy, I expect that food, clothing, water, and
shelter would be quite inexpensive. Air would be inexpensive but not
free as it is on Earth. Most kinds of hardware would be fairly
inexpensive, except those which had some risk associated with them.
Risky things (cars, spacecraft, power tools) would have a cost that
mostly subsidizes lawsuits against the manufacturers. Anything that
had to be custom designed or manufactured would be fairly expensive.
For instance a special piece of software, a unique building, a piece
of music composed just for you. Medical costs would probably be
fairly expensive, and people probably wouldn't live much longer than
they do today, though a smaller proportion of people should die young.
Taxes would probably be fairly high, and would mostly be for defense.
Most healthy people would save most of their salary. Few people would
borrow. As a result, interest rates would be quite low, and there
would be plenty of capital for investing in new enterprises.
In this economy nobody would starve, but a poor person might get
bored if he has tastes that cannot be satisfied by such things as
public libraries and evenings with friends.
Forty years ago, who would have guessed that so much of so many
people's leisure time would be spent watching television? Or doing
just one thing, whatever that one thing is?
Remember that not so long ago, the great majority of the population
had just one vocation (farming) but many avocations. Today, it is
reversed. People have many vocations, but the majority have just one
avocation (watching TV). Is it possible that it will change again?
That perhaps someday the great majority of all people will be
programmers? Or artists? (If there is any difference between the two
then!)
Probably many of the people on the net(s), especially those that
read and write to a lot of lists, think that computers will be very
central in the world of the future. Not just that there will be one
in every appliance and that most people will use one every day (we are
close to that point now!) but that the majority of people will spend
most of their working hours and leisure hours hunched over a keyboard
and screen. Is this realistic?
Personally, I do not think a Cray would provide more computer power than I
could use (given sufficiently good software).
Same here. If nothing else, one can compose synthetic movies using
ray-tracing software. I read that a Cray can produce one high
resolution ray-traced image in a half hour. So to do this at 24
frames per second (standard movie rate) would require about 400,000
times the processing power of a Cray. Other applications include
deeper-lookahead chess programs, and AI.
Note that this future economy presupposes really good robotics and
computer science. This can be regarded as AI, I suppose. But I am
not really assuming that we will have true AI, that is, computers
which can do everything humans can. I am not sure that that is
possible, and I am pretty sure that it is not necessary to get
computers and robots to do useful and independant things. Current
computer visions algorithms could be used to make robots much smarter
at dealing with an unstructured environment. The only problem is that
the algorithms are too slow. Faster hardware will cure this, even if
vision researchers never come up with better algorithms.
My objection to your original posting was that you were implying that an
increased population in and of itself would be a good idea. I am hoping to
get you to modify this approach to: "an increased population is a good
idea if we can maintain a sufficiently high standard of living".
Not exactly. I am convinced that the average person produces more
than he consumes, and thus makes the world (er, solar system) a
wealthier place. The only hole in this argument is that he does
consume certain limited resources, and as such reduces the net wealth
in a way that he cannot offset in the same way. This is the very crux
of my argument for space. In space, all such limited resources are
much less limited.
It may be the case that "a sufficiently high standard of living"
constraints on the number of people we are willing to place within a cubic
kilometer of one another.
Well, once again I disagree with the way you are saying it. You say
"we are willing to place" when you should be saying "are willing to
place themselves".
Note that there are over ten to the 26 cubic kilometers in the inner
solar system alone. If everyone requires a volume equal to that of my
apartment, you can fit three million people into each cubic
kilometer. This would allow a total population of the inner solar
system of over ten to the 32. I don't think the solar system can
support a population anywhere near that high, ten to the 20th seems
more likely. Sheer volume is not a problem.
...Keithdoug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (03/18/86)
My apologies to net.space folk... I don't know how to route mail from Usenet to mc.lcs.mit.edu... > Nobody > should have the right to decide those things for others. I am not > saying that I should sit in a control room somewhere and set the > population and median income to some figure. I don't think that I or > any government has the power to do anything of the sort. And if > anyone did have such a power, they shouldn't. There is no point in > colonizing space, or even on living on Earth, unless we can be free. What we have here is a fundamental opposition between "freedoms". On the one hand, the freedom to have as many children as you please; on the other, the freedom to live in conditions better than overcrowded starving squalor. This kind of dilemma can be seen in microcosm in the smokers vs. anti- smokers debate. Perhaps whatever truce is worked out in that conflict will provide guidance on the question of population control. -- Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {elrond,savax,seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!terak!doug
mrgofor@mmm.UUCP (MKR) (03/20/86)
In article <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].851959.860315.KFL> KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") writes: > > From: Chuck Simmons <chuck%dartmouth.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> > > If the population stays the same size, but each > person's disposable income increases by a factor of a million, they would > buy enough goods to justify all sorts of economies of scale. > > Not true. No matter how rich I was, I wouldn't buy two copies of >the same book. I wouldn't buy more food than I could eat. I wouldn't >buy more clothes than I could wear in a week. I wouldn't buy two >copies of the same CD. I wouldn't buy more computer power than I >could use. I wouldn't buy more than one calculator. I own two copies of several books, and because others have become damaged or lost, I have bought multiple copies of many books. I often throw away un-eaten food that has spoiled or is cluttering up the fridge ("who is going to eat this okra your mother brought over? :-)). I own a lot more clothes than I can wear in a week, and I'm not a clothes-hound by any means - I *hate* shopping and will only do it when my shirts start to disintegrate. Besides, how many thousands of pairs of shoes did Imelda Marcos have? If I could afford it, I would definitely buy multiple copies of CD's (one for the office on my D5 portable, one for the living room stereo, and one for the bedroom stereo - and maybe another for each car). I think the vast majority of computer owners have computer power that they don't use - if all they do is run Wordstar, there is a lot going to waste. I own quite a few calculators - as do a great many people. Maybe you could come up with some better examples? -- --MKR "The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency." - Albert Einstein