Open Thread: July 2010

komponisto

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

Part 2

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

Part 2

In fact, should the human race shrink significantly [due to antinatalism perhaps], without societal collapse, the average utility of a human life should increase.

Why shouldn't having a higher population lead to greater specialization of labor, economies of scale, greater gains from trade, and thus greater average utility?

Because of the law of diminishing returns (marginal utility). If you have a billion humans one more (less) results in a bigger increase (decrease) in utility than if you have a trillion.

2Kingreaper16y

Resource limitations. There is only a limited amount of any given resource available. Decreasing the number of people therefore increases the amount of resource available per person. There is a point at which decreasing the population will begin decreasing average utility, but to me it seems nigh certain that that point is significantly below the current population. I could be wrong, and if I am wrong I would like to know. Do you feel that the current population is optimum, below optimum, or above optimum?