jaibot comments on Justifiable Erroneous Scientific Pessimism - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 May 2013 08:37PM

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Comment author: gwern 09 May 2013 02:54:58AM 0 points [-]

He would have been right if not for the sustained growth given to us by the industrial revolution.

How so? Last I checked, human populations could still pop out children if they wanted to faster than the average real global growth rate since the IR of ~2%.

Comment author: jaibot 09 May 2013 04:12:42AM 3 points [-]

"Watch out for that cliff!"

"It looks pretty far off, and besides, we're turning left soon anyway."

"But we could keep accelerating!"

Comment author: gwern 09 May 2013 03:32:02PM -1 points [-]

Your reply seems completely irrelevant to the Malthusian point that population growth can always exceed total factor production, and so it is population growth - or lack of growth - which dominates and determines per capita.