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peter_hurford comments on Why I'm Skeptical About Unproven Causes (And You Should Be Too) - Less Wrong
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Comments (102)
I'd put decent credence on 1A, but I don't expect actual population decline. I'd also put decent credence on 1B, but perhaps not indefinitely. There does seem lots of room for further innovation in farming and resource extraction. Furthermore, one could also imagine eventual colonization of other planets.
Secondly, I think you're missing the option I most endorse:
4 Exceeding the planet's carrying capacity (as above) is a sufficiently credible and immediate existential risk to take seriously (but perhaps still is not as credible nor as immediate as other existential risks). However, there are no known interventions at this time to reliably improve our planet's carrying capacity. Therefore, our best option is to try and find these innovations.
I agree with 4 to the degree that I disagree with 1B. I think there's a good chance existing agricultural innovations are already good enough and just need to be deployed. But I don't think funding that is the most cost-effective thing I could be doing.
Lastly, as a nitpick: I don't think asteroid impacts and Rogue AI are in the same category. Asteroid risk is actually fairly well understood, relatively speaking.
True enough for the supply-side. The demand-side interventions are obvious, but are not seriously considered or even discussed because of religious/political/cultural stigma.
What interventions would you consider?
The final outcome involves people choosing to reproduce less, obviously. The means to get there in a way that's broadly acceptable is the tough problem. But perhaps not the same order of tough as AI.
Many religions are hostile to family planning and no mainstream ones I know of are actively in favor of it.
People who choose to have large numbers of children have the advantage of numbers (insofar that their large-family values get passed onto their children).
Civil libertarians are uncomfortable with population control because of it being a cover for racist policies in the recent past.
Economic libertarians are uncomfortable with population control because they have come to associate that goal with intrusive government policy and this prevents them from even considering free-market means to achieve that goal.
Many, maybe most people like to leave the option of having more-than-replacement levels of children for emotional reasons that were perhaps shaped by evolution.
It's a lot to overcome. Perhaps the first step is at least separating the actual issue from misguided solutions that have been attempted and make it less taboo of a topic for public debate. I don't know, though. It's easier to see the destination than how to get there.
Though I fear it hypocritical to mention: perhaps you ought to give some thought to reducing consumption per individual living human instead? Particularly among those who already enjoy the largesse?
Each extra kid can completely wipe out a lifetime of being a responsible consumption.
Yeah, I do some of that.