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gjm comments on If interventions changing population size are cheap, they may be the best option independent of your population ethics - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (19)
Because it seems like it would be an awful coincidence if the current situation were right at the end of the range of the available possibilities. That would mean, e.g., that there's a small gap between where we are now and one more child being born in Bhutan, but a really big gap between where we are now and one fewer child being born in Bhutan.
That's by no means a watertight argument. It could be, e.g., that for some reason it's really easy to get people to have more children and really hard to get them to have fewer, or vice versa. But it seems really unlikely.
For the avoidance of doubt: I didn't think it does, nor did I think you think it does.
That's pretty much exactly what I meant by "If you got staggeringly unlucky ... pick a different one instead". My apologies if that was too cryptic.
Seems really likely to me. For instance, having more children is associated with poverty. It's a lot easier to make many people poor than to make many people rich.