Are they advocating for constant population growth, or merely aiming for stabilization? To the extent that the arguments you discuss here suggest that fewer people is a bad thing for humanity, then the extension of this would be that mere stabilization isn't desirable either, right? To stabilize rather than increase the birth rate would also mean fewer living, breathing humans with unique personalities, and a slow-down in technological progress.
My only fear with this kind of argument is that it presumes not only that progress is a good thing (agreed), but that the rate of progress should also be accelerating.
Moral progress (whatever that means), sure, that would be great to accelerate. But technological progress? I am not so sure. When it comes to AI and related tech, would stabilizing the pace of progress be so bad?
Increasing the pace of progress may make it less likely we stick the landing with these increasingly societally destabilizing technologies. Obviously this is a complicated issue (increased tech = better health care, better solutions to many problems), but simply assuming increasing the *pace of progress* is an unadulterated good seems like a stretch.
Anyways, thanks for the great review. Definitely going to check this one out.
That's a great question. I wish I'd raised it in my review. Their official position is that we should seek stabilization over depopulation but, as you say, their central argument seem to entail that population growth is preferable to stabilization. Maybe they think stabilization entails less progress but is on balance preferable for other reasons, though they don't make that argument and I'm skeptical they could. What they say (persuasively) about environmental damage and resources limitations does not suggest that population growth is unsustainable.
I'm not a full-blown techno-optimist, but I suppose I lean in that direction. It's bad for there to be progress in weapons technology, but I think technological progress mostly fosters moral progress. For instance, climate change will be solved through technology that aligns our interests and the environment's. AI is of course the real wild card here, and I'm very skeptical that we know anything about its risks/benefits. But whether AI needs to slow down will be evident in the next few decades, and won't depend on population size.
I haven't read the book, but I-ve listened to an interview with the authors and it sounded like they see stabilising as the minimal threshold we need to achieve not necessarily the optimal point.
With respect to the point on "fewer people = fewer ideas = less progress", might technological advances in AGI substantially increase the ideation rate of a given population size to the point that a smaller global population could achieve continuous progress?
What do you think the impacts will be of high-birth-rate communities like Mormons / Amish / Traditional Catholics? Obviously the micro-cultures with a fertility rate of 4 or 5 kids per woman are so small now that they don't affect the statistics much, but I wonder if after a couple generations of exponential growth (combined with exponential decline of everyone else) it might start to make a difference / rebound.
Are they advocating for constant population growth, or merely aiming for stabilization? To the extent that the arguments you discuss here suggest that fewer people is a bad thing for humanity, then the extension of this would be that mere stabilization isn't desirable either, right? To stabilize rather than increase the birth rate would also mean fewer living, breathing humans with unique personalities, and a slow-down in technological progress.
My only fear with this kind of argument is that it presumes not only that progress is a good thing (agreed), but that the rate of progress should also be accelerating.
Moral progress (whatever that means), sure, that would be great to accelerate. But technological progress? I am not so sure. When it comes to AI and related tech, would stabilizing the pace of progress be so bad?
Increasing the pace of progress may make it less likely we stick the landing with these increasingly societally destabilizing technologies. Obviously this is a complicated issue (increased tech = better health care, better solutions to many problems), but simply assuming increasing the *pace of progress* is an unadulterated good seems like a stretch.
Anyways, thanks for the great review. Definitely going to check this one out.
That's a great question. I wish I'd raised it in my review. Their official position is that we should seek stabilization over depopulation but, as you say, their central argument seem to entail that population growth is preferable to stabilization. Maybe they think stabilization entails less progress but is on balance preferable for other reasons, though they don't make that argument and I'm skeptical they could. What they say (persuasively) about environmental damage and resources limitations does not suggest that population growth is unsustainable.
I'm not a full-blown techno-optimist, but I suppose I lean in that direction. It's bad for there to be progress in weapons technology, but I think technological progress mostly fosters moral progress. For instance, climate change will be solved through technology that aligns our interests and the environment's. AI is of course the real wild card here, and I'm very skeptical that we know anything about its risks/benefits. But whether AI needs to slow down will be evident in the next few decades, and won't depend on population size.
I haven't read the book, but I-ve listened to an interview with the authors and it sounded like they see stabilising as the minimal threshold we need to achieve not necessarily the optimal point.
With respect to the point on "fewer people = fewer ideas = less progress", might technological advances in AGI substantially increase the ideation rate of a given population size to the point that a smaller global population could achieve continuous progress?
Humanity is smart enough to produce this crisis and they are sure to be smart enough to solve it. When has this been ever not the truth 😎
What do you think the impacts will be of high-birth-rate communities like Mormons / Amish / Traditional Catholics? Obviously the micro-cultures with a fertility rate of 4 or 5 kids per woman are so small now that they don't affect the statistics much, but I wonder if after a couple generations of exponential growth (combined with exponential decline of everyone else) it might start to make a difference / rebound.