excellent website on population

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Apr 2012, 20:23

Indeed. I prefer sparsely populated places.

But it's not about what we want but what we have to put up with.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 30 Apr 2012, 11:44

Global Degrowth and Depopulation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arZjy6lD68M

Jack Alpert, from the Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory, says over populaton will bring riots, chaos, and billions of deaths in the next 10 years. We must slash world population. Alpert explores the maximum naturally sustainable number for Earth, and radical ways to get there.

Someone even more radical than me on this topic. Although I agreed with the vast majority of it, including most of the bit at the end about "germ warfare". The final claim that it is possible to engineer a race-distinguishing sterilisation virus goes too far though - I do not believe this is technically possible.

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 30 Apr 2012, 12:01

What happens in a animal population when it goes into over shoot do the strongest smartest best examples choose to not have offspring knowing the weakest less smart will continue to breed, or do they fight it out for resources and the ability to mate and breed

Is that how you get faster stronger tigers by the best breeding stock choosing to not breed, you seem out of touch with nature.

I've said this before and really doubt you will understand what I'm saying, but maybe spaced repetition will work someday .

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 30 Apr 2012, 12:40

And good link .
Albert may be right with his scarcity model of collapse, but I really don't think humans will chose to be mass sterilized to avoid collapse, so then you have either a group of individuals or section of govt covertly sterilizing people, or conflict over resources which may well lead to the road .

personally I think the Road is more likely, civilization will collapse, thats what they are apt to do, people with the right quality's who are lucky will come through it, much like they did in the past.

New York and London will fall like Rome of old, the romans had millions of books, at the beginning of the Renaissance they found a tiny church in Spain and all the books that survived were on a couple of shelves.

Actually it may be worse than that other civilizations have collapsed and left nothing to survive .

The strong who are willing to fight and adapt can survive

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 30 Apr 2012, 12:43

jonny2mad wrote:What happens in a animal population when it goes into over shoot do the strongest smartest best examples choose to not have offspring knowing the weakest less smart will continue to breed, or do they fight it out for resources and the ability to mate and breed

Is that how you get faster stronger tigers by the best breeding stock choosing to not breed, you seem out of touch with nature.

I've said this before and really doubt you will understand what I'm saying, but maybe spaced repetition will work someday .

As I've explained to you before, I think you are missing the significance of group selection in human evolution. For the whole of the period humans were evolving from apes, we were tribal animals. Survival of the fittest still applied to individuals to a certain extent, but it was really all about survival of the fittest tribes. And that's where your philosophy falls down, I think. You seem to think that survival of the fittest should even apply within families, so if you were thrown into a tribal situation, the tribe would kick you out after about ten minutes. And in primitive human societies, being thrown out of the tribe is normally fatal.

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 30 Apr 2012, 12:50

Well how big is your tribe or family group, people today seem to think its the whole world

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 30 Apr 2012, 13:27

jonny2mad wrote:Well how big is your tribe or family group, people today seem to think its the whole world

I don't really have one, but then I'm not planning on taking part in a game of survival of the fittest at any level.

Human tribes can be anything up to 100, maybe 200 people. No more than that.

Biff thinks his tribe is the whole world, but you're talking to me at the moment, not Biff.

jonny2mad · Post by **jonny2mad** » 30 Apr 2012, 13:37

UndercoverElephant wrote:
jonny2mad wrote:Well how big is your tribe or family group, people today seem to think its the whole world
but then I'm not planning on taking part in a game of survival of the fittest at any level.

You don't get to choose your part of the game whether you like it or not, you can chose not to win thats about all, maybe even that you don't get to chose .

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 30 Apr 2012, 14:49

jonny2mad wrote:
UndercoverElephant wrote:
jonny2mad wrote:Well how big is your tribe or family group, people today seem to think its the whole world
but then I'm not planning on taking part in a game of survival of the fittest at any level.

You don't get to choose your part of the game whether you like it or not, you can chose not to win thats about all, maybe even that you don't get to chose .

I can choose to not compete if that's what I want, Jonny. Absolutely I get to choose this.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 30 Apr 2012, 15:36

UndercoverElephant wrote:As I've explained to you before, I think you are missing the significance of group selection in human evolution. For the whole of the period humans were evolving from apes, we were tribal animals. Survival of the fittest still applied to individuals to a certain extent, but it was really all about survival of the fittest tribes. And that's where your philosophy falls down, I think. You seem to think that survival of the fittest should even apply within families, so if you were thrown into a tribal situation, the tribe would kick you out after about ten minutes. And in primitive human societies, being thrown out of the tribe is normally fatal.

Until relatively recently many disabled children died at birth. It was natural to the extent that a wet, naked, young child would succumb quite quickly to the cold if it weren't wrapped warm up at birth. It was one of the jobs of a mid wife and was the best thing for a poor family who couldn't afford the time and resources to look after a disabled child. That was natural selection at work. And I'm talking about the fifties here.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 30 Apr 2012, 16:14

kenneal - lagger wrote:
UndercoverElephant wrote:As I've explained to you before, I think you are missing the significance of group selection in human evolution. For the whole of the period humans were evolving from apes, we were tribal animals. Survival of the fittest still applied to individuals to a certain extent, but it was really all about survival of the fittest tribes. And that's where your philosophy falls down, I think. You seem to think that survival of the fittest should even apply within families, so if you were thrown into a tribal situation, the tribe would kick you out after about ten minutes. And in primitive human societies, being thrown out of the tribe is normally fatal.
Until relatively recently many disabled children died at birth. It was natural to the extent that a wet, naked, young child would succumb quite quickly to the cold if it weren't wrapped warm up at birth. It was one of the jobs of a mid wife and was the best thing for a poor family who couldn't afford the time and resources to look after a disabled child. That was natural selection at work. And I'm talking about the fifties here.

And a good example of the relevance of group selection. The tribe which allowed disabled children to grow up, and become a burden on the tribe, would be less able to cope when times got hard.