overpopulation

I don't really understand your point. I'm working on some advanced AI now which 'mimics' the psychology and behaviour of humans. Just because I'm able to do that, doesn't mean that we are "just calculations".. or maybe it does. Either way there is no more 'value' in being a more complex calculation, since the basic principles are the same for most AI : the 'attraction' or desire to reproduce, the 'fear' or avoidance of death. So I represent emotion and feeling with numbers - that doesn't mean we are emotionless. Neither does it mean that animals are. It does explain your behaviour rather well, however.

In the context of what I was saying, I was implying that we are eating ourselves. Grass, flowers, plants, all use nutrients from decomposed organisms (which includes humans) to grow.

The difference is that I am not basing the importance of other organisms on my own perceived importance. I'm not implying that you shouldn't have your say, I simply asked you a question about why you think you have the right to judge every other life form as if you 'know better'. Although I suppose I know, it's because instead of actually trying to analyse and understand the world you take the lazy option of assimilating a world view and twisting reality around it in order to fool yourself into thinking that you're right, because actually questioning yourself would mean having to tear down the very foundations of your mind and rebuilding from scratch, which no-one wants to do because it means that all these truths they're blocking out would resubstantiate themselves in an overwhelming flood. Although I could be wrong.

You're not really comparing material goods with autonomous life forms are you?

I disagree completely. While they may not 'know' what death is, they seek to avoid it. That implies they have some idea that the state of 'being alive' has an opposite. It's a common misconception that animals don't acknowledge or fear death. When you actually analyse their behaviour it becomes very obvious that they do. We may have a greater understanding of it but not even WE know what death is, which is partially the reason for fearing it so much.

Yet, if you'd lived under a rock or slept on the open ground all your life, you'd probably consider a bed pretty dumb. You'd probably consider our whole society a pointless waste of time, seeing as these things are only there for the comfort and convenience which we've been brought up to value. You know, instead of life.

Doesn't it depend on the circumstances? It could be argued that having children is an entirely selfish thing to do, considering we're spurred on by the replication of our own genes. That is, after all, why we reproduce in the first place, why any animal or plant reproduces. In which case it is an admirably selfless act, or at least a totally naive one not to have children.

But it's also selfish when we have to destroy all other life forms in order to fill the world with humans, which we will inevitably end up doing.

 

Huh? What good is it to mimic human behavior by some machine? To do work for us? To make amusing screen savers? To make enemies in video games that aren't so easy to outsmart? One complaint I have read of about video games, is how the enemy won't even duck for cover when being shot at. But all that is all to serve humans. Without humans, what good are screen savers or video games? You can't really place "attraction," "desire," "fear," with a mathmatical construct, and then call that human life. Symbolic interpretation of supposedly "life-like" behaviors by human innovators, does not "life" make. Perhaps that's one reason I don't cry, when I see some cartoon character flattened by a steamroller. He'll just blow himself back up, and keep on entertaining. It's not like it is "real" or anything, and that's one thing I can't stand about "reality" TV shows. Come on, we all know it's not real, so enough with the pretending. Like they are all "Lost" on that island, but the camera crew knows where they are? How can it be a "fair" competition when the story is mostly about TV ratings? At least Gilligan's Island didn't claim to be real, but rather a TV sitcom or comedy. We know the actors get to go home, after each day or taping.

Oh, so you believe in that "dust to dust" nonsense? I can't imagine what difference that could make as to what the afterlife would be like. I wonder how people think it makes any difference where they have their ashes scattered. Didn't Carl Pagan, make that Sagan, have his ashes scattered in orbit around the earth, or was that somebody else?

Well if humans are growing more and more numerous, why then would we need nutrients from other dead people, who might rather still be among the living? Can't humans convert the nutrients from the various plants and animals into more and more human bodies? Last I heard, there was no shortage of carbon or water in our global environment.

Soylent Green intended for what those "crackers" are made of, to be shocking. But there's plenty of other places they could obtain nutrients for food to feed so many humans. Soylent Green was meant to show a distopian view of the future, as if a mere story could somehow "prove" that humans can't somehow keep adding more and more people to the world. But why use "population" as the scapegoat? Why not plain old human sin? How about the problems shown in the movie, Total Recall? Considering that movie, I have to think that it might be better just to stay on a supposedly "overcrowded" earth, than to rush to colonize Mars, only to find that the Mars colony is ruled by some powermad dictator. As they say, the grass isn't always greener, somewhere else. And maybe "living in a crowd" isn't so bad anyway. Soylent Green missed the point in so many ways. They assume that humans can't adapt somehow to their increasingly huge numbers. And yet how did the numbers manage to grow so huge? By adapting. No, even the historical trend suggests that adding more mouths to feed, to the world, in turn also trends towards innovation and expanding food supplies, such that people spend less of their day working for food, and more time working for more and more gadgets, that we probably don't even need all that much. (i.e. the big screen TV, the 3rd house bathroom, overpriced satelite channel programming, and those barf! MP3 players)

Somehow I find that hard to believe. Do you walk around with a magnifying glass, to be sure you don't accidently step on an ant. On a sunny day? Whoops! Another ant bites the dust being fried by the magnifying glass's concentrated sun's rays. Oh well, so many ants, so little time.

You talk as if I suggested something "new" here. I am merely stating what most all humans do, all the time. We eat almost anything, plants and animals, well except for humans. Why is cannalbalism so taboo? Because human life is sacred. It would be prudent for humans to respect their own kind, especially now that there are so many of us.

I reaccess things I believe all the time, as I learn new things. But what I believe remains remarkably stable. I once wondered why poor people in developing countries have so many babies if they can't afford them. Until I learned more about political and economic injustice, and how there really is enough food to feed everybody, for those who can afford to buy it. Those who can't afford to buy food, get by, well until there's some famine and their crops fail, and having fewer options, find it hard to then buy food from elsewhere. It's not because they have so many children, but too few options. In the past, I used to think a crying baby sounded awful, like screeching chalk across a chalkboard. Well until I became involved in the pro-life movement, and now I feel so much more compassion for the little people. I would cry too, if I didn't know yet how to do much else. I used to believe the claims of authority of the Mormon "church." Until I learned that those claims can't be substanciated by the Bible they claim to believe, and learned that the evidence doesn't support such a conclusion. So I renounced Mormonism and go to a more mainstream Church. Now I believe a lot of things that Mormons and Catholics believe. Most religions seem to promote family values including the value of people having possibly large families. But I don't take the Pope's word for it, but reason out my own reasons to believe as many people believe.

Mere animals are much more like material goods, than they are like people. Until very recently, we made animals do much of our work. They still measure the power of gasoline engines in horse-power.

And apparently, sometimes even an animal will give its life to protect its master, at least according to the old movie, Old Yeller. Which is sort of "normal" in the animal kindom, as drone worker bees will die having stung an animal, to protect the hive, and animals will often fight for the welfare of their pack. As people sometimes say, "There's safety in numbers."

Does an animal even know what itself is? But sadly, some animals seem to know what they are, better than people do, people who like to claim fishy things, like that humans are just animals. Even computers "fear" death, because somebody programmed them that way. "Do you really want to permanently delete this file? Y/N" Any decent operating system (OS) tries to park the hard drive heads when it shuts down, or sometimes now when a laptop senses a fall. Any decent OS tries to prevent file corruption, etc. That doesn't mean the computer "understands" death, but merely that it was designed to last for a while.

Well some people just don't know, what they should know. I hear that some people in developing countries, aren't so sure they want indoor toilets. Won't they make the house stink? So we have to educate them. Look, you can't just go out and pee in the street, or defecate in an open field, when increasingly the neighborhood is filling up with people, people everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Increasingly no empty fields anymore, within reasonable walking distance. Now of course, most people seem to understand that there are compelling reasons to have children, and of course people have to be welcome to go on having their precious darling children. Unlike some powermad Western contraceptive imperilists, I don't ask at all that people somehow try to "control" their population growth. Rather that they simply make a few necessary adaptations so that humanity can populate up more densely and efficiently, for the greater good of the many.

Procreating is an incrediably unselfish act, because rather than merely seeking selfish self-gratitification, it seeks to pleasure one's spouse, and benefit any children that may result, that they may also experience life, and the pleasure of sex themselves, when they are old enough and marry and reproduce too. It's win-win for everybody. Even society benefits, from the possible child's contributions, which could be the experience of being a friend to others, or a soulmate for somebody else's child when they later grow up and marry.

I don't believe in setting any arbitrary cap on world population size, as that would unfairly arbitrarily leave countless people out. I fully intend for my childrens' rights to be respected, to have "all the children God gives them," when the world population may be pushing 9 or 10 billion. And I expect the same for all those other people's children too. Now what if my family grows "too big?" Why shouldn't I cut down a tree, and add a wing onto my house, if I need the space? Which is worth more to me? My precious darling children, or a few squirrels and birds that might supposedly be displaced? Why would it be such an "inconvenience" to me, to have to "scoot over" a bit, and make room for a growing world of people, if people are willing to do the same for me, so that I can have all my precious darling children?

My point is to promote better alternatives. The world is already awash in rampant contraceptive peddling, and yet world population, at least for the moment, continues to grow. Isn't it high time to explore some other ideas, like how to population more densely and efficiently, so that there can be room enough for all? I don't see any "maximum capacity" sign on this planet, and so who are these overeducated idiots, who can't even begin to agree on what that "capacity" might even supposedly be? Who died and made them "god?"

 

I vote overpopulation is not a problem--So keep screwing (no protection)

 

Well at least that is natural, and doesn't go against nature. (See Romans 1.)

When God put Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden, he commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Genesis 1:28. After the fall of man and the Great Flood, the commandment is repeated in Genesis 9:1, lest there be any question about whether it is still in effect. So it was God who made what populates the planet to be extremely pleasurable, people are commanded to pair up and marry and procreate, at least in the Garden of Eden there was apparent "unlimited" food, and Whoops! God "forgot" to give them any means of contraception or "family planning?" No, it was no "oversight," but a recipe for a human "population explosion," right from the start.

Even some newspaper cartoon picture got it right, when it depicts the serpent in the Garden, offering Eve a condom. Yeah, that's about where contraceptives came from--an invention of the devil to rob us of our precious wonderful children.

Funny how it was a "given," that family size was pretty much "uncontrollable," until the advent of "the pill" and other various shoddy contraceptives, then liberal population pessimists just assumed that we should then decide "Which contraceptive method?" rather than "Why would we want to give up getting to have our children again?" There's a reason for such natural terms as natural increase or issue of children. Because after all, it's quite natural for humans over time, to rise in their numbers. After all, isn't it great to exist and to be alive?

And still nearly have the world doesn't use any "protection," because as they say, "You can't fool all the people, all the time."

While obviously there is not an apparent "shortage" of people anymore, neither is the world anywhere near "full" of people either. There's lots more room for lots more people, especially if humans would consider the sacredness of each and every human life, a worthy priority.

 

seriously. poetry dude.


sorry to be the one to point out the obvious, but the only reason this "debate" even exists is because Pronatalist hates himself.

it's like one of those dreadfully uncomfortable acid moments when some people catch on, and others don't, to the fact that such and such actually revolves around somebodies personal insecurities.

 

What a bizarre theory.

No, what I hate, is crackpot theories that don't fit in well with the evidence nor with responsible pro-family social policy, masquerading as if they were "science."

I am also not impressed with all these modern women, who would rather marry a career than a husband and settle down and do what comes naturally and raise children. We have women who think they are men, men that have been feminized into giving up any leadership role, and children being raised by godless socialists running a government school monopoly and being raised by TV, to be mindless consumer machines.

 

This actually makes sense to me. He often says we should kill dumb people instead of aborting those of unknown intelect. Well over time it has become obvious that he possesses severley limited intelligence and probably would be very close to retarded if tested.
So when you say that he hates himself it does ring true. It all kind of fits in. MUst be hard for him to read. He's gonna learn something about himself if he's not careful.

 

i say: a toke and a fresh perspective for all!

 

I tested "genius," on some internet IQ test. But I am smart enough to question the test even, since they wanted to sell me some more detailed analysis. I thought about trying it again, and getting stuff wrong on purpose, just to see if it was "flunkable." But then, why bother? Why do I need some nifty test, to tell me what I already know?

 

why bother reading anything new at all, when the answers to everything can be found in the bible?

 

Good question.

But I have already read the Bible from cover to cover.

The Bible isn't the book to replace all books, but rather the book of books. The place to start to get your world view right, to properly frame everything else.

Even in a smart computer/android/robot, there has to be a "master control program" to keep everything else in line.

 

Unfortunately, you are one hundred percent right.

"The earth is a living thing, and like other human things, it has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called man." -- Nietzsche

 

yep yep yep. eventually things will go back to the way there supposed to be.

 

Acorn------its going to happen the world and the USA's population has doubled in the past 50 years. 3 to 6 billion and 150million to 300 million. It says in the bible that people will die of starvation and in that there will be the need for a world government and a world leader (this is the anti christ). The anti christ will not screw around at all and will be very militant (somthing jews wanted jesus to be and this is one reason possibly why judas sold jesus out--he was upset that he wasn't). He will kill and punish. He will not forgive. The are the opposites of Jesus. The thing that will really create this though is organized crime. Organized crime is so corrupt and like in africa seeks to control food that the anti christ will be pissed and try to put an end to all of them first-------then he will deal with the rest of all the people.

The worlds population will rise to 12 to 18 billion with in the next 150 years--this will be around the time of the anti christ. There will be human cloning---and the anti christ who is perfect and smart (God cloned himself in mary and out popped jesus) will also be a clone. There are over half a billion africans--over three billion asians--almost a billion white europeans--and half a billion hispanics and the half breeds make up the rest.

---its weird I would say rich people should have alot of kids and poor people should n't but thats not usually the way it goes----poor people are bored and have sex alot because they have no other activities---rich people have money to do other things so they don't have as much sex and not as many kids

 

What's going to happen? The world will go back to how it's supposed to be? Huh? When did that ever happen, since Adam & Eve got themselves kicked out of the Garden of Eden?

Or were you talking about people reproducing naturally, welcoming their babies to come as God allows, like how they pretty much did, up until the rebellious "free love" 1960s at the advent of "the pill" that supposed removed the need for personal responsibility concerning sexual behavior? Surely that would come under "go back to how it's supposed to be."

But of course. Why not, now that there's finally enough parents to raise so many children? Without all those people, those iPods that people "just gotta have" and those nifty overly expensive cellular phone plans, even the internet, probably wouldn't work, as did we have those things back in 1950? Why not? Didn't humans have thousands of years to think and invent those things up? I say quite a lot of modern technology which we so like to take for granted, supposedly having come perhaps from magic?, is actually very much population-driven, accelerated along by expanding human populations, as I also predict will be necessary, before humans can even venture much as close as Mars.

But it's not just numbers, it's people precious darling children, of which you speak, in those numbers. For which I am quite sure that people could compose quite a long list of good reasons, for having had their children.

One thing I just don't get about population phobic propagandists, why do they have such an obsession with mediocrity and population "stabilization"-stagnation? Why do they so oppose the great progress of the human race, apparently according to God's design? Which of God's creatures, wouldn't multiply more and more, if given the chance? But we are so "smart" that we must go against nature, in what so benefits us, and refuse God's commandment to humans, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth? Maybe we aren't so "smart" after all?

Uh, wasn't it the corrupt leaders, the Anti-Christ being the most corrupt, who help along the starvation, by bringing disorder, disharmony, and war to the various nations?

I am for the "globalization" of the various nations populating themselves up into each other, in whatever form of "global neighborhood," as apparently that is a way God approves of people somewhat coming back together, after the huge language mix-up fiasco people brought on themselves at the Tower of Babel, in conspiring against God, claiming they could build their own way (the tower) to heaven. I think God scrambled their languages, to reduce the people's tendency to become a curse unto themselves. But I am against the consolidation of power we see advocated among political globalists and corporate globalists. Power belongs disfused among the people and more at the local and family level, because as they say "absolute power corrupts absolutely." There is a huge need for "checks and balances," to reduce and guard against abuses, and already most of our political and economic decisions are made by arrogant rich elite bigwigs who don't live in the real world of the working poor, and they too often make "arbitrary" special-interest-promoting decisions rather than fair or Constitutional decisions.

Perhaps that's the problem a lot of people have with much of "organized religion." Not enough militization, too much "playing Church," and debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Where's the relevance? Where's the relevance? Why doesn't the Church talk more about cleaning up politics or about social issues? Where are the Christians actually explaining why the human population must grow and why that is "good?" Where's the justice? But we are told, it's coming, perhaps in the hereafter. But people too often confuse God's patience, giving people time to repent and learn from their bad ways before pouring out his wrath, with apathy. People are inheritantly impatient. But it does appear that God has a place for human militaries, and sometimes uses them to end some of the abuses of the world. I have heard the idea, maybe 9-11 wasn't so much about God "judging" the U.S. for its waywardness and wickedness, so much as God getting fed up with the abuses of Islam and terrorism and such, and so God let the terrorists stir up a (U.S.) military "hornet's nest" to come after them.

Notice that Jesus apparently wasn't against all of his followers carrying weapons, perhaps all the more so, where weapons may be needed or customary. Wasn't it his disciple Peter, who cut off the soldier's ear? And then Jesus healed his ear again. That might have ticked off a "militant" or two? Serves him right to lose an ear, just for serving in the brutal Roman army? So why was Peter carrying a sword anyway? For fear of robbers? Because it was normal to carry arms?

Well you seem to be on the right track here? Crime and sin, isn't that what directly or indirectly, causes most of the poverty throughout the world? People refusing to try to "love thy neighbor as thyself." Yeah, too often, even food is a "weapon" of war, used to make people suffer or submit or die or become less numerous.

And I would be alarmed if the world population didn't rise so much. What powerful and evil force, could prevent it from rising so much over such a long time? Humans progressing backwards? Humans becoming more evil, hedonistic, and selfish? The interpretation I got, although perhaps not intended, from the movie Artificial Intelligence, was that the human race became doomed, by the robot pretend children "to replace God's children" some mean old street preacher in the sports arena of robot destruction vocalized, and by the robotic jigalos. Why have sex with a real person, when a robot can "learn" how you like it, and do it so perfect, without all those "inconvenient" pregnancies, and probably not so able to spread STDs? Then the ice age came, because all the people had over the centuries, disappeared, apparently from lack of breeding. Nature had no need to consider the needs of humans, now that the humans were gone. And since humans are actually part of nature, contrary to the view of many "environmental" extremists, then humans are likely part of the regulation machinery of nature, even if we don't know what we are doing. Without humans, nature can more easily "go wild" and not long maintain a human-friendly environment. As our relationship with nature, is far more symbiotic than "parasitic." Nature may not exactly "need" us, but nature needs us, in order to help regulate nature to be more human-friendly.

I hardly think that "cloning" would be the right word, to describe the virgin birth. Not to mention how sacriligious or anti-religion, that word could appear to some people. The 3-in-one of the trinity, is not a "clone" relationship. They may be similar but not exactly alike. A lot of cults get it wrong, considering the trinity.

Well at least somebody has been obeying God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and been busy breeding? But it's hardly a zero-sum game. Don't want the Asians to "take over" the world? Then what's wrong with the europeans and caucasions, that they can't breed more anymore? Not enough faith in God? An anti-natalist culture?

Half-breeds? Huh? Oh, you must mean people who trash our culture with that evil, noisy, Rap-is-crap, as I judge people by the stupidity that comes out of their mouths, and not merely what their skin color happens to be. "Purebred" is pretty much meaningless concerning humans, when it comes to rejecting the miserable failings of eugenics dogma. Isn't "purebred" almost like "in-bred," which I have heard that the dangers of marrying a cousin was it?, are greatly exxagerated. The Bible says that there were 2 of each kind, which is less specific than species, on Noah's Ark, and that God made the animals and plants to reproduce after their kind. Well humans are all of one kind, pretty much universally compatible to breed, so unless there are issues of bringing false religion into the family, I see nothing necessary wrong with interracial or international marriages. May the "halfbreeds" proliferate, along with the "purebreds," as I see little difference between them to be considered, that is, if we are merely speaking genetics.

Yes, the rich people should have more children, but maybe God gives so many children to the poor (Psalm 107:41) because the rich people don't want them? But strangely what I notice, is that the more money people have, the less able they seem to be to "afford" children. This shows that it's due to mixed-up priorities and selfishness, why the rich in general, underbreed. That, and too many costly "distractions" from raising children.

No, I don't expect poor people to have fewer children, but rather for economies to better serve the populous masses rather than the elite few. They say of poor people that children are their only wealth. Who dare, in their right mind, conspire to steal away their "only wealth?" They also say for poor people sometimes, that sex is their only recreation, and of course the cost of contraceptives, is out of the question. Condoms don't grow on trees, but food does. And why expend effort to prevent benefit? The economics of that, just doesn't make much sense. If children are a blessing, as the Bible says, then I would expect to expend effort to get blessings, not to prevent them. Thus, I would much rather spend more money on diapers and toys, than supposedly less money on nasty, unnatural contraceptives. If children come, then I shall pray to God for the means to provide for his children that he entrusted to me to raise.

 

Don't worry man. No chick will ever sleep with you anyway.

 

nice one

 

pronatalist do you really think someones bored enough to read all of that?

 

Well apparently you read part of it?

Uh, yeah.

It's far better and more enlightening, than the typical corporation controlled "news" propaganda from the "idiot tube" TV.

Why do they so often put idiots and celebrities on stage, anyway BTW?

Those who claim to prefer a less populous world, well why weren't you born back then?

Here's an idea. What if you could travel back in time, like that episode of the old Twilight Zone in which a jet airplane flew back in time, to see dinosaurs roaming the earth and the "disappearance" of cities. Well it was less populous back then. Isn't that about what the population phobics claim to desire? How about Land of the Lost, that old TV series in which a small band or family of humans, lived in fear of being "lunch" to the dinosaurs? Was it so good back then, if "then" ever existed which it didn't depending on the definition, than now when the world has become so populous? Of course the jet airplane didn't dare land "back in time" as there were no runways for such a huge airplane, nor anything set up for the people to be able to survive back then. "Modern" people quite likely wouldn't have the necessary survival skills for such a "primitive" (although less populous) world. So they tried to find whatever "jet stream" that took them back into the past, to get back home.

 

Oh really? How about some woman like the one who was the wife of some previous co-worker, who he said that she said she wanted around 6 children? He wasn't so sure. Of course I told him to go for it, as he likely wouldn't be sorry.

Oh that's right. She wouldn't sleep with me if she's virtuous, because she's already taken. But what of the virtuous women, who aren't yet taken?