[ExI] Existential Risks might be underestimated

[William Flynn Wallace]

​

Indeed.  Do you offer evidence the above notion is superstition, or just
assume it so?

You are aware there are currently plenty of human groups whose populations
are held in check by space limitations and food limitations.  We know there
are efforts to bring them food and introduce birth control technology.
They are grateful for the former but want no part of the latter (at least
some subset within the group wants no part of the latter.)  This shouldn’t
surprise us: we in the advanced west have subsets of our population who
reject the notion of birth control, still to this day.  They have a lot of
offspring.  And they vote.

spike


The correlation between birth rate and level of society is firm and
negative.  All of my data exist in books and articles I left behind when I
graduated, but I do recall this firmly.  I taught Human Sexuality for many
years and kept up with such as this until the late 90s.


Will Catholics and others who eschew birth control take over the earth?
Use of birth control among Catholics is and has been growing for decades.
And Latino Catholics are leaving for evangelical churches at a significant
rate.  Of course no birth control will be used when babies and young
children are dying at high rates.  Bring those rates down and people will
tend to have as many as they can afford (or can get the gov. to afford -
another issue).


As for the policy or number of people point: of course if we had policies
for rigorous testing of the chemicals we have put into the environment,
which would have stopped a great many, including medicines, if we limited
farmers to a proper amount of fertilizer for his acreage and showed them
how to prevent runoff, if we penalized industry much harder for dumping
into creeks etc., if we strongly treated our sewerage before dumping it
into the waters, if if if.    Then we'd have a lot less, maybe even
manageable pollution.  I suspect it will be shown that among the 50
chemicals in our bloodstreams that we were not born with we will find that
some cause or exacerbate or cause cancers and other serious medical
problems.


But still, to a certain extent it is the number of people that contribute
to the over pollution.


If it is any kind of government regulation, certain people will be against
it no matter what, so increasing the scope and the regulation of the EPA is
not going to happen anytime soon.  Politicians of the modern sort are
pocketliners.  Their contributors have them in their pockets.  I have no
solution to this sorry lot of so-called statesmen we have, from local to
nationwide.  They think of money first and the long term last.  Anybody
want to dispute this paragraph?  To say the least, we are not given a full
range of choices for who to elect.  And unless you are a billionaire you
have to go through a political party and toe their line somewhat.


bill w

On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 6:57 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 11:30 AM, William Flynn Wallace
> <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 12:54 PM, Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Again, I?d just like to point out there?s no proof more is not better.
> >>
> >> You can assert it is not.
> >>
> >> I hereby assert: More is better. The more humans the better. We don?t
> have
> >> nearly enough yet to even imagine what will become.
> >>
> >> We are still in the infancy of our sentience and haven?t even left the
> >> cradle yet.
> >>
> >> Tara Maya
> >>
> >
> > ?Define 'better'. I say we are polluting the planet far more than our
> > species is worth.?
> >
> > ?  Fouling our nest, as if we are the only things in the universe worth
> > anything.?
>
> Bill you missed your cue.  "Leaving the cradle" refers to the point
> where more humans live off planet (or perhaps are uploaded) than live
> on it.
>
> Keith
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>
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