Evolution always seeks to create a population such that its goal is the proliferation of that species in the short term (in evolutionary terms) with no regard for the future.

Moral conscience is only beneficial to a species when the species exists globally such that there are little or no free resources. Only then is the greater good more beneficial to the survival of the species than the individual or the good of the pack/tribe over another pack/tribe.

However on the flip side intellectual evolution is an advantage even in very sparse populations with plentiful resources. Greater intelligence means you can harvest and utilize those resources more quickly and put them to use growing your family or tribe as well as defending it.

As such due to the nature of evolution moral evolution is doomed to always lag considerably behind intelligent evolution. Furthermore since evolution is, in human life span terms, a very slow process, it isnt something that should be expected to catch up until many generations, and a lot of death has passed first. Due to the nature of intelligence to enable us to find more effective ways of killing ourselves this can inevitably lead to a species destroying itself long before its moral evolution has a chance to balance the equation.

It is this reason that many scientists speculate why we dont see very many radio signals in space indicating alien intelligent life, the theory goes that the very nature of evolution is such that life will almost inevitably destroy itself once it reaches the intellectual singularity before it has a chance to become interstellar and as such simply doesn't have a very long time span where it exists in a state where it gives off radio waves.

Sadly we dont appear as though we are going to be much different in that regard.

#science #evolution #seti #morality #ethics

@freemo our facing grace is our swiftly approaching capacity for genetic engineering. Not only will we be able to modify organisms that will then improve the environment(Like making Azolla salt water resistant, leading to incredible carbon sequestration), but we will be able to modify ourselves to be perfectly suited to nearly any environment. Any similarly intelligent organism would likely eventually gain the same ability.

@Demosthenes im not sure that would help.. i mean sure dont get me wrong it might help stem the tide and fix some issues, for example stemming global warming. At best it will somewhat increase our carrying capacity as a species. But that carrying capacity will still be finite and our growth rate still exponential. So it might buy us a few years at best.

@freemo actually, our growth rate is quickly leveling off, and current projections predict that the population will stabilize at about 11 billion.

I highly recommend the book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. It describes several common cognitive distortions pushed by media companies that make people think that things are much worse off than they actually are. Nuclear weapons are still an existential threat, and global warming probably will be within a century and a half, but population levels won't be too big of an issue. Several decades at current rates of technological advancement will bring things that we can't predict at the moment.

@Demosthenes Thats not actually true, though often argued. From 1930 to today the US growth rate has consistently wobbled both up and down with no apparent trend in either direction. Prior to 1930's it has consistently went up, we see the same trend in most first world countries no particular trend int he growth rate decreasing but with it staying at relatively constant levels with wobble.

The reason for the misconception in data is because industrialization causes a signficaint explosion in population rates which then stop their upward trend but level off at a positive growth rate.

In short we remain steadily at annualized 1% - 2% growth which is not a trend towards leveling off population growth (which is the integral of that)

@freemo you're talking about the US population, which is heavily affected by immigration. I'm talking about the global population, which is overall seeing a massive levelling off. When lower-income countries become middle-income, reproduction rates plummit as parents become sure that their children will survive, combined with the trend that child labor also generally becomes outlawed, significantly increasing the cost of childcare and maintenance.

@Demosthenes I'm talking global as well, I am uSa as an example because you must understand the global rate is the result of the composite across the various individuals nations.

I am trying to explain why the expected result, based on nations that have already "leveled off" is that the growth rate will not go into the negative and is not headed there... individual nations follow the trend of hitting huge spike during industrialization, and then decreasing and hovering for an extended period at positive growth rate with no further trend downward past 0.. since the individuals nations all show the same trend, then one would infer the global rates would follow the same trend, and so far have.

@freemo complete industrialization isn't necessary for the population to level off, only a certain threshold of security. Most nations see a generational population surge when medical and economic status reach a threshold of childhood survival. The next generation almost always has about 3 children, with subsequent generations having on average 2, which does cause a population decline over time.

i highly recommend you check out that book, it explains it much better than me..

The absolutely only reason why industrialized countries are still seeing a population increase is because of immigration and the children of immigrants. The reproduction rate of natives in the US, Canada, and Europe are all below 2.

@Demosthenes Whether complete industrialization is needed or not is the point.

The fundamental fact remains we dont see nations trending towards 0% or below, almost ever (unless there is disease or famine, and then only temporarily).. We see all nations that have leveled off at all follow the same trend in almost all cases.. The stabilize a few percentage points in the positive and stay there with no additional downward trend.

@freemo this is absolutely true, but I'm not sure you truly grasp how much of an abberation this is. It's the nature of an organism to reproduce until it reaches carrying capacity, generally stopped only by a limitation on resources. This causes considerable conflict.

Humans are reaching a point where there will be population stasis _without_ actually hitting their carrying capacity. Over time, that will considerably reduce the chance of global conflict.

There will still be conflict over scarce global resources, but the ferocity of those conflicts will be significantly suppressed. All civil wars and most conflicts are precipitated by famines and resource shortages.

It bodes well for the long-term stability of our species, making it likely that we'll at least make it to Mars before killing ourselves.

@Demosthenes Exactly, but thats just it, we **are** being stopped by carrying capacity, we just arent there yet.

Again taking the USA as an example, most people cant afford to have 15 children , two kids would be a financial struggle for most people. You cant just send them out to forage and your good.

While there are certainlys ome well to do people who are having far fewer kids than they otherwise could support, there are others who have quite a few. The truth is, however, there are a lot of people out there getting abortions solely based on the fact that they couldnt support their kids if they didnt.

@freemo people who choose not to have 15 kids aren't hitting their carrying capacity, they're just making a trade-off between quality of life and family size. A mother could have 15 children and get most of their calories from the dumpster. They can get a minimum wage job and just buy rice, eating like they do in Subsaharan Africa. But they don't. THAT is the abberation.

People used to have as many kids as they could, and if some died, oh well. They still live like that in a lot of the world. But people are getting beyond that, and it's going to change humanity.

@Demosthenes your assuming a persons needs are just food and not quality of life though...

People 400 years ago had lots and lots of kids. The reason is because land (a resource) was effecively infinite back then.. more kids means more farm land you can plow, means more resources...

Today resources are scarce, you cant just pop out a kid and give him his own plot of land to feed himself. Now you have to complete for the competitively priced food at the grocery store and most people have neither the means or access to any resources to feed 15 kids without making their life worse... a few hundred years ago having kids didnt thin out your resources though or make your life worse, there was always more land.

@freemo resources have always been scarce. If not limited by land, we've been historically been limited by fixed nitrogen, available micro or macronutrients, or on a tribal basis, security. People still starve in many regions because of resource limitations, and it's actually in those sorts of areas that reproduction rates are highest.

Quality of life is not a need. If you look at Maslow's heitarchy of needs, things like self-actualization and the need to feel like a part of a tribe are well above things like food, water, and shelter. Quality of life is a luxury given by being secure in your survival and continued existence.

@Demosthenes limited resources in terms of fixed nitrogen or nutrients isn't really equivocal.. these are limits in concentration, not overall quantity. There is more than enough total nitrogen/nutrients for everyone 2000 years ago in terms of total nitrogen/nutrients across the planet.. the issue is that the concentration of nutrients in certain foods are so low that it would take too much effort for an individual to get those nutrients balanced with the correct amount of energy...

In other words the shortage of the types of resources youa re talking about is not a shortage that comes from competition pressures, therefore isnt relevant to the discussion.

@freemo survival requires defeating entropy. If it takes too much of an effort to obtain certain chemicals, organisms die as a result of the negative energy balance. The existing organisms compete with one another to get the nutrients that are actually energetically accessible.

I think we're bickering a bit about minor details here. We're really just talking about the carrying capacity of humans. You're saying that we've hit our capacity in USA, right? If that were the case, then why would reproduction rates be highest in regions where poverty is highest, like in rural Africa?

@Demosthenes Im not saying we hit our capacity, I am saying that the slow down in growth rate is not due to any personal choices or human understanding. It is the result of being closer (not hit) to the carrying capacity.

The reason reproduction rate is highest in africa is because population density is much lower there, therefore they are much farther away from their carrying capacity. also brith rate is **not** equal to growth rate.. Even at or near carrying capacity birth rate can be rather high in a species, but the growth rate will be low.

@freemo population density in the US is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than in many Asian countries, or even in many cities in Africa. If reproduction rate was a function of population density,wouldn't we see higher growth rates in most of the US?

@Demosthenes you asked about africa overall, you cant refind the scope to just areas that are locally dense due to free movement into and out of the city and lack of data on the growth rate due to only births local to the city. The data we have is usually country-wide in terms of growth rate and as such that is the narrowest scope we can discuss

@freemo if we're talking nationwide then, then population density is extremely low in the US compared to many countries. Why then would our native reproduction rates be so low?

Note that inequality limits access to land in most countries nowadays, not just the US, yet many lower-income nations still have high reproduction rates.

@Demosthenes Not entierly true...

well lets look at some of the most dense areas, as well as highest population growths then and compare...

Higher end of population density, post industrial.

USA has a population density of 35 per km^2 and its growth rate has held steady around 0.5%-2% the last decade, averaging about 1%

Hong kong has one of the highest densities and 6,791 per km^2 and its population growth over the last decade or so has been 0.5% - 1%, averaging about 0.75%

Lower end of population density wall being mid-industrial:

Niger is at 19 per km^2 with a population growth of 3.16%, which is one of the highest (top 10) population growths of all countries (7th), with one of the lowest population densities (197), and the first one that struck me as mid-industrial

All other mid-industrial countries with low population density and have the highest population growths as well.

Sudan for example is about 21 people per km^2, which ranks them 195th on population density. Their growth rate is 2.93% annualized, which is the 9th highest growth rate.

Only time you see a country that tends to have a low growth rate and low population density is pre-industrial.

@freemo looking at population growth rates shows an incomplete picture. When nations first begin escaping poverty, life span significantly increases as medical care improves longevity, increasing the relative proportion of older-aged people and surviving children. This increase in surviving children causes people to reproduce differently, having first three then two children on average.

This is why I keep focusing on reproduction rates, because it will matter far more in the log run than population rates which will increase as median age increases from healthcare improvements from vaccines and sanitation. The reproduction rates of middle-income countries are mostly rapidly approaching 2.

@Demosthenes That isnt bore out by the evidence. Sudan, for example, has due to industrialization had a noticable increase in both longevity and the perportion of their older population. However their growth rate has not slowed in that time as you suggest. In fact their population growth rate has increased by 42%.

Fertility rates are not useful since our whole discussion is centered around population growth which judges movement towards or away from carrying capacity.. If fertility rate goes down, but survivability increases more, then the trend is still towards teh carrying capacity. We are also measuring the growth rate relative to how close a population is to its carrying capacity (densest populations vs least dense), where again fertility rate would not apply.

@freemo Sudan still has some of the worst quality of life, I wouldn't really consider it a middle-income country.

if fertility rates go down to two births per couple while survivability increases, then population only goes up for another 5 decades or so, then stabilizes as an equilibrium is met between births and deaths. That equilibrium point isn't necessarily at carrying capacity if the reduced reproduction rate is caused by cultural changes instead of resource limitations.