No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons

Thank you, Peter! You framed my own feelings about human sociopathy in far more scientific and literate terms. It’s happening, and barring genetically altering ourselves, it won’t stop. Acceptance of this and the hastening permutations of the world we’ve always known probably won’t happen.

The Corona Virus might fight us a little bit. Not enough to matter. Biotech and The CDC being what they are only dull and/or mutate our collective danger response. We’ll get through it.

Ever read the short story “The People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi? Deals with the deeply unsettling ways we humans might end up viewing other organisms.

I have read “The People of Sand and Slag,” and I’m afraid it disgusted me so much that I got rid of the book.

The inventor of the “worm” that allows humans to eat anything, regrow limbs etc. is described as refusing to take his own creation, preferring to die than become what his creation turned human beings into.

I agreed with that character, and would prefer to die than live as described in the story.

Looking at some articles on maintainable food production I found an assertion that the world can only support about 3.4 billion people with sustainable farming. That as they say is not good. However, there’s little I can do to change human nature, and the history of life on Earth is extinction.

On that cheery note, I leave you to now go and contemplate more morbid thoughts.

Not sure it’s a valid question.

In the end, it’s our species moral duty to eradicate all life on Earth and elsewhere.

Whether to kill off some species earlier or not depends entirely on whether the genocide prevented would serve to postpone the date on which we can cook the planet so thoroughly only deep-rock bacteria survive.

The ‘janitor at Auschwitz’ question is something I’ve thought about a good deal lately, as I’ve a friend of long-standing working as a programmer for a petrol company, a position that seems to me to be about as morally defensible as being an accountant working for major interests engaged in the Triangle Trade circa 1720. And that might be generous: as risible as slavery was/is, it didn’t threaten the survival of the species.

‘He’s a good guy,’ I think, ‘A progressive, etc.’ ‘How many of those worked for the slave trade?’ another part of my mind answers. And so it goes, down and down. The world is a very depressing place sometimes.

Phil: I’d be willing to put my name into a global lottery to cull the population back to about 50 million or so, provided everyone else was.

I don’t think we need to implement anything as extreme as culling. Reducing birth rates dramatically for couple of generations would allow numbers to get down to sustainable levels, and I imagine would be a more palatable solution for most. 8 billion people are more likely to sign up for intelligent and responsible family planning than for a global cull lottery IMO.

What if you turn the question around: how many Auschwitz janitors sum up to one Himmler? Maybe the janitor also deserves to die, but these people aren’t lining up for the firing squad and your ammo is limited. But let’s say you do have enough. By the time you’ve mowed down the SS to a man, how much longer are people going to cheer as you execute increasingly irrelevant menial workers?

Fatman,

I agree. The cull suggestion was a tongue-in-cheek discussion starter (not because it’s necessarily a bad idea, which would require a discussion of first principles to determine, but because consensus could never be reached on the idea), and the idea of global population control has merit for all the reasons you mention, along with the caveats.

I can think of one other problem with population control. About 30 years ago I started writing a paper for a grad course where I was gung-ho on the need for global birth control. I ended up stating pretty much what you note, which is that one of the best means of accomplishing this is through a broad-based increase in educational attainment. The other factor was an increased standard of living. The very poor in the cities of many developing nations needed large families to forage for resources, for example. As standard of living increased, family size decreased, with education preceding rising income. My take-aways were simply that education was a good thing, that a straight line toward promoting birth control globally was a non-starter, and that I should stop advocating that everyone limit family size to two or, preferably fewer, kids. Looking back, though, I’m not sure that smaller family sizes resulting from an increased standard of living would reduce environmental impact. The way we generally gauge standard of living is focused on our ability to travel, acquire material possessions, and live with an increasing amount of personal space that is comfortably heated and/or cooled. Education focused directly on reducing population size can be interpreted as a form of soft genocide.

I’m not arguing that our current approach isn’t a much more entrenched form of annihilation – I certainly believe it is, and am glad I have no skin in the game. But I’m not sure how a global birth control program can be advocated without creating the kind of backlash we see from climate change deniers. I’m sure inroads can be made in that direction, but I’m not sure exactly what form those would best take.

An activity possibly affecting global warming more than all other human activities combined is modern agriculture. Not livestock specifically, but general practices. There’s a movement in farming towards something called “Regenerative Agriculture” that aims to apply ecological principles to farming, one of the benefits of which is to promote rapid carbon sequestration. It might all be hooey, but if not then it’s an area in which we can very quickly make an enormous impact without culling humans or blowing up oil refineries and coal mines. We use a lot of land for farms.

A typical modern vegetable farm would till the soil using large tractors, which does a lot of bad things, like destroy roots from previous crops that anchor topsoil, and expose weed seeds and aerobic plant diseases to air, encouraging them to germinate. Nature hates bare soil. Weeds and the diseases promote topsoil formation. This can be thought of as a healing mechanism, like blood platelets. Farmers also plant seeds using a tractor, which cannot deposit seeds close together due to physical limitations. Thus plants are spaced far enough to allow sunlight to reach weeds. Weeding by hand in such a manner requires much effort. In some farms it accounts for eighty percent of the labor. It’s a lot easier to use broad-spectrum herbicides to handle the weeds (such as glyphosate, a.k.a. Round-Up). Except the herbicides affect the crops, so then we need to engineer herbicide-resistant seeds, and the herbicides also kill plant bacteria in the soil that help decomposition. The herbicides also make their way into our food and water, which end up being consumed by humans, and our intestines are full of plant bacteria that produce most of the dopamine (or was it serotonin?) in our bodies.

A regenerative approach often involves not tilling the soil, and adding compost, as would normally happen without human intervention, as plants die or shed leaves, fall to the ground, and are decomposed by microbes, fungi, and insects. Plants are spaced very close together, usually hand-planted or with simple machinery, which allows greater yield for many types of crops. Weeding isn’t generally an issue and very little time need be spent on it. Harvesting can again be done by hand or with simple machinery. Roots are left in the ground to both anchor the soil and enrich it through decomposition.

For livestock, a modern industrial farm does the usual horrible stuff: keeps animals cooped up in one place, often indoors, without getting enough exercise or fresh air, often living in their own excrement, pumped full of antibiotics, producing harmfully high concentrations of waste. In other words, they have been taken out of their natural ecological roles and thus all of their ecological benefits become problems, which are handled ways that often cause more problems.

A regenerative approach to livestock farming often involves intensive rotational pasture grazing using multiple animal species (look up Allan Savory, Joel Salatin, Richard Perkins, et al). For instance, cattle can be rotationally grazed through pasture broken up into multiple paddocks, and are usually moved every day or two. Grass goes into a type of shock after being grazed on, and regrow for a few days. During that time, insects like dung beetles pull manure into the soil and flies lay eggs in the cow pats. They hatch and the maggots go to town. Then chickens are brought in behind the cattle. They eat the maggots and spread the manure around. This method promotes rapid plant growth and allows livestock to be grazed in a fairly small area. It apparently can also be used to combat desertification, which looks to be a growing problem.

I’ve only touched the surface of this, and my knowledge is very limited, but it was something I’d never considered until recently. I got rid of my car and ride a bicycle instead, buy used when possible, eat local seasonal or at least national, grow some of my food, prepare all my meals, compost my food scraps, keep my thermostat really low in winter and off during the summer, line-dry my clothes, et al, and I tell people but they won’t change, not even when I explain how much money I have from not wasting it all. Knowing and doing are different, old habits die hard, etc. The most environmentally responsible thing I did up until a few years ago was recycle. Why did I change? Maybe if I can trace the history. Maybe it was my job? In abstract, I corrected mistakes or dealt with consequences, which, combined with my desire to actually be good at it, led to an understanding of those consequences and of the system. My initial adaptation was a necessity. A janitor at Amazon might understand that better than most. The people who repair things or clean up messes might have a better understanding of the systems they maintain, including how to break them, but no one pays them any mind.

Meh, I feel like this anti-human environmental stance is too cheap. I mean, are you going to be the one leading by example and not having any children, ever?
The fact of the matter is that we can easily sustain a large population IF we lived cost-effectively. GMO plants and animals could drastically reduce the resource consumption of farming. Using e.g. nuclear power instead of harmful but cheaply available coal could drastically reduce CO2 emissions from energy production etc.
Hell, we could even eat dead humans to recycle as much nutrients as possible instead of just burying or burning them.
Note that the environmentalist left-wingers are all strictly against this because of what is essential religious belief.
The issue is not overpopulation, it’s that humans are sick. There’s a distinct part of the human neural circuitry related to stone age social cohesion that is catastrophically malfunctioning.

Does the fact that 99.999% of humans are unaware of their own pathology elevate it to something else? Nature, perhaps? We’re just inherently shitty, and so, still in need of a good (third-party) culling, but somewhat ethically off the hook?

Cal: Does the fact that 99.999% of humans are unaware of their own pathology elevate it to something else? Nature, perhaps? We’re just inherently shitty, and so, still in need of a good (third-party) culling, but somewhat ethically off the hook?

You call it pathology, I call it life.

There isn’t a single animal species that doesn’t behave like that. Or wouldn’t if it could.

Peter Watts,

The Amazon thing is something I wrote while thinking about my response to the question. Here goes with the real point…

My answer is yes. Some of us are starting to value non-human life sufficiently to accept human deaths as collateral / cost of preserving another species.

Example: google for “Kenyan Park Rangers” and look at the images. They’re carrying fully automatic asault rifles, far more firepower than needed to defend yourself against an angry leopard or lion. They can and have killed fellow human beings to defend the last few rhinos in Africa. That’s the policy of the government of Kenya.

Example: 1st Gulf War, 1991. The Iraqis started pumping massive amounts of oil into the sea. The UN Coalition spent resources and risked lives to bomb the pump control station, ending the spill.

Now, it’s not clear that the Iraqis meant this solely to cause environmental damage. Nor is it clear that the bombing actually worked. Still, at the time, not in hindsight, the environmental case was being used by both sides. Military action is necessary because the Iraqis have demonstrated they’ll destroy the environment. No, military action should be avoided, let the Iraqis do what they like to the Kuwaitis, because the environmental danger from an invasion is too great. Human lives were being balanced against environmental costs.

Example: US Navy ultra low frequency sonar. ULF sonar is very effective and very long ranged, giving US submarines an advantage in warfare over others. But it also uses the same frequencies as whales and dolphins, and implicated in mass strandings. So under the Maritime Protection Act environmentalists forced the US Navy to stop using ULF sonar. Animal life over risk to humans.

So I say yes, although baby steps. But we are making progress.

Looking to the future, I doubt that “save a species to prevent a genocide” will be the common choice. I think it’s far more likely we’ll be asking whether to commit genocide to save another species.

R.,

It’s pathology when combined with moral superiority as is my understanding of Peter’s use of the word. We’re just beasts wallowing in our own excrement but we think we’re better than beasts, and masters of them, and so we use them to all ends, no matter how cruel. Ah but nature doesn’t care about cruelty either. The only moral code in nature is to survive (long enough to reproduce, and not much longer).

Which is my answer to Nestor:
So why should I care?

It doesn’t mater if you do, but something in the DNA of most of your species does want to survive, and if we’re all going to die, that’s entirely unsatisfactory to your true masters. It’s easy to have sang froid in a natural gas-powered house with a full belly, but when the gut flora pandemic reduces everything to a state of nature, you’ll be bashing in heads with the rest of us, or you won’t, and your line will cease (unless your descendants continue to bash). If you’re a parent, on average, you’ll bash harder and longer than if you don’t have any (genetic) skin in the game. So, most people do care, at least about their local group.

If you’re already past the point of reproduction, then to nature, it’s the same difference. To an individual human, I guess it’s just an aesthetic choice. I would prefer to cull 9/10 of y’all than to lose the last breeding pair of tigers. However I think it should be the tall ones first as you use in absolute terms more per capita energy even if it is expended more efficiently. It will also leave more room for charismatic megafauna.

However I wonder, and feel free to steal this idea, anyone. I wonder if it will be more than an aesthetic choice for nature. Why bring in this highly disruptive (in the sense of extinctions but also in the sense of genetic dice-rolling experimentation) creature only to go back to the old ways of doing business? What if the real ‘purpose’ (more like, side-effect) of human existence is a stepping-stone to something new and more interesting? Not just AI or GMO microbes, but enduring and rapid genetic dice-rolling, something much faster than baseline evolution. Something that allows a new proliferation of ‘species’ (or some loose correlate) on a canvas conveniently blanked by us truly?

We’re almost guaranteed to get it, considering that whatever crawls out of the ooze after WW3/gut-flora end-times is going to be one tough (and possibly smarter) sumbitch but also we might get something entirely unexpected, a hybrid of human and natural efforts.

I know that this is anthropic principle daydreaming but it’s worked out for us so far, and it’s a comforting thought (that killing everything wasn’t entirely pointless) at the end of the anthropocene.

Apparently the compensation for being eaten by a tiger is a million rupees, about $14k? I have to say I would not take my mom being eaten by a tiger with equanimity. Those $14k ought to buy a couple of AK47s and sufficient ammo to make amends.

It seems our esteemed host dislikes the hypocrisy, personally, I try to own by biases and scope insensitivity, like I said before, I don’t fear tigers so I feel free to like them aesthetically. I would likely not feel the same if I’d had to climb a tree like those poor unfortunates in this article.

I don’t think human societies as a whole can be hypocritical though, it’s why I posted the Scott Alexander link, we fall into involuntary constraints that lead us against our chosen values and it takes an heroic effort or an abundance of resources to let us make the optimal choices.

I too have no children and probably won’t have descendants, I try to avoid harming animals directly and am keeping a fairly low carbon footprint (I did just come back from Australia, but I’m going to keep my flying to a minimum from now on) but I don’t claim my life choices are motivated by any sort of principled stance, it just shook out that way (Anyway there’s no free will is there?) so I don’t feel entitled to castigate people because they’re doing the same as everyone else.

Why, “R”. You’ve read “Kindred”.

Or more likely, both you and I have read the same stuff from the Human Voluntary Extinction movement.

Drawing a blank here on both accounts. Voluntary extinction movement are useless idiots. Kindred? I don’t read environmental literature, it makes me want to do things to environmentalists. I have no use for new age religions.

I believe I was mostly inspired here by a few ideas I got from JBP’s lectures, then the worst technothriller ever by you know who (not gonna name that shut that book is legit infohazard) and probably also this blog, a little.

Peter Watts: Random lotteries don’t seem very scientific. I’d prefer a height-based cull, with the shortest individuals being culled first. (Short people are energetically less efficient because of their higher surface/volume ratios.)

I like the elegance of this suggestion. All you need is to sequester the 50 million tallest people on Earth while culling the rest. I was initially troubled that the moral component implicit in my suggestion is missing here: Would these energy efficient humans be motivated to educate their offspring in the importance of population control? Then I saw the light: The 50 million tallest humans on Earth are likely to be men. Within one generation there would be no one who would need educating.

Sorry — that paper was actually published in November, 2018.

Fatman: Reducing birth rates dramatically for couple of generations would allow numbers to get down to sustainable levels, and I imagine would be a more palatable solution for most.

By current estimations, there will be no need even for that – birth rates are declining steadily all over the world, and even in Africa, and there are projections that by 2100 the growth of population will be all but halted, at about 12 or so billions. Even though it seems like a large number, it really isn’t, not even twice as big as today. The demographic transition is going to do most of the job.

The real problems are going to be more substantial, and it is about the financial stability, especially as amount of people of advanced age is going to increase substantially. And if all the emancipation movements, “green” revolutions and so on are going to drive down the birth rates even further, well, the population in “developed” world is going to go through the floor. They are going to get bankrupt. There are already several countries that are diving down due to the same problems, and surely migrants are not going to solve that one problem (not without creating a cascade of others).

https://www.americansecurityproject.org/demographic-decline-a-tangible-threat-to-the-baltic-states/
Naturally, the “threats” to these countries are only viewed through the interests of US and as long as they are concerned – after all, these countries have always been viewed as a transient administrations for the US military base backyards, who need a large population for those? But it is still a major threat that is going to be noticeable in places where the death cults of Mother Nature are going to be more prominent.

Santiago G.: What if you turn the question around: how many Auschwitz janitors sum up to one Himmler?

None whatsoever. By superior ruling of supreme leaders of Better World, Just Following Orders can be a reliable defence in the same manner as “the bullets kill them, I am just pulling the trigger”. And it will be, if it yields the desirable result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
People might argue that everything changed since 1940s. It really did not. As we speak it goes back to square one.

Tran Script: Meh, I feel like this anti-human environmental stance is too cheap. I mean, are you going to be the one leading by example and not having any children, ever?

Yes.

It’s not even a matter of principles, or concerns about the contribution of little carbon bombs to climate change. More and more people are not having kids because they have better things to do with their time and/or don’t see the point. Kids are no longer useful as free labor, or a source of income, or financial security in old age.

Tran Script: The fact of the matter is that we can easily sustain a large population IF we lived cost-effectively.

“Large population” is meaningless. Our current population is “large”. 20 billion would be “large”, as would 5 billion. “Cost-effectively” is likewise meaningless without someone actually crunching the numbers. It’s like saying “stuff could be much better for everyone if we just got along”.

Peter Watts: Not as much as you might think. Sadly.

Agree with the numbers, and the fact that the cliff edge we’re approaching cannot be avoided. I do, however, believe that fewer people would be better positioned to survive on whatever remains available after SHTF. I don’t see any downsides to it, in any case.

listedproxyname: Even though it seems like a large number, it really isn’t, not even twice as big as today.

It’s a huge number, especially considering that whoever is alive in 2100 probably won’t even have the resources available today at their disposal.

listedproxyname: There are already several countries that are diving down due to the same problems, and surely migrants are not going to solve that one problem (not without creating a cascade of others).

As discussed before, populist bandits and their troglodyte supporters are not offering a solution by repressing emancipation movements, environmentalists, etc. The reason why populations in their fiefdoms are free-falling is because their thieving, gross mismanagement and abuse have eroded people’s trust in a better future, making it less attractive to reproduce.

But that line of theorizing isn’t particularly useful. Ultimately, it comes down to the aging population factor, as you point out.

In a few decades’ time, even the most entrenched bastions of reactionary primitivism are going to see huge influxes of immigrant populations. Liberal or neo-fascist, pro- or anti-immigrant, decrepit palefaces around the world will eventually need someone to wipe their behinds and cram mushy oatmeal down their throats. That someone will most likely be coming from a faraway land with a burgeoning young population.

Speaking as an aspiring decrepit paleface, I, for one, can’t wait.

R.: Look at Israel. Their birthrate is okay. Even birthrates for university educated atheist women are just slightly below replacement.

Not a major destination for immigrants. Plenty of actually desirable countries to immigrate to with birth rates below replacement. Your point?

R.: The trick to having a reasonable birthrate is enough threat projection from your neighbors to keep the people sane.

Threat projection from neighbors to drive birth rates downward? Haven’t heard that one before. Could be worthwhile. Links?

R.: Make sure to not look at population projections for sub-saharan Africa. Or India.

Trending downwards, with the vast majority of the population below 35 years of age and rarin’ to go (overseas)? Not that your response has anything to do with my comment, but hey.

To those being dismissive — without any actual evidence — to the effect of animal waste on worldwide CO2 production and environmental destruction, get a grip. I eat plant-based not to make a political statement, but because I enjoy the taste, the high number of different protein-sources available (as opposed to meat, which is usually three or four), and the health benefits.

The fact I’m doing more than any meat consumer to aid the future of our living environment is just a bonus I don’t think about. Ever, really. Unlike many vegans, who can be pushy, I know. I’m not that guy.

Peter wrote, “It’s Human Nature to prioritize our own interests over others’, a bias that comes standard in virtually every organism on the planet (consciously or otherwise).” Yep.

Fatman: Threat projection from neighbors to drive birth rates downward? Haven’t heard that one before. Could be worthwhile. Links?

No, upwards.

Look up thrive/survive theory of politics. Thinking about death makes people more anxious to reproduce and keeps politics more sane, e.g. more right wing. Concerned with basic stuff like border security, law enforcement, budgets, suppressing subversion, etc.

USA is pathological, so take a look at say, Austria. They banned Turkish funding of Mosques & Imams, instituted state oversight of imam education, expelled the worst offenders, all to the massive squealing from Turkey about ‘repression’. Because we really want Erdogan’s clerics over here preaching to the faithful.

Why do you think Israel is the most right wing democratic country at the moment? The threat of death is keeping them grounded in reality.

Fatman: Trending downwards, with the vast majority of the population below 35 years of age and rarin’ to go (overseas)? Not that your response has anything to do with my comment, but hey.

1) trending downward extremely slightly. Africa is expected to have double its present population by 2050. Per capita economic growth is very low, sometimes negative. Also, say goodbye to elephants and such.

2) the human capital there is worse than useless for purposes of modern industrial societies. You can look this up. Danish treasury ran the numbers, and non-white immigrants were a net negative, albeit slight. The reasons are manifold but basically it boils down to insufficient mental acuity. Being born dim, that’s not a moral failing, by the way. This is:

https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/27/investing/wells-fargo-sacramento-lawsuit-discriminatory-lending/index.html

In Britain, Somalis are the least employed group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalis_in_the_United_Kingdom#Employment

They’re more representative of what the West could expect from Africans than say, Nigerians, whose small middle class is running way.

3) barring a miracle, there’s no solution but what the Israelis are doing: heavy policing, expelling and so on.

4) yeah, ‘rarin’. We’d be foolish to accept them – look at America, what happened there. It’s pretty grim.

Carbonman: You’re already enrolled; the Doomsday Clock is at 100 seconds and we have several ‘leaders’ that have itchy trigger fingers.

If the rest of what FAS does is so blatantly disconnected from reality as that clock..

They put it higher bc of Soleimani than it ever was at the height of Cold War nuclear standoff. It’s closer to midnight than during the Cuban Missile crisis. A regional war there would be of no account.

What people ought to worry about is US not ceding its dominance in world affairs to China gracefully. They don’t have a gnat’s chance against China in a regional conflict, and if they’re sore losers the whole thing could go really bad once they don’t have ‘freedom of navigation’ of warships in south China sea.

Trying to imagine the drama and hysterics if People’s Liberation Army Navy sailed a carrier battlegroup off the coast of Texas to assure say, Cuba, of PRC’s support for their independence. You know, the way US regularly does for Taiwan.

But, living in a rural community in a temperate region where you can grow potatoes, preferably one with heavily armed neighbors who like you is probably a good idea anyway.

R.: Thinking about death makes people more anxious to reproduce and keeps politics more sane, e.g. more right wing.

The alleged right-wing upswing in European politics is something of a mirage. People still vote stolidly middle-of-the-road. Witness how the neo-Nazi scene in Austria imploded (at least its political wing), and who the conservatives are in coalition now.

You can win elections by appealing to human trash, but it’s really, really hard to keep said trash under sufficient control to ensure long-term stability and growth, which is all that people care about. Anti-immigrant sentiment makes for good speeches, but racism ain’t never bought anyone a loaf of bread at the shop.

Old uneducated peasants who currently form the bulk of right-wing voters (speaking of diminished intellectual acuity) in most European democracies won’t be around for much longer. There is no younger generation growing up to replace them. The diminishing ranks of youth are either educated urban-dwellers, or shut-in NEETs living in their parents’ basements, addicted to hentai and posting angry anti-immigrant diatribes online. The former trend toward tolerance and having fewer kids, the latter, by definition, have zero impact on the reproductive rate.

So we’re back to what I wrote initially. It’ll boil down to a bunch of decrepit palefaces relying on immigrants for sheer survival. Looks more and more likely with each passing year. Maybe I’ll even get to see some of it myself.

R.: The reasons are manifold but basically it boils down to insufficient mental acuity. Being born dim, that’s not a moral failing, by the way.

Nonsense. America became a global power on the backs of the absolute dregs of the European genetic barrel. “Mental acuity” has nothing to do with genetics or race, and even if it did, I would imagine the average Central African being several paces ahead of the average 1800s/early 1900s Central European.

R.: 4) yeah, ‘rarin’. We’d be foolish to accept them – look at America, what happened there. It’s pretty grim.

That’s cute. Still assuming you have a say in the matter.

Hey, America isn’t perfect, but at least we have a reasonably high living standard, solid job markets and our workforce will still be around for the next 50-60 years, generously supporting me well into retirement.

R.: Why do you think Israel is the most right wing democratic country at the moment? The threat of death is keeping them grounded in reality.

Considering the Israeli government’s general attitude toward child-murder and human rights, I’d say the immigrants are getting off lightly.

R.: Thinking about death makes people more anxious to reproduce and keeps politics more sane, e.g. more right wing.

Not really. What you get with right-wing populism is the dumbest, least productive parts of society railing against economic progress and trying to prevent the introduction of migrants who could keep the economy going. Basically people who are most reliant on the left-wing welfare state and government subsidies, doing their best to tear down the very system keeping them alive.

Old uneducated peasants who currently form the bulk of right-wing voters in most European democracies won’t be around for much longer. Young right-wingers tend to mostly be shut-in NEETs living in their parents’ basements, addicted to hentai and the posting of angry anti-immigrant diatribes online. The former don’t matter, the latter have zero impact on the reproductive rate.

So we’re back to what I wrote initially. It’ll boil down to a bunch of decrepit palefaces relying on immigrants for sheer survival. Looks more and more likely with each passing year. Maybe I’ll even get to see some of it myself.

R.: They banned Turkish funding of Mosques & Imams, instituted state oversight of imam education, expelled the worst offenders, all to the massive squealing from Turkey about ‘repression’.

Right-wingers repressing other right-wingers by any means necessary is A-O-K in my book.

R.: The reasons are manifold but basically it boils down to insufficient mental acuity. Being born dim, that’s not a moral failing, by the way.

Nonsense.

“Westerners” who oppose immigration the loudest share the exact same traits. Insufficient mental acuity, lack of education and/or marketable skills, less than useless to modern industrial societies. They should be the ones showing solidarity toward the disadvantaged, not calling for them to be expelled.

Besides, America was built on the backs of the dregs of the European genetic barrel, and went on to substantially surpass every single one of its new citizens’ countries of origin and become a global superpower. The average Central African of today is far more capable of fitting into a modern industrial society than the average Central European from the 1800s / early 1900s.

R.: 4) yeah, ‘rarin’. We’d be foolish to accept them – look at America, what happened there. It’s pretty grim.

Come on now. Don’t buy into propaganda spread by angry losers. There are many things wrong with America, but none of them can be blamed specifically on immigration (unless you want to go back to the 1600s or so). Grim or not, life here is still substantially better in every conceivable way to life in any of the right-wing, immigration-restrictive countries.

R.: Why do you think Israel is the most right wing democratic country at the moment? The threat of death is keeping them grounded in reality.

Considering the Israeli government’s attitude toward child-murder, genocide and human rights in general, I’d say the immigrants are getting off lightly.

Peter Watts: and bias on the part of the predators (who, believing Mexicans to be Born Dim, preferentially target them for more usurious rates even though us white folks might be every bit as susceptible if they bothered to target us).

“Might be”?

People of all ethnic, racial and economic backgrounds are equally susceptible to predatory lending practices. For evidence, look no further than the housing crisis of 2008. America was hit the hardest, but they didn’t fare much better in Europe.

Fatman: As discussed before, populist bandits and their troglodyte supporters are not offering a solution by repressing emancipation movements, environmentalists, etc. The reason why populations in their fiefdoms are free-falling is because their thieving, gross mismanagement and abuse have eroded people’s trust in a better future, making it less attractive to reproduce.

Well, they offer temporary solution for people who want to continue live as if nothing happened. They offer to people a belief that if they wait a bit longer, there will be a random magical chance for someone to come and save them – give them a better life standards or something. But what actually happens as by modern political system is the major scandal, a wave of protest and replacement of some officials – everything else stays on the same course. The cycle is complete.

Fatman: The alleged right-wing upswing in European politics is something of a mirage. People still vote stolidly middle-of-the-road. Witness how the neo-Nazi scene in Austria imploded (at least its political wing), and who the conservatives are in coalition now.

Or so the EU bureaucracy wants you to believe. Many people probably don’t notice it too much, but with UK decoupling Europe has moved one step closer to being 4th (or rather, 5th) Reich, because economic and national background here did not really change that much over the last century despite huge cataclysms and wars. This is the lesson to the future generations – liberals don’t learn from history. They did not learn from WWI, and they have all the intention to completely forget about the Second War as well. It is better than to admit its own failings.

This is the result of mismanagement, that is not really affiliated with any particular movement – everybody wants to blame the other side. Eventually they will find some 3rd party to blame everything on it and then they will agree how to better use their resources to burn, kill and plunder. The signs are very bright and appalling but people refuse use their own eyes and prefer to stick to the imaginary problems which will be forgotten the instant the opportunity will be presented. Like some sunspots science before the war breakout, when people suggested that they influence climate, economy and some other occult bullshit.

The recent Auschwitz “celebration” indicates this much. Dehumanization isn’t the first stage of preparation to a total war, it is the last stage.

I’d love to see you start to incorporate bright, interactive graphics like these http://worrydream.com/TenBrighterIdeas/ into your extinction/genocide calculations.

I came across that on Dominic Cummings blog (yes, I know he’s a prick) but it’s actually a pretty cool way to try and illustrate data models to the mathematically challenged, myself included. With a little bit of Javascript your bleak-ass deductions would look so much more cheery.

Nestor: Life can’t pull more energy out of the sun than it sends out, consider Mars. Sunlight falls on bare rock and sand, is reflected as randomized energy. Bam, entropy increases. In contrast, the same surface on earth captures the solar energy in plants, then animals, then maybe sequesters it for a few tens of millions of years, then maybe a combustion engine – the same energy input can keep things rolling for a long time.

What actually happens though is that a beam that would get reflected by Mars’ surface gets all its energy sucked out on Earth, i.e. the change in energy is greater on Earth which means the increase in entropy is also greater.

I’m no physicist but I think there’s a confusion here. Sure light from the sun is our lowest entropy source of energy, but at the same time energy spreading in a bubble across space at the speed of light is increasing it’s entropy at the highest rate possible. Energy stored as hydrocarbons for millions of years is clearly “spending” it’s entropy slower than light zipping across the galaxy

RIP Homero Gomez Gonzalez – Some people are laying down their lives to protect ecosystems, and I don’t mean to imply that I don’t respect them.

I rather care about my personal satisfaction and leave the rest to the cumulative activities of humans of whom I have no say on their behavior. Really based on what you say you should be glad this life will survive in maybe decent condition after giving rise to something as dangerous as a semi intelligent species that could organize itself in such massive numbers. The crux of the issue is evolution has no foresight and people as a group of 7 billion has no foresight either.

Also if people are gone life will be no different than any rock in space since we are the only ones who think its anything more than that. Even the distinction is something we came up with. Barren Earth and thriving Earth only matters to human brains who are in a position to care. The life doesn’t care. So its a matter of people who do care against the people who don’t care very much. Is this any different than any other ideology?

Culling humandkind DOES sound like a great plan to keep Earth inhabitable. But somehow i see even the staunchest proponent of it flinch when it comes to himself and/or his family and loved ones. The only ones who would actually able to do it would be utter psychopaths, i guess.

Also, if my life is not sacred and special (which it absolutely isnt) it all comes down to who has power. We have it (currently), other animals do not. And if we fuck up and render the Earth a wasteland for a few million years or so, well, thats Evolution in action. I somehow just find it hard to REALLY care, my own wellbeing aside. Either all life is sacred and special, or none of it is.

That aside, i just read Bacigulapis “People of Sand Slag” that someone further up mentioned, and goddamn, would i love to have an immortal body. The whole thing is surely meant as a warning against humanity disentagling itself from nature through technology, but i would trade in my current piece of hardware in a hot second, even if it meant living in a wasteland.

While i too doubt that we will ever be THAT immortal and invincible, being “grateful” for proteins is just as, well, stupid. There is plenty to improve about the human body, i just need to look at the fucked up genetics of my family. Who knows what is possible and what isnt in regards to genetic tinkering? Now the notion that every shlup is getting a magical upgrade, now that is pure utopian wishlisting.

Also, humans are exceptional as tool users. If we werent, we would not be able to even argue about this, and we would not also heading toward climate doomsday. Humans are not some divinely ordained crown of creation either, though. We are apes with way too much power, but we DO have that power, for now at least.

R.: It’s not the 1980s, old man. Have you seen Flemish nationalists ? The ones who tore down the EU flag.

Hey, that’s precisely why I included incel NEETs in my comment.

I agree that violent football-hooligan Nazis are a thing of the past. But the fact that the angry losers of today don’t look like the angry losers of yesterday doesn’t make them any less… angry losers.

R.: Governments facilitated this exploitation by mandating more lending to minorities despite bad credit scores.

Again, that fails to prove anything about racial/ethnic minorities having lower IQ scores.

All it shows is that stagnating real incomes coupled with skyrocketing housing prices will sooner or later lead to a market crash. Poorer people with worse credit scores are riskier borrowers, and also less likely to possess good financial planning skills. Unfortunate, but hardly earth-shattering.

Anonymous: But then what? It’s fucking off to interstellar space. At the speed of light in a vacuum, the speed limit of the universe. An expanding shell of light has to be the fastest way of losing potential to do work in this universe.

But it’s literally not.

Anonymous: Two months later that photon that got turned into carbohydrates is busy being transformed into ATP in a mouse, meanwhile your photon is well into the Oort cloud. Good luck getting any work out of that.

That’s exactly my point. That photon will get less work done, resulting in LESS entropy.

For what its worth,i dont think @B.Traven actually disagrees with your factual arguments, Dr. Watts. But one still wonders if you were so vehemently against having children if your own childhood had been happier.

Intellectually, i know it would be a horrible, horrible idea for me to have children, with the extinction looming right ahead. But my gut still screams at me that children are cute, and wonderful, and i should make some ASAP. Now if my childhood had been supbar instead of wonderful, it probably would be much easier for me to convince myself that having children is a bad idea.

We are, after all, only the sum of our experience and genes, with a lot of hardwired stuff, and neither you nor i are an exception. Sorry for rambling.

Away from the inter-tribal banter for the moment, this is your sort of thing if you haven’t seen it yet — the first MRI of a squid was just done.

‘Toward an MRI-Based Mesoscale Connectome of the Squid Brain’

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.100816

And not one of you, including Peter Watts, came up with a viable solution. Not one. First solution is- to refuse the conditions of the problem. To use those giant brains you have to ensure that everyone gets through, or as many as possible. You do not fold up and accept defeat, Bob’s yer uncle. We may be animals, but we have a nifty superpower: we can strategize like no one else. As for animals, there’s thing called a gene bank. In lieu of a power source to keep things cool, there are chemicals that can do the job of cooking. There’s always a way. We are remarkably adaptable creatures.

And if there really is no choice, a death lottery is your solution? Exactly how are you going to enforce that without triggering the survival instinct and causing life and death struggles? Oh, people are just going to accept a death lottery and walk into the ovens? No. You do it, if there’s no other way, by taking out the terminal, the immune compromised, then maybe the old men and women. And first, learn any skills they have to offer. The women and children, for obvious reasons, they stay.

The movie, Alive!, based on a real life incident, the people, trapped on a mountain with little to no hope of rescue, only ate those that succumbed to the cold or had died in the crash. At least at first, as far as I recall. You see how it works?

But no, tall and short people, (if it’s humour, it sucks) and even Peter Watts succumbing to hubris and glee, oh gee, what a lovely problem to mull over. Again, the first is to try every possibility possible first. The second, a last resort, is the way I describe it. And at least ask the terminal and old if they mind, or describe what’s happening, and why, so at least their sacrifice has some dignity. There may be no overall meaning, but we humans can invent meaning with ease.

Appalled that none of you big giant brains thought of any of that. Including Peter Watts.

Bryce,

“And at least ask the terminal and old if they mind”

No, they’d be too stringy, tough, and possibly disease ridden.

“tall and short people”

I liked that idea because it would take humans out of the equation completely in one or less generations. Watts apparently is willing to consider stratifying the sample, which would avoid this result. Frankly, my preference, if we want to leave behind some portion of a breeding population, would be to cull those lacking a sense of irony. Unfortunately for me, the focus would more likely be on people who enjoy being a dick.

This – “The neocortex allows us to imagine our own mortality; the brain stem keeps us from believing it.” – seems to sum up the problem with your argument. Speaking for myself, when a virus with a 20% mortality rate sweeps the planet, I know I’ll have an 80% chance of living, but I’m 100% certain it won’t actually kill me.

Did some digging about the light/power generation away from the Sun, found a paper on solar panels on probes. It looks to me like every AU out of the sun you lose about half the power generation potential, according to the graph in page 10 of this paper https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/nov_2007_meeting/presentations/solar_power.pdf
(I’m sure everyone here knew that already but it’s cool to find actual figures…)

So, on a more optimistic note, what utility would we assign our potential for averting extinction level events? Say tomorrow we spot a big rock that will turn the planet into hot soup in 50 years, we launch a couple of big ole ion drives to clamp on it, maybe splat it with some albedo changing paintballs and avert the complete destruction of every single living thing in the known universe.

That ought to earn us some karma, right? Balances out the whole anthropocene?

No?

Oh well.

Ah, made, the oldest Transhumanist solution. “Storm’s acomin’. Big one.”

“How big?”

“Oh, just extinction level.”

“Oh hell. Better virally rewire ourselves starting from the brainstem on up then.”

“Sign me the fuck up then. I wanna be superman.”

“Yeah? What about the rhinos then?”

“Ah shit, I love those guys. Okay, death lottery, and uh, I dunno,restrict the lottery to tall and short people, or maybe fat and skinny people. No wait, fat one shot a porta flesh, could come in useful.”

“What about breeding population?”

“Only if they’re the right ones. I prefer specific physical specimens. Fuck skills and shit.”

Randy Newman: “short people got no reason to live.”

Bryce,

I wrote: “Unfortunately for me, the focus [of a cull] would more likely be on people who enjoy being a dick.”

I think it’d be unfortunate for you too, brah, judging by your posts.

Peter Watts,

Looking through some of the data on the WHO’s website, I’m finding the more I dig into this the more confusing it becomes. To find out which countries fit into categories such as high income vs low, which WHO uses to represent cause of death, I had to go to the World Bank and download an Excel file. Entering a geographic region on their website, I find I cannot back out. The “home” icon’s top level is that geographical region, not the WHO’s global website. Each region seems to present data differently, as well. If you go to the global home page, then go to “Emergencies” and “Disease outbreaks”, there’s no mention of Covid19, although it’s featured prominently on the homepage itself. They have a focus on Ebola in the “Disease outbreaks”, which is largely a problem in Africa, but if you look at what kills people in lower income countries (which are over-represented in Africa, according to the World Bank) it’s predominantly lower-respiratory diseases, which Covid19 seems like it would fit into. I’m sure there’s logic behind all this somewhere, but I can’t discern it. My take-away is that when something emerges with the potential to seriously destabilize the world order (heath, economy, Hollywood productions…) it won’t be recognized for quite a while, and when it is, our ability to coordinate a response will make very entertaining viewing for that portion of humanity that doesn’t give a fuck, but enjoys a complex, morally ambiguous, fast-moving show.

The K,

If you fail to see my argument, that’s your mental block. I’m basing it on Buckminster Fuller’s two books, Utopia Or Oblivion, and The Critical Path in which he uses oh, just some fucking practical science and actual calculations and common sense plans to get us through. It isn’t blind optimism. Defending cynicism and defeatist positions are really weak areas to defend or argue from.

Question for Watts in which “we have to kill some cause not enough resources,” a typical answer, won’t work: given the obvious that it takes only one human to really fuck up a lot of resources, smokers starting forest fires, Exxon Valdez and many more examples, exactly how in the fuck does killing off a bunch of people ensure our survival?

To change tone slightly, Death Lottery would make a pretty decent 80’s slasher flick.

Phil,

Disease ridden, is precisely the reason I suggested it. In predator prey situations, it’s generally the weak, diseased and old who get culled. However, as I have stated elsewhere, animals do not create technology capable of destroying large swaths of environment at the hands of one or a few humans. Which negates the very idea of a cull.

Peter Watts,
I’m unsure if worst case corona-chan will be worse than the flu is today but you have mentioned that diseases will start hollowing out urban cores as temperatures rise. But looking at how things are playing out here do you think as events start getting worse the global economy will slump and reduce carbon emissions. So that it acts like a sort of natural check so if humans damage the environment they rapidly lose the ability to worsen it till carbon emissions drop off reducing further impact.

Anonymous,
The ability to ramp up industry in centers normally producing significant airborne pollutants may be somewhat self-limiting because of the already stressed pulmonary systems of the residents. If they are infected with covid-19, it follows that those with a diminished capacity to weather the ravages of the disease would have a much higher mortality rate. This would leave holes in the cadre of trained and experienced workers that support these industries and at least temporarily reduce pollution because of reduced production capability.