From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Re: Global Sterilization (was Re: The Marching Morons)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 12:25:35 GMT

Geoff@equinox.gen.nz (Geoff Mccaughan) writes:
>Paul Dietz (dietz@cs.rochester.edu) wrote:
>>Yes, I would.  More people means more interesting things happening.
>You are one sick, sick puppy.

That's uncalled for. Paul is more than entitled to his view, and has,
I am sure, good justification for it, probably something along extropian
lines. And he's right - more people will mean more interesting things
happening; the question is whether those people can be sustained in their
activities or not. It's something of a race - can our culture provide for
us before we collapse beneath its weight?

>>More interesting books will be written.  More R&D can be justified
>>because of larger markets.  A global population of 50 billion as rich
>>as the current US could spend 100x more on space, for example.
>A global population of 50 billion as sick as the current US society is
>something many would die to prevent.

Lookit - that 'sick society' has had a lot to do with the luxury that we
antipodeans enjoy - the medicine, the communications, the wealth. Sure 
they do some crappy things, but humans everywhere do some crappy things.
Just as there's no call for insulting Paul Dietz, there's no call for
insulting his country. Stick to the issues here and save the ad hominem stuff
for cocktail parties.

>>"Breeding ourselves to extinction" is just a vacuous slogan.
>Surely even someone of your undoubted erudition can add up? However we much
>of the earth we destroy in our efforts to provide for the hungry mouths,
>surely you can see that one day, sooner or later we *must* stop. Maybe not
>at 5 billion, or 50, but can you really expect that 500 or 5000 billion
>people is achievable or in any way desirable.

One way to do it might be to upload humanity into an enormous virtual
reality, brought to you through the marvels of nanotechnology. Once
there we can spawn fantastic numbers of ourselves, access and
manipulate incredible amounts of information, and all at such fantastic
speeds that all the engineering that will be needed to acquire further
lebensraum for the nanofolk can be performed in the blink of an eye.

At least, that's the gist of extropy I think. I'm not sure quite what
the purpose of that many humans might be - given the capabilities of
the medium it sounds to me like rather a waste of compute power. I'm
also not quite sure what happens when the ever more rapidly reproducing
masses (what, Moravec says 100,000 times faster? That would be one
generation every couple of hours or so ... so if they were Catholics
and Indians, and given that they'll outbreed the rest that's pretty
much what they will be, that would mean doubling the global population
every four hours or so) consume all the mass of the solar system.

I guess no one will go hungry in a virtual reality, but there must be some
competition for computing resources ... 

>The Earth's population *will* level off, if not voluntarily then by war,
>famine, and disease.

Paul has kindly ruled out war for us - and of course disease will also not
be much of a worry in a VR. And it _will_ be interesting, provided that
you appreciate catholicism and hinduism :-)

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
                       I am a big pond in a small fish.
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3945 alt.folklore.science:4572