• Huh
    127
    if you had to choose between saving yourself or save another you wouldn't show mercy and the law is even on your side right?
  • Huh
    127
    How do I use qoutes?
  • javi2541997
    5.8k
    if you had to choose between saving yourself or save another you wouldn't show mercy and the law is even on your side right?Huh

    You are speaking now about life choices. It depends a lot. I guess I will leave my life for my parents one but not for a random one. This is a complex situation because law is supposedly to defend a life at all costs not sacrificing one to get other. This is a dramatic scenario and the worst possible dilemma.
  • javi2541997
    5.8k
    How do I use qoutes?Huh

    Select the text and then should appear a little box with “quote” function.
  • Huh
    127
    "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."-Orson scott
  • Huh
    127
    You are speaking now about life choices. It depends a lot. I guess I will leave my life for my parents one but not for a random one. This is a complex situation because law is supposedly to defend a life at all costs not sacrificing one to get other. This is a dramatic scenario and the worst possible dilemma.
    You can't save everyone.
  • javi2541997
    5.8k
    You can't save everyoneHuh

    Yes. Sadly. At least try it
  • Huh
    127
    I don't think you should try to save everyone.
  • javi2541997
    5.8k


    What about the lovely/worthy ones?
  • Huh
    127
    Unfortunate
    You can love something that can kill you
    do you actually control your actions or not?
  • Huh
    127
    Lifespan limited by identity limited by understanding limited by empathy limited by environment limited by entropy and enthalpy limited by chance?
  • javi2541997
    5.8k


    True. We are limited by everything because we are by nature limited humans. Nevertheless, I think this also should be motivated us to improve our knowledge.
  • counterpunch
    1.6k
    Over-population is not the problem. The mis-application of technology is the problem. Applying the right technologies, the world could support a large human population, at high levels of welfare - into the indefinite future. Limitless clean energy from magma, carbon capture and storage, desalination and irrigation, and recycling - are technologies that already exist, or could be easily developed, and scaled up would change the equation of sustainability. Problematising the very existence, and the needs and wants of people; rather than the application of technology - strikes me as profoundly wrong, and is unlikely to make for a prosperous, sustainable future. In scientific terms, the correct approach is to develop vast energy resources. In technological terms it is possible. In political terms it's obviously very difficult, and one would want to be satisfied that it would be beneficial in economic terms. But I think it would work.
  • Huh
    127
    what problems do overpopulation cause again?
    What's the cause of overpopulation is it really a lack of land and resources?
    Or having a problem of how we solve those problems?
  • counterpunch
    1.6k


    I do not accept there is over-population, so I cannot answer your question, but I will say this: resources are a function of the energy available to produce them. The Malthusian, pessimistic view - and all its intellectual descendants are fundamentally mistaken. There are no limits to growth.
  • Huh
    127
    even if you had infinite resources, would there be a social structure capable of catering to everyone?
  • counterpunch
    1.6k
    How I imagine it, we commit to developing the energy resources to address climate change - using massive clean energy from magma to extract carbon, desalinate and irrigate, recycle, and so forth - while otherwise carrying on exactly as we are. In the deepest philosophical terms I can fathom, I think it's the right thing; not least because it explains the problem and solution in the same terms, but also because it is the one single thing we could do, that would do the most good, at the least cost and with least disruption to how things are.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    We've already collapsed, friend; like a beheaded corpse, 'global civilization' is only still twitching ... Read e.g. Jared Diamond, Bill McGribbin, Alan Weisman, et al.180 Proof

    :up: :clap: :lol:

    The earth is in its death throes. How long until that sinks in?
  • Huh
    127
    Why not let people who want to fight to the death fight to the death?
  • counterpunch
    1.6k
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56544239

    Read this, and explain to me how he charts the course of energy development as key to the development of civilisation, but does not reach the conclusion that now, we need massively more energy to spend, as has accompanied every previous leap forward.
  • Primperan
    65
    The idea belongs Thanos (Thank you, Marvel). Without every two people having only one child, the Earth would be more sustainable.Miguel Hernández

    Ok. Thanos' solution seems to me the simplest as long as each person can only have one child. Later, sterilization.
    If each couple has a child, but remarries or couples and may have another, the problem will continue.
  • Janus
    16.3k
    Overpopulation is a not a problem and we can feed the world twice over if we needed to.StreetlightX

    Only because of continual destruction of wild habitat, unsustainable industrial farming and ravaging of the fisheries. Industrial farming relies on fossil fuels both for its fertilizers and for its harvesting machinery, Modern intensive fishing practices also rely on fossil fuels, And then you have the problem of how to transport all that food around the planet, without using fossil fuels.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Overpopulation narratives are just eugenic fascism for the well-off.StreetlightX
    :mask: :up: The 'civilizational project' (via dominance hierarchies) of the last several millennia has never been a lifeboat, or ark, meant for the vast majority of human beings (or tribes, ethnicities, cultures, etc); "eugenic fascism" seems the very grammar (logic) itself of any global (top-down) metanarrative, and so ...
    I suspect that 99% of "the human population" will be left behind in order for 1% (or less) of humanity to "reach long-term technological and organizational goals" offworld.180 Proof
    This sort of elitist (Malthusian) prospect has been gamed-out by World Powers (militaries, intel services), R&D think-tanks, major corporations and "well-off" fallout shelter-bunker building survivalists/preppers since the beginning of the Cold War prospects of catastrophic nuclear war which eventually morphed into forecasting Global Warming disaster scenarios since the 1970s. Recently, tech billionaires (& the hypercapitalist PRC) ramping up capabilities for commercially exploiting LEO, Luna, Mars and the asteroid belt is just an extension of this +70 year prep-undertaking.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    "Choice, not control: Why limiting the fertility of poor populations will not solve the climate crisis"

    https://www.carefrance.org/ressources/themas/1/4422,CARE_COP20_Choice-not-control_Famil.pdf

    First, it is human consumption, fundamentally controlled and driven by wealthier populations, not the reproductive behaviour of poor populations, that is overstretching the capacity of our ecosystems. Suggesting otherwise puts false blame on populations who have done least to cause climate change while suffering the brunt of its impacts. Second, in the context of climatic adversity and natural resource dependence, the line between fulfilling unmet demand for family planning on the one hand, and contributing to unjust population control narratives on the other, is very thin.
  • Janus
    16.3k
    Overpopulation narratives are just eugenic fascism for the well-off.StreetlightX

    That's a facile dismissal. I read the articles, and while I agree that "first world" people contribute many times more emissions per capita than so-called "third world" populations, that is not the only or even the most salient point. The avowed aim of corporations and governments is to bring poorer countries up to a first world level of prosperity and consumerism. And that would be only fair, right? ( And good for the capitalists as well :wink: ).

    The problem is that to achieve that, or even just to keep feeding the current population adequately will involve continuing habitat destruction, species extinctions, depletion of water resources, salination of soils, destruction of soils by industrial farming, destruction of marine life, and so on. The more the humans get the less for the rest of the inhabitants of our little planet, and ultimately disaster for the humans too.

    It'd be great if we could simply get rid of three quarters of the population, and that would be far more effective if it was three quarters of the first world population. But what would happen then? The world economy would collapse. There'd be no more aid, exports or travel to, or exploitation of, third world countries. They would be left to their own devices.

    Any curtailment of business as usual would involve immense human suffering, so we seem to be riding a juggernaut that cannot be stopped without catastrophe for the humans. But continual growth is unsustainable and is very quickly approaching catastrophe anyway, so either way it's catastrophe. It's a hard fact to face, but seems inevitable unless someone can come up with a magic solution. Can you imagine any?
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.