zlacker

>>Simon_+(OP)
The whole world is going this way: Japan is just an early adopter. It’ll be good for the planet to have fewer people: our challenge is to run a flourishing society that isn’t based on continual growth.

>>michae+p6
Citation needed. The earth has tons of resources and can easily support several times the number of current humans.

It is bad for the species to have fewer people. It's also bad for the production of novel art.

>>sneak+N6
How is it bad for the species?

How do you define "easily"?

Sorry, I'm asking two questions that each deserve comprehensive answers.

>>quanti+i9
Population decline is bad for the species because the endgame of population decline is population == 0.

>>sneak+cb
That's a slippery slope argument which doesn't hold up. There are many endgames and goals. Managed properly, the human population will equal 0 someday because we will have further evolved into something else.

>>quanti+gd
> the human population will equal 0 someday because we will have further evolved into something else.

Ah, there are other possible paths. 1) Extinction (which has happened to many species) without any evolutionary successors. 2) Artificial life (it evolves without us). 3) Something else evolves (long after we are gone) and becomes the dominant species on the planet.

Humanity has limited options, but nature doesn't and we can't count on it doing us any favors.

>>Tozen+O21
"...there are other possible paths..."

Hence @quantified's "managed properly" caveat.