Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!mc.lcs.mit.edu!KFL From: KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") Newsgroups: net.space Subject: Population Message-ID: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].844652.860310.KFL> Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 01:16:19 EST Article-I.D.: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].844652.860310.KFL> Posted: Mon Mar 10 01:16:19 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 11-Mar-86 01:22:13 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 105 From: jon@csvax.caltech.edu Space colonies - even if obtained by dismantling all the rocky bodies of the solar system - can only put off the day of reckoning for so long. True. My rough estimate is that the solar system can support ten to the twentieth people, the galaxy can support ten to the thirtieth, and the known universe can support ten to the fortieth. If population grows at two percent per year, we will have filled the solar system by the year 3200, the galaxy by the year 4400, and the whole universe (the part known in the 20th century) by the year 5600. I don't for a minute think that it will happen this way, but it shows us what we have available. It is obviously true that population cannot continue to expand exponentially forever. Certainly not for more than 4000 years at the present rate of increase, and the limit may be very much less. But the question is, how high should it be? When there were just a few dozen people on earth, they could have reasoned this same way and decided that the population should not grow beyond 100. They might have decided that since the Earth's carrying capacity, with their lifestyle, was (lets say) one per square mile and since Olduvai gorge was (lets say) 100 square miles, that this should be the permanent limit. after all, nobody should be forced to live outside the gorge, the birhtplace of mankind! Anyone who brought up an argument about 'eggs in one basket' would be informed that not even the biggest lion could eat up 100 people. After all, they would have no comprehension of any greater disaster. And if someone had told them that the gorge was to turn arid and become uninhabitable in a million years, they would have laughed. Obviously a million years is much too long to worry about. So, had they reasoned the way you do, makind would have become extinct after that million years, and would have been extinct for many more millions of years by now. I have several points to make: 1) 'Eggs in one basket'. No, I do not think there will be a nearby supernova. But I don't know that for sure. Should we risk the whole human race? Many other disasters are possible. A replay of the asteroidal catastrophe that did in the dinosaurs. Nuclear war. Alien attack. Something we have never thought of. 2) For the short term, the more people in space, the fewer are on Earth messing up the wildlife. For the long term, mankind will make available for life far more space and time than are available on Earth. Possibly we will set up whole world-sized experimental ecologies. 3) The more people there are the more geniuses there will be. There will be more and better inventions, music, literature, software, sculpture, paintings, etc. If with ten to the ninth people we have one Newton or Mozart per century, with ten to the twentieth we should have several dozen geniuses on a par with them each second. I have no idea what this would be like, or what sort of super- genius would appear just once per century on the high end of that much taller bell curve, but I would like to find out. 4) Widely seperated cultures will be able to try a great variety of cultural, political, economic, and religious experimentation. Let the communists have a world of their own. The libertarians, another. Those who think that everything would be better if psychiatrists ran the world would also be free to band together and give it a try. 5) Even if nobody ever actually lives in space, we could (with more advanced robotics) have all our large factories there. And our mines. And our farms. So Earth COULD then support a much higher population density, equivalent to downtown Manhattan. Food, fuel, computers, cars, furnished apartemnt buildings and office buildings, would parachute down from space to the point where they are needed when they are needed. 6) It will increase the economies of scale. If the world population were only 1000, would there be any market for computers? For CD players? For SF books? These things are only possible because there are so many consumers. Just think what new things would be possible if the population were a million times what it is. An author who would have gotten just 100 dollars royalties because his work appealed to so narrow a segment of the population would get 100 million dollars instead. Machines that interest only one person in a million would be mass produced by the millions and would cost just pennies. 7) The more people there are, the more will share your tastes, sympathize with your problems, etc. There could be millions of independant countries to live in, millions of seperate religions to join, millions of TV channels to watch, billions of seperate corporations to work for, billions of different books to read, billions of different computer programs to run, trillions of special interest clubs and societies to join, and trillions of possible friends and lovers. 8) Life is enjoyable. Else why go on living? So why not share this amazing boon with as many others as we can. How is it of any benefit to anyone for worlds to remain barren of life, resources unused, sunlight streaming pointlessly into empty space? No, population will not grow exponentially forever, barring something completely unexpected like travel to other dimensions, travel to alternate universes, faster than light travel beyond the redshift horizon, etc. But that is no reason to halt space exploration. That is no reason to halt population growth. Not when life would be so much better, and for so many more people, if there were billions of people for every one alive today. ...Keith