i don’t really believe that because there’s a large number of people who would already want to go to mars. it’s not like they’re lacking willing participants.

I want to inform you that there are Zionists who oppose the current military operation in Palestine, but yeah most people carrying out these operations are scum.

This comment is part of a tree-datastructure that represents the branches of discussion.

I try to be positive, but my way of life are very different from other people’s; and i end up doing more harm than good, if i’m forcing myself to be friendly and nice.

Ah nice, I encountered a Poisson-distribution in the wild today. I shall recount this encounter to my children.

Also, just to make this clear: There’s nothing wrong with the population shrinking again. Or growing, the earth is far from its carrying capacity if we’re doing it right. The trouble is shrinking too quickly, or for that matter growing too quickly. We should pine for two kids per woman, ±0.5, thereabouts: Don’t veer too far off replacement levels. And all that can be done by proper social policy, parental leave, good schools, work/life/family balance, sex ed, etc.

Yeah, i agree. Decline should be at an acceptable rate. Just that i think an acceptable rate for me is 0.66 children/woman. That would lead to an annual decline in birth rate of 3.6% (formula is: 1-(0.66÷2)^(1÷30)) assuming women give birth at 30 y/o.

Just to contrast this: The US’ population (excluding Native Americans) grew steadily by approximately 3% annually from 1680 till 1880. Source:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States

I just want to notice that most people have been told by the economy in recent years that more people are needed to fulfill all jobs because the economists wanted to increase the supply of workers and therefore push the wages down.

Recently, economists have started understanding that this (AI) wave of automation/innovation might indeed be the last one, the one that reduces demand for human labor without creating more new jobs as a side-product. As such, the number of workers needed declines. Since economists would favor lower taxes, they try to limit Universal Basic Income to a minimum, but that implies fewer people to pay for. As such, they are taking a “lower fertility rate is better” stance now. We’re gonna see a lot of “news articles telling us that the falling birth rate is a good thing” in the near future. It just takes a significant effort to spread that message in the population.

i would upvote twice if i could, but i only have one account.

also: people have been worried about birth rate being too high in the past (around 1800) and population count going to infinity, consuming more resources than the planet can give and provoking a famine.

And the population count stabilized eventually in every country that they were worried about.

And now people are worried that the birth rate is too low and population count will go to zero.

I dare predict it’s bullshit and the population size will stabilize at some point.

“fear of decline”

also, your argument is based on the totally-nonsense assumption that there “has to be a certain number of workers to sustain the elderly” which is bullshit (frankly). it’s not about the number of workers; it’s about the productive output, and as we all know, that has risen tremendously the last few years. So there should be no shortage of workers regardless of how many workers there are. Everything else is bullshit the news (which btw are owned by billionaires) tell you because they want to sack a significant part of productive output for themselves - well ofc if rich take 90% of output it’s not gonna be enough for everyone. but that’s the rich’s fault and has nothing to do with “there not being enough workers”.

People aren’t just wageslaves. If there are many, it’s easy to see people as a “mass product”. If there are fewer, i hope that any individual will be seen with higher value.

yeah i agree with especially the last paragraph. i don’t think abandoning all IP laws today is realistic, as the commercial art/innovation economy still has too much game to gain so it’s gonna take at least 10 more years.

“Left” and “right” mean very different things for different people. People can’t even agree on the definition. Just to give you a clear example: today’s “leftists” are pro-immigration, while practically all leftists before 1990 were not so much pro immigration.

I take “right” to mean authoritarian, and “left” to mean self-organizing.

btw, do you think americans would still go to africa if it turns out to be/become communistic? i.e., no or restricted private ownership of land, …

hey that’s racist (slight /s as that is literally the reasoning that i see many people use here as an argument why to not block immigration)

roko’s basilisk or sth

i have come to the conclusion that there is a god and a heaven, alright, but it’s a cruel place that i would never ever ever want to go to. ever

edit: oh yeah, what does that have to do with your comment? well, the christians are going to heaven alright, if you can interpret the american technocracy (or even mars) as “heaven” (by any stretch of the word)

explanation: the christian idea of “heaven” is heavily based on platon’s “ideas”, which are described as “heavenly objects” (a.k.a abstractions), and platon called the collection of all ideas the “inter-net” for some reason, and modern IT is heavily modeled after it, with a purely abstract world ruling the world, more or less. there’s lots of articles how some technological platforms (such as meta, google) shaping what news we get and what we believe/think. thus it is a “techno-cracy”.

wait isn’t there some christian story about exactly that … 🤔 something about some curse that is inherited and bans the people from living a good life or sth, i can’t remember. maybe that good life was symbolized as a garden, but i could be wrong

i think you use “emigrating” when leaving their homes behind, but here it is part of the joke that they no longer see the US as their home. instead, they’re seeing europe/whatever other country as their new “home”, so they’re immigrating.

Would be ironic if we had to go to Africa because life there is better.

… after decades of relentlessly repeating how much better we have it that “poor children in africa” especially.

I really don’t like to be the “well acktschually” guy but the major constraint for a mars settlement is the availability of water. mars is inhabitable (with the help of technology ofc) wherever there is water, probably it in the form of ice underground. Various research missions are currently mapping that out. Here’s a map from around 2000: