Also... so far, the most effective method of reducing population growth without resorting to killing people (ugh) is empowering women. There are organizations that make microloans to women so they can start their own business... even if it means buying a cell phone and letting the other villagers pay Ũ.15 a minute to use it. Once this stuff happens, the women have fewer babies... why breed when there's greed?

so you see... the "bad" qualities of people can be used in a positive way.

quote:

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Originally posted by Anztac:
Ok usually I'm not one for rational answers, but you guy are talking mass genocide! WTF! theres no way you guys are serious and if you are then your fucking insane! If we start saying "lets kill all Chinese people" and "No one can live on this planet unless they agree to these rules" we have efectivlry become the Fourth Reich. Why would we want to eliminate China anyways? You say because they're mostly starving and not producing anything? You got it all wrong. They're all starving and producing [b]everything and were fattening and producing practically nothing. So obviously Dust's solution isn't right. Next!

[/B]

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Free your mind anztac!

I didn't suggest going after china specifically. I just said that there must be a culling of a significant percentage of the population in order to reduce the population to a level that the world can sustain with the amount of rescources per person we use now without causing significant environmental damage. Environmental damage that would kill all of us in the end, most likely..

Would you rather 2/3 of the population die or all of it? Yes, it's a mass cull. Yes, there would be moral outcry.

Morals arn't logic. I personally do not believe in right and wrong, per se.

"It is wrong to kill" - err, what was the question? There is no evidence to suggest that by killing somebody we piss the universe off. Right and wrong, as most people think of it, would be as if it was a property of the universe, it isn't, it's about how they feel about doing certain things. Personally i'm not sure if this morality has evolved into us as an enhancement to our instincs, or just trained into us from society, but one thing is certain, the theory that some actions are right and wrong fundamentally is not supportable by any logic.

We must not get bogged down with this Right/wrong concept stopping us doing what must be done to preserve the longevity of our species.

Kill people. It makes sense.

You are, of course, free to think of me as some insane psychopath, but that won't help.

I seriously doubt there can be any entirely logically provable refutation of the thoery that morality is bullshit. If you can think of one, tell me.

quote:

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Originally posted by Anztac:
Ok usually I'm not one for rational answers, but you guy are talking mass genocide! WTF! theres no way you guys are serious and if you are then your fucking insane! If we start saying "lets kill all Chinese people" and "No one can live on this planet unless they agree to these rules" we have efectivlry become the Fourth Reich. Why would we want to eliminate China anyways? You say because they're mostly starving and not producing anything? You got it all wrong. They're all starving and producing [b]everything and were fattening and producing practically nothing. So obviously Dust's solution isn't right. Next!

[/B]

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Free your mind anztac!

I didn't suggest going after china specifically. I just said that there must be a culling of a significant percentage of the population in order to reduce the population to a level that the world can sustain with the amount of rescources per person we use now without causing significant environmental damage. Environmental damage that would kill all of us in the end, most likely..

Would you rather 2/3 of the population die or all of it? Yes, it's a mass cull. Yes, there would be moral outcry.

Morals arn't logic. I personally do not believe in right and wrong, per se.

"It is wrong to kill" - err, what was the question? There is no evidence to suggest that by killing somebody we piss the universe off. Right and wrong, as most people think of it, would be as if it was a property of the universe, it isn't, it's about how they feel about doing certain things. Personally i'm not sure if this morality has evolved into us as an enhancement to our instincs, or just trained into us from society, but one thing is certain, the theory that some actions are right and wrong fundamentally is not supportable by any logic.

We must not get bogged down with this Right/wrong concept stopping us doing what must be done to preserve the longevity of our species.

Kill people. It makes sense.

You are, of course, free to think of me as some insane psychopath, but that won't help.

I seriously doubt there can be any entirely logically provable refutation of the thoery that morality is bullshit. If you can think of one, tell me.

When you say "in order to reduce the population to a level that the world can sustain with the amount of rescources per person we use now" you mean of course the amount of resources America uses per person. China, seeing as their people are starving, does not use nearly as much resources per person. In china, by the way, the best way to insure your own survival is either by working your ass off your whole life, or having a child to do it for you. And in a lot of cases both.

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~Anztac - The guy who had the really long sig (formerly Kriegman)

"I am easily driven into a flying rage by blithering idiots"
-cr0bar [The god of this domain]

quote:

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Originally posted by Anztac:
Actually I had forgotten Starship Troopers. I am rather fond of most of the ideas in it. That is probably the best solution anyone has proposed to the problem.

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I must say I agree with you. He had some very good (if a little controversial) ideas about punishment and voting rights. Now all we need is someone with the guts to try and pass it as law...

To be honest though, I don't think there is such a thing as a good government. As far as I can tell any form of government is intrinsically flawed in that human beings are, at root, selfish creatures. If you study evolution at all ("The Selfish Gene" is a good book), you'll learn that altruistic behaviour is generally directed toward siblings. When the choice is between a small amount of good to a large number of people, only a few of whom are closely related to yourself, compared to a large amount of good to onesself (ie a bribe, 'approprating' resources) then it is obvious which is, evolutionarily speaking, the better choice. Hence, those humans (or proto-humans) who make choices like that will survive and breed, whereas altruistic creatures will die off.

Systems like 'morals' are a purely social construct, to try and counter the innate selfish tendencies of humans. The reason they survive is that a society is better than an individual (pooling of resources, etc etc etc). However, without socially-instilled morals, and 'normal' (ie selfish) human would simply steal, cheat or whatever to ensure the maximum gains from the minimum effort. Of course, if everyone did this then society would collapse, hence moral systems become evolutionarily benificial. It's a simple win-loss matrix: for a two person interaction, consider two possible actions: selfish (s) and altruistic (a). The matrix below shows the outcome of your choices - your gain is before the slash, your 'partner's gain is after (an abstract number to represent how much you gain/lose) (God only knows if this is going to format OK. Here goes nothing...)

       other
     s       a
y s 0/0     5/0
o
u a 0/5     3/3

If you add the numbers up, logically you would both be better off if you are both altruistic. Of course, this is only the simplist explanation but I don't have time for an essay (like I haven't written one already).

Of course, in a large society small amounts of selfishness will not destroy the society, hence the reason corruption etc still exists.

Just to summarise:

• Anarchy fails because without control, all humans will act selfishly (all lose)
  
• Representative Democracy fails because those chosen to represent would rather be selfish than provide a small amount of good to the masses (greed wins)
  
• True democracy fails because it relies on the public being interested enough to research every damn topic that comes up (apathy wins)
  
• Communism fails becuase those chosen to 'represent' the people are, inevitably, vulnerable to corruption (Greed wins, yet again)
  

-- Aethr

quote:

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Originally posted by Serpwidgets:
[B]Dustman says: "We must not get bogged down with this Right/wrong concept stopping us doing what must be done to preserve the longevity of our species."

Ummm.. why are you assuming that "the longevity of our species" has some special value to the universe when in fact it does not? The universe cares as much about our species as it does about right and wrong. The same line of irrationally-based logic that dictates that we must be preserved is the same basis for the idea that there is such a thing as right/wrong.

You cannot have one without the other, and since you value the former, you must logically extend to value the latter.

As for the idea that 2/3 of the population must be killed off to preserve the species, where exactly do you come up with this number? I've heard plenty of other estimates, including one that says Earth could support up to 50 billion people. Are we just to assume that the guesstimate you quote is true and murder 4 billion people, just in case it is?

[B]

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True, the universe itself does not care about how our species survive. However, thinking that there is no great purpose to it, we would just end up doing nothing all day. When you're dead, it is the absence of everything (i believe) and i suspect being alive is a whole lot more fun. To make being alive worthwhile you have to follow your instincts to a certain extent. True, there is no reason to preserve our species on the scale of things, but the thought of our extinction looming weighs heavy on my mind..

The thought of some pensioner getting her head smashed in so someone can steal the contents of her purse.. Please.. I don't give a sh1t.

To support 50 billion people we would first have to do some crazy stuff to the planet.. With that population it's be one big city, food grown in hydroponics, the choking stench of the car exhausts almost knocking you unconscious.

Yes. I think 4 billion people would be a sensible amount of people to murder.

where are we gonna put 4 billion dead bodies ?

If progress means to move forward then congress means to...?

Here are my thoughts. I would kill off 90\% of the population and then use the remaining 10 percent as my slaves so that I could rebuild. Don't worry, when the time comes you will all have jobs. Ill even appoint cr0bar as head of the loyal opposition so that he could safely rant against me. I would be a shame to waste such a resource.
As for where the bodies would go, I'm sure they would make good fertilizer. Or could be used as a fuel source.
Sorry, its the German in me.

Enough of that. The problem with the gov we have today is that you only have 2 choices and they both suck. Once the person is in there you can't get rid of them. What we need is a way to force an election any November we want so that we can get rid of people that lied to us. It would not make a difference right away but once they saw that their job relied on their job performance they would tend to listen better. We don't need a better form of government we just need to fix the one we have now.

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The gene pool has no life guard, support the GPPTF (Gene Pool Purification Task Force)

Within the time of WW1 + WW2, the germans managed to restructure their economy and actually become a power to be acknowledged - only they went too far.

As for the Population thing, I believe the most recent figures are showing that most devolped countries have declining birth rates but people are living longer, so perhaps a solution such as Loguns Run should be taken.

It may be extreme but I do believe that we should nuke China, India get the areas under control now - before they start WW3.