Check, check, check. And actually it was a previous article of Bill's that made me want to become a scientist, and now we're Gates funded to develop more efficient crops.

Coders of the world - we have awesome data to play with. Come and help :)

Sorry, but I nearly spat my drink all over my keyboard at that sentence. This from the man who a decade ago used all his influence to fight tooth and nail against the notion of sharing knowledge and code for the benefit of mankind instead of profit, and didn't blink at screwing over developing countries in this particular area to increase his profits

I'm sure he means well and does great things these days, but this is pushing it a bit.

So, Selling code you wrote == Preventing sharing of knowledge.

You could argue that your business model requires me, i.e. all your customers, to agree not to give their friends (or anyone else) copies. But the world does not owe you a living. If your business model requires you to ask people to behave badly towards their friends, then it is destroying the social fabric of society, and you could rightly be called immoral.

Anyway, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html if you truly want to read more.

In the real world in which we live, people have to work hard to create new things. There is no magic software fairy. Software is not a right like air, water or food or speech.

Remember, the world does not owe you free software. ("free" as in "free beer")

However, you are implying something more insidious: That one must forbid people to share software in order to make money writing it. This is obviously false, with many counterexamples. In particular, there is a company which is mostly writing the Gnu ADA compiler which is reportedly making money hand over fist. If one were to assume that this (or variants of it) is possible in all fields of software, then there is no good excuse for forbidding sharing of software, which does some demonstrable harm.

Another radical example: Github. Why is the source for Github not open or free? Why are they not sharing that with us? Surely a company so invested in open (and to a large extent free) software must know better right?

Sharing the source to Google would be better for society, but a bit bad for Google, and since Google decides, they are deciding not to. The same goes for Github. It’s the collective action problem.

More concretely: free software always mimics commercial software badly after someone takes risk building it. No free software is comparable to Google or Watson in both technical capability and market results. They need 100s to 1000s of PhDs working full time. These PhDs have already slaved off in academia for years.

If software should not be treated as property, nothing else should be!

> free software always mimics commercial software badly

One could argue against this, but let’s assume that it is true. Does this have anything to do with the necessity of allowing software makers to forbid the sharing of software? Are you arguing that it is impossible to make money with software which is not forbidden to share, when lots of people are doing it today?

Let’s say the world stopped allowing ideas and other non-rivalrous goods to be considered property. Would the world still need software? Yes. Would the world still need people to write software? Yes. Would the world be willing to pay people to write software they need? Obviously yes.

Hmm. It is true. Which free software are people using to search more than Google search? Which free software won Jeopardy?

> Are you arguing that it is impossible to make money with software which is not forbidden to share, when lots of people are doing it today?

I never said that. But forcing people to give up their software would result in a bleak Soviet like future for all of us.

>Let’s say the world stopped allowing ideas and other non-rivalrous goods to be considered property.

Then why should anything else be considered property? Are you not denying my right to enjoy land that you claim to own?

Well, I never said anything about any such thing, so I’m not sure which strawman you are arguing with. If you think I implied it, please show it, and be more explicit in your reasoning.

> Then why should anything else be considered property?

Because those are rivalrous goods. There is a difference, and I would suggest you look it up before treating them all the same.

What is the negation of the statement below?

> Does this have anything to do with the necessity of allowing software makers to forbid the sharing of software?

> Because those are rivalrous goods. There is a difference, and I would suggest you look it up before treating them all the same.

I know what rivalrous goods are. What on God's earth makes them so special and different from non-rivalrous goods?

You are not born with a piece of land attached to your neck. Only a piece paper with words and ideas says so. Who says one should be entitled to anything permanently? If you have a rivalrous good X, why not use it only for Y years and give it to the public for the common good?

The whole idea that you own a piece of a rivalrous good is an unnatural and a relatively new social construct just like intellectual property and ownership of ideas. It is a good solution when we are confronted with scarce resources (land, ideas, software).

Once again, there is no "rivalrous good fairy" granting them special rights. We decided to so as the other option was barbarianism and anarchy.

> What is the negation of the statement below?

I don’t understand what you mean. The text below is a question, not a statement.

Software is not a scarce resource; once it has been created, it can be easily defined as non-scarce. And before it has been created, if there is sufficient need for it, someone will pay to have it created.

> why not use it only for Y years and give it to the public for the common good?

Well, some people think this would be a good idea. Other people call those people “communists” and/or “anarchists”. So, the question is hotly debated, but also, for our purposes, irrelevant. We are debating the property or non-property status of ideas, information and software.

> I know what rivalrous goods are. What on God's earth makes them so special and different from non-rivalrous goods?

[…]

> We decided to [grant them special rights] as the other option was barbarianism and anarchy.

And this is exactly why rivalrous goods are different. We have (most of us) decided that we agree they need to be granted “property” status.

However, I do not think that defining software, ideas or other information as a non-ownable non-property would be “barbarianism and anarchy”. If you think so, please elaborate.

Ummm...creation is not a trivial process. As I said before, there is no software fairy creating new software. Who decides what is the proper compensation for creation? The creators! Not some political goon.

> And this is exactly why rivalrous goods are different. We have (most of us) decided that we agree they need to be granted “property” status.

Um... software has the same legal rights as land. So there is no difference.

Just because X is different from Y in aspect A does not mean we should treat X differently in all aspects from Y.

>However, I do not think that defining software, ideas or other information as a non-ownable non-property would be “barbarianism and anarchy”. If you think so, please elaborate.

We won't devolve into anarchy, but we will devolve into Soviet-style bleakness.

I am arguing the side that claims that these non-rivalrous goods like software, ideas and information should be changed to no longer be considered property and have owners. I have demonstrated that there are compelling arguments why their status as property has downsides, and why eliminating their being owned should, at least, have no appreciable downsides, and could potentially be a boon to all society. You, however, seem to argue that since software, ideas and information are legally considered property (at least some of them, some of the time, in different forms), they are property. But this would be assuming that the law is correct, and you can’t do that, since this is the question to be resolved.

I would still like to know why and how we will “devolve into Soviet-style bleakness” if software and ideas would no longer be granted property status. As a comparison, you could look at the clothing industry. There are no ownerships of patterns or designs there, but the industry continue to be needed and people are still paid to produce clothes. The odd cases of illegal copies you hear about are about trademark law, i.e. things fraudulently claiming to be a particular brand, but this is an issue of fraud and consumer protection against low-quality knockoffs, not a design or pattern property issue, since the designs of clothes are not property.

If your belief system relies on not compensating other people's hard work, then it is destroying the social fabric of society.

By not acknowledging software as property, you are entrenching the power of those who control other forms of property. We can make software through our own efforts, but we cannot make land, or other natural resources.

You may wish to trade your time to provide support for free software to powerful corporations, but that seems like a grim vision of what's possible for humanity.

You're being weird. I'm using the word in its normal sense.

> If your belief system relies on not compensating other people's hard work, then it is destroying the social fabric of society.

Work does not intrinsically need to be compensated. The world does not owe you a living. It is up to you to do work that actually deserves compensation. It will not do to complain that everyone is using your work in ways you did not intend; it is for you to find a business model which takes the actions of people into account.

It is also your duty as a member of society to engage in actions which does not, on the whole, damage society.

> By not acknowledging software as property, you are entrenching the power of those who control other forms of property

Perhaps. But this does not leave you destitute; property is not the only form of wealth. You have the ability to work, which you can sell. You do not need to go the roundabout way of working to create software, and then create this constructed form of property so you can sell this new form of “property”. You can just as easily sell your labor directly.

You keep saying 'the world does not owe you a living' as though it means something relevant to this discussion.

What gives you the right to decide what duties and actions damage society? I think you are damaging society by trying to destroy developers rights over the software they create.

What does and does not damage society is certainly open for discussion. But when you frame it as “developers’ rights over the software they create” you are presupposing the conclusion. Why should ideas and other non-rivalrous goods be considered property? If I “own” an idea that you have a copy of, why should this give me power over you?

I said nothing about ideas. That is a straw man.

I am not presupposing the conclusion. I recognize that developer's rights are artificial. I also recognize that money is artificial as are all property rights.

The reason software as a non-rivalrous good should be considered property is because we value the creative output of individuals, and recognize that it takes individual time and investment to add value to the world through this art. In doing so, we are valuing and incentivizing creativity and ingenuity rather than clock hours of work.

Price competition can take care of making the fruits of this creativity widely available to those who want it.

This all sounds good, but it is very theoretical. Let’s look at the more practical effects. As noted by many, the fact that the creative output of individuals can currently be owned has rather large drawbacks. So what do we gain to potentially offset these drawbacks? Note that these gains would have to be things we would actually lose if creative output of individuals would cease to have property status. Finally, are these gains large enough to overcome the drawbacks?

Furthermore, there are many who argue that, should the creative output of individuals cease to have limits on their dissemination and use, society would gain more than enough to offset any potential drawback of this. It could also be argued that the cost would be entirely transitional, i.e. people would have to get used to new business models and move to different ways of doing business, and there would be otherwise no actual continuous loss by making the creative output of individuals non-owned.

I know this is your belief, but you haven't offered any argument to support it.

You also dismissed what I said out of hand, with the phrase 'This all sounds good but it's theoretical', which is also false on the face of it since it is the current state of affairs and has produced tangible results.

I know what you believe. I just don't think you have a coherent argument for it.

I would rather not argue specifics, but instead get you and people in general to understand what the argument is, and to get people to honestly investigate whether the cost is worth the drawbacks.

I called your reply “theoretical” because it talked about principles, not about what society would gain or lose with any available options, without which no cost-benefit analysis can be made. Are you wedded to the idea that the principle should outweigh all downsides in this case? How much would you be willing for this principle to cost society?

If so, it seems as though you're simply hiding a position that you're not willing to defend.

How about if you promised not to do that in your acceptance of the license agreement?

Your friends "need" isn't necessarily a valid claim on the fruits of the software authors labor. (A "need" for software? Come on.) It might make a very compelling argument that the author should choose to gift a copy to your friend, or offer an educational version (as many do), but I can't see the logic that a need is a valid claim, moral or otherwise, on someone else's work.

Or let say that a cab driver see a child who missed the buss back home. However, the cab drivers contract says he is not allowed to pick up passages who can't pay. Without the drive back home, the child need to walk several miles.

This is what people call moral dilemmas. To help a child, or to follow the contract.

There's no dilemma preventing you from helping the child.

It is possible that you can spend money to buy a new copy, in the same way that the cab driver could "pay" his employer the drive the child home. However, anyone who sees the child could also spend the money for the cab. Is the argument here that they are all equally moral bankrupt when they child end up walking all those miles home? Does it matter that the cab driver was driving in that direction anyway?

Many people around the world can say that they are helping children to become the best they can be. Someone who refuse sharing can not. Which one are you?

This is a “let them eat cake” response. All problems could be solved if one assumes endless resources.

Also, you are assuming the software is still for sale. Perhaps it never was on sale; perhaps it’s a student-only edition provided by an institution. The point is: There are two choices: Obey the restriction the owner has decided and deny your help, or help the child and break your promise to obey the restrictions.

I could do that, and then the ethical burden would fall on me to motivate why society would benefit more from my use of the software than it would benefit everyone I would potentially deny to receive a copy of it.

But, the way you phrase it (“claim on the fruits of the software authors labor”) presupposes that it is property, and a rivalrous one at that. However, software is a non-rivalrous good, and whether it should be considered property is the question we are debating.

Also, does a mere legal barrier suffice to make something an excludable good? Could you turn, for example, the observing of the Statue of Liberty into an excludable good merely by passing a law mandating that only those allowed may observe it?

That maths degree probably means, at the least, that you're comfortable learning graph theory, combinatorics, discrete optimisation, probability theory, etc. These things are the foundation of systems and computational biology.

The software development skills are also sorely needed - a huge proportion of computational biology software is unusable outside of the lab that developed it, and well-engineered software underpins a LOT of successful research. Many great ideas go wasted due to lack of good programmers to implement them properly.

I would say there are two ways in:

1. Stay in your current job, and do hobby work collaborating with scientists to write scientific FOSS and publish it. If you're interested in this, I have a long list of ideas.

2. Transition to science - get a job in a bio lab or at a computational biology/genomics institute. Depending on the specific problem you want to work on and where in the world you are, I can suggest places.

Probably 1, then 2 would be a good idea.

I live in the Boulder, Colorado area, and I've even applied recently for a job at a biotech firm. There are plenty around here. Only saw that one job opening, though.

Beyond that, I just don't have the vision or lack the key insight on where to go or what to do next. That's where your item (1) would come into play, I suppose. I need to be guided. It's a difficult position to be in. I'm basically saying "I have skills and want to contribute, but need a step by step guide, and probably continuing guidance along the way, before I can contribute anything valuable."

Feel free to get in touch with me if you'd like to chat.

Chemical fertilizer can't come anywhere close to the fertility and output of a rainforest. Look into holistic environmental systems; living soil, the role of fungi and bacteria in the capture and sustained release of nutrients, the role of animals in the growth/death cycle.

The world's food crisis is not caused by a lack of petrochemical distribution, but by the abuse (and thus death) of the soil.

After a plantation is dead from over fertilization, no life will grow. With nothing to hold the soil in place it will wash into the sea.

Forgive me, I'm a bit out of my element here: I assume you're talking about "genetically modified foods"? How do you plan on dealing with the anti-GMO doomers? That perspective seems to be pervasive.

There are some "naturalists" who are just fundamentally against it, but I think a lot of people just don't like that they're so untested. If we can do more long- term studies feeding animals these foods I think you could make inroads with those folks.

Also, though there's nothing inherent about GMOs that encourages pesticide use, in practice many of the existing GMO crops are designed to facilitate heavy use of Roundup, which makes people uncomfortable. Again, because there is limited science about what the long-term effects of that are.

So maybe when you're thinking about GMO research it's good to keep in mind that "research" includes not just development, but testing, which helps address the challenge you raise.

The biggest risk GMO has is over-confidence in human science.

Definitely agree with you there.

I was speaking to the "tried and true" or "test of time" aspect of traditional crops.

someone cross seeds, radiate them, etc... gets a seed that naturally produce a harmless parasite poison. He sacks that. Keep crossing, radiating, sprinkling magic dust, whatever those guys do... now he gets one that is healthy even after being bombarded with some common pesticide. But that common pesticide is public domain. So they keep doing their thing until they get a seed that survives whatever pesticide the company can patent and exclusively distribute. Is it better then the others? well, the pesticide to not have been patented have to use weird stuff that is probably carcinogen (good reason to not have been patented before) and the nutrients is probably worse than the others... but if they sack the research on the others nobody would have that option. anyway, i'm tired of typing. but you get the idea.

I'm sorry that you had to take inspiration from a lowly businessman to become a scientist. That man was against open source software just a decade ago.

He wrote, as we approach the centenary of The War To End All Wars.

No one with an appreciation of human history would write such a thing. Nor would they imagine that the technological innovations between us and that war have been marginally more important than those in the century proceeding WW I. The Green Revolution is fine, but it seems hard to believe its productivity improvements outstrip those from the mechanization of agriculture, or the use of railroads to move grain. Polio prevention is awesome, but its gains pale before those from imposing simple sanitation codes and providing clean water.

And perhaps the "salvation through technology" set should reflect on the impact of the addition of mobilization by railroad to the diplomatic problems following the assassination of Ferdinand. Or on the confusion, to horrifying cost, of military and grand strategy by the introduction of the machine gun. The unintended consequences of those innovations, and the complete failure of technology to solve them, made for the costliest and stupidest war to its date.

By all means, pursue better and better technology. But the world's deepest and most serious problems have always been political, and always will be, and will always be beyond resolution by better gadgets.

Even when we include the horrors of the world wars, the 20th century had fewer per-capita battle deaths (both civilian and military) than the centuries before it.

The same trend is detectable at decade timescales, and shows that we are still improving since the world wars.

Stephen Pinker's book "The Better Angels of our Nature" goes into the underlying statistics to support these assertions.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1igscl/what_i...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anthropology/comments/12gpj0/are_ste...

There are plenty more if you search in

reddit.com/r/askhistorians and reddit.com/r/Anthropology

So i'm not sure this debate is settled yet.

The second takes issue with his use of per-capita comparisons and suggests that an absolute rate may be a better measure. This is extremely silly and Pinker spends very little time discussing it because it really is absurd to entertain. For one, it implies the only true solution to any violence is massive population control. And two, it negates any comparison to cultural or behavioral change by simply pointing to the population size of the planet. Think of the statement, "Modern medicine has not advanced from the hunter gather days because more people under the age of 40 die every year than did 5000 years ago."

Edit: The second comment brings up a third point that the lower rate of violence does not imply we are better off, and is therefore questioning what we should define as violence. Pinker again readily addresses this issue by explicitly defining the type of violence he is analyzing, physical, and repeatedly stating that these issues are outside the scope of his book.

For example, in the first link the author summarizes his long comment: " In short, he's extremely sloppy with his numbers and relies on almost no scholarly sources. I would not accept the type of work he puts in from an undergraduate.". So maybe Pinker does jump to conclusions that not necessary result from the data.

The third point , about how do we define violence is crucially important. I wonder if you counted the homicide rate in nazi germany before wwii or in soviet russia after wwii , you've get much lower numbers than pre-history(per capita). But it's hard to tell with a strait face those are "better" or less violent than pre history.

Is he forgetting that Pinker writes mass-market books, not journal articles?

Here is a direct answer to the question. There's a ton more info on the topic and a huge portion of his book is dedicated to it:

*Wasn’t the 20th century the most violent in history?

Probably not; see chapter 5, especially pp. 189–200. Historical data from past centuries are far less complete, but the existing estimates of death tolls, when calculated as a proportion of the world’s population at the time, show at least nine atrocities before the 20th century (that we know of) which may have been worse than World War II. They arose from collapsing empires, horse tribe invasions, the slave trade, and the annihilation of native peoples, with wars of religion close behind. World War I doesn’t even make the top ten.

Also, a century comprises a hundred years, not just fifty, and the second half of the 20th century was host to a Long Peace (chapter 5) and a New Peace (chapter 6) with unusually low rates of death in warfare.

I don't pretend to know if it is the correct measure, but it is at least an interesting measure of the human resources being put to war.

http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature

Others have cited Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature, so I won't rehash.

But I couldn't disgree more with your comment that "the world's deepest and most serious problems have always been political, and always will be, and will always be beyond resolution by better gadgets." Technology CAN help. It can't help everything, and I don't think he was claiming that. But if you think your live would have been better in the 14th century, you're insane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_democracie...

My favourite example is Finland v. Allies in WW2.

The spirit of the argument "there is no(t much) war between democracies" is that "when everyone gets a say, they generally don't choose to march off to war". Given the spirit of the argument, to then define democracy as forms of government with quite limited voter eligibility, is somewhat intentionally missing the point.

> He wrote, as we approach the centenary of The War To End All Wars.

The diminishing in size and frequency of armed conflict is either evidence that we'll have less destruction due to war in the future, or more destruction due to war in the future. It's not clear to me what model predicts more war, when observing less war--can you explain under what circumstances your model would predict less war?

Good luck solving the political problems of our day without technology to help.

I don't think anyone is arguing that technology alone will solve our most pressing problems, but you seem to take offense in that straw man. Do note that BMG is also focused on education (which to many is a good way to solve many political problems) and talks about influencing political decisions (noting that politicians are often risk averse, so that showing the way and reducing the risk with intelligent investments is another way to help).

Here's the funny part: your claim may even have some validity. But increased mobility is a very good thing, in the long run. I would argue that we need much more of it. I acknowledge it can cause problems in the short term, especially when there are very large differences in living conditions. But as the poverty rates in different areas slowly converge, I think this will become less of a problem.

Yes, the issues of the world are political. But demonizing technology doesn't help. Pointing out that technology didn't fix the problem would be a more reasonable way to make your point than "look how technology was used to make things worse".

More people living doesn't necessarily mean people living better lives. In a finite world with limits to growth, relaxing one bottleneck only leads to the next bottleneck.

(I use the term limits to growth in reference to the book Limits To Growth -- http://joshuaspodek.com/the_best_book_on_the_environment_eco... -- which strongly informs my perspective and I recommend to others as particularly relevant here. It offers a systems perspective -- http://joshuaspodek.com/systems-perspective-population -- necessary to create effective strategies to help everyone in the context of a finite planet.)

Reducing suffering caused by disease undoubtedly improves people's lives, but increasing the population without the ability to provide everyone resources doesn't. We know that simply having enough resources for everyone doesn't mean everyone will get enough resources. How we distribute resources matters and that's a social issue, not technical. Trying to solve social issues with technology doesn't work that well. Changing social patterns is much harder. Capitalism is great at increasing the pie, but poor at distributing it to those without capital.

I applaud his optimism and support for reducing suffering from disease and supporting education. I suspect he's helping create a world with similar fraction of people suffering versus happy, just more of them. And accelerating toward limits to growth, some of which we can't overcome with technology.

(If you challenge the belief that the planet has limits to growth or even that we're near any, I recommend the excellent blog "Do the Math" -- http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/post-index -- which looks at physical consequences to growth by a Caltech-trained physicist. I also recommend it if you like reading thoughtful, intelligent blogs by knowledgeable people who do the math behind what they talk about.)

In short: it's bullshit.

Oh, the poor little wogs, they lead such brutal lives, it's so sad that there are so many of them, if only there were fewer of them the world would be a better place. This is the sub-text that I see underlying these comments. It's "surplus population" crap yet again.

These are people. People with dreams and ambitions. People with lives and families. People who are capable of amazing things if given a chance. They're not just grubby uneducated unwashed masses. These are folks who will build the world of the 21st century, who will help lift their own countries out of poverty. These are people who will build fusion reactors, and space ships, and nano-technology. People who will cure cancer, create art, and music, and literature. They don't need people who think that they are wastes of resources, all they need is a chance, and just enough help to start building their own futures.

On the question of population growth, families are getting smaller across the globe. If you're in the UK, I recommend this excellent programme presented by Hans Rosling.

Don't Panic: The truth about population http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03h8r1j

From the programme description: "With seven billion people already on our planet, we often look to the future with dread, but Rosling's message is surprisingly upbeat. Almost unnoticed, we have actually begun to conquer the problems of rapid population growth and extreme poverty."

Rosling is, of course, a well-known statistician so he actually presents his conclusions based on real data.

What utter nonsense. If you want people to take your opinions seriously, you should start having opinions that aren't obviously wrong.

I don't think surplus population is the issue (in the present) because we do have enough resources for everyone. At least to give everyone a decent standard of living if not a first world one. And the way population growth is declining I don't think it will become a problem. Not the real problem anyways.

However yours is a terrible argument against overpopulation fears. It is possible for there to be too many people for the world to support, regardless what you think of them as individuals.

Bill Gates is a massive investor in Monsanto, if you are naive you might think Bill Gates is a saint. He is really just a globalist with an extremely stubborn perspective of the future.

Think of his contributions to IT: Proprietary software.

Anyone that is a fan of Bill Gates cannot also be a fan of humanity unfortunately.

a) bringing affordable / usable home computing to the majority (something I usually see Jobs credited with)

b) using a large amount of his vast wealth for good causes (I never heard of Jobs doing anything).

Several parties have said Jobs donated to causes, but would often do so anonymously. Known is that he donated to the Democratic Party and to cancer research.

As for Gates: he is once again the richest person in the world. He could give away half of his wealth and he would still be in the top 6. Let’s not think too long about how he amassed his fortune, but I’ll give one example: under his leadership at Microsoft, he ’gave away’ tens of millions of Windows licenses to schools, so that kids would grow up being used to using Windows. It was presented as charity and Microsoft received tax benefits from doing so.

I take it you aren't a fan of GMO foods then? If so, then you are wrong. I'll leave it to former anti-GMO activist Mark to make that argument[1].

If you are talking about their business practices, then generally I agree with you. I can understand the point of view of people who think otherwise, though. I think people who agree with Monsanto's view are wrong, but that is a disagreement about methods, not outcomes.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/09/mark-lyna...

GMOs present numerous issues. Proprietary interest in seed corn and yet another usurpation of privileges by corporate interests are a key issue. It's not intrinsic to GMO, but it's quite the extant problem. Genetic drift is another. Encouraging use of pesticides (through resistance).

And ultimately, they don't address the root issue: humans have to live within ecological limits.

Also: oh boy, Monsanto = evil, haha.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore#Demographics

What if all the progress we've built is not built on any solid foundation? How much of our QOL boosts are based on actual increases in carrying capacity vs. capital drawdown? What happens when we run out of capital and built a system dependent on it's continual usage?

The reasoning is that capitalism can solve EVERY problem that it creates, but not until that problem is right up in it's face (because you know, capitalism is so short sighted, which incidentally is not a bad thing, just an odd trait).

So we wait and hope that the capitalists are right, which they of course aren't, but then they'll say they're sorry and we will feel good again.

OOPS, we are sorry, our predictions did not pan out. Good that we didnt follow our own conclusions because life would have been so much worse and it was not necessary.

I'm a Popperian. When the facts (best available science) changes, I change my opinions. Also known as "science".

Whatever their faults, the Malthusians made predictions. To be debated, validated, debunked. Far more useful than the techno utopian unverifiable views of the libertarian ostriches.

And capitalism isn't that bad. If a resource is running out, people can predict that decades in advance and have strong incentive to conserve it or invest in replacements. The price gradually rises over many years giving the world time to adapt, it doesn't just disappear overnight.

Malthusianism is correct in a closed system. Predictions of doom and gloom are as of yet unfulfilled because humans are clever and find new pockets of resources to exploit.

Do you believe our Earth is a closed system or an open system?

Malthusianism is incorrect in that they did not foresee ever increasing productivity leading to costs approaching zero. So reaching many limits has been postponed (e.g. peak oil is an economic issue).

I'm personally optimistic. We're in a bear race. I hope and work towards a sustainable economic model. Trivially, that means decoupling economic growth from resource consumption. I hope it happens.

But don't pretend the current situation is anything but dire. A positive outcome is far from certain.

* Earth is not a closed system, it receives an enormous influx of energy from the sun

* We are no where close to using even a fraction of that potential, or using too much of it, most of our energy use is in the form of digging up time-compressed solar energy.

* We are enormously wasteful in manufacturing, no where close to what can be achieved according to the laws of physics

* Life itself shows you that you can manufacture or an enormous quantity of material and continue to recycle it sustainable over eons. So while our current manufacturing techniques cannot sustainably scale forever, there's no fundamental reason why we can't have a manufacturing ecosystem that works more like a biological one

* Matter is neither created nor destroyed by our industrial processes, only rearranged. We benefitted by digging up low-entropy material filtered and concentrated by slow geological/biological processors, but again, there is no proof that we cannot, in an energy efficient manner, recover the used material. Whether through bio-technology or nanotechnology.

The basic premise that man is clever and keeps finding ways to postpone the Malthusian bombs is correct, but it's not just because we keep finding new pockets of resources to exploit, it's because we are getting more efficient at using those resources.

Not to mention the fact that the assumption that GDP growth is equal to manufacturing or population growth is wrong. The math allows value of goods and services to go up even as amount of energy, people, or raw materials used goes down.

We have clear challenges, and we should be scared enough to invest in them heavily. But if you're not a techno-optimist, that we will find ways to address and improve these issues without throwing away our entire style of life, and instead thing the world is going to renounce the last 300 years in favor of a return to life before the industrial revolution, you're backing a set of policies that will never succeed.

As I see it, if collapse is coming, only our smarts are going to save us, not a retreat.

There's something called "Jevon's Paradox". It asserts that increases in efficiency (via technology) increases consumption rather than decreases.

And no, I'm not a Luddite. The only way is forward. Full speed. Any hesitation means humanity loses.

The extent and degree of risk each poses to our life are debatable.

> Do you believe our Earth is a closed system or an open system?

The sun being a source of massive amounts of ongoing energy puts it squarely into open system territory in my opinion. Also, the human brain's ability to learn and build tools to improve upon what we are given by nature, as well as the ability for society to work together for common goals also to me distinguishes us from a classic closed system.

> But don't pretend the current situation is anything but dire. A positive outcome is far from certain.

These two sentences seem contradictory to me. I don't see anything particularly dire about our current state of affairs at all. Certainly we could be far better stewards of the planet, but I see very little that indicates a "positive outcome" (depending on your definition I suppose) is unlikely. At some point we may push the earth beyond its carrying capacity in certain areas, at which point we can simply shift to something else. Where I can agree is, some things are more important than others. If we lost the means of our current mass produced agriculture for example, we'd have to make some very serious lifestyle changes very quickly. But life would go on, and it may even be more fulfilling in some ways.

Misremembering, but there's a Soviet era quote about being 3 days away from revolt. People need to eat.

Yes, Life (sic) will find a way. But governments are far more brittle. Should we (humanity) experience food riots, things will get very bad very quickly.

Food won't vanish, like poof. It's about the disruption. That's when "normal" channels drys up and food is only available thru the black market. During a famine, there's always plenty of food. But the speculators withhold supply and the consumers don't have enough cash. (Note that I said cash, vs credit or savings.)

That's when people starve. That's when civil society (law and order) breaks down.

I'm all for fixing corruption and increasing transparency of governance worldwide, including here at home.

Perhaps. I've been accused of having a random free association narrative most of the time. :)

We seem largely on the same page about the challenges. So we're cool. I'm far more pessimistic than most people. For instance, I believe we're already way past the tipping point on climate change, per the opinions of the experts, and most people aren't there yet.

There is an interesting Ted talk on this: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_o...

  >>> More people living doesn't necessarily mean people 
  living better lives. In a finite world with limits to  
  growth, relaxing one bottleneck only leads to the next  
  bottleneck.

Granted there are now lots of other things to kill the child, malaria etc, but I guarantee every single person on HN will rather take the chance of malaria than the certainty of not being born in the first place.

I also guarantee that most of HN places themselves on the "not yet happy" side of the fence, so I find your argument which seems to be "its no good bringing another child into this world, they might not die of starvation but something will get them, and they will never be happy" to fly in the face of, well, millions of years of evolution. We've always been unhappy.

More people is a good thing, more people, and in a world that knows it should use its wealth to provide decent sanitation, opportunities, education, peace and justice, it is an unalloyed good.

Perhaps that's true. But what about kids in all the destitute places on the planet? Using an average HN user as your test case just shows how biased your perspective is. Personally I'd rather not be born than be born in a place where I have a high change of dying of malaria, or dysentery.

Huh? And nobody asked you to reply to his comment. My goodness tptacek, this is a discussion board. Open-ended conversations take place here that drift off to all places. Sometimes they lead to interesting points, sometimes they don't. I see no reason to mock someone for that.

Seriously? You prefer a 0% chance, over, say, a 60% chance?

But then I'd jump at the offer of a 4% chance of making it over a 0% chance any day, so I guess it's just a different mindset.

EDIT: Come to think of it, if he's correct in his assumption that the non-privileged people of the world would tend to share his opinion, we should expect to see extremely high levels of suicide in these regions should we not?

The whole idea of rather not having been born is specifically because that precludes any of those emotions that make it hard to off yourself no matter how bad your situation is. It also removes the usual arguments against suicide such as impact on your family and friends.

I'm happy to consider that going through the act of suicide has some additional emotional overhead that could account for a lower rate than we might expect. But, will you consider the possibility that maybe life in a 3rd world country isn't actually so bad that it isn't worth living?

My original statement was simply a personal preference that I would choose not to live a life of suffering out of some romantic idea of the nobility of suffering, and that I'm sure there are plenty of people (especially those who end up on the wrong side of the statistics of various diseases) who would agree. It's absurd to think that someone should want to struggle through any sort of adversity for the chance of making it through on the other side. The rationality of this choice would completely depend on the various probabilities involved.

>But if the life is so harsh that it's not worth living, more people would commit suicide, at least those with no families.

This also isn't true. The self-preservation instinct is a powerful force. One can rationally decide that life isn't worth living but still be incapable of actually ending it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6719288 "Personally I'd rather not be born than be born in a place where I have a high change of dying of malaria, or dysentery."

Maybe it's a nuance of the language, but "rather not be born" and "not worth living" are roughly equivalent in my interpretation.

While life in the 3rd world, or places where you have a high change of dying of malaria, dysentery, etc is not a walk in the park, except for the very worst places people are probably far happier than you imagine. The human spirit is really quite resilient.

At the end of the day, I think we'll both decide to believe what we want on the matter. :)

But you don't exactly see millions of people offing themselves, so clearly the human spirit survives such adverse conditions?

1) Rely on their prospective parents decision. To improve the parents decision making you attempt to improve their education and increase access to contraception.

2) Enforce laws about how many children a couple can have.

Most places have followed method (1). China followed method (2) (but also increased education).

Both methods seem to have resulted in dramatically better standards of living in less than a generation, and many people from drastically poor areas have gone on to live fulfilling lives.

Indeed some have accomplished more than I ever will - for example, the greatest distance runner of all time[1] grew up as 1 of 10 children of subsistence farmers during the Ethiopian 83-85 famine[2]. You can't get much deeper in poverty than that, and yet he won 2 Olympic Gold medals, 8 World Championships and broke 27 world records.

I'm unconvinced he would think he should never have been born.

Also - as the linked article shows - it is possible to tackle problems like malaria relatively easily and cheaply, if there is the will for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Gebrselassie

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethi...

Yeah... the 1 in a million person is always the wrong person to ask. Perhaps if you asked the millions who have suffered and died if they would have been better off not ever being born, you might get a more meaningful statistic.

A sustainable population is better. There are many indications that the current world population is unsustainable. With the oceans being quickly depleted of fish, for one small example, I doubt that even 2 billion people can survive in the long run. Everyone eating Solyent is not a solution in my book.

Essentially we are setting ourselves up for things like massive famines, biological diseases, etc.

It has nothing to do with happiness, and more people means more people suffering.

Incorrect, that idea exists in the heads of many people, and many of them are doing something about it.

> the things needed to keep that population in a good condition are not manifesting.

Incorrect. Standard of living is improving for most people.

> Essentially we are setting ourselves up for things like massive famines, biological diseases, etc.

I'm open minded and willing to be convinced, but it will take more than a mere opinion. I don't see anything compelling in the news that even suggests this is likely.

> It has nothing to do with happiness, and more people means more people suffering.

So we shall just ignore happiness, but focus on suffering? Got it.

Bottom line is this, I was replying to the response to this comment "More people living doesn't necessarily mean people living better lives. In a finite world with limits to growth, relaxing one bottleneck only leads to the next bottleneck." that said "this doesn't even make sense"

I'm showing that it does make some sense, though there is plenty of room for debate. I think too many people misinterpreted his comment for Malthusianism.

Here are a few papers on the matter:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1846696/pdf/brme...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3586590/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1811054/pdf/proc...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1332674/

Actually no. More people isn't automatically good. Taken to it's extreme this would mean just making as many people as is physically possible with the lowest standard of living possible. There has to be some trade off between number of people vs happiness per person.

Then there is the many worlds thing argument http://lesswrong.com/lw/ws/for_the_people_who_are_still_aliv...

You would have to assume that anyone who didn't want to be here would have topped themselves already.

Quite simply it is this, extrapolation of closed systems always fails to predict the behavior of those systems. The two most interesting examples are the use of energy and birth rates. Birth rates go down as countries become more prosperous for a variety of reasons, but the effect is that once it gets below replacement rate (as it has in Japan and elsewhere) the extrapolating the population leads it going to 0. We intuitively know that it is unlikely a population will simply die off due to a failure to reproduce. But it is easier some how to imagine a crushing horde of people, too many too feed, crammed into pens. Why? Energy is another area where we've constantly predicted (again via extrapolation) the end of the world as we know it, and again it has failed to materialize again and again.

These are examples of the responsiveness of the system to forcing functions. People don't reproduce as much if they are not worried that their children won't live to adulthood, energy as an expense is minimized by gains in efficency, process changes. The US' carbon 'footprint' has remained flat for years, policy change, people change, the economics change.

So predictions based on extrapolation are fallible if not simply wrong.

As countries grow richer birthrates tend to trend downwards, for a variety of reasons. The one country that actually took population growth seriously and tried doing something about it (China) continues to get shit over its policies today (sometimes for good reason). Just providing people in developing countries with access to contraception ignores many of the reasons that people in those countries choose to have large families.

Finally, I've read that UCSD guy's blog, and while I respect his expertise, I can't get over the fact that his analysis often seems to rest upon rather shaky assumptions. For example, one of the blog posts he links to ("Galactic-Scale Energy") argues that exponential growth means that even a modest ~2% growth rate, sustained into the far future, would result in humanity needing to consume ludicrous amounts of energy. The math is sound, but the assumption is that the human population will also continue increasing exponentially (e.g. 1%), meaning that economic output continues to be divided among the current populace at a rate that is not necessarily exponential. However, if population growth really is slowing down (as statistics show [0]), then 2% growth into the far future with a constant or slowly increasing population results in a ludicrous amount of economic output available on a per-capita basis. The author's point is that unchecked growth is a bad thing; I don't think unchecked economic growth is even meaningful in the context of a population that is no longer increasing. Many of his other posts contain similar 'spherical cow' assumptions meant to make his mathematical models more appealing in terms of presenting his overall message.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_ra..., data from US Census Bureau.

A child born in the west will consume vast amounts more resources than multiple children born in poverty.

Empowering women, with education, economic freedom, and reproductive choice, is the Correct Answer.

Fortunately, much progress has been made and will continue.

36 billion by the end of the century. You would have to convert all the land on Earth to farms and you still wouldn't be able to feed this many people.

216 billion by 2200 Which is almost four times as many as we could support if every planet in the solar system supported the same amount of people Earth does now.

1296 by 2300 An absurdly large number of people. You need to start expanding to other solar systems if you haven't already because this one is running out of resources. Transporting billions of people interstellar distances would take a ton of energy also.

362,797,056 billion (363 quadrillion) by the year 3000 We are running out of planets in the milky way to house them all.

2.19×10^25 by the year 4000

1.33×10^33 by 5000 We are out of planets in the universe to house them all.

8.02^40 by 6000 Now we are running out of atoms to make more humans.

And this is only 4,000 years, not even the amount of time civilization has been around. Not even a tiny fraction of the length of time humans have been around. Barely a blink of the eye for the age of the Earth, let alone the universe.

Exponential growth is a serious force.

It is naive and stupid to state that overpopulation increases the chances of a species' survival.

Please show your work.

Attempt #2: Gravitational potential energy = kinetic energy = .5massescape velocity^2. = .5human bodyweight kg 11,200 m/s. Convert the units and you've got a few years worth of calories (which I think I mixed up with kilocalories the first time).

Fertility is below replacement rates in China, and it's population will peak in the next decade. India's will peak by 2060. Population in Africa continues to grow, but with economic development there is every reason to believe that it can follow in the footsteps of India and China.

See: http://www.economist.com/node/21541834

---

"In society after society, he saw, when the mortality rate falls—specifically, below 10 deaths per 1,000 people—the birth rate follows, and population growth stabilizes. “It goes against common sense,” Gates says. Most parents don’t choose to have eight children because they want to have big families, it turns out, but because they know many of their children will die.

“If a mother and father know their child is going to live to adulthood, they start to naturally reduce their population size,” says Melinda.

In terms of giving, Gates did a 180-degree turn. Rather than prevent births, he would aim his billions at saving the kids already born. “We moved pretty heavily into vaccines once we understood that,” says Gates.

---

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/11/02/the-sec...

On such a button-pushing subject linking to your own blog. As if you have the very best post ever written on the topic. Even if you did though (which I doubt very much you have) humility should lead you away from self-promotion. If your writing is that great others will eventually submit your posts and link to you, won't they? Also, a quick look at your submissions history shows that every single submission is one of your own blog posts. In short, you are nothing but a self-promoter.

> More people living doesn't necessarily mean people living better lives.

Yes. And. So. What? Where did you get that from the article? Better disease prevention leads to a _reduction_ in population growth. And this is the observed trend.

> limits to growth

Ok. So we have an energy growth ceiling. Yes. And. So. What? Where did you get in the article that Gates is calling for _unbounded_ energy growth? I read a lot of techno-utopianism, I read a lot about disease prevention. But _unbounded_ energy growth. Nope.

> Capitalism is great at increasing the pie, but poor at distributing it to those without capital.

This speaks directly to the article. Gater says that he is a fan of capitalism. He is suggesting that the current economic model is a good model. You are not. (I agree with you to some extent by the way.) You need to articulate a _better_ model instead of just disagreeing. Are you advocating more socialism? A Tobin tax? A carbon tax? What model are you proposing that better distributes wealth than the current one. Arguably Bill Gates's own action show that in order to address his needs he had to _go outside_ capitalism (i.e., he had to turn to philanthropy) to achieve his goals. This and his seeming antipathy to open-source and free-software are two very real areas you could take serious issue with Bill Gates rather than your overpopulation/finite_world/limits_to_growth schtick.

Pity I was late to this party :)

So the best cure for overpopulation isn't limiting growth it is accelerating it.

As much as it sucks to admit, there's no shortcut here. You need to go through every stage of development. Societies can't skip from step A where there is rampant starvation and disease and basic needs aren't met to step D where there is a flourishing middle class and population stability and control, without first going through steps B and C where basic needs are met but there is also overpopulation and widespread poverty.

If you ask me, disease should be our #1 priority. Human beings can do almost anything if they are well, but if they are sick it becomes much, much harder to function and provide for their own basic needs. They are much more likely to starve if they are not well enough to go out and work.

Poverty fuels rich people? Most likely in some cases. Having layer of fear between these two. Either fear/like/hate other and experience themselves thanks to other.

Some play life seriously, some not so, one with serious face will try hang onto ledge for as long as he can, nailing others to the ledge so they won't fall off too. Success is achieved, people don't fall off, but nails in palm makes it no pleasure also.

What alarms me is that there seems to be the morbid implication in your words that disease serves as population control. Improving quality of life and reducing unwanted pregnancy are parallel and not incompatible efforts. And I think they are two of the most important challenges of our generation.

[1] http://www.psfk.com/2013/04/bill-gates-condom-challenge.html

I rather think living is a necessary prerequisite to living better.

Maybe it could e.g. when offering a 'globally funded retirement provision' to people who agree to only have one child. Or maybe if you only offer Malaria/Polio 'technology' to people who agree to this and that condition.

Given this situation, to then turn around and claim that GM is the answer is ludicrous. Modern civilization has clearly lost its way by diverging too far from nature, which abhors a monoculture. The obvious and sustainable path is a move towards heterogeneous planting patterns, and ideally toward greater decentralization in land ownership, production and the re-recognition of longer term concepts such as sustainability, social and environmental concern.

A simple example: I have read that many farms in the US are actually energy-negative, ie. they cannot produce enough calories in agricultural output to offset the oil they burn.

For those here wanting to improve the world through agricultural change, please consider reading some of the philosophy behind permaculture and the short but thought-provoking book The One Straw Revolution then applying technical knowledge to building robots that can efficiently harvest densely interplanted crops from potentially reformed large-scale agricultural operations that may accept a high variety of species and thus embrace natural methods for pest control and moisture retention, eliminating most agricultural overhead in existing operations. New operations should be smaller and decentralized, because we need exercise, nature is nice, and robots aren't free.

Tangentially, last night I met a guy who has spent three years trying to find ways to save coral reefs and said that on a global scale we're screwed - they're all going to be gone within less than a generation. I spent a few weeks in Sumatra last month and the rainforests for which it was once famed are almost gone. Meanwhile in many Asian population centers (I'm in Bangkok at the moment), a view from above confirms that concrete dominates a landscape of air conditioning and energy-inefficient floor to ceiling glass, pockmarked only by the nervous system of fossil fuel burning transportation infrastructure, the odd plane flying overhead about a brown haze, and the glimmer of thousands of unnatural lights feeding on the same fossils, while themselves produced through an alchemy poisonous chemicals. The virus that scarred the landscape this way, humans, potter at all hours throughout, concerning themselves with alcohol, fashion, colosseums of sports on television, and reproduction.

But in this case it does, as quality of life over the entire earth has improved over the past 100 years and continues to improve.

Growing inequality does not mean quality of life is decreasing (the point you are disputing).

> More and more people (in the UK) relying on food banks.

Has general standard of living decreased? By most any measure it has not. People have vastly more resources than their ancestors did, but if you make poor choices yes you may have a visit to a food bank in your future. And there is a food bank to visit.

> Falling real wages, with increased rents.

This part I can agree with in many cases. But, let's not forget the vast improvement in affordable entertainment options available now compared to the past.

You would have us believe everything is worse. This is not true.

1. Change "Foreign Aid" to be based on direct micro-loans rather than dumping excess agricultural commodities and destroying local markets and pumping money into corrupt governments that steal it.

2. End the Drug War. It's killing people and is the foundation of organized crime. And why grow food when you can make more money growing dope?

3. Recognize women's rights: unfettered access to contraception/abortion and education.

I realize the "sex" part of #3 may be controversial to some, but those who are offended can just fuck off.

It was kind of a play on words, however, the faction that it was addressed to is so militant that it isn't completely out of place. Try talking to an anti-abortion protester about preventing abortions via sex education and contraception and they will reject even that.

I'll do my best to be nicer next time.

However, to even bother posting something like that, you have to be trying to do one of two things:

(1) Trying to convert others with differing opinions to your side

(2) Make yourself feel superior and smarter by talking down to those with different opinions

#1 seems to be a more meaningful use of one's time, so I was offering some insight as to how to be more effective in doing that. If #2 is what you're after, then by all means, please continue.

When rich countries dump their excess food on a poor country, the local agriculture industry dies, and everyone on up the chain suffers. Cheap food sounds good in theory, but as you say, it is of little consequence if you have no steady source of income – which typically needs to start with farming, with services being built around that. Reducing/removing the external food supply and providing micro loans on which to build a local agriculture economy could have some benefit though, assuming you can actually get the resources to the people without corrupt powers taking over, of course.

I do see problems with our prolonged use of fertilizers and anything that can be done to resolve that is a good thing, but I'm not sure if it will really help the poor. It will just make growing food even easier for wealthy nations, making things even more difficult for those less fortunate.

> Are there any stable economics of the world that are not built upon natural resources?

Singapore?

This definitely seems the most obvious route to improving the world.

The nerdrage over all that was a little hard to take seriously even before we had historical perspective on it.

edit: I'm actually HAPPY that MSFT were found guilty of abusing their monopoly power. I just want to keep it in perspective, not just in the omg BillG is saving the world perspective, but frankly in perspective relative to all the evil that corporations are capable of doing...

Even if you were right, I don't think the lives of Silicon Valley yuppies have been "ruined" in quite the same way as some of the victims of Chinese factory production lines....

Indeed, while you are getting your panties in a twist about things you think happened in the 1990s, Gates has saved millions of lives.

Have you considered worrying less about a few capitalists being "ruined" (while living in the world's richest society and consuming a huge proportion of the world's resources) and worrying more about the millions suffering from war, starvation, disease and various other afflictions?

I don't recall any of them being being brought up on anti-trust charges and losing.

And no amount of saving lives wipes away those you ruined.

You want to compare the effects of these lives "ruined" (whose exactly?) with the Chinese workers making your products committing suicide?

Second, Gates wasn't uniquely bad, and he had plenty of equally ruthless rivals including Jobs, Ellison and Noorda. He was, as mentioned, held to much higher standards.

Third, it still shows a profound lack of humanity to think that what was mostly antitrust-theatre has anything like the same importance as real life and death issues in the wider world.

Well fuck off then, we're done. I'm not going to waste my time reiterating Microsoft's crimes to someone's who apparently blind to them and continues to throw out red herrings.

Chinese workers... red herring, nothing to do with this.

Re Chinese workers, denial of concrete evidence is a good way to show you lost the argument. Also, that you are desperately short of common humanity.