So let's see, if the meaning I have derived from the numbers is wrong, and you are right and that growth is reduced by the availability of food, then that means that the reduction of growth in the developed world must mean I'm starving! Shit, these chips I'm eating must be imaginary, and Malthus was right all along!
Fertility in contemporary society is tied to economic growth, not food production. Might I suggest you look into the research of Hans Rosling.
However you're too tightly wound to have an enjoyable debate with, so this will be my last interaction, one way or the other.
I realize that when I said 1.5 I meant 2.38, but I mentally was working with 0.7 at that point instead of the actual 0.07. So I'm even more right with that error accounted for.
I don't see you quoting any specific mortality figures, funny that. I suppose it's because they don't actually support your argument. Let's look at India because it's the elephant in the room (that's a pun!). In 1970 each woman had 5.25 children on average, and if 119.73 died per thousand, that meant mortality of 0.12 per woman. In 2007 each woman had 2.8 children on average, and if 54.57 died per 1000, that meant mortality of 0.05 per woman.
Difference in fertility: 2.45 Difference in mortality: 0.07
Let me spell it out for you, since you seem a little slow: there are almost two and half fewer children born to each woman in India today vs. four decades ago. There is less than one child more per woman in India due to any difference in mortality rates. This is a net decrease of more than 1.5 children per woman. This is echoed throughout the other examples. Even if you added in child mortality (depending on your definition of child) that wouldn't change things by much more than a few hundreths in most cases, tenths in a few. Nowhere does it touch the still huge decreases in fertility.
What do you mean whole number compared to fractional, do you think that makes a difference on its face?
I was speaking in colloquial terms, wherein it is assumed that 'fractional' means less than one. Of course a fraction is only a representation of a difference of values and can be far greater than one, it was meant to be a rhetorical device using colloquialisms to contrast values less than one with values greater than one.
Are you trying to make the case that population growth is not exponential?
If the figures are right, it's not. It's also unlikely for most changes to be exponential FOREVAR.
I can't figure out what, exactly, argument you are offering that would counter Malthus here... other than name-calling.
That's because you're assuming the numbers prove you right, when I have shown that they prove you wrong. You will proceed to stick your figures in your ears, because the facts don't fit your preconceived notions formulated by your worldview.
Oh well. No use arguing with people who are content to be ignorant, or can't be bothered to actually make an informed point.
If every individual lifeform has the same observable goal, it is rational to suggest that life in the aggregate possesses that goal, as all observations of individuals demonstrate it in common.
Hey I know, let's come up with ridiculous extremes and pretend they are real possibilities! Yeah sure, the atmosphere is totally going to turn to methane or something, and the plants are going to mutate into the things from the end of The Way to Eden! I've been so blind, why couldn't I see this happening before?!?!?!11ONE!
Oh that's right, because that analogy is stupid hyperbole.
And as flexibility is an attribute, a thing which makes events possible and not an event in of itself, it is not possible in this context for it to be 'fated' consequently there is no rational thing called a 'fatalistic view of human flexibility' regardless of how much you wanted that non sequitur to work rhetorically.
Further, do you seriously think that the guy living in a box under an overpass is better off than Caesar Augustus? Even if you take into account the medical advances, the guy in the box isn't really privy to those, he's probably going to die of complications from huffing paint or simply freeze to death. I mean seriously, come off it. Yeah, the AVERAGE guy lives pretty good even compared to the ancient and medieval elites, but the homeless are not a valid contrast.
I don't think you realize how much of your luxury is the direct product of biosphere changes. The abundance of food comes from the agricultural development of land which has a) lowered water tables b) increased inland salinization c) increased nitrate levels and decreased oxygen levels in aquatic environments etc. That fancy meat you eat comes at the expense not only of the immediate animals, but it is likely that extinct species such as the Aurochs had to go to make room for new species (yes, NEW SPECIES AKA DIFFERENT BIOSPHERE) of tastier and easier to manage domesticated cattle.
But because you're ignorant, you want to ride the wagon of biosphere changes and spit at it too.
Life does have a goal: to survive any forthcoming threat in order to consume the resources necessary to reproduce. Try getting in the way of a living thing and you'll find it is very goal-oriented, even plants and microorganisms.
I'm afraid I don't share your fatalistic lack of faith in the viability of humanity in other biospheres. Humanity has presided over the extinctions of many species, some of which were significantly important resources for early man and his predecessors. However, precedent demonstrates that we adapted from those losses just fine, thanks.
When Mohammad Ali came back from Zaire, he was asked what he thought of Africa and he said "Thank God that my granddaddy got on that boat."
It is possible when removed from the direct, negative effects of history to be thankful for otherwise negative historical events where they positively impact oneself. This is rational, as to wish for anything different would in fact would be to wish not to exist, contradicting the natural self-preservation instinct.
My own ancestors were probably slaves to the Romans, but that does not begrudge me to Roman culture and civilization.
When "defiled" is used in the Bible it usually carries a social moral connotation, and you are taking this verse out of context, as the chapter is talking about how the Israelites should avoid "defiling" themselves and their newly conquered *cough* I mean delivered land with the worship of false gods.
Your verse from Job could be interpreted simply as 'learn from the stuff around you' and ends up by saying 'you and the animals are all God's bitches, so show some respect to Him'.
Your verse from Genesis doesn't even apply on the face of it, the 'rainbow covenant' was simply God saying 'I won't kill almost everything in a flood again, so don't fear the rain'.
The passage from Ezekiel of course is a metaphor, an analogy drawn between sheep and people that really isn't about the environment (because guess what, ancient people didn't give a shit about the environment), but rather about the lowly, dirty animal nature of man compared to the divine plan of God.
Yeah taking shit out of context doesn't work with an apostate Christian who was forced to study the Bible five+ days a week, nine months a year every year for nine years.
Actually, even that would potentially be a good thing if it happened slowly (as it would have to, as the alternative would be a nova-analogous event, and consequently neither here nor there), as it would force us to finally spread into space, which is the only way we (or this context something descended from us) could survive longer than the sun anyway.
Life becomes tougher with each change. Its formation may be fragile, which is why the moon is barren (aside from lacking liquid water or any kind of turbulent, reactive environment probably prerequisite for abiogenesis). However, you're right about total extinction being possible, but the forces for that are largely outside of our control (novas, radiation bursts, huge high velocity objects), except for the most vicious of nuclear wars.
If you think it's possible through extinctions, sorry, you have no precedent to stand on. Hypothetically it's not impossible, but that's a very low standard.
If you don't think the oxygen catastrophe and resulting mass extinction was noteworthy or beneficial, I politely invite you to off yourself, as clearly you don't think that the very chain of events that made you possible are worth anything.
Also, I already talked about the oxygen catastrophe of the Siderian period. It is an example of how mass extinctions enable the development of life, rather than the opposite as people are trained to think.
Afghanistan is something of an exception, both in the shallowness of its change in fertility and the current socio-political climate there. As such I think you are being disingenuous, focusing on an exception when the average fertility in 1970 was 5.25, and now it is 3.01. India itself, far more statistically significant than Afghanistan and the great population boogeyman of neo-Malthusians, has dropped right along the lines of that average from 5.4 to 2.8. Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation, is similar from 5.5 to 2.2. Brazil, fifth most populous, 5 to 2.3. Pakistan, sixth most populous, 6.6 to 3.5. Bangladesh, seventh most populous, 6.4 to 2.9. Etc. etc.
I'm sure you can do algebra too, so I'll let you calculate what impact these whole number decreases in all the world's most populous countries' fertility rates has in the face of fractional differences in mortality rates. So...
I'm curious, was this something you just didn't consider, or were you being disingenuous?
Why is it then that rural areas tend to be more religious? Granted, city-dwellers where they replace religion tend to latch on to other things they think are equivalent providence (from dependence on the church to dependence on the state).
While I am an atheist, my upbringing overexposed me to the Bible, so I can tell you that the reason some Christians want to have free reign over the use of planetary resources is that it's what God told them to do in Genesis 1:28. In fact, that verse specifically says 'subdue it [the earth]' and that man has dominion over all life on earth. Psalm 115:16 says that the earth has been given to men.
Change and instability necessitate new developments. Those are beneficial even if the environment is harmful (and the environment knows no 'positive' or 'negative', good or bad, just what works and survives or what fails and dies). It may be counterintuitive, but discomfort, even disaster, forces development and innovation. Humanity will be benefited by a swift kick in the ass to get off its laurels.
So let me guess, you think chicken pox comes from chickens? Here's a hint: it doesn't. As for bird flu, it took twenty. muthafuckin'. years. for it to cross from birds to humans in any appreciable numbers. That's my point, not that it doesn't happen, but it takes a LONG TIME. Swine flu took more than a decade.
H1N1 is a joke and demonstrates common paranoia as well as anything could. My toddler had H1N1 and it was so much like the regular flu we had no idea until she was already recovered and we heard back from the lab. So yes, it is completely unjustified in the developed world to worry about diseases around every corner for a person that behaves in any normal, responsible way. Now in the developing world there is reason to worry about AIDS and Ebola. Which is why I stay the hell away, but that still says nothing about horror movie levels of mutation that just don't happen in the real world.
Fertility rates are down in virtually every country, even where birth rates remain high. Of course all the neo-Malthusian twits remain completely ignorant both of that fact and of the difference between the metrics.
You are placing everything into your specific emotional context. Thing is, natural processes don't care about your emotional context. It wouldn't matter how cute you thought mammoths were, they simply were no long a viable species in the biosphere. There are no 'good' species or 'bad' species, just the successful ones that live, and the unsuccessful ones that die. And if you like diversity, you should know that regardless of the fact that 99% of species that have ever lived are now extinct, the rate of speciation and the total number of species has always increased over geologic time.
If you really think that life retrogresses, I can't help you. Successful lifeforms will find any biosphere "valuable", that's why they are successful, they become less impacted by the way that resources are distributed.
The period of time doesn't matter. Humans are incredibly resourceful, moreso than any other animal.
The chance that a given species survives an extinction is exactly that: chance. However humans have one thing all other animals do not: the ability to pursue any resource, anywhere to virtually any degree that an environment can support. We can grow plants without soil, we can engineer life to perform in environments that it otherwise could not, we can synthesize previously limited resources from materials that are renewable, on and on. Humanity has a better chance of surviving any mass extinction event than any species in earth's history.
Yes I am being an ass. I'm just tired of the paranoia getting rolled out every time somebody suggests a biotech solution to a problem, as though viruses are going to jump between entire taxonomic KINGDOMS overnight and kill us all (which I believe was implied even if it was not stated). It's just bullshit, and no, it couldn't happen, in so far as it has never been observed to happen, never even been reasonably theorized to happen. Insofar as we as human beings don't know everything, it's not demonstrated impossible, but from everything we do know, no, it just couldn't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
So let's see, if the meaning I have derived from the numbers is wrong, and you are right and that growth is reduced by the availability of food, then that means that the reduction of growth in the developed world must mean I'm starving! Shit, these chips I'm eating must be imaginary, and Malthus was right all along!
Fertility in contemporary society is tied to economic growth, not food production. Might I suggest you look into the research of Hans Rosling.
However you're too tightly wound to have an enjoyable debate with, so this will be my last interaction, one way or the other.
I realize that when I said 1.5 I meant 2.38, but I mentally was working with 0.7 at that point instead of the actual 0.07. So I'm even more right with that error accounted for.
Difference in fertility: 2.45
Difference in mortality: 0.07
Let me spell it out for you, since you seem a little slow: there are almost two and half fewer children born to each woman in India today vs. four decades ago. There is less than one child more per woman in India due to any difference in mortality rates. This is a net decrease of more than 1.5 children per woman. This is echoed throughout the other examples. Even if you added in child mortality (depending on your definition of child) that wouldn't change things by much more than a few hundreths in most cases, tenths in a few. Nowhere does it touch the still huge decreases in fertility.
What do you mean whole number compared to fractional, do you think that makes a difference on its face?
I was speaking in colloquial terms, wherein it is assumed that 'fractional' means less than one. Of course a fraction is only a representation of a difference of values and can be far greater than one, it was meant to be a rhetorical device using colloquialisms to contrast values less than one with values greater than one.
Are you trying to make the case that population growth is not exponential?
If the figures are right, it's not. It's also unlikely for most changes to be exponential FOREVAR.
I can't figure out what, exactly, argument you are offering that would counter Malthus here... other than name-calling.
That's because you're assuming the numbers prove you right, when I have shown that they prove you wrong. You will proceed to stick your figures in your ears, because the facts don't fit your preconceived notions formulated by your worldview.
Oh well. No use arguing with people who are content to be ignorant, or can't be bothered to actually make an informed point.
If every individual lifeform has the same observable goal, it is rational to suggest that life in the aggregate possesses that goal, as all observations of individuals demonstrate it in common.
Hey I know, let's come up with ridiculous extremes and pretend they are real possibilities! Yeah sure, the atmosphere is totally going to turn to methane or something, and the plants are going to mutate into the things from the end of The Way to Eden! I've been so blind, why couldn't I see this happening before?!?!?!11ONE!
Oh that's right, because that analogy is stupid hyperbole.
And as flexibility is an attribute, a thing which makes events possible and not an event in of itself, it is not possible in this context for it to be 'fated' consequently there is no rational thing called a 'fatalistic view of human flexibility' regardless of how much you wanted that non sequitur to work rhetorically.
Further, do you seriously think that the guy living in a box under an overpass is better off than Caesar Augustus? Even if you take into account the medical advances, the guy in the box isn't really privy to those, he's probably going to die of complications from huffing paint or simply freeze to death. I mean seriously, come off it. Yeah, the AVERAGE guy lives pretty good even compared to the ancient and medieval elites, but the homeless are not a valid contrast.
I don't think you realize how much of your luxury is the direct product of biosphere changes. The abundance of food comes from the agricultural development of land which has a) lowered water tables b) increased inland salinization c) increased nitrate levels and decreased oxygen levels in aquatic environments etc. That fancy meat you eat comes at the expense not only of the immediate animals, but it is likely that extinct species such as the Aurochs had to go to make room for new species (yes, NEW SPECIES AKA DIFFERENT BIOSPHERE) of tastier and easier to manage domesticated cattle.
But because you're ignorant, you want to ride the wagon of biosphere changes and spit at it too.
Life does have a goal: to survive any forthcoming threat in order to consume the resources necessary to reproduce. Try getting in the way of a living thing and you'll find it is very goal-oriented, even plants and microorganisms.
I'm afraid I don't share your fatalistic lack of faith in the viability of humanity in other biospheres. Humanity has presided over the extinctions of many species, some of which were significantly important resources for early man and his predecessors. However, precedent demonstrates that we adapted from those losses just fine, thanks.
When Mohammad Ali came back from Zaire, he was asked what he thought of Africa and he said "Thank God that my granddaddy got on that boat."
It is possible when removed from the direct, negative effects of history to be thankful for otherwise negative historical events where they positively impact oneself. This is rational, as to wish for anything different would in fact would be to wish not to exist, contradicting the natural self-preservation instinct.
My own ancestors were probably slaves to the Romans, but that does not begrudge me to Roman culture and civilization.
When "defiled" is used in the Bible it usually carries a social moral connotation, and you are taking this verse out of context, as the chapter is talking about how the Israelites should avoid "defiling" themselves and their newly conquered *cough* I mean delivered land with the worship of false gods.
Your verse from Job could be interpreted simply as 'learn from the stuff around you' and ends up by saying 'you and the animals are all God's bitches, so show some respect to Him'.
Your verse from Genesis doesn't even apply on the face of it, the 'rainbow covenant' was simply God saying 'I won't kill almost everything in a flood again, so don't fear the rain'.
The passage from Ezekiel of course is a metaphor, an analogy drawn between sheep and people that really isn't about the environment (because guess what, ancient people didn't give a shit about the environment), but rather about the lowly, dirty animal nature of man compared to the divine plan of God.
Yeah taking shit out of context doesn't work with an apostate Christian who was forced to study the Bible five+ days a week, nine months a year every year for nine years.
Actually, even that would potentially be a good thing if it happened slowly (as it would have to, as the alternative would be a nova-analogous event, and consequently neither here nor there), as it would force us to finally spread into space, which is the only way we (or this context something descended from us) could survive longer than the sun anyway.
Life becomes tougher with each change. Its formation may be fragile, which is why the moon is barren (aside from lacking liquid water or any kind of turbulent, reactive environment probably prerequisite for abiogenesis). However, you're right about total extinction being possible, but the forces for that are largely outside of our control (novas, radiation bursts, huge high velocity objects), except for the most vicious of nuclear wars.
If you think it's possible through extinctions, sorry, you have no precedent to stand on. Hypothetically it's not impossible, but that's a very low standard.
If you don't think the oxygen catastrophe and resulting mass extinction was noteworthy or beneficial, I politely invite you to off yourself, as clearly you don't think that the very chain of events that made you possible are worth anything.
Tell that to cockroaches.
Also, I already talked about the oxygen catastrophe of the Siderian period. It is an example of how mass extinctions enable the development of life, rather than the opposite as people are trained to think.
I shall call names as I see fit.
Afghanistan is something of an exception, both in the shallowness of its change in fertility and the current socio-political climate there. As such I think you are being disingenuous, focusing on an exception when the average fertility in 1970 was 5.25, and now it is 3.01. India itself, far more statistically significant than Afghanistan and the great population boogeyman of neo-Malthusians, has dropped right along the lines of that average from 5.4 to 2.8. Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation, is similar from 5.5 to 2.2. Brazil, fifth most populous, 5 to 2.3. Pakistan, sixth most populous, 6.6 to 3.5. Bangladesh, seventh most populous, 6.4 to 2.9. Etc. etc.
I'm sure you can do algebra too, so I'll let you calculate what impact these whole number decreases in all the world's most populous countries' fertility rates has in the face of fractional differences in mortality rates. So...
I'm curious, was this something you just didn't consider, or were you being disingenuous?
Why is it then that rural areas tend to be more religious? Granted, city-dwellers where they replace religion tend to latch on to other things they think are equivalent providence (from dependence on the church to dependence on the state).
Mass extinctions enabled you. Without mass extinctions, you would not exist. Celebrate that.
While I am an atheist, my upbringing overexposed me to the Bible, so I can tell you that the reason some Christians want to have free reign over the use of planetary resources is that it's what God told them to do in Genesis 1:28. In fact, that verse specifically says 'subdue it [the earth]' and that man has dominion over all life on earth. Psalm 115:16 says that the earth has been given to men.
I think of myself more as Mr. Han. Especially as he surrounded himself with a troupe of assassin-whores. Now if only I could reach that level...
Change and instability necessitate new developments. Those are beneficial even if the environment is harmful (and the environment knows no 'positive' or 'negative', good or bad, just what works and survives or what fails and dies). It may be counterintuitive, but discomfort, even disaster, forces development and innovation. Humanity will be benefited by a swift kick in the ass to get off its laurels.
So let me guess, you think chicken pox comes from chickens? Here's a hint: it doesn't. As for bird flu, it took twenty. muthafuckin'. years. for it to cross from birds to humans in any appreciable numbers. That's my point, not that it doesn't happen, but it takes a LONG TIME. Swine flu took more than a decade.
H1N1 is a joke and demonstrates common paranoia as well as anything could. My toddler had H1N1 and it was so much like the regular flu we had no idea until she was already recovered and we heard back from the lab. So yes, it is completely unjustified in the developed world to worry about diseases around every corner for a person that behaves in any normal, responsible way. Now in the developing world there is reason to worry about AIDS and Ebola. Which is why I stay the hell away, but that still says nothing about horror movie levels of mutation that just don't happen in the real world.
Fertility rates are down in virtually every country, even where birth rates remain high. Of course all the neo-Malthusian twits remain completely ignorant both of that fact and of the difference between the metrics.
You are placing everything into your specific emotional context. Thing is, natural processes don't care about your emotional context. It wouldn't matter how cute you thought mammoths were, they simply were no long a viable species in the biosphere. There are no 'good' species or 'bad' species, just the successful ones that live, and the unsuccessful ones that die. And if you like diversity, you should know that regardless of the fact that 99% of species that have ever lived are now extinct, the rate of speciation and the total number of species has always increased over geologic time.
If you really think that life retrogresses, I can't help you. Successful lifeforms will find any biosphere "valuable", that's why they are successful, they become less impacted by the way that resources are distributed.
The period of time doesn't matter. Humans are incredibly resourceful, moreso than any other animal.
The chance that a given species survives an extinction is exactly that: chance. However humans have one thing all other animals do not: the ability to pursue any resource, anywhere to virtually any degree that an environment can support. We can grow plants without soil, we can engineer life to perform in environments that it otherwise could not, we can synthesize previously limited resources from materials that are renewable, on and on. Humanity has a better chance of surviving any mass extinction event than any species in earth's history.
Yes I am being an ass. I'm just tired of the paranoia getting rolled out every time somebody suggests a biotech solution to a problem, as though viruses are going to jump between entire taxonomic KINGDOMS overnight and kill us all (which I believe was implied even if it was not stated). It's just bullshit, and no, it couldn't happen, in so far as it has never been observed to happen, never even been reasonably theorized to happen. Insofar as we as human beings don't know everything, it's not demonstrated impossible, but from everything we do know, no, it just couldn't happen.