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TUESDAY, DEC 14, 2021: NOTE TO FILE

Quora Q&A 8

More info offered

Eric Lee , A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: QUESTION EVERYTHING, FROM THE WIRES, TENATIVE ANWSERS

Abstract: So another fifty pretend answers offered. See answers 353 and 359 [with ending comments on issues with Quora moderation such that I no longer will post answers there]. I had one comment from someone I recognized by name and replied. It turns out I had answered one of his questions without noticing who was asking. He mentioned mine was the best answer. Eventually he was impressed enough to add me to an informal email exchange (about 85 mostly scientists) what includes a dozen or so top scientists whose work of legend I cite, who make my list of household names. I may dare to comment someday or even initiate a topic before I die, but only after I consider the books and articles of those whose email address I don't recognize.

COOS BAY (A-P) — So answers starting with 351 follow and may be of interest to someone someday. Answers are not really mine. I reference some human sources. If the source, the data, is correct and the interpretation is valid, then Nature answers the question. As 'people would rater believe than know', answers that few or none Like or Share will be ignored, obfuscated, denied, and if necessary the messenger will be vilified, demonized, or killed. But 'my' answers are ignored, so I'm in no danger. For over a month a Quora moderator has been vigilant in preventing my answers from appearing when anyone not logged in as me goes to the question to view answers, hence single digit views are common.

That one moderator has issues is evidenced by the canceling being linked to time of day. One moderator could work any day, but likely not any hour given most humans need to follow their circadian rhythm and sleep. Evidence suggest the moderator is full Woke except for 8-10 hours a day and views most of my concerns as those of the eco-fascist, racist, and anti-human I obviously am. With over 200k views in 2.5 years, I am aware of only two readers who read more than two offering, so while I continue to answer questions, it is with little expectation of being viewed as a person of interest (enough to come back for more). I am posterity's watchman whose mandate is to declare what I seeth. So while I could post when an answer is likely to be approved while my nimisist sleeps, I don't bother.

Questions:

Q&A1
Q&A2
Q&A3
Q&A4
Q&A5
Q&A6
Q&A7

351. What does every human in the world need?
352. What social, environmental, or economic sustainability issue locally or globally are you most passionate about? Which SDGs do you think are linked to your chosen issue?
353. Is there a real fear of not enough resources on the planet to continue to sustain life as it grows exponentially into the future?
354. Why is it that [a] student runs from science courses while science deals with world problems and the problem of life?
355. Is there actually the number of population of people the Earth can't contain? Are we all going to sink beneath the waters?
356. How will the survival of humans be more difficult in the coming days?
357. Since sustainability is important, isn't it good for everyone to learn how to treat the planet in a great way?
358. What are the human factors in the problem of suffering in the world today?
359. What is the best program to control the population?
360. What are some of the truly realistic existential threats to humanity in the next couple of centuries or so?
361. Why are all countries indifferent to the destruction of the planet and the environment?
362. If it were up entirely to you, what would be the population limit of the Earth at any one time?
363. Amy Potter requested your answer: Does the zombie apocalypse have any basis whatsoever in reality?

351. What does every human in the world need?

For 300k years our ancestors needed a habitat whose environmental productivity provided a place to ambulate it, sit, and for a better part of the night lie down to sleep. Air, water, and food containing energy and nutrients were for the foraging. Individuals needed a band of trusted others to live with and other bands so some could join and cohabit with a mate to avoid inbreeding. In some climates shelter/clothing was needed to maintain homeostasis (maintain body temperature, stay mostly dry). An individual might not need other humans, might wander the wide world alone, but they would self-select out of future generations, so any genetic tendency to do so would not likely be passed on and any memes that made the individual a loner would not be readily passed on, so they would self-select out of passing on their genes or memes. Posterity would become more social thereby.

Modern techno-industrialized humans ‘need’ vastly more energy and stuff to get through one day and vastly more than that to get though a lifetime.

Over the last hundred years, humans have become obligate consumers of industrial production. From toddlerhood on we are advertised to remorselessly. It works. We are utterly dependent on a now global economy that is not remotely sustainable. There are implications, but virtually all products of the modern education system cannot understand them (e.g. the exponential function).

Not good news for 10 year olds. But why should you care about posterity? What did they ever do for you? So go shopping and try to do more screen time (and click on Quora ads).

352. What social, environmental, or economic sustainability issue locally or globally are you most passionate about? Which SDGs do you think are linked to your chosen issue?

The issue is overshoot. The SDG (UN Sustainable Development Goal) linked to humanity’s one-off plague-phase overshoot event is SDG 8, ‘Decent work and economic growth’ for all humans so that even the poor can get richer.

The Brundtland commission that came up with the idea (oxymoron) of ‘sustainable development' aka growth in 1987 urged the global economy to grow at 5 percent per year (doubling economic growth and consumption every 14 years) so the economy could grow faster than the human population, so poor people could get at least a little richer and be happy in their work. Almost all humans celebrate growth and will continue to until they can’t (i.e. when the growth hegemon climaxes and contracts rapidly).

In 1948 UN pundits came up with a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You have the ‘right’ to work to serve the economy, stupid, to convert a planetary life-support system into more humans consuming more stuff.

Article 4. [translated]

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. [As human slaves have been largely replaced by fossil-fueled energy slaves, human wage-slaves who work for the SYSTEM and consume stuff to serve short-term self interests (their own and others), also serve SYSTEM interests by doing work that machines cannot do (yet) and, as consumers, will neglect to revolt as those who are called slaves and controlled by force (instead of money) will.]

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. [Working for the SYSTEM is obligatory for consumers to consume more than they need to help grow the economy.]
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. [Equal pay for equal work helps the SYSTEM grow smoothly.]
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. [Happy male workers work harder for the SYSTEM and soon females will also devote their lives to working to grow the economy unto overshoot.]
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his [and her] interests. [Commoner trade unions balance elite self interest to avoid revolt and allow the SYSTEM to work more efficiently.]

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. [One human cannot work a 24-hour day, but three humans, working in shifts, can work efficiently to serve the SYSTEM.]

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. [Workers and elites must be educated to serve SYSTEM interests.]
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. [Workers and elites much be educated to serve SYSTEM interests.]
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. [Parents control early childhood education before they enter the educational subSYSTEM.]

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SUMMARY: Undefined (undefinable?) feel-good words per number of usages: Right/Rights: 61 times, Freedom/Free: 29 times, Dignity: 6 times with other newspeak words (e.g. equality, justice, liberty) used less frequently. If not a privileged elite (consumer), you have the right to work (to be employed as a wage-slave/consumer) to serve the SYSTEM in freedom (you can choose how you will serve/buy/consume) and dignity (as otherwise your pathetic so-called life of quiet desperation would have no meaning). Are we asserting 'human rights' or enumerating the rights of drones in the Borg Collective?

[No links to any articles I’ve written, so Quora moderators can’t remove this answer as spam. But soon canceled, few viewed it.]

353. Is there a real fear of not enough resources on the planet to continue to sustain life as it grows exponentially into the future?

An exceptionally informed question that few could even ask. Fear invites amygdala reactivity and hijacking of the prefrontal cortex (and failure to think well), so ‘recognition’ or ‘concern’ would be more descriptive as the only humans who know enough to understand the implications of the exponential function tend to be systems science literate, i.e. to think in systems, for example Donella Meadows. The life whose persistence is in doubt, that is endeavoring to grow exponentially, would be modern techno-industrialized human life that is not remotely sustainable.

Do scientists and the systems science literate have existential concerns for humanity and the biosphere? Yes, from at least the 1950s and some (e.g. M. King Hubbert) since the 1930s. The Great Acceleration became obvious by 1950, and the number of scientists having concerns increase exponentially, but are not yet a majority (virtually all scientists are trained to be specialists so most who can think in systems are autodidacts).

That such growth cannot continue for long should be obvious to any educated human, but today almost all people are products of a modern techno-industrial education system that selects against foresight intelligence to make humans energy and posterity blind, most being educated to be clever wordsmiths profoundly ignorant of biophysical reality. Error, ignorance, illusion, and denial have been normalized.

We moderns are well into a one-off overshoot event. We are enthusiastically (as Anthropocene enthusiasts) incurring an extinction debt that posterity will pay. Consensus thinking excludes the thought that posterity faces a ghastly future.

We modern techno-industrialized (MTIed) ones consider living in a one-off plague-phase overshoot event to be normal. We think growth without limits is the best thing ever. We are right, but only FOR A TIME. We MTI ones lack foresight intelligence because our monetary culture selects for short-termism. Sorry about that.

We are in overshoot. Our population (and global economy) will contract. The downslope may be measured in decades, centuries, or millennia (200-500 years is common), but if humanity fails to recover from its MTI condition, if we fail to seek out the condition now that will come anyway, we almost certainly don’t have eons to figure out how to love, understand, and live properly with the planet. Don’t count on having even a millennium. One or a few centuries? One or a few decades? Maybe.

To simplify our predicament, we are like the 515,000 people living on the three islands of Malta that has an environmental carrying capacity (without significant imports) of maybe 800 people given that to live on the islands long term (as the millennia pass) room must be left for Nature who provides all services that allow for the persistence of life on on Malta (and on Earth Island). This is not a belief-based claim based on political or religious certitude. It is what Nature says to those who listen. Those who don’t listen go extinct. Could humans living on Malta (or Earth) ever live as one? Perhaps, but not as MTI humans, e.g. The Malta Solution.

"There have been seven [climate change] disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism." James Lovelock who envisions an 80% to 90% die-off event this century.

What might a viable alternative to MTI society look like? Nation-states replaced by 25k watershed management units that are members of a United Federation of Watersheds, within which humans manage one fifth of the area to support themselves as hunter-gatherers or low-intensity forager-farmers. On average, the population of humans is a few thousand normally living in small communities of 20 to 50 others, but meeting in a central area (monthly to annually) for a time. All would agree to defend any other watershed that might be attacked, and to engage only in sustainable trade between watershed management units.

Optimistically, there could be 25k planets bearing viable civilizations (unlike ours is currently) in the Milky Way. If travel between them was possible, and even one became (or already was) an empire builder (like MTI culture is), then the existence of one sovereign planet able to conquer another would become a state of war that would lead to a Borg-like collective, or all members of the Federation would agree to destroy the independent sovereign planet (or at least enforce its permanent containment, i.e. inability to grow by conquest). Will your descendants be Federation or Borg or go extinct in a few centuries? Near-term developments in this century may determine humanity’s outcome. The time to stand and deliver is now.

Spinoza realized that to understand something (e.g. overshoot) is to be delivered from it. If humans understood the exponential function, i.e. that growth is for a time (becoming increasingly detrimental as the lower limit of environmental carrying capacity is exceeded), then our enthusiasm for growth would be moderated. And if we understood that technology enables us to exploit a planetary larder of energy and resources (dismantle a global life-support system), then our enthusiasm for technology (e.g. cars) would be moderated. To understand is to stand down from our hubris heights. As Ludwig Wittgenstein put our options in fewer words, “Understand or die.”

The New York Times has mentioned "ecological overshoot" zero times since 1851 (one opinion piece mentioned "environmental overshoot" to deny it, zero mention of "overshoot and collapse," but "overshoot" was used 533 times. Apart from "Earth Overshoot Day", none reference our meta-problem of one-off ecological overshoot). And "climate change" (a politicized distraction from our Anthropocene overshoot event) has been mentioned over 31,000 times (over 12k in last five years, 66 times a week last year). Compared to the existential threat of climate change, our wicked overshoot problematique should be mentioned at least 666 times a week.

Do we suffer from an information deficit disorder? One caused by the formal/informal education system (schooling system) and those schooled by it? "EVERYONE believes in their own world view [Nate Hagens]." EVERYONE believes in belief and feels entitled to their world view, to allow their beliefs to competitively displace information. The more politicized, the more power/influence a person has, the less likely their views will change. Ever.

Very few people can think in systems terms. They are experts in their one area. People defer to the most respected, influential person in the room — a natural ape (clothed or unclothed) instinct. And since the people at the top are techno-optimists who think fossil fuels can be replaced with renewables at little cost by growing the economy, everyone lower in the hierarchy blindly believes likewise. Perhaps no one is sane and the modern techno-industrial consensus narrative is dead wrong, as the consensus narratives for all prior complex societies proved to be wrong.

It is "important to understand that as long as a population or species is in overshoot, it continues (by definition) to deplete resource stocks and energy-flows necessary for its own future survival. In other words, present attempts to maintain and grow the human population is destroying the biophysical basis of our own long-term existence. Present and future carrying capacity at whatever material standard/lifestyle we might choose is steadily being eroded and will continue to be so unless we dramatically, rapidly reduce demand (i.e., absolute consumption and population) or until there is systems collapse."

It is entirely possible to graduate with highest honors from a top university and know essentially nothing about ecological overshoot, carrying capacity, sustainability, or that there are limits to growth even if you are a STEM/STEAM/STREAM major. The more inconvenient truth is that most people would rather believe than know. Those who would rather know than believe, who question everything, who reevaluate all values and assumptions, who are abelievers, are some fraction of one percent. This is true for denizens of Facebook echo chambers and most think tanks to which only PhDs who have written at least several books are invited. Because the number of people who understand that we can't grow ourselves out of overshoot (the exact opposite being the case), e.g. via sustainable development, a Green New Deal, or more nuclear (and fusion and Dyson Dots at L1...), is so small and because they're just not listened to, it looks like overshoot will run its course as usual. Carrying Capacity, Overshoot and Sustainability.

Our collective inability to think about the possibility that there are or ever could be ‘too many people’ on the planet has a long history that goes up to the time I am typing this. Ouora is one source of evidence. There are several questions on human ‘over’ population with over a hundred answers. Pick all of them and spend some hours scanning the answers and sorting them into sets of essentially the same answer. Do it as a citizen science project. Instead of watching another movie, updating Facebook, or going shopping..., do it.

Assume that most of those who answer questions on Quora think they know enough to have an opinion—not that they do, just think they do. So the data reflects the opinions of experts, whether academy vetted or not (as part of your study, note whether the answerer has a background in a field at all relevant to the question). Some people are more likely to know enough to have an opinion. For example, Richard Feynman is viewed pretty much by everyone who knows enough to do advanced physics as no ordinary genius. Feynman said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

Was he talking about self-accredited know nothing experts from the hood like me? No, he was talking about academy vetted experts like he worked with. My suggestion is that you listen to those who endeavor to listen to Nature who has all the answers. Then ask Nature questions and listen to the still small voice her data speaks. To be a bit more helpful, here’s a short, readable intro:

World scientists’ warning to humanity — Rex Weyler

Rex Weyler ends by noting: "As an ecologist, I feel compelled to ask myself: if the last 50 years of environmental action, research, warnings, meetings, legislation, regulation, and public awareness has proven insufficient, despite our victories, then what else do we need to do? That question, and an integrated, rigorous, serious answer, needs to be a central theme of the next decade of environmentalism."

The Fundamental Failure of Environmentalism — David Suzuki

On his 80th birthday, scientist and environmental activist extraordinaire David Suzuki noted that despite some victories of the David Suzuki Foundation and other efforts by environmentalists over the decades, that meanwhile "the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed". Maybe there are no political solutions. Maybe any "integrated, rigorous, serious answer" will be wholly outside humanity's (including political activists to full-on eco-fascist revolutionary environmentalist's) current Overton window of thinkable discourse—for a time—yet know that things change, "this too, shall pass away", so learn now while access to viable information is still out there.

And always vet the source first (e.g. Weyler, Suzuki and who, if anyone, is publishing them, media bias/fact checkers are your friend and so is Wikipedia if you understand its limitations and bias). ALL UNVETTED SOURCES ARE NOT. Could a source know more than you do? Maybe. If so, maybe resist letting screens distract you and consider that:

WE WERE WARNED
(longer list here)

[Note: Quora moderation appears to have decided that any link to any content hosted on a URL (with no ads that sells nothing) that I pay for, e.g. to PDF files and graphics I did not write or modify or HTML files and graphics I did, is spam. I received a notice of deletion, but no indication of which answer or what is considered spam, The entire answers disappeared such that I can't see it to edit or determine what spam may be present, so I've removed all links (25) to any content hosted on a URL I pay for having no potential for personal gain, which the concept of 'spam' implies. Sorry for the missing links to information of possible value (I've been to six conferences in the last few years and could name dozens of scientists who likely think the information is of high value). Highlight, right click, and Google for missing content. About a month before this practice of deletion for 'spam', about 80 percent of my answers began to get single digit 'views', which had never happen in the last two years and over 500 answers. If I go to the question, my answer appears as expected. If I use my wife's computer logged under her name, there is one less answer and mine is gone. I've even received requests from Quora to answer questions I already have answered, meaning the left-hand algorithm that sends out requests for answers doesn't yet check to see if the right-hand algorithm canceled me from answering it. One Quora moderator may be responsible as evidenced by the only answers, including short ones with no links, not made to go away (except from my view when logged in under my name) seem to have been submitted on the same two days a week, perhaps ones a moderator who doesn't work everyday has off. Just saying. I understand that Quora owns all content I create (I'm not paid to answer, but do so only to inform by citing vetted sources). Quora is for-profit and has the right to delete/hide any content not compatible with their envisioned product for their happy consumers. Perhaps read up on 'cancel culture'. I happen to know noted scientist Charles A. S. Hall who personally found time to look over my homepage and read several of 265 articles, and to tell me he found nothing to concern him as other than information of value the public should consider. He commented favorably on a article within his specialty (biophysical economics) some years ago, but I can't link to it. Sorry about that.]

Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man's Future 1954
“......we are now living in a phase of history which is destined never to be repeated. For the fifth of the world population that lives in regions of machine culture it is a period of unprecedented abundance. And most of us who are a part of that fortunate one-fifth are so enamoured with the achievements of the last century and with the abundance which has been created that we believe the pace of achievement will continue uninterrupted in the future. However, only a cursory investigation of the present position of machine civilization is needed to uncover the fact that it is indeed in a precarious position. A cosmic gambler, looking at us from afar, would, in all likelihood give substantial odds in favour of the probability that it will soon disappear, never again to come into existence."

Energy resources and our future - Admiral Hyman Rickover 1957
“.... We live in what historians may some day call the Fossil Fuel Age.... Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels.... The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable.... Metals, too, are non-renewable resources... According to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable..., are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050.... Occasionally the voice of a Cassandra has been raised only to be quickly silenced.... Prudent men will... prefer to face the facts so that they can plan intelligently for the needs of their posterity."
Aldous Huxley, TV Interview 1958
Population, Evolution & Birth Control 1964, A Collage of Controversial Readings [from Han Fei to Garrett Hardin]
A Blueprint for Survival 1972

Limits to Growth 1972
"Taking no action to solve these (global) problems, is equivalent to taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse. We cannot say with certainty how much longer mankind can postpone initiating deliberate control of his growth before he will have lost the chance for control. We suspect, on the basis of present knowledge of the physical constraints of the planet that the growth phase cannot continue...... Again, because of the delays in the system, if the global society waits until those constraints are unmistakably apparent [e.g. until 2030-2070], it will have waited too long".
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change 1980
A Planet for the Taking 1985
An Appeal for Joint Commitment in Science and Religion 1990
Elder Brothers' Warning 1990
World Scientists' Warning to Humanity 1992
Joint statement by fifty-eight of the world's scientific academies 1993
The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives 2011
Aluna: Elder Brothers' Second Warning 2012
Consensus Statement from Global Scientists 2013
World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice 2017
Worsening Worldwide Land Degradation Now ‘Critical’ 2018
Living Planet Report of 59 global scientists & overview 2019
The State of the World's Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture 2019
Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’ (IPBES) 2019
World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2019
A Discussion and Call to Action on Global Catastrophic Risks 2020
(38 in roundtable, Part 1: Warning. Part 2 and 3: no 'real solutions' considered as consensus limits thinking.)
Wildlife in 'catastrophic decline' due to human destruction, scientists warn 2020
Limits to Growth Updated, Harvard & Yale 2020
Tim Garrett's Audio Warning 2020
International Scholars Warning on Societal Disruption and Collapse 2020
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future 2021
Freshwater fish in 'catastrophic' decline 2021 BBC summary
FINAL REPORT- Delivering the Human Future 2021 No real solutions
(The world needs a ‘survival revolution’ on a scale far larger than the ‘industrial revolution’)
Global Trends 2040 (2020 may look like the good old days) 2021
WORLD SCIENTISTS’ WARNINGS INTO ACTION, LOCAL TO GLOBAL 2021
(Now yelling and swinging the 2x4 against blindered heads harder)

[Imagine that a world scientists' warning has a different outcome (maybe) than all prior ones. A month passes, a button is pressed and 20,736 world leaders (from top down) become unstuck in time. They have no distractions, no need to sleep, eat, breathe, have sex, or garner social approbation. For a timeless period they are intensively educated. Everything every world scientist has to teach is assimilated. The ether they inhabit is incompatible with error, and so all error associated with the warnings has been filtered out and as they now know everything that matters that every scientist had to teach, each leader far exceeds any of their individual teachers in understanding the human predicament. In the end all have triumphed over their inability to understand the implications of the exponential function. There is nothing more to learn about thermodynamics, the energetics of complex systems, carrying capacity, or overshoot. That humans are subsystems of Gaia from whom no decoupling is possible is as mother's milk to them. Thinking in systems has become child's play. In less than a heartbeat they find themselves back in their positions of power, privilege, and prestige as top government, business, media, NGO, military, university and religious leaders. All receive an invitation to join a Zoom meeting of 20,735 other leaders to discuss coming up with a plan of action to turn MTI (modern techno-industrial) society (that automatically thwarts all attempts to change its trajectory) into its opposite. The newly educated world leaders are 0.0001939% of the human population, but nearly 0.0004% of we adult hu-mans they serve or pretend to rule as leaders, i.e. 'mere puppets they, who come and go at bidding of vast formless things'.]

Update: Leaders did not grow the fossil-fueled modern techno-industrial socio-political economic system [MTI Empire], nor can they degrow it. Of the 20,736 leaders, some acted on their understanding and were rapidly selected out of the system. Others, in all knowingness, go with the humancentric flow to nudge it as best they can and thrive. After retirement, they attend Club of Rome meetings. There are no political solutions.

Update: Leaders did not grow the fossil-fueled modern techno-industrial socio-political economic system [MTI Empire], nor can they degrow it. Of the 20,736 leaders, some acted on their understanding and were rapidly selected out of the system. Others, in all knowingness, go with the humancentric flow to nudge it as best they can and thrive. After retirement, they attend Club of Rome meetings. There are no political solutions.

"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called." —R. Buckminster Fuller

In an alternate time line, the leaders are randomly divided into 1,728 groups of 12. Each group spends six months getting to know each other and discussing the human problematique (while adding to their understanding of it). Each group then selects a leader who can be replaced at any time by consensus of the eleven. The 1,728 leaders are randomly divided into groups of 12 who take a year to get to know each other and discuss issues. They agree upon who represents them. The 144 second cut leaders repeat the process. In a year there are 12 leaders able to make rapid emergency decisions. Of the 12 on the High Counsel, one would serve, for some hours as the supreme leader of the sapientocracy, to make decisions in extreme emergencies before the other 11 could consider the issue, whose decision would strand until the 144 could consider the issue and so on to the 20,736 representatives of each Watershed Management Unit of Earth. Only those who demonstrable knew enough (about the limits of their knowledge) to have an opinion would serve, for a time, to offer their best posterity and biosphere serving guess.

[Note: This answer was posted at 1 AM to see if it would be hidden. It had more views than usual, but perhaps only because moderators have to sleep. On becoming Woke again, the answer was canceled, suggesting one moderator is being hyper-vigilant/righteous. Everyone needs a reason to live. I'm answering more Quora questions than usual knowing that 60 percent are almost immediately hidden from other's view and others may get more on days the moderator isn't working. Hence, I can more freely declare what I seeth. Human who do social media would rather believe than know.]

354. Why is it that [a] student runs from science courses while science deals with world problems and the problem of life?

There are many scientists who specialize and know much about one thing, the better to serve as experts (who make lots of money), but apart from their specialty, they know as little as non-scientists of world problems (humanity’s problematique) and/or the problem of individual human lives (suffering) than others. But some refuse to overspecialize and want to know about, to understand, the whole shebang.

E.O. Wilson wanted to know about and understand ants, but also mice and men. He founded a branch of science called sociobiology. I can call few scientists ‘great’, but E.O., who died December 26, 2021 (aged 92), was one such. I think he answered your question. ‘People would rather believe than know.’

He didn’t say ‘some people would rather believe than know’. There may be exceptions, he may have been one of them, but there are not enough such. People have five digits on the end of their arms. Yes, some don’t, but to beat on that drum would be a distraction. Humans are characterized by having five fingers/digits per two hands and wanting to believe. Science is not about wanting to believe nor claiming that the last hominin standing is exceptional, superior to all other organisms, and therefore at the apex of the Tree of Life, having dominion over all who live (and over all other things) on their planet.

If you believe the Earth is flat or that trickle-down economics works to end poverty, then you do, even if you have a PhD, have written 12 books, have 15 million followers on Facebook, are fully Woke and have answered 1,638 questions on Quora. Being a clever wordsmith, you can easily dismiss and obfuscate the arguments and evidence of anyone who begs to differ with you. And that is why you sell so many books (to those whose conclusions they support) and have so many Upvotes and Likes. Meanwhile, the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed nor do fewer humans suffer.

355. Is there actually the number of population of people the Earth can't contain? Are we all going to sink beneath the waters?

Is there actually a limit to the number of people Earth can support? Yes, but the exact number of humans on the planet when our population climaxes (is at its maximum) is not yet approximately known given that when I click ‘Post’ to reply to this question, the exact number of humans on the planet is unknown (but 7.9 billion is a good guess).

The basis for this claim is based on the principles of how things work, on the nature of complex systems. Go outside under the noonday sun and shoot an arrow at it. Will the arrow reach a maximum height? Will it fall back to earth? Yes. If the short answer seems dogmatic, then sorry about that.

Yes, an eagle could grab the arrow when it reaches its predictable maximum height, and fly higher, ‘proving’ that the physicist who predicted the arrow’s trajectory is wrong in assuming that no eagle would grab it. But that the eagle will let go of the arrow (or die in flight and fall to earth with the arrow still in its talons) is predictable, even if where and when, exactly, is not.

Some things are as predictable as that a car with a tank full of gas, driven on and on without stopping or being refueled while driving down the highway, will run out of gas/fuel/charge on battery. We humans are exploiting a planetary larder of fossil fuels and will continue to, FOR A TIME. About 90 percent of food is produced by turning mostly fossil fuels into food energy, without which about 7 billion humans will die (most from starvation and conflict deaths fighting over limited resources). Sorry about that.

That modern techno-industrial society will run out of fossil fuels is predictable. If clever apes make cold fusion work and develop an energy source ‘too cheap to meter’, then humanity will keep on keeping on growing its economy (stupid) until it can’t given that all mined resources, like fossil fuels, are finite. That all humans could live on Zanzibar (could stand on Unguja) if covered in multistory apartments is true, but they could live there only for a time, as the planet’s resources are finite even if every other floor of the apartments has grow-lights covering the ceilings to grow food for the the tens of billions, then hundreds of billions, living on Unguja (with no other life except pets and livestock).

The glow at night as seen by satellite.

Climax is followed by descent. The trajectory is sometimes called ‘overshoot and collapse’. All populations of plants, animals, or protists in overshoot will climax and descend. Climax doesn’t mean ‘transition to a steady state’. That never happens. Whether the long term carrying capacity of St. Matthew Island for reindeer was 500 or 1,200, when the reindeer population exceeded it the reindeer began to incur what ecologists call an ‘extinction debt’ that future reindeer had to pay (predictably).

Sometimes an extinction debt is a near-extinction debt, meaning some individuals survive to become ancestors. But often, at least regionally, the population declines to local extinction. And it happens to humans. Sometimes there is recovery. More often collapse is to local extinction.

Dark Ages (little or no history recorded for a time, prior to some recovery)

Old Kingdom of Egypt Dark Age, 126 years, 2181 – 2055 BCE
Middle Kingdom of Egypt Dark Age, 100 years, 1650 BCE – 1550 BCE
Mycenaean Greek Dark Age, 350 years, 1100 BCE – 750 BCE
New Kingdom of Egypt Dark Age, 405 years, 1069 BCE – 664 BCE
Irish Dark Age, 200 years, 100 BCE – 300 CE
Parthian Dark Age, 84 years, 91 BCE – 57 BCE
Han Dynasty Dark Age, 361 years, 220 – 581 CE
Britannia Dark Age, 400 years, 400 – 800 CE
Roman/European (Early Middle) Dark Age, 500 years, 476 CE – 10th century
Byzantine Dark Age, 150 years, 630 – late 8th centuries
Dark Age of Khmer, 432 years, 1431 – 1863

Darker Ages (collapse, no conquest, no history, no recovery)

7370 BCE Göbekli Tepe
5700 BCE Çatalhöyük
3800 BCE Nebelivka
2500 BCE Malta
2550 BCE Flinders Island
2250 BCE Liangzhu culture
2154 BCE Akkadian Empire
1900 BCE Bactria–Margiana
1800 BCE The Norte Chico civilization
1700 BCE Indus Valley Civilization
1500 BCE Erlitou culture
1450 BCE Minoan civilization
1200 BCE – 900 BCE Sea Peoples
1180 BCE Hittite Empire
612 BCE Neo-Assyrian Empire
200 BCE Chavín culture
400 BCE Olmec
100 BCE Paracas culture
220 CE Han Dynasty of China
650 CE Lima culture
800 CE Nazca culture
800 CE Moche
900 CE Izapa
900 CE Maya civilization (Classic Maya collapse)
900 CE Zapotec civilization
900 CE Quimbaya
907 CE Tang Dynasty of China
1000 CE Tiwanaku
1000 CE Wari
1125 CE Pueblo at Chaco Canyon
1130 CE Mimbres culture (collapse followed by 320 years to self-extinction)
1290 CE Pueblo at Mesa Verde
1300 CE Cahokia
1400 CE Great Zimbabwe
1431 CE Angkor civilization of the Khmer Empire
1450 CE Norse colony on Greenland
1450 CE Original Polynesian civilization on Pitcairn Island and Henderson Island
1500 CE Pre-Columbian complex societies in Amazonia
1500 CE Hohokam
1650 CE Rapa Nui
1700 CE? Malden Island
1760 CE Munhumutapa Empire

So, some will go down, under the waters. Certainly our civilization, our now global monetary culture, will (like all prior ones) go under. But perhaps some individual humans will persist on Malta or Unguja to rebuild. Perhaps some will rebuild to repeat the pattern of overshoot and collapse until humans go extinct in a few millennia. Or perhaps some will learn to not repeat the pattern, will come to understand the planet and their place on it, will learn to live properly with the planet as Earth Guardians. Instead of causing species extinctions they will work to prevent them and allow new species to evolve to replace those many species their modern techno-industrialized ancestors had, in their Anthropocene enthusiasm, made to go extinct (as they had almost destroyed all humans on the planet). Or not. I confess to being an optimist who must have hope for posterity (I can’t help it, it’s biological).

So, what can a human of today do? Learn to not be energy and posterity blind (i.e. ecolate), and work to be life-affirming (all life, not just human life).

356. How will the survival of humans be more difficult in the coming days?

In the coming hundreds of days (999 days = 2.74 years) expect increasing scarcity-induced conflict (real or perceived scarcity) which will increase scarcity. In the coming 9,999 days (27.4 years), don’t be surprised by increasing scarcity induced deaths, e.g. by starvation (inability to buy food until producers have none to sell leading to fighting on the farm and less food produced).

Note: all prior complex societies have failed, and their dissolution typically involves conflict and starvation.

http://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/human-past.html

357. Since sustainability is important, isn't it good for everyone to learn how to treat the planet in a great way?

Normal organisms, e.g. viruses, bacteria, archaeans, protists, multicellular eukaryotes, all behave as if persisting was ‘good’ because persisting as the millennia pass, sustainably, is selected for in complex evolving systems. You can refuse to reproduce and self-select out of the system, making room for those who do not.

As for everyone learning to treat the planet properly, if everyone were normal evolving systems (organisms/groups of organisms), then they would prosper as the millennia passed. But any that failed to understand their environment/biome and live with it properly by consuming/destroying it could also prosper greatly (by exceeding limits), for a time, then go extinct locally or as a species. The 29 reindeer, for example, who were brought to St. Matthew Island (which had no reindeer predators, diseases, nor parasites) greatly prospered, apparently well after exceeding the long term carrying capacity of the island’s primary productivity due to delays in ecosystem negative feedbacks.

There was a large amount of stored food on the island in the form of lichens and dried grasses. If long term carrying capacity of the island for reindeer (that left room for the voles, foxes and other species that were also dependent on island primary productivity) was 500 to 700, then when the population reached 5,000, a population biologist would assess the reindeer as having incurred an ‘extinction debt’ that they and/or their descendants (posterity) would have to pay (they would NOT vote to pay it, they wouldn’t have a choice).

Are humans smarter than reindeer? Sorry about that….

If you are a reindeer ecologist/population biologist in 1958 and some reindeer have concerns, are careful to defecate and urinate evenly on the land so every square meter gets fertilized, well, sorry to say, but doing so is not enough to treat the island in a great way. The only way to treat the predator-free island properly would be to rapidly contract the population from 1,200 to 600 and then assess to see if that was still too many as evidenced by significantly lowering the vole population.

If humans had done so in 1800, then their descendants (posterity in the 21st century) would have no debt to pay. If you are the reindeer ecologist in 1963, you could not foresee that the winter of 1964 would be severe, and that the reindeer population would collapse then, nor that it would collapse to island-wide extinction by 1966. But that the reindeer population would climax and descend, possibly to extinction, would be foreseeable given that the extinction debt had already been incurred by 1963.

https://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/over-carry.html

358. What are the human factors in the problem of suffering in the world today?

Error, ignorance, and illusion. As E.O. Wilson noted, ‘people would rather believe than know’. We are dissociated from reality. We are trying and failing to live in a world such as we believe in, a disconnect from the what-is. This is the source of our suffering, our dukkha.

[I include this responce with no links here only as it was immediately canceled by a moderator. Buddha's concept of dukkha was one of dysfunction, as in a dislocated joint, which causes suffering as symptom. I could have gone on to describe modern humans as dysfunctional K-strategists, but didn't. I didn't realize at the time that it would be my last post to Quora.]

359. What is the best program to control the population?

Good question (assuming by population control you mean managing population numbers and not forcing humans to be happy in their work serving an unsustainable system of growth) as our failure to address the condition of too many humans consuming too much of the planet’s primary productivity (green plant biomass, e.g. food, fiber, wood) and animals, matter concentrations in the planet’s crust (e.g. all base metals/minerals: bauxite, iron, cassiterite, phosphate, sphalerite, copper, tetrahedrite, silica, galena, gold, baryte, clay, gravel, dolomite…) that cannot be mined sustainably, and exergy (useable energy) whose use is far beyond what is sustainable is our condition of overshoot (and descent/contraction to come). What follows from our failure is that posterity faces a ghastly future.

Energy is the precondition for all activity, including mining/extraction of limited matter/material concentrations, food production, and the work of mostly fossil-fueled energy slaves modern techno-industrial (MTI) society and industrial agriculture depend on (as well as the MTIed humans whose existence depends on continued growth to support the still growing (80+ million/year) population. Oh, but growth on a finite planet has limits that have been (not will be, have been) transgressed. Sorry about that. Politicians can outlaw the second law (of thermodynamics), but trafficking in pretend solutions will not select for a different outcome even if 99.99% of humans agree doing so will.

But enough with the human predicament/condition stuff. What plan/program based on what policies/rules would best manage human population (the condition of there being too few or too many people)? This is known as a wicked problem by those living in MTI society, one of many problematiques (the problematique being overshoot), that will all need to be solved as all are interconnected (e.g. overconsumption, overproduction, overpollution, overpopulation, climate change…). Wicked means unsolvable given the present need in MTI society for politically acceptable solutions, which, if they don’t/can’t work, are pretend solutions or non-solutions that prevent real solutions and hence are actually part of the problem.

As noted initially, our failure to solve our probematique(s) is causing the Anthropocene mass extinction event which could include humanity (as posterity). If this be so, then your question follows. Note that all politicians either don’t think there is (or could be) an overpopulation (or overshoot) problem, or if there is a population problem it is an underpopulation problem related to the need to grow the population to grow the economy (stupid). Most thought leaders and most of those who answer population questions on Quora or vote agree that the majority of scientists who have been warning humanity about their overgrowth for 70 years are wrong. I assume the minority view (the matter-energy systems worldview) is correct and that Nature doesn’t care what the majority of humans deeply believe in and/or vote for, whether right or left or inbetween.

If the country you live in cannot embrace any wicked solutions (ones that might actually work, e.g. rapid depopulation via birth-off) or even think about wicked problems including the meta-problem of overshoot, then imagine one country (perhaps Malta) that does (where 51% of citizens do agree to adopt a best-guess program, and they pay the 49% to move and live in luxury somewhere else). They adopt the best program to manage their population that is conceivably possible at this time (they identify 25 thousand of the most literate, numerate, and ecolate (systems science literate) humans on the planet and host multiple interconnected conferences around the planet to iterate towards the best program that might work to manage human, livestock, crop, pet populations and all other problematiques (all being interrelated) to be implemented within the host country.

To wonder what the final program/solution is in detail is a distraction unless you are designing a potentially viable civilization. First create the condition within which any viable solutionatique can be forthcoming and implemented (e.g. on Malta where 100% of adults have agreed apriori to implement a best-guess program. If you agree to live by and work to implement the program prior to knowing what it is, then you can apply to immigrate. If you already live in the country and don’t agree, then you will be paid to leave and live in luxury (for a time until your adopted economy fails) elsewhere. This condition is the meta-program that any best program needs. Create that condition, then implement the best design for a viable civilization as may be forthcoming.

There will be no politics involved, hence real solutions become possible. They may still fail, but 'best' implies at least potentially viable, that which could work. I agree to vote with my feet and move to a pocket of potentially viable biophysical sustainability. If you do too (and a few others), then we could move to Malta (or elsewhere) and thereby become the 51+% who could agree to live within biophysical limits. Those in the minority who refuse could fight to kill as many of the majority as possible to again become the majority (or agree to be given enough money to move to live in luxury elsewhere). Assume most take the money plus paid moving expenses, and the paid for services of relocation specialists whose job is to make relocation as painless and enjoyable as possible to any other country that will accept those who refuse to live by whatever the new (i.e. viable as Nature alone determines) rules may be. This means replacing existing political control systems with one that listens to Nature and is naturcentric, i.e. is a naturocracy in which citizens agree to be ruled by Nature's laws.

If potentially viable solutions cannot be implemented in the country you live in because all countries so far are controlled by political systems, then the best (only viable) program/plan to implement is to vote with your feet, the one vote that might matter. Even if those willing to vote with their feet (perhaps 0.001% of world citizens) come to occupy only a region (one or a few watershed areas) within a country or state/provence/county instead of a country, such may be enough to avoid posterity's extinction.

[Note: For over three years I’ve answered Quora questions (575) and from the start I knew that Quora owned any content they hosted (that I gave them) and that their doing so had nothing to do with serving my interests nor that of humanity. Recently, any posts containing any links to any content I host (without ads) are subject to being deleted for violating their spam policy. I receive a notice of deletion, but no clue as to which answer was deleted or why (other than ‘spam’). More recently, Quora seems to have stopped sending me any emailed questions of the sort I would consider answering. For three years their software was getting better at sending questions of interest. For a Quora moderator to make that stop would be trivial. I could be on probation such that if I stop giving the wrong answers to questions, I may receive questions of interest again (provided I don’t answer them). So if I have to spend too much time hunting for questions of interest, then I won’t see them to consider, hence Quora (perhaps 1 moderator) wins (and perhaps posterity looses). But with 222,060 views, I did connect with a significant number of Quora readers, enough to assess that there is a near zero chance that more than 1 in 100k people who are literate and interested in questions have enough of an interest in any of my offerings to read another. The data suggest that at present less than 0.001% of humans share my concerns for humanity and the biosphere. I can post questions, but answering them on Quora would violate their policy. But if I answer them here, I can still claim it as an answer to a Quora question even if it really isn’t.]

360. What are some of the truly realistic existential threats to humanity in the next couple of centuries or so?

Natural Disasters

Pandemics: Although in 1918 about 50 million people died from the Spanish Flu (when population was 1.8 billion or 50 million would be 220 million in today's population), we have not seen a major pandemic. And by 2022 we still haven't as only 6.23 million deaths so far from COVID-19, a wannabe serious pandemic. We Indo-European types haven't seen a good old fashion pandemic, one where maybe half the population dies, since the 14th century when the Black Death struck. As population and crowding increase along with greater mobility, the chance of a new bug developing and rapidly spreading will only increase. As with most disasters, you'll have little time to escape. The danger here will be other people. The pandemic will spread too fast to expect science to find a cure in time. Your best hope will be a reverse quarantine where uninfected individuals isolate themselves from others before the die-off reaches their area. You might need to be self-sufficient for a year or even several years, so just staying in your apartment or suburban home isn't going to work for you. A pandemic is a disaster waiting to happen, one that will make pre-depression COVID-19 look like a fond memory, and expect it sooner than later.

Volcanic Eruptions: Dust from the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815, which affected the entire Northern Hemisphere, lead to the "year without a summer" and to the worst famine of the 19th century. When this happens again, you won't want to be in or near any major city. The Lake Toba eruption 74,000 years ago killed some or all humans living in Indonesian at the time. A volcanic collapse in or next to a sea can cause a monster tsunami causing ocean-wide costal devastation.

Supervolcanoes: There are six known supervolcanoes. The eruption of any of these would be a thousand times worst than any known volcanic eruption. The one under Yellowstone is coming due.

Impact Event: The Solar System still contains a lot of debris and Earth will continue to be struck by objects of varying size. Asteroids of 1 km diameter or larger impact Earth on average about every 500,000 years, which means that, though unlikely in the 21th century, it could still happen anytime. But one a mere 1/5,000th the size is far more likely and could cause destruction equivalent to a nuclear bomb.

Famine: Often the consequence of other natural/man-made disasters and regional population overshoot, thousands of famines have occurred in historic times (1,828 in China alone). In the 20th century about 50 million people starved to death, and many more simply starved. A reasonable guess is that about two-thirds of the world's human population is being supported by unsustainable agricultural practices. Expect famine in the 21th century to be vastly greater than any seen before (read more).

Extreme Weather: Whatever has been the worst drought, flood, hurricane, cyclone, heat wave, little ice age, tornado, or blizzard ever known, there will be more to come of lesser, equal, or greater magnitude. The impact of such events, once regional, will become increasingly global.

Earthquakes: The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was the worst ever experienced in the United States, but worldwide 70 earthquakes have killed more people. Clearly, in the USA, the "big one" has yet to come. The disaster, however, will be confined in area and help can be expected unless, for whatever reason, the rest of the country is already struggling to get by.

Solar Superstorms: Back in 1859 a large solar flare took aim at our planet and knocked out telegraph communications throughout Europe and North America. Today a similar event would bring civilization as we know it to its knees and put us back in the pre-telegraph days. For a time: no satellites, no computers, no communications, no electricity, no water, no transport, no food—think economic collaspe, chaos, and expect a really bad year or so—full recovery, if it came, would take decades. Solar maximums occur every 11 years.

Man-made Disasters

Here the door is wide open to never before experienced disasters, not merely the ones we've already managed to create.

CBRNs: Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events, whether intentional terrorist acts or accidents, will happen. If the area affected is large enough, you'll need some place to go before the nasty "whatever" gets to you. A single nuclear devise exploded high over any developed country, by whomever for whatever reason, would create an electromagnetic pulse having devastating consequences. Iran is actively pursuing the development of nuclear weapons with the likely intent to use them. They have the ability to launch from ships to strike anywhere in the world.

Civil Disorder: First World societies have avoided civil disorder by providing for the social welfare of those most likely to cause it. Wealthy nations can do this, and indeed, can't afford not to. The result is that a large percentage of their population is dependent on the state and have a well developed sense of entitlement. If not given what they feel entitled to (perhaps because there isn't more to give?), expect riots, increased home invasions, and marauding gangs when law enforcement falters. Your home will no longer be your castle.

Transportation Disruptions: On average the food you eat travels about 1,500 miles to get to your mouth. If for any reason trucks were to stop bringing food into your area, shelves would be bare in three days as that is all the inventory stores normally have on hand. Actually, once people saw that the shelves would soon be bare, panic buying or looting would mean the shelves would be bare even sooner. Even if you had a year's supply of food and water stored, how long would you survive in a city of increasingly desperate people?

Economic Collapse: The now global economic system is complex beyond anyone's complete understanding or control. Any mismanagement can have unforeseen, catastrophic results. In complex systems, a failure in one sector can take down the entire system.

Overshoot Disasters

While the other disasters mentioned so far seemingly just happen randomly, exponential growth in a finite environment has predictable consequences— namely overshoot and descent. Growth at some point will exceed the ability of the environment to support further growth. There is then a delay in corrective feedback and descent/collapse follows. In the struggle to survive, the environment is further degraded leading to a steep downward spiral.

Other disasters are like icebergs—maybe we'll get lucky and avoid them for a long time; maybe we'll hit one but not too hard, so it won't be so bad. Overshoot and collapse is different; it's like steaming full-speed ahead, through a fog, towards a continent. You will hit it; damage will happen—you just don't know exactly when crunch time will come. Will it be five years? Fifty? Five hundred?

Of course our ship could stop and change course, but doing so would require some collective intent and steely determination to overrule the full-speed-ahead crowd. Since there really is no one at the helm, making dramatic changes in course seems unlikely given the pervasive lack of foresight concerning things to come and the firmly vested interests most have in "staying the course." That some individuals have foresight may not be enough.

So, choose to work tirelessly to reform Growth Civilization 3.7, or prepare to lay the foundations for Sustainable Civilization 5.0 by transitioning to a Civ 4.x that works to recover functional behaviors and restore Nature over an 8 to 20 generations period.

It may be that, for long-term survival purposes, there are two types of people in the world: those who understand the exponential function and those who do not. If you're not sure what it's all about, consider looking into the matter—your fate, your children's fate, the fate of our species may depend on it.

361. Why are all countries indifferent to the destruction of the planet and the environment?

All countries are modern techno-industrial societies endeavoring to grow their economy by enthusiastically seeking short-term gains (e.g. by extracting resources, deforestation, farming marginal lands unsustainably, urbanization, industrialization, population growth, drawing down aquafers…). Growing the economy, stupid, is not compatible with long-term persistence of humanity and/or the biosphere. Hence we are indifferently presiding of the greatest mass extinction event since the late Cretaceous, one that could rival that of the Permian.

All countries will loudly proclaim that they are not indifferent (to the environment, human rights, the best interests of posterity…). Arguing with Anthropocene enthusiasts is a distraction. The more you stir a turd, the worse it stinks. We modern techno-industrialized humans are energy and posterity blind, such that we don’t even see our blindness nor our short-term persistence as overcomplex dissipative structures to be a problem.

It is the nature of the beast, overcomplex societies/nation-states, to serve the short-term self interests of those who think they are running the show, whether political (autocratic to democratic), military, religious, and/or corporate. This is what monetary systems select for, which in the long term is the failure (via overshoot) of the socio-political economic system.

362. If it were up entirely to you, what would be the population limit of the Earth at any one time?

The limit for humans would not be the maximum possible number of people by turning all of Earth’s environmental productivity (e.g. all fish, trees (biomass/wood needed for cooking), arable lands, grasslands, crops —including fiber that may be needed to maintain homeostasis in temperate areas, wildlife and livestock) into humans and their pets, but the population of humans and their mutualists, whose footprint should be well below the planet’s carrying capacity (because it goes up and down, so a down turn such as a drought would not kill people), would be maintained at a level that does not cause species extinction nor prevent the evolution of new species to replace those already lost in the present and ongoing Anthropocene mass extinction event.

When did humans regionally exceed Earth’s carrying capacity? When did we first overshoot regional productivity in the manner we are now by globally exceeding sustainable environmental productivity such as by turning fossil fuels into food? Before the Neolithic (which happened in some regions millennia later than other areas) there were 5–7 million humans and megafauna extinctions had occurred on five continents not including Zealandia, Madagascar, and numerous small islands such as Santa Rosa and Malta.

If those extinctions are discounted as secondary to the spread of a superior invasive species (not a mass extinction event), then when did the great simplification of biomes (loss of biodiversity) occur as they were turned into agricultural lands (as we continue to do on a vast scale, greatly accelerating the rate of species extinctions) in the Anthropocene to alter regional areas such that local mass extinctions began to occur (an indicator of exceeding carrying capacity)?

Asking a human about their overshoot condition and its beginnings is perhaps like asking a genocidal autocrat if he was behaving in a less than commendable way that all right-thinking beings in the universal might not celebrate. So don’t ask. Instead, ask Nature, as the nature of things, what the wages of overshoot are. Well, overshoot involves an increase in numbers and/or per capita consumption (which subjectively always seems like a great and wonderful thing), for a time. The trajectory of growth is for a time. There are limits to growth even if 99% of modern techno-industrially educated humans believe humans are exceptional, exceptions to natural laws that apply to all animals (but humans are not just another animal, so carrying capacity and overshoot limits don’t apply).

Nature, however, is unkind and doesn’t care what humans may deeply believe with utter certainty. If humanity’s growth trajectory climaxes and descends, don’t be any more surprised than if you shot an arrow at the noonday sun and its trajectory climaxes and comes to a sudden stop on its not so prosperous (as measured by GDP negative growth) way down.

And how many humans? By 3k to 4k years ago human overcomplex societies were regionally overshooting limits and collapsing to local extinction if not conquered as they weakened. The human population on Earth had exceeded 35 million, with most living in overcomplex empire building societies from chiefdom to state levels of complexity that select for the dynamic we are all part of today (which differs only in that, for the first time, we are doing overshoot on a global scale).

The beginnings of the pattern may have began when our population exceeded 7 million. We may have to reduce our population (along with that of our mutualists) to something in the range of 7 to 35 million humans depending on the level of per capita consumption. Could more humans be supported if all environmental productivity were turned into humans? Yes, maybe 500 million could be supported assuming 80 percent are serfs/peasants/slaves needed to support the soldiers and non-food producing servants of the leaders (religious and political) who benefit by maximizing growth via conquest, exploitation, and trade (trafficking), at least for a time (per last 10k years, empire building is not sustainable).

That’s why, if I were world dictator, the human population would be lowered by rapid birth-off to 35 million in about 80 years (in 50 years women would have to have on average perhaps 2.1 children, enough to maintain a population of 35 million, and in another 30 years most of the elder cohort, who were over fifty at the end of the birth-off, would have died a natural death after gifting such valuable memes as they could to posterity), then conditions (e.g. continued species extinctions) would be reassessed to determine a need for further decrease or increase as the millennia go by.

363. Amy Potter requested your answer: Does the zombie apocalypse have any basis whatsoever in reality?

[I answered no questions for two months as Quora no longer sends questions I would consider asking. I would have to go to the site and find them. Those that ask questions can ask up to 25 people to answer the question. This question was directed to me by the questioner, bypassing Quora's algorhythum. I looked at 14 other answers plus 11 'collapsed' for violating guidelines (my answer was not collapsed) and none answered the question. I thought I would test answer to see if the answer was cancelled by Quora moderation. Remarkable, for this first time evern, there were no vews (average answer had 70 views). A moderator may have been the first so no one, including the person what directly asked me to answer, saw the answer. Or Quora software now automatically cancels my answers. I'm guessing I did not violate any Quora rules with this answer, so it looks like personal moderator intolerace/aversion, some felt need to protect humanity from people like me. The link is to one episode of a BBC series. The question was asked 10 days ago, so the questioner is continueing to ask others (up to 25/day) and I could have been 250th on the list. Few likely persist or use this ability to ask individuals questions.]

Zombie apocalypse is a modern metaphor for post-collapse marauding hordes. It has happened many times as all prior overcomplex societies (like the one you live in) collapsed (or failed to persist if you prefer). Historians never record much of the aftermath as those who are literate tend to resist the hordes, but not persist to write about it.

https://youtu.be/B965f8AcNbw

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