Here’s a piece that challenges my challenge to the assumption, especially in America, than more is better, that the economy must always expand, that the population should continue to increase indefinitely. My point has been that this literally cannot continue forever. At the same time, projections acknowledge that the human population will continue to rise to a point, later this century, and cap out at around 10 or 12 billion, then level off and even decrease — an effect of wealthier populations deciding to have few children all by themselves. Because, in a sense people don’t consciously realize, you don’t need to churn out so many children when most of them these days will survive past infancy.
Big Think, Jason Crawford, 21 Aug 2024: The overlooked virtues of a crowded world, subtitled “In a world of rising cynicism, a celebration of our capacity to create, adapt, and thrive.”
This piece is the third chapter of something called The Techno-Humanist Manifesto, about which it seems I haven’t posted about before, though I noticed earlier links, like this one back on July 11th. It seems to be a forthcoming book, being published a chapter at a time on “Freethink,” though there’s nothing about a physical book publication, which is a first sign of caution. A second sign is that, though scientifically and humanist informed projections of the future are right up my alley, there’s reason to be cautious of futurists who a bit too inspired by classic science fiction. Case in point: Elon Musk. Some of them get carried away.
But let’s see what this chapter says.
Key Takeaways
• In this chapter of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto, Jason Crawford argues that a larger human population drives innovation, progress, and diversity, benefiting individuals and society as a whole. • Techno-humanism emphasizes the value of human creativity, cooperation, and the unique ability to understand and shape the world.
Chapter 3, Ode to Man
Techno-humanism is a type of humanism. Humanism (as stated in Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now) is “the goal of maximizing human flourishing—life, health, happiness, freedom, knowledge, love, richness of experience.”1
Implicit in this goal is that humans deserve to flourish. A hallmark of the techno-humanist worldview is love for humanity, including reverence for human creations.
This was once a common sentiment in the West. Indeed, it is ancient: Sophocles’s Antigone features an “Ode to Man” that begins: “Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none more wonderful than man.”2 The Ode praises mankind’s ability to sail the seas, to plow the earth, to tame animals, to secure ourselves from wind and rain. “O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure!” Two thousand years later, this was echoed in Shakespeare: “What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals.”3
Yet, acknowledging what could be called the human plague upon the human biosphere, many philosophers and commentators have argued caution about human expansion.
Today there is a significant current of anti-humanism. In the last chapter, I quoted one environmentalist who called humans a cancer and a plague upon the earth; this was echoed in 2020, at the beginning of the covid pandemic, with the spread of the catchphrase “we’re the virus.”4 In 2018, a philosophy professor opined in the pages of the New York Times on the question “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?” Although he acknowledged the tragic aspect of such an event, he called the issue “quite complex” and said that “it might just be a good thing” since humanity is “committing a wrong, a wrong whose elimination would likely require the elimination of the species.” (On the question of whether those alive today should commit suicide for the sake of animal welfare, he said “I do not have a final answer.”)5 Extreme views like these belong to a small minority, but their voices in national newspapers affect the mainstream mood, and dampen the enthusiasm of all but the most ardent humanists.
We need a corrective to anti-humanism. We need to reassert the value, the dignity, the glory of humanity. Consider this a modern Ode to Man.
This 2018 reference is to an essay by Todd May, which this year has become a book (that I just bought), Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times. I have several earlier May books; he is one of those very patient, reasonable philosophers, who walks you through arguments you may never have thought to consider.
Then the writer cites David Deutsch and Jacob Brownoski; he gets points. But let’s jump ahead. What exactly are the benefits of a much larger human population? Benefits that aren’t available now?
Well, first, here’s this key point about humans:
We have succeeded in part because we have learned to cooperate better than any other species. Large-scale cooperation is not inherent in our nature—colonies of insects work together in larger teams than primitive humans did8—but it emerges from our conceptual abilities. We are the only species that comes together to build cities, to unite into nations, to form global markets. We are the only species capable of specialization and trade.
Then much more about human evolution and cooperation. And so:
Our cooperative nature means that not only are humans good, more humans are better.
Thus we need a corrective not only to anti-humanism, but to anti-natalism and fears of overpopulation. Those fears were stoked in the 1960s, when the world population growth rate climbed to 2.3% per year while over 1.6 billion people were still living in extreme poverty.26 In 1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which warned that “[i]n the 1970s… hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”27 The Ehrlichs said that population control should be achieved by compulsion if necessary, and supported coercive sterilization in India.28
1968, it turned out, was already past the peak population growth rate. …
And so on. Let’s get to the point.
First, more people means more outliers—more super-intelligent, super-creative, or super-talented people, to produce great art, architecture, music, philosophy, science, and inventions. If genius is defined as one-in-a-million level intelligence, then every billion people means another thousand geniuses, to work on all of the problems and opportunities of humanity, to the benefit of all. Of course, for every Einstein or Mozart, there is also a Hitler or Caligula. But society amplifies the accomplishments of the good, and fights to suppress the damage of the bad—which is why over the long term, we’ve created far more than we’ve destroyed.
Well… OK, except that most people live their daily lives without awareness of anything these geniuses have accomplished. Conservatives actually resist new accomplishments, in favor of ancient received wisdom.
The article goes on along similar lines.
For other reasons, too, a larger population means faster scientific, technological, and economic progress. More people means more total research and development: more researchers, and more surplus wealth to invest in it. And it allows researchers to be more specialized and thus to go deeper in their fields. In the economy generally, the division of labor increases productivity, as each worker can specialize and become expert at their craft.
But when conservatives are in charge of government, they suppress research and development.
Even setting aside growth and progress—looking at a static snapshot of a society—a world with more people is a world with more choices, among greater variety. A bigger society has more cuisines, more architectural styles, more types of fashion, more sub-genres of entertainment. This also improves as the world gets more connected: for instance, the wide variety of ethnic restaurants in every major city is a recent phenomenon; it was only decades ago that pizza, to Americans, was an unfamiliar foreign cuisine.
Sure, of course, but there is only so much time in the day. I’m also skeptical about his other examples. A greater chance of finding your perfect partner? Nonsense; people find their partners via the limited circumstances of their lives; they do not conduct interviews of all potential partners around the world. Furthermore, have people run out of cuisines to sample, fashions to try? To say nothing of books to read, music to listen to? Do we really need *more* of all those to keep ourselves occupied?
But the writer does cite some general principles:
These examples illustrate a few value-generating effects of a larger population. One is economies of scale: fixed costs are amortized over more output, lowering average cost. There are also network effects: value in any network is generated by connections, and more people means more connections possible per person (the total number of possible connections is proportional to the square of the number of people).42 Finally, there is the existence of non-rival goods, which can be shared by all—especially ideas, which increase the productivity of everyone who uses them without diminishing the value of the idea for others.
Granted this is but one chapter of a book, but it doesn’t balance these theoretical advantages of a larger populations, with the inevitable consequences of a larger human population doing increased damage to the planet. I remain skeptical.
