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[Caithness]

I don't think overpopulation is the problem. The earth could comfortably support a population many times higher if we were able to allocate resources more effectively.

The problems are greed, carelessness and income inequality.

[Smiler]

Overpopulation isn't scary until everyone starts turning into zombies.

[Beat Bandit]

I don't think overpopulation is the problem. The earth could comfortably support a population many times higher if we were able to allocate resources more effectively.

The problems are greed, carelessness and income inequality.

So the problem isn't the people, just the effect of having people.

[Caithness]

Pretty much. But I believe that people and societies are are slowly improving as time goes on, and we'll eventually reach that utopian state.

[MarsDragon]

After we destroy ourselves? Sounds about right.

[Classic]

Imagine there's a condescending comment here, maybe with the phrase, "adorable naivete."
EDIT: Shit. Mars beat me to it with an actually cynical response.


ORIGINAL CONTINUES:
I dunno if I'd go so far as "utopian" myself, but... Yeah.
Getting Better- The Beatles

[Caithness]

After we destroy ourselves? Sounds about right.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141801929/u-s-dismantles-the-biggest-of-its-cold-war-nukes

Edit: Okay, after actually reading that article, it's kind of scary.

"In the 1990s, the United States was dismantling at a rate three times the rate of today," he said. "Partly that's because we were not refurbishing a lot of weapons and extending their life spans. And now we have a plan, just the next 10 years, we're supposed to be extending the life, the longevity, of roughly 2,000 strategic, high-yield nuclear weapons."

The U.S. still has some 1,800 strategic warheads deployed, a thousand on land- and sea-based missiles that could be launched in 12 minutes — and another 2,500 in reserve. These are the warheads that are being refurbished and that have slowed the dismantling process.

"At the rate that we're dismantling now, which is around 250 or so weapons per year, a weapon that is ready to be retired and be destroyed may not get to Pantex for actual dismantling for 10 years, because the queue is so long."

How long is that queue? Poneman would only say it's a goodly number. Other sources say there could be as many as 4,000 bombs in warehouses awaiting destruction.

[Mongrel]

After we destroy ourselves? Sounds about right.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141801929/u-s-dismantles-the-biggest-of-its-cold-war-nukes

Edit: Okay, after actually reading that article, it's kind of scary.

"In the 1990s, the United States was dismantling at a rate three times the rate of today," he said. "Partly that's because we were not refurbishing a lot of weapons and extending their life spans. And now we have a plan, just the next 10 years, we're supposed to be extending the life, the longevity, of roughly 2,000 strategic, high-yield nuclear weapons."

The U.S. still has some 1,800 strategic warheads deployed, a thousand on land- and sea-based missiles that could be launched in 12 minutes — and another 2,500 in reserve. These are the warheads that are being refurbished and that have slowed the dismantling process.

"At the rate that we're dismantling now, which is around 250 or so weapons per year, a weapon that is ready to be retired and be destroyed may not get to Pantex for actual dismantling for 10 years, because the queue is so long."

How long is that queue? Poneman would only say it's a goodly number. Other sources say there could be as many as 4,000 bombs in warehouses awaiting destruction.

Your tiddlyweek bombs! They do not scare me!

[Kashan]

I think humans are naturally inclined towards apocalyptic thinking, and that as a result of this people massively overestimate the damage and likelihood of a nuclear war. Which isn't to say that it wouldn't be the worst thing to ever happen to man kind and that it isn't more likely than I'm comfortable with. Still, I think natural extinction events are much more likely to push mankind to the brink rather than man-made ones.

Also I more or less agree with Caithness that things are getting better on a long enough timeline. No reason to think tomorrow will be better, but eventually things will be better. I think we see things as getting worse because we're less tolerant and more aware of the things that aren't okay than in the past.

[A²]

Split.  If someone can find the earlier abortion thread (we DO have an earlier abortion thread, right? (anybody who says Jail gets a posting ban.)) feel free to merge it.

I think there IS an actual Abortion thread in Jail/Guild Hall that got jailed because Guild guilded it.

Wait, are you threatening to ban someone who mentions that thread, or someone who calls Jail an abortion of a thread. Because I took it to mean the second.

[Mongrel]

Generally, I do agree that things are getting better over the long term and that even a massive extinction event would leave some survivors who would eventually rebuild some semblance of society.

But I would like to point out that if you're on the ascending slope of a very gradual and very long-term bell-curve, then of course things are going to look like they're always getting better. Which is just to say, we don't generally appreciate what "long-term" really is.

[Cthulhu-chan]

Accounting for the heat-death of the universe is generally considered cheating.

Unless you'd like to make a contract...?

[Brentai]

Jesus Christ we've switched gears AGAIN.

Rather than go through the tedious process of splitmerging one more time I just came up with a quicker and easier solution.

[Mongrel]

Accounting for the heat-death of the universe is generally considered cheating.

Unless you'd like to make a contract...?

Only if it's not payable until said heat death   >__>

[A²]

I still need to watch that.

[Büge]

Me too.

Hey, we could watch it together.

[Brentai]

Perhaps as some sort of remedial program?

[Thad]

A fetus is a living human organism. Whether you consider it a person is up to you, I guess, but it is alive.

A sperm is alive too.  Again, the trouble with this debate is that slippery-slope arguments are pretty much unavoidable.

I think humans are naturally inclined towards apocalyptic thinking, and that as a result of this people massively overestimate the damage and likelihood of a nuclear war.

I think it was a Stross post I read a few months back that posited we'll never see nukes dropped again simply because of the cost involved.  You want to kill a few thousand people, you can do it just fine by hijacking a plane.

The other key difference between WWII Japan and modern powers is that, well, as you may have noticed, 9/11 didn't result in an immediate surrender, it just pissed us the hell off.  You can make "the terrorists won" arguments for various subsequent infringements on our rights, but I don't think anyone can really say that bin Laden got what he wanted.

Unless what he wanted was to be shot in the face.

[Brentai]

I'm trying to frame this in a way so that I don't catch a facefull of Thad for it, but it's kind of a tiring exercise so I'm just gonna be upfront with it.

The scale of the Hiroshima bombing to 9/11 is at least 25:1 just in the immediate death toll.  I think it's rude to the Japanese to compare the two directly.

[Thad]

Since I was paraphrasing Stross's post, I've gone ahead and dug it up and will quote him directly:

There's one group of people who might still want to acquire nukes for a practical purpose: "terrorists". (Scare quotes intentional.) But I think this is a paper tiger. Terrorism isn't an existential state, it's a tactic. People employ it in order to achieve political ends. Nuclear weapons are difficult to make because they require extremely exotic materials that the existing manufacturers keep under armed guard. As the Hamburg Cell of Al Qaida demonstrated on 11/9/2001, you can achieve equivalent damage using much simpler tactics. The collapse of the World Trade Centre buildings released about as much gravitational potential energy as a one kiloton nuke, and killed roughly as many people. But the 9/11 atrocities also demonstrated the limits of the terrorist spectacle: like Douhet's mass bombardment of cities from the air, terrorism doesn't make the target population quake in their boots and plead for surrender, it mostly pisses them off and stiffens their spines.

No, clearly the two are not directly comparable, for a myriad of reasons which he largely covers in the post.  That the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a unique moment in history and we'll never see their like again is the point.