tweeted recently about population

collapse what do you think is going to

happen there

oh well i’ve thought for at least 10

years that the biggest problem in 50

years will be that there’s just not

enough people i remember hearing you say

a few years ago that you thought we’d

peak at about nine billion yeah we

probably won’t hit nine yeah and i think

about stats because think about how

crazy it is to think

that we might be living on earth right

now

at a time with the most number of humans

that are ever going to exist at one time

ever yeah that’s highly probable and you

know in the past

the population collapse

in developed countries is precipitous

right it’s like it fall we fall off a

cliff because it’s the same everyone

knows this from the pandemic the r

naught number

if fewer people are reproducing next

generation you have fewer people to

reproduce as fewer people are

reproducing and it

yeah yeah yeah

well i i worked on

un committee

it’s got to be ten years ago now

um to help draft the un secretary’s

general’s report on sustainable economic

development and so i looked at all sorts

of things like that i was very curious

for example about

because people have been beating the

overpopulation drum since

well it really kicked in in the 1960s

you know because there were dire

predictions by the year 2000 the club of

rome came out and said well there’ll be

riots and mass starvation and mass

movement of of migrants and all the

things you hear about climate change

because there’s too many people on the

planet and that just didn’t happen at

all that was just that it wasn’t just

wrong it was anti-true it was absolutely

wrong what happened instead was that

everyone got way richer and the bottom

section of the population in terms of

economic distribution got lifted out of

poverty inequality still exists but

that’s that power law phenomena we

already talked about not that that’s

trivial it’s just unbelievably difficult

to determine what to do with there are

solutions but certainly getting rid of

capitalism isn’t the solution

and so

i looked at population trends and first

of all found

not that this is an act of genius or

anything that as soon as you educate

women

and

the the size of family shrinks

precipitously like below replacement and

that’s partly because women have other

options that that’s a huge thing this

play out oh yes i mean all the all the

countries in the west are way below

replacement korea is way below

replacement south korea japan way below

replacement

yeah yeah i think the number one not

good number one on the planet it might

be chad

chad the country in terms of growth uh

eight children on average yeah i think

nigeria will have more people in it than

china by the end of the century

so

yeah yeah yeah and musk you know he’s a

far

looking

man and

and so he’s looking

around the apocalyptic corner let’s say

oh we’re running out of people and what

that means of course is that you run out

of young people right you don’t run out

of old people first because everyone who

is here now is going to be 30 years

older in 30 years and

it’ll be young people we don’t have

enough of and of course young people are

the ones who do the innovation and are

going to do most of the heavy lifting

etc and so there’s going to be a

terrible shortage of young people well

you see this with some of the things

that i i posted that o s data 50.1

percent of women childless by 30 and

both men and women are replying to that

tweet saying well good there’s too many

people on the planet in any case i’m

thinking how

this

npc midwitery

is so dangerous because it makes people

believe that they actually have

something grounded backing up their

claims yeah yeah well and that this idea

that the planet has too many people on

it this is

there’s no

sentiment more implicitly genocidal than

that statement

[Laughter]

so what do you mean too many people

exactly and what do you mean the planet

and what do you propose to do about that

exactly mass abortion is that your

answer or should we do something a

little more dramatic maybe we’ll just

shame people out of having children and

i’ve seen people do that literally i saw

a professor when i was at an um

a ted i think it was it

doesn’t matter it was a number of

professors talking to a couple hundred

students and one of the professors who

was an environmentalist activist type

and he got up on stage and shook his

finger to the whole young crowd saying

that him and his wife had only decided

to have one child which was in my

opinion one child too many for him and

told all the young people there if they

had a shred of ethical decency that they

would lim severely limit their

reproductive potential and

i stood up and said that i thought that

was the most one of the most appalling

things i’d ever heard anyone in academia

say to young people which is really

saying something because they say plenty

of appalling things and it was a very

uncomfortable moment and he huffed off

the stage but

you know in a frenzy talking about how

you couldn’t talk about such things

without being pilloried on ethical

grounds and yeah that’s for sure you

come out

as a what emissary of the academic

establishment you tell young people that

humanity is so corrupt that they should

seriously consider not propagating

because that violates the deepest of

ethical norms and you think that’s a

good thing and that that’s your right

and

it was just

beyond comprehension it’s beyond

comprehension but it’s associated with

like a deeply rooted

existential self-hatred

and and i mean hatred at the level of

humanity is like a virus on the planet

that we’re a cancerous group alex

epstein calls this human racism

right

right right it’s that yeah well we’re a

cancer on the planet you know unchecked

growth just like a cancer

it’s like that’s us say a cancer it’s

okay we know where your heart is

located

because what’s what’s the implications

for for a doctrine like that what do you

do with a cancer cut it out yeah that’s

for sure poison it or whatever whatever

there’s nothing you don’t do to a cancer

so you’re gonna use a metaphor like that

there’s too many people on the planet

you can use a metaphor like that

you know and then you’re gonna you’re

gonna also decide that you’re virtuous

while you’re using it because you’re on

the side of the planet whatever the hell

that means

so yeah it’s it’s unbelievable and a

huge part of it’s rooted in this

existential

shame and

and horror at the condition of being

human and the fact that life is rife

with suffering and a lot of it’s

unjustified and

you know it’s a mephistophelian

position so mephistopheles was laid out

portrayed in girth is faust

that’s

the story of a man who sold his soul to

the devil for knowledge it’s a story of

intellectual pride and

gurtha stands in relationship to german

literature in the same manner that

shakespeare stands in relationship to

english literature

girth is mephistopheles

says straight out twice in in the play

once in the first

his two books and once in the first book

and once in a second girth that hasn’t

restated twice

existence is such a foul thing

because of all its suffering essentially

that it would be better if it was merely

enough annihilated

and that’s the mephistophelian stance

this whole show should just come to a

halt look at how corrupt people are evil

reigns everywhere it’s nothing but will

to power we’re destroying the planet

with our unchecked ambition all of it

rooted in greed and and and

machiavellianism and jockeying for

position and we’re so contemptible that

we should just roll up and die

and we should shame women into not

having children and we should shame men

so they never manifest any planet

destroying ambition and

it’s it’s unbelievably appalling it goes

all the way down to the bottom

the bottom of things that’s what’s

tearing our culture apart this dispute

about

the nature of existence at the most

fundamental level

so and the universities have come out on

the wrong side what’s happening people

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peace