Surgery, sure, but hormones? Who care. Half of cis woman are on hormones anyway, they're called birth control.

I have half a mind to go on testosterone just for fun. Sounds like a cool drug. Estrogen just makes me vomit.

People are declaring/accepting their prepubescent children to be transgender. Psychologists say it's healthy to do that, but I can't help but wonder if we have enough evidence for that and what the long-term effects are going to be.

Prepubescent children have no idea what it means to be a man or a woman. A girl who is more outdoorsey and less girly is not a boy. When hormones hit she can change completely. It is insane to do such treatments. Let them do it when they adults and paying their own way.

Amy Alkon, This Blog Post ☑

Kids aren't stupid. They KNOW (especially with boys) what becoming trans would mean in the long run, so if they're merely gay or androgynous, they don't WANT any medical treatments or surgery. (In both cases, I assume it would mean not being able to reproduce as adults.)

While of course we have to learn to have more respect for kids who don't want to have stereotypical gender roles, as well as those who are going to grow up completely gay, I suspect that most of the parents who agree to hormone treatments did so because their kids were a lot more extreme - at very early ages - in their demands than just wanting to wear dresses, get crew cuts, or play only with certain toys.

(Not to mention the problems that might occur when, say, a girl has a new baby brother that her father desperately wanted - and she resents that and comes to believe he never wanted any daughters at all.)

It's well known that LGBTQ teens have high rates of suicide when their parents are hostile to them - and the trouble with parents refusing to help trans children get the medical treatments they truly want, early on, is that post-puberty, those treatments don't work so well. That is, the post-surgery adults don't look that different from transvestites, if at all.

Oh, and as I may have said before - at least some scientists are saying that there really are more LGBTQ people than before, and the reason is that that is nature's way of responding to overpopulation. Apparently, the number of heterosexuals who use birth control isn't enough.

Not to mention that, as Conservation Magazine pointed out just a few years ago, falling birth rates are no match for rising life expectancies. (So by 2050, half the world's population could have white hair - that is, 5 billion people or so.) Since no one is about to suggest raising the death rate, maybe we need to help every single person who is even CONSIDERING not reproducing at all. (As well as drilling every child in the science of "waste not, want not" from day one, so they'll be less likely to be in dire need when they're old.)

Well lenona THIS TIME they might be right!

"1: “Civilization Will End Within 15 Or 30 Years”

Harvard biologist Dr. George Wald warned shortly before the first Earth Day in 1970 that civilization would soon end “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

"2: “100-200 Million People Per Year Will Be Starving To Death During The Next Ten Years”

Stanford professor Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared in April 1970 that mass starvation was imminent.

4: “Demographers Agree Almost Unanimously … Thirty Years From Now, The Entire World … Will Be In Famine”

”By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

6: “Childbearing [Will Be] A Punishable Crime Against Society, Unless The Parents Hold A Government License”

David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club [stated]"

Throw enough balls at de hoop and ...

http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/22/7-enviro-predictions-from-earth-day-1970-that-were-just-dead-wrong/

Well lenona THIS TIME they might be right!

"1: “Civilization Will End Within 15 Or 30 Years”

Harvard biologist Dr. George Wald warned shortly before the first Earth Day in 1970 that civilization would soon end “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

"2: “100-200 Million People Per Year Will Be Starving To Death During The Next Ten Years”

Stanford professor Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared in April 1970 that mass starvation was imminent.

4: “Demographers Agree Almost Unanimously … Thirty Years From Now, The Entire World … Will Be In Famine”

”By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

6: “Childbearing [Will Be] A Punishable Crime Against Society, Unless The Parents Hold A Government License”

David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club [stated]"

Throw enough balls at de hoop and ...

http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/22/7-enviro-predictions-from-earth-day-1970-that-were-just-dead-wrong/

Yeah, I recall that when I was in the fifth grade, the Weekly Reader (a small news magazine distributed to elementary schools) confidently predicted that the world would be out of oil by 1980. I worried about that for a few days, and then I did what children usually do with such things -- I decided it was a problem for the adults to fix. Of course, they did.

I've written here before about the psychology of end-of-the-world predictions. There's a certain art to it. But after a while you can spot the tactics, which include:

1. The deadline is in the medium-near future, not immediate, but close enough to get people worrying about it. (If not for themselves, then for their children.) You don't want it too close because in a few years you'll be proven wrong, but you don't want it too far away because then people will dismiss it.

2. There's an element of retribution and punishment: "This fate is what you deserve unless you repent immediately." Make people feel guilty for existing and for enjoying their lives. Make them feel that if they don't immediately change their ways, blood will be on their hands.

3. Totalitarian measures are essential to avoiding the disaster. Ordinary people must surrender their lifestyle and put their fates in the hands of some kind of authority. Nonconformity by one individual spells doom for all of humanity.

4. Grasping at the slimmest of evidence straws that "prove" that the prediction is coming true. Any coincidence that favors the theory constitutes proof. A lot of people don't understand probability or coincidence, and they assume that everything has an easily demonstrable cause. Exploit that. Convince people to ignore contravening evidence.

> I decided it was a problem for
> the adults to fix. Of course,
> they did.

☑ Power blog comment.

I regard this article as one of the most compelling pieces I've ever read.

A precis from Postrel 4/2001-

As Jonathan Rauch explained in an important Atlantic feature a couple months back, the oil business has adopted all sorts of information technology to produce incremental improvements in production. From that article, which I highly recommend in its entirety, especially since I'm quoting the dry, number-filled parts rather than Jonathan's vivid, on-the-scene reporting:

[T]he world has burned about 820 billion barrels of oil since the first strike at Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, in 1859, and 600 billion of those barrels—almost three fourths of the total—have been burned since 1973. Yet the world's proven oil reserves are about half again as large today as they were in the 1970s, and more than ten times as large as in 1950. It is as if using up oil has somehow created more, although obviously that cannot be true.

A second paradox: Each decade produces fewer of the very large discoveries known in the industry as elephant fields. "No field with more than 27 billion barrels—one year of global consumption, at present rates—has been found anywhere since Safaniya, in Saudi Arabia, was discovered in 1951," Gregg Easterbrook wrote recently in The New Republic. Today, indeed, a find of merely one billion barrels is considered cause for rejoicing. Yet the average exploratory well yielded four times as much oil in 1998 as in 1980, according to the Energy Information Administration, with the big jump starting about ten years ago.

A third paradox: We know there is less oil in the ground every year. Other things being equal, that should make finding additional barrels more expensive every year. But finding costs have dropped sharply since the 1970s, even in the United States, a region that has been drilled practically to death. According to the Energy Department, the average cost of finding new oil has fallen from $12-$16 a barrel in the 1970s and 1980s to $4-$8 today. (Oil prices have recently risen quite a bit, of course, but that is because of OPEC's machinations and turbulence in the Middle East. Finding and development costs give a much clearer picture of oil's real scarcity.)...

[T]he reason the average new oil find grows larger even as the average new oil field grows smaller is that the industry is drilling fewer dry holes and extracting more oil from the new wells it drills. Exploration success rates grew from 23 percent in the 1970s to 29 percent in the 1990s. That increment sounds modest, but remember that explorers in the 1990s were shooting at much more difficult targets. Success rates could rise even as difficulty increased because improvements in seismic imaging gave geologists a much clearer shot—as if a new rifle scope enabled them to shoot targets at 1,000 yards that previously they couldn't hit at 500. Meanwhile, techniques such as directional drilling and enhanced recovery (in which water or gases or chemicals are injected into reservoirs to force out more oil) increased the yield per new well. Thus did the growing ingenuity of human beings outpace the earth's growing reluctance to relinquish its treasure.

Cousin Dave, re apocalyptic predictions..."3. Totalitarian measures are essential to avoiding the disaster. Ordinary people must surrender their lifestyle and put their fates in the hands of some kind of authority. Nonconformity by one individual spells doom for all of humanity."

A current example of this: much worry and even panic about 'climate change', but very little about the destruction of the power grid via either an EMP attack or natural solar storms. Hardening the power grid might allow you to beat up on the utility companies, but doesn't allow you to establish complete control over every business and individual in the world.

I agree with cc. Making prepubescent kids -- or even teenagers -- go trans is child abuse, IMO.

Bob, just so you know, the ONLY thing I remember the magazine saying was that falling birth rates are no match for rising life expectancies. They did not say anything ludicrous or Chicken Little-ish. So why are you gleefully pointing out erroneous predictions from 47 years ago? Especially when they all seemed to be made by men who didn't grasp how popular birth control would be with women - and men - in the 1970s and 1980s?

Btw, recently, Lori Kenschaft, author of "Gender Inequality in Our Changing World: A Comparative Approach," said that

"...the world’s birthrate has been falling since 1970. Today, the total fertility rate (average births per woman) worldwide is less than 2.5. In India it is 2.4. Only in countries plagued by poverty, war, or both — mostly in Africa — does the average woman have more than three children. The evidence indicates that most couples want to have a moderate number of children, and will do so if they have access to reproductive information and contraception. Hundreds of millions of women, though, do not have that access..."

We reached 6 billion in 1999. While it may be true that only 4 billion people born in the 20th century will still be alive by 2050, anyone can be white-haired by age 50 - or even 40. What's more, while it's true that statisticians were slipping up even as late as 1974, when we were at 4 billion (Frank H. T. Rhodes said, then, that we would double by 2007), I'd say it's pretty likely that now, certain people are UNDERESTIMATING what things will look like by 2050. Why? Because they never seem to explain why the increase rate will slow down when it didn't even STOP during the Depression or WWII. Ever since 1960 (then at 3 billion), the global population has increased by a billion every 15 years or fewer - and the number of years has kept shrinking.

Namely:

1960
1974
1987
1999
2011

Do the math. We should be reaching 10 billion by 2047 at the latest.

Lenona,

Care to provide any evidence of that 'overpopulation' you seem so scared of? People have more food and better food today than 100 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. That Tokyo and New York are crowded is not evidence of overpopulation. But I guess some day you and Malthus will be right. Someday.

> the ONLY thing I remember the
> magazine saying was that falling
> birth rates are no match for
> rising life expectancies

Not to nitpick, but you (or the magazine) have already entered the arena of argument: What is meant by, or desirable about, having the quantities "match"?

I'm totally nitpicking.
That's how this is DONE.

That video makes an excellent point.

At least 90% (more like 95%) of prepubescent children with gender dysphoria are not transgender, and their gender dysphoria resolves as they go through puberty. It's as if the surge in sex hormones is the cure. At least 80% of adolescents who identify as transgender will have their gender dysphoria resolve by the time they are 20.

Giving drugs and hormones to delay puberty might be beneficial to the 5% or fewer whose gender dysphoria is intractable, but it will be harmful to the 95% or more in whom it would otherwise resolve.

Unless there's a way to positively identify which 5 out of 100 children with gender dysphoria won't get over it by the time they pass through puberty it doesn't make medical or humanitarian sense to rush prepubescent children into a treatment that will harm 95 of them for every 5 that it might help. And of the 5 whose gender dysphoria doesn't resolve as they go through puberty, 4 will become part of the 80% of adolescents whose gender dysphoria resolves by the time they're 20.

I get the feeling that the motive for this push to start treating children before puberty is to start transitioning them before their gender dysphoria resolves on its own and they become content cisgender people.

I mean —and I really don't mean to pick on Lenona, she's one of my favorite commenters on the computer "internet"— projections or citations of growing headcounts are entirely beside the point, much as are Amy's sudden-yet-now-unceasing rantings about the incompatibility of Islam with this or that.

"10 billion" is a number, not a threat.

So, like, relax. Have a glass of Merlot, watch this video from my hero, and take gratitude from the presence of other people on this planet.

> The deadline is in the
> medium-near future, not
> immediate, but close enough
> to get people worrying

There's probably a name for that... And if there isn't, there will be within the next six months.

Also, Lenona, I will give you back the full price of your subscription to "Conservation" magazine if you prove to me that you've cancelled its remaining issues.

Because fer cryin' out loud... Conservation Magazine.

Bob, I have no idea why you would post for-profit "news".

-----

Johns Hopkins once performed surgery on infants to determine gender.

-----

Population. Note that there are precisely TWO infrastructure practices that make this possible today: vaccination and fossil-fuel-powered food cultivation and distribution.

Geez, Crid, I think you KNOW I'm a tightwad. I do not pay for ANY magazine. There's always the library.

(But since the recent special issue of TIME's "Marijuana Goes Main Street" will not be there, I may have to buy that one. Collectors' issues of any magazine never show up at the library, for some reason - maybe they're afraid they'll get stolen?)
________________________________________

What is meant by, or desirable about, having the quantities "match"?
_______________________________________

They didn't say they SHOULD match. The idea was that, simply, we can't afford to have a world population that keeps increasing by a billion every 12 years, whether or not the majority will be over 50 years old. If life expectancies keep going up, we have to rethink how old people are going to live comfortably. Obviously, we need young people to care for the old, but we can't base that care on a pyramid scheme.

As it happens, I stumbled on CM because of the long and thoughtful 2013 article reprinted in Utne Reader. Here it is:

"TV as Birth Control" (no, it's not what you might think)

http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2013/09/tv-as-birth-control/

By Fred Pearce, the environment consultant of New Scientist magazine.

Check out the bit on Kenya, too.

Excerpts:

"...The pair noted that the new diet of game shows, soap operas, and reality shows instantly became the villagers' main source of information about the outside world--especially about India's emerging urban ways of life. At the top of the ratings was Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (meaning 'Because a mother-in-law was once also a daughter-in-law'). Based on life in the megacity of Mumbai, it was Asia's most watched TV show between 2000 and 2008 and was an eye-opener for millions of rural Indian women. They saw their urban sisters working outside the home, running businesses, controlling money, and -- crucially -- achieving these things by having fewer children. Here was TV showing women a world of possibilities beyond bearing and raising children--a world in which small families are the key to a better life...

"...There is a history to using soap operas to cut fertility. It goes back to Mexico in the late 1970s, a time when the average Mexican woman had five or six babies and Mexico City was becoming the world's largest megacity. Miguel Sabido, then vice president of Televisa, the national TV network, developed a soap-opera format in which viewers were encouraged to relate to a character on the cusp of doing right or wrong--a "transitional character" whose ethical and practical dilemmas drove the plotlines.

His prime soap, or telenovela, Acompáñame ("Accompany Me") focused on the travails of a poor woman in a large family living in a run-down shack in a crime-ridden neighborhood. She wanted to break out and, after many travails and setbacks, did so by choosing contraception and limiting her family size. It was a morality tale, and nobody could mistake the message. The lessons were reinforced with an epilogue at the end of each episode, giving advice about family planning services...

"...Optimists point out that poverty no longer dooms countries to high fertility, as shown by examples such as Burma and Bangladesh. But pessimists say it is unlikely that hard-pressed African governments will be delivering either wealth or Asian-style education systems to their fast-growing citizenry any time soon.

"However, it may be a mistake to think that governments are key to reducing fertility. Evidence from both Asia and Latin America indicates that wider social forces are at work: women are making their own choices. Female emancipation is key...

"...We should not think the power of soaps is a purely developing world phenomenon. Many argue that soaps have played a role in triggering changes in attitudes toward homosexuality and gay marriage in Europe and North America, for instance. And even Sabido-style programs are being tried in rich nations. Witness the arrival of online soaps with overt messages, such as East Los High at hulu.com. Launched in June 2013, the soap--funded by the Population Media Center with help from the California Family Health Council-- targets Latino teens with tales of a girl from a single-parent household who struggles against temptation."

____________________________________________

Care to provide any evidence of that 'overpopulation' you seem so scared of? People have more food and better food today than 100 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. That Tokyo and New York are crowded is not evidence of overpopulation.

Ben at April 25, 2017 6:17 PM
____________________________________________

Who said anything about NY or Tokyo? They're popular cities to live in - and you pretty much have to be rich to LIVE in either one, as opposed to work there. End of story.

However, last I heard, at least 1 in 6 (or is it 1 in 5?) people in the world still can't get a transparent drink of water. I.e., a drink that is unlikely to give you cholera or typhoid. Having smaller families is one possible way to help your family get all the basic necessities like clean water, depending on where you live. (Obviously, many childless people are still dirt poor.)

Not to mention that the child prostitution industry in Thailand is still going strong - caused heavily by the fact that parents often can't afford to feed their children, so they sell them. Somehow, I doubt they had children for the purpose of creating THAT kind of income.

Oh, and anyone will tell you global hunger is still very much a problem. Btw, the Hunger Project will also tell you that hunger doesn't keep the birth rates down, it keeps them up. When parents know their children will NOT die from famine, disease, or war, they have fewer children.

From World Hunger dot org (in 2016):

"The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2014-2016. Almost all the hungry people, 780 million, live in developing countries, representing 12.9 percent, or one in eight, of the population of developing counties. There are 11 million people undernourished in developed countries."

And, to get back to the video, I wish Lehmann would offer proof that more than a small fraction of kids coming into clinics are REALLY shallow enough to consider transgender surgery just for the sake of being "fashionable." Parents, after all, generally don't like the idea of their kids effectively sterilizing themselves - never mind other hazards of surgery and hormones - so how do we know the kids DIDN'T show suicidal signs (or signs close to them) when the parents tried to make them settle for things like clothes, haircuts, and toys?

> The idea was that, simply, we...

STOP. You have no business clucking about what's simple.

Listen, we were raised in a squirming, mouthy culture with several baked-in presumptions about economics and the environment, and those presumptions almost always misapprehend the failures of human nature. What is or isn't "simple" is precisely the topic today: "Simply" is a smirk you haven't earned.

> we can't afford to have a world
> population that keeps increasing
> by a billion every 12 years

How on Earth could you know such a thing?

And what could you possible mean by "afford"?

There is no master checking account in some cosmic bank held by "Human Beings," nor even is there one for "Life on Earth." The idea of such a final accounting, and poorly-articulate feelings of terror and guilt about it, are probably remnants of our J/Christian heritage.

No one has any idea how many people this planet can sustain. And certainly no clue about how many need to be under or "over 50 years old."

I was hoping the intrinsic truth of that Lomborg video would be clear to you, but here it comes: People are a blessing, not a burden. People —especially the ones living in freedom and especially the girls who learn to read— add enormous amounts of value and create measurable wealth for civilization. People pay their own way, and a little more.* We've seen this time and again over my own lifetime, and not even the young and pretty part of it.

As it happens, humanity will top out at around nine+ billion over the next thirty years, and then start dropping again... Because we're all getting richer, and rich people are less fertile than poor ones.

In the meantime, DON'T WALK AROUND MUMBLING ABOUT WHOSE LIFE IS A BURDEN AND WHOSE IS NOT...

...Because if you do, I'm going to have some questions about where YOUR name is on your list.




I would strongly, strongly encourage you to watch this video...

...And read about the Simon-Erhich Wager.

I seriously seriously seriously want to you watch (or listen) to that video.

"No one has any idea how many people this planet can sustain."

Sure they do. This is actually a simple engineering problem, because the amount of oxygen expelled by land and sea plant life and the amount consumed by, us, for example, is known.
The first complication is estimating where equilibrium will occur, because changes in atmospheric concentration will cause other, buffered, changes.
Then there is debate about how many other species are "necessary" and the ethics of Soylent Green.
So you won't find a consensus number, because some researchers want to save the bald eagle and others only care about their dog.
Current consumption of fossil fuel is known, but future use varies by technological opportunity. The USA burned ~44% of all energy in 2005; this suggests that the same lifestyle cannot be supported worldwide.

You may be stamp your feet that you don't get a simple answer, like "21,342,456,023 people", but you should never have expected one - because it matters what those people do, not just if they are alive. Also, every proper observation under the scientific method requires the citation of the measuring instruments and conditions. That this list can be extensive doesn't justify any argument from ignorance or other fallacies.

Crid, when it comes to the overpopulation of, say, deer, no one claims that extra deer are a blessing to each other or to humans (especially with the deer ticks and Lyme disease factors). Nor does anyone suggest redistributing food. They just cull them.
______________________________________

People are a blessing, not a burden. People —especially the ones living in freedom and especially the girls who learn to read— add enormous amounts of value and create measurable wealth for civilization. People pay their own way, and a little more.
_________________________________________

Even in the U.S., as someone pointed out, any kid of yours is statistically more likely to become a murderer (or at least a violent criminal) than someone who cures cancer. Anyone can count those numbers. And even the perfect kid can get hit by a car before age 30 or 20 and become a vegetable in a hospital for years before dying. "Blessings" are not to be betted on.
_________________________________________

As it happens, humanity will top out at around nine+ billion over the next thirty years, and then start dropping again...
_______________________________________

And how do you know that, when it hasn't even show any signs of STOPPING, even during WWII, as I mentioned?

As I said, maybe all those Chicken Little predictions from 47 years ago and earlier were wrong only because 1) small families and no families turned out to be far more popular than expected, and 2) people got alarmed enough to USE birth control more than they might have otherwise?

Btw, Rad, thanks for beating me to a couple of points.

Not to mention that we really have to take seriously just how many jobs, strictly in numerical terms, WON'T be available for future generations. It's not just the cashiers who have to worry - so do some medical specialists, for starters.

Oh, and we don't just need enough space to lie down in (Texas theory) - we need of space to grow food in, as well as many other resources. Is THAT news?

I keep seeing surveys asking about detransitioners, and also the effects of social contagion. Seems like people are starting to study it

Raddy, if bullshit were cornflakes, you'd be Kellogg's of Battle Creek.

> Sure they do.

"Sure they do," you chirpily announce, before immediately blowing a blindingly befogged explanation for why they most certainly do not.

> "Blessings" are not to
> be betted on.

So kill your children. Then kill anyone in you own generation in your family, and certainly your parents, aunts and uncles. You're married? Kill all his people. And then him. And then, when you're sure they're gone, kill yourself... Blow your own brains out. Leave the campground better than you found it, Okay? Don't cry or anything. Think of it as "culling," Lenona.

Because, like you, I'm not in the mood for "betting" either.

I predict a quiet avalanche of backsliding to their original classifications when all the attention dies down.

How on Earth could you know such a thing?

And what could you possible mean by "afford"?
____________________________________________

You're just playing innocent, aren't you?

I don't see how we can even justify the CURRENT population of 7.5 billion, given what I said at 7:41 AM. How will increasing to 8 billion or more make those horrible problems more likely to be solved? Only pro-natalists believe that. Rich people NEED large numbers of poor people to exist, hint hint, so they're not going to help them that much. (Poor people make willing cannon fodder, for starters. As a well-known fictional character said: "All wars are about money, no matter what anyone says.")

For that matter, how do we justify the existence of fertility clinics when foster children have to beg in the newspapers every week to be adopted?

And in case you didn't understand my mini-chart, here it is again:

Global population

1960 3 billion
1974 4 billion
1987 5 billion
1999 6 billion
2011 7 billion

So, since 1987, we've been increasing by a billion every 12 years. Anyone with common sense should know we can't continue at that rate and abolish hunger when we haven't abolished it at our current level.

Again, I have yet to hear any clear reason why the population would "top off" or drop, especially when there's still no shortage of religious and legal resistance to family planning all over the world. (Trump certainly isn't helping either.)

I wouldn't be surprised if the United Nations were claiming that we'll only be at 9.5 billion by 2050 because they don't want to make people panic - or because someone is bribing them to say that.

Yeah... sure... But the most readily available resolution for this problem holds no appeal for you.

So I'm thinking we secretly agree that this isn't a big deal.

For some reason you imagine that the arriving billions just stand around and wait for salvation... To be provided by, presumably, you. But approximately zero-point-naught incoming billions of people actually live their lives that way.

> Again, I have yet to hear any
> clear reason why the population
> would "top off" or drop

Have you read anything about this besides scare stories? Again: Fertility plunges with wealth. When you know you don't need ten kids to be certain someone makes it to adulthood, you start having fewer kids and making sure they're good ones.

As Cousin Dave said, the adults will take care of this.

Glad we're on the same team after. Be nice to you family, okay? Good peeps, they mean well.

Geez. Crid denies the scientific method because it's too hard.
Dude, every proper measurement includes the method and its uncertainty. Meanwhile, you don't know how tall or old you are except as a guess.
All I said was you have to read the work, not just the number, but you won't.

"People are a blessing, not a burden."

Really? Some animal are just more equal than others.

"However, last I heard, at least 1 in 6 (or is it 1 in 5?) people in the world still can't get a transparent drink of water. I.e., a drink that is unlikely to give you cholera or typhoid. Having smaller families is one possible way to help your family get all the basic necessities like clean water, depending on where you live."

False. As was most everything else you presented.

Hunger is less of a problem today than 50 years ago or even 100 years ago. Clean air and water too are less of a problem. No, rich people in the global sense of the word rich don't need an army of poor people to stay rich. The US is not rich on the backs of third world nation.

Corruption is the main issue today. Why people don't have enough clean food and water it almost always comes down to government corruption. Having fewer children doesn't help when the mean guy with a gun is just going to rob you either way.

Raddy, you spazzed through a pointless sequence of irrelevancies, an




Yeah. I "denied the scientific method." Wrapped up in a bow, just for you, in a blog comment.

"...pointless sequence of irrelevancies..."

Only to you. It remains that the method by which information is gathered and the factors leading to any conclusion must be explained in any scientific observation, that there are hundreds of these in population forecasting, and that the forecasts vary due to the assumptions made in such studies w/r/t environmental and behavioral factors. Your link to the Simon-Ehrhich wager was nice - it shows what happens when you do NOT consider market behavior behind the scenes.

Please continue getting your simple answers from for-profit media, as you wish (and which is demonstrated by your desire to call petroleum a perpetual resource) - but complaining when it or a proper study doesn't agree with your hastily-assumed belief isn't productive. Most problems are not ethical until someone presumes to make them subjective.

You're a bright guy. I have no idea why you don't engage in study outside of your profession, whatever it entails.

"...pointless sequence of irrelevancies..."

Only to you. It remains that the method by which information is gathered and the factors leading to any conclusion must be explained in any scientific observation, that there are hundreds of these in population forecasting, and that the forecasts vary due to the assumptions made in such studies w/r/t environmental and behavioral factors. Your link to the Simon-Ehrhich wager was nice - it shows what happens when you do NOT consider market behavior behind the scenes.

Please continue getting your simple answers from for-profit media, as you wish (and which is demonstrated by your desire to call petroleum a perpetual resource) - but complaining when it or a proper study doesn't agree with your hastily-assumed belief isn't productive. Most problems are not ethical until someone presumes to make them subjective.

You're a bright guy. I have no idea why you don't engage in study outside of your profession, whatever it entails.

> Even in the U.S., as someone pointed
> out, any kid of yours is statistically
> more likely to become a murderer
> (or at least a violent criminal) than
> someone who cures cancer.

Do people really believe It Can't Happen Here?

> Even in the U.S., as someone pointed
> out, any kid of yours is statistically
> more likely to become a murderer
> (or at least a violent criminal) than
> someone who cures cancer.

What does it mean when the man or woman on the street believes the lives of strangers have no value to others and need not be defended until those strangers cure cancer?

Do people really believe It Can't Happen Here?

> It remains that the method by
> which information is gathered
> and the factors leading to any
> conclusion must be explained in
> any scientific observation

Did you do acid in community college?

Never forget that I am a terrible threat to the public's appreciation of the scientific method; and it is your duty as my blog comment interlocutor, as well as Amy's as our blog comment hostess, to take this very, very seriously (in an undergraduate kind of way), and to make certain that the scientificalism of these topics is puffed up to the maximal scientificity.

...Because the guy on the street doesn't get it. He doesn't understand know how important scienceness is to building the wealth and comity of our culture; he doesn't be properly about sciencetude enough.

Consider holding a march. People can carry signs and stuff.

Science.

Media too, especially the 'for-profit' kind.

But mostly science.

ScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienc
eǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔs
ScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienc
eǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔs
ScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienc
eǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔs
ScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienc
eǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔsScienceǝɔuǝıɔs

"However, last I heard, at least 1 in 6 (or is it 1 in 5?) people in the world still can't get a transparent drink of water. I.e., a drink that is unlikely to give you cholera or typhoid. Having smaller families is one possible way to help your family get all the basic necessities like clean water, depending on where you live."

False. As was most everything else you presented.
___________________________________________

Funny, I'VE never heard anyone claim, before you, that that figure on drinking water is exaggerated. They just don't want to talk about it.
_____________________________________________

Hunger is less of a problem today than 50 years ago or even 100 years ago.

Ben at April 26, 2017 8:36 PM
___________________________________________

Maybe, but how much progress are we really making on ELIMINATING it? Or child prostitution for that matter? Including IN the U.S.?

"People are a blessing, not a burden."

Really? Some animal are just more equal than others.
__________________________________________

Right, Rad.

Crid, try telling a college freshman that it's a "blessing" to have a baby at that time. Or a woman with an abusive partner. Or a married couple that already has four kids they can't quite feed. (IIRC, most women who get abortions ARE married and/or have children already. I could be wrong, but if not, that wouldn't be surprising.)

In college I dated this coed from the L100 Biology class, and we were in the same lab section (Thursday nights), and I scienced the Italian thunder out of her ass, but eventually she was pissed off at me for good reasons and her sister almost spat at me on the street one time, in front of that guitar shop where I bought my first Strat.

But it was a great class. I learned important stuff that's still useful in big ways. It was the only time I saw a huge (250+) undergrad hall explode with applause after the last lecture. We could tell that the prof was surprised too, she was smiling at her shoes through the noise. It occurs to me now that she was a fiftyish woman who in the late 1970s was probably pissed at having to teach the little kids when the men in the department didn't have to bother, so she was probably grateful when we expressed to her that we understood that the things she'd taught us were genuinely meaningful compared to the other crap on that campus, even though she graded ours tests like a flaming cancerous banshee. I got a B+.

Still, it was a proper sciencing all the way around. There was a thing with a TA, an immigrant, that I won't get into.

So I think my understanding of the importance of science is particularly well-grounded.

This was year before the science song.

Scienceǝɔuǝıɔs
c     c      c
i     n      i
e     e      e
n     i      n 
c     c      c
ǝɔuǝıɔsScience

Years before the science song, not just year.

Also, maybe the number of seats in the lecture hall was closer to 175, not 250. But I also kinda remember it was like 400. I don't even remember which building it was in. I remember it was a fucking ridiculous number of people being herded through there, though the class was in fact successful at teaching.

But yeah, scienceness is very important for young minds, Raddy. Don't forget to science!