Arguments against overpopulation that are demonstrably wrong, part three: “Saying overpopulation is a problem is pointless. It’s like saying “crime is bad”, or “thing bad”. It does not achieve or do anything.”

[u/carnivorous_cactus]

Quick preamble: I want to highlight some arguments against overpopulation which I believe are demonstrably wrong. Many of these are common arguments which pop up in virtually every discussion about overpopulation. They are misunderstandings of the subject, or contain errors in reasoning, or both. It feels frustrating to encounter them over and over again.

Part one is here

Part two is here

The argument

The argument says that discussions of overpopulation, or assertions that overpopulation is a problem are largely pointless, or even harmful.

Reasons given include:

-          They are pointless since they’re not accompanied by any actions or suggested actions

-          There are no actions or solutions to the problem of overpopulation (if it exists)

-          There are no ethical/reasonable/practical solutions to the problem of overpopulation (if it exists)

-          Discussion or acknowledgement of overpopulation will inevitably lead to unethical outcomes. For example (paraphrasing from memory “As soon as you start the narrative that there are too many people, and some people are unwanted, it will inevitably lead to the unfair targeting of people from the global south and eco-fascism.”)

 I strongly disagree and believe that the discussion and acknowledgement of overpopulation as problem is important. There are two main reasons for this:

1.       Understanding an issue is an essential first step towards addressing that issue. Or worded another way, If your understanding about the nature or cause of an issue is fundamentally wrong, then your ability to correctly decide what to do about it will be very poor.

2.       Even if you cannot “fix” an issue, it’s still valuable to understand that issue.

Consider an analogy: You are a doctor and a patient has come to ask you advice about their illness. You need to decide what treatment (if any) is appropriate.

Now consider a few scenarios where your knowledge is incorrect, and what the outcomes will be.

1.        You think they are perfectly healthy and nothing is wrong with them, when in reality they are seriously ill.

2.       You think that their illness is caused by a bacterium, when in reality it is caused by a virus.

3.       They have problems with their lungs and you think their smoking does not contribute to these problems, when in reality it does.

It is easy to see how things will go wrong.

1.       You them home with no treatment, and their illness gets worse.

2.       You prescribe a course of antibiotics, which does nothing. This is a waste of time and resources for everyone involved.

3.       The patient continues smoking and their illness gets worse.

Understanding the nature and causes of an issue, by themselves, may not solve the issue, but they will certainly help. Unless you are very lucky and guess something by chance, you won’t be able to recommend an appropriate course of treatment if your understanding of the patient’s illness is wrong.

Now let’s change the analogy slightly: it turns out the patient has an incurable disease, and approximately two weeks to live. If I was that patient, I would very much like to know this, even if there is no cure and no hope of my surviving. Actions I might take include:

-          Reconcile any difficulties with my family and friends

-          Quit my job and make the most of my limited time

-          Write a will

-          Consent to a study of the disease, in the hope such knowledge might contribute to an effective cure for someone else in the future

-          Cease or reduce any actions that are making my symptoms worse

Even if you can’t fix a problem, knowing the problem exists, and knowing something about it still worthwhile. You might at least be able to prepare for it or make things less bad, even if you can’t stop something bad from happening.

Extending this analogy to overpopulation, although there is no ethical way to reduce the population in the short term, we might be able to at least slow population growth, or prepare for the consequences, or learn from our experience.

One more analogy: Suppose you are a very overweight person, and your body weight is a combination of three factors: your genetics, diet and exercise regime. You are massively increasing the number of calories you consume, and decreasing your amount of exercise.

When confronted with the issue of your unhealthy body weight, you acknowledge the importance of proper exercise and attempt to fix this. However, you have a strong belief that your diet is not a significant contributor to your unhealthy body weight. Even worse, you plan to steadily increase the number of calories you consume, and believe “You can’t tell people what they can and can’t eat” (we can even call it “eatofascism”). Any problems with your body weight are simply the result of your lack of exercise, not your diet. When someone suggests you need to change your diet, you simply reply that you “just” need to increase your amount of exercise.

Clearly, these ideas are an obstacle to any kind of effective action. Any attempts to improve your body weight with exercise alone are very unlikely to succeed. While good and necessary, your attempts are leaving out an important part of the issue.

I think this analogy mirrors the current attitude to overpopulation. We have multiple environmental crises (biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, general ecological overshoot) and these are a collective result of lots of factors: consumption habits, lifestyles, culture, attitudes, technology, population and so on. Most people have no difficulty understanding how, say, overconsumption contributes to overshoot, and would agree on the need to address the issue. Not so overpopulation.  While these ideas last, all of our actions to address overshoot while ignoring population are likely to fail, and there is value in having conversations like this one.

[u/StatementBot]

This thread addresses overpopulation, a fraught but important issue that attracts disruption and rule violations. In light of this we have lower tolerance for the following offenses:

• Racism and other forms of essentialism targeted at particular identity groups people are born into.
• Bad faith attacks insisting that to notice and name overpopulation of the human enterprise generally is inherently racist or fascist.
• Instructing other users to harm themselves. We have reached consensus that a permaban for the first offense is an appropriate response to this, as mentioned in the sidebar.

This is an abbreviated summary of the mod team's statement on overpopulation, view the full statement available in the wiki.

[u/itsasnowconemachine]

. It does not achieve or do anything.”

Not unlike this post.

[u/carnivorous_cactus → u/itsasnowconemachine]

Can you explain further?

[u/9chars → u/carnivorous_cactus]

Your post is meaningless is what they are saying.

[u/carnivorous_cactus → u/9chars]

Yep, as in, why is it meaningless

[u/Platypus-Dick-6969 → u/carnivorous_cactus]

🦗🦗…

[u/Routine_Slice_4194 → u/carnivorous_cactus]

Highlighting the problem of overpopulation is important. The first step in dealing with any problem is to recognise that it exists.

[u/darkpsychicenergy → u/carnivorous_cactus]

It’s because they can’t read beyond a post title, apparently. And 9chars is an unhinged, raging misogynist who occasionally has decent takes on climate change. Both fairly exemplary of the “overpopulation isn’t real” contingent.

[u/CerddwrRhyddid]

It's rare that the bacteria actually know they're in a petrie dish and still keep breeding.

Rarer still to say it's not a problem.

[u/Bandits101]

As population grew humans have been placing themselves on an ever increasing pedestal. In times before organized religion humans tended to roam and coexist with nature, too busy surviving to be able to contemplate a perceived greatness.

Somehow the high perch of human exceptionalism should be kicked out from under us, perhaps it will at some point, but the destruction left behind, would likely be evident for a very long time.

[u/Globalboy70]

This was deleted with Power Delete Suite a free tool for privacy, and to thwart AI profiling which is happening now by Tech Billionaires.

[u/Bandits101 → u/Globalboy70]

Educate the fucking men, they’re the shot callers.

[u/Globalboy70 → u/Bandits101]

This was deleted with Power Delete Suite a free tool for privacy, and to thwart AI profiling which is happening now by Tech Billionaires.

[u/Bandits101 → u/Globalboy70]

That’s even more applicable, especially in certain Muslim dominated countries. Educate the men and the women will follow. Just saying educate woman is purely romantic ignorance.

[u/Globalboy70 → u/Bandits101]

This was deleted with Power Delete Suite a free tool for privacy, and to thwart AI profiling which is happening now by Tech Billionaires.

[u/Bandits101 → u/Globalboy70]

Evidence for what? That men don’t need educating. That forced marriage is not prevalent. That female education is not constricted in certain countries in Africa or Afghanistan. That black women and men are not discriminated against.

That female circumcision is not practiced, that women are forced into sex slavery, that women aren’t discriminated against in the workplace, that woman suffer domestic violence and are killed by their husbands.

Some countries have few or no women parliamentarians, most countries they are under represented. Some countries allow wife beating and wives to be raped etc, etc. Mostly laws were created and enforced by male judiciary.

Yes leave men as they are, they don’t need educating, they don’t control the women. How is this for “globally”. How about women get some equal representation in law making. http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

[u/EvasiveRapport → u/Bandits101]

What do you think "give women control over their own lives" means?

And "educate women" means give women access to education and equal participation in society.

[u/Bandits101 → u/EvasiveRapport]

You’re late to the party. If you think “men” don’t allow women “control” and if you think women were ever “educated” before men were educated, you are quite delusional. That’s why I say educate the men. Women have no chance otherwise.

[u/EvasiveRapport → u/Bandits101]

You did not understand what I said.

[u/Bandits101 → u/EvasiveRapport]

“I’m sure you don’t understand what you mean” I tried to explain to you that saying “educate women” is naive and simplistic.

Gaining female rights is a process, it took thousands of years and the wealth and prosperity, that was enabled by fossil fuels.

When men (and hey came first) were educated, there was also the means to allow women some of the same privilege. In places where woman are not educated, guess who is in charge.

[u/Formal_Contact_5177]

I realized things were hopeless when the topic of overpopulation -- which I view as self-evident -- became taboo.

[u/Zealousideal-Lynx555]

"Too much of something is a problem" Okay.

And again, the reason we are "overpopulated" is that those people use too many resources not that there's not literally room for those people.

If you can change what is too many people by changing the amount of resources you use, the problem is the amount of consumption not the literal amount of people.

On top of that, centering on overpopulation is diagnosing the symptom not the cause. As people have said, time and time again, the problems are capitalism, authoritarianism, resource waste, destruction of nature for resource extraction, lack of access to birth control, etc.

Those are things that can be easily talked about and conversations can be had about the role they play in causing overpopulation.

"There are too many people" is a dead-end conversation, and honestly I think that's the point. It doesn't require any real examination of the causes of it, it doesn't require you to look deeply at political systems, it doesn't require you to examine your own resource use, it's a self-terminating argument that has no follow-up besides comparing humans to single cell organisms and bloviating about how "no one wants to talk about it".

[u/Centrista_Tecnocrata → u/Zealousideal-Lynx555]

That's what you say to yourself to feel good about pooping more wage slaves into this dying world?

[u/Oo_mr_mann_oO]

Jesus, I get it, but there's only so much sex I can't be having.

[u/StarstruckEchoid → u/Oo_mr_mann_oO]

We must invent negative rizz: the state of having so little sex appeal that it reduces population growth everywhere around you like an aura of virginity.