People may believe that they fear for the "future of our species," but at a meta level, is it not merely an expression of the same innate human desire that caused us to build up civilization and medicine to the point that we're facing the aforementioned issues?
Without getting into a long spiel, human intelligence appears to actually be extremely limited, compared to a theoretical perfect intelligence, and any explicit actions we may take to enforce "quality over quantity" could end up doing more "harm" than "good" as soon as 1 "move" beyond the furthest move that we're capable of calculating.
IMO, there is no "saving" humankind. We're all doomed in some way. Life is just a way of postponing death.
> People may believe that they fear for the "future of our species," but at a meta level, is it not merely an expression of the same innate human desire that caused us to build up civilization and medicine to the point that we're facing the aforementioned issues?
Yes, in a way. But with mindfulness, one can choose different thoughts to attach to that innate survival feeling of wanting to exist and multiply. Instead of, 'We need to always multiply / population control is evil', make it, 'We need to create a better world for our species and those around us'.
> IMO, there is no "saving" humankind. We're all doomed in some way. Life is just a way of postponing death.
Also agreed. I've read the big AI books like Nick Bostrom's and Max Tegmark's. Given their monumental knowledge, the sentiments around population control are not so much about saving so much as managing. More importantly, it's about saving the possibility of AI and superior forms of evolution to arise in the future, which are far more significant than current Homo sapiens.
One way to put this into practice is to choose to adopt a child as your own, instead of producing yet another one. I may do this in my life.
If you believe you're the sort of person who can potentially "save" the world, wouldn't you want to clone your inherited software to counterbalance the cloning of those who cannot or will not?
Without getting into a long spiel, human intelligence appears to actually be extremely limited, compared to a theoretical perfect intelligence, and any explicit actions we may take to enforce "quality over quantity" could end up doing more "harm" than "good" as soon as 1 "move" beyond the furthest move that we're capable of calculating.
IMO, there is no "saving" humankind. We're all doomed in some way. Life is just a way of postponing death.