World Population Growth

[Rococo]

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The entire population of earth could fit into Texas at a density far less than the current density in New York City. We have plenty of room.

[/ QUOTE ] Source? That's amazing if true.

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From wiki, the earth's population is about 6.6 billion, NYC's population density is 66,941 people/mi^2, and Texas is 268,601 mi^2. This works out to a pop. density of 24,572 people/mi^2, almost a third of the density of NYC.


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And I have no doubt that the Texas desert could support such a population density. This statistic is nothing more than a curiousity.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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I have a basic theory that is probably not popular, and is also easily misunderstood, so I rarely discuss it. In a nutshell, I think the world population (of humans) is too high and population growth should be stopped.

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Almost a year ago I started this thread with quite a different viewpoint.

Some of the links won't work but hopefully John Feeney's are still up.

~ Rick

[turnipmonster]

you would really really like daniel quinn's books. I recommend "Ishamel" followed by "Story of B".

[TonyRoflmao]

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The vast majority of the world's population live off the intelligence and production of others (to wit, "stupid" and unhealthy people can easily survive and reproduce). Medicine has advanced to the point where "traditional" evolution no longer works right.

In a sense, we are "devolving", yet our population continues to grow.

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Natural selection doesn't tend to occur in large populations, especially given humans' capability to travel vast distances and increase heterozygosity. Even if the "less intelligent," who are really only less intelligent in certain ways, outpace the "intelligent" in relative fitness, the "intelligent" still increase as a population in absolute terms.

Now, if there was a natural disaster, or artificial disaster that suddenly decreased the overall human population, probability would favor the "less intelligent" to survive. Without some sort of major disruption that cuts a small group of humans off from the rest of the world, or a drastic reduction in the overall population of the species, no speciation will occur.