My question was IDEAL population. A stable and affluent population will be smaller than a population that is stable yet impoverished. I'm thinking by 2800, 500 million would be a good critical mass to have enough geniuses born to find solutions to difficult problems. A higher population than that would be more dead weight than is required, hence a drag on the standard of living.
That's not how things work though. Limiting the amount of people would not make people smarter especially if the cause of which was something outside of human control. If the population was 500 million most of those people wouldn't have the time to spend on innovation and as a result things would take a lot more time to get better. Part of the reason humans are so advanced is because we have so many people in the world. The more people you have the greater the chances of someone coming up with a new idea.
Think of humans as one big artificial neural network. In a neural network the more nodes the better the chance of solving whatever problem is given in a shorter amount of time. You have to also think that almost all of the innovations done are done by specialists in their respective fields. If you lessen the population that lessens the amount of people who are gonna be able to devote there time to a specialized field.
Except in the year 2800, production and service jobs will be almost all automated. This will enable far better leveraging of intellectual talent. For example, say 2 million researchers are doing biomedical research right now. With no production or service jobs in the future, 2 million biomedical researchers can easily be supported in a population of 500 million.
Your neural network analogy does have some merit, tho. In the next 80 years, dumb people will continue to multiply. Smart educated people, drowning in student debt will opt to not have kids they can't afford. The drop in intelligence means that humanity's neural network will flicker, and perform poorly.
There are other problems with your idea though. The first of which is what would have brought a decline to the human race. If it is a world wide epidemic, like you say it will probably be, then there is no telling who would have survived or the intelligence of those that survived not to mention that with only 500 million people the survivors would most likely be very spread out. 500 million is only about 0.07% of the current population. At that low of a population survival would be the number one priority not scientific discoveries if any scientists are even left alive.
No, 500 million is 7% of the current population. Remember, this is for the year 2800. The population does not need to drop in one event. If the reduction is due to disasters, social chaos will have time to fix itself. There would be plenty of scientists still alive, probably 7% of them. The road to an ideal population functioning well in the future is not necessarily a smooth one.
What is the ideal population for Planet Earth?
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My question was IDEAL population. A stable and affluent population will be smaller than a population that is stable yet impoverished. I'm thinking by 2800, 500 million would be a good critical mass to have enough geniuses born to find solutions to difficult problems. A higher population than that would be more dead weight than is required, hence a drag on the standard of living.
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xxLucifer
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That's not how things work though. Limiting the amount of people would not make people smarter especially if the cause of which was something outside of human control. If the population was 500 million most of those people wouldn't have the time to spend on innovation and as a result things would take a lot more time to get better. Part of the reason humans are so advanced is because we have so many people in the world. The more people you have the greater the chances of someone coming up with a new idea.
Think of humans as one big artificial neural network. In a neural network the more nodes the better the chance of solving whatever problem is given in a shorter amount of time. You have to also think that almost all of the innovations done are done by specialists in their respective fields. If you lessen the population that lessens the amount of people who are gonna be able to devote there time to a specialized field.
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Except in the year 2800, production and service jobs will be almost all automated. This will enable far better leveraging of intellectual talent. For example, say 2 million researchers are doing biomedical research right now. With no production or service jobs in the future, 2 million biomedical researchers can easily be supported in a population of 500 million.
Your neural network analogy does have some merit, tho. In the next 80 years, dumb people will continue to multiply. Smart educated people, drowning in student debt will opt to not have kids they can't afford. The drop in intelligence means that humanity's neural network will flicker, and perform poorly.
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xxLucifer
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There are other problems with your idea though. The first of which is what would have brought a decline to the human race. If it is a world wide epidemic, like you say it will probably be, then there is no telling who would have survived or the intelligence of those that survived not to mention that with only 500 million people the survivors would most likely be very spread out. 500 million is only about 0.07% of the current population. At that low of a population survival would be the number one priority not scientific discoveries if any scientists are even left alive.
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No, 500 million is 7% of the current population. Remember, this is for the year 2800. The population does not need to drop in one event. If the reduction is due to disasters, social chaos will have time to fix itself. There would be plenty of scientists still alive, probably 7% of them. The road to an ideal population functioning well in the future is not necessarily a smooth one.