this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] JayDee@lemmy.world 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Literally from Malthus himself. He argued that due to overpopulation we'd cause mass famines, leading to war and societal collapse. And he solidly pointed blame on developing countries overbreeding and called for population control and oven culling in those nations. All arguments directly derive from his original argument.

Because that is the only solution to overpopulation, is population control and population culling. Population too big, either start killing people or forcing couples to not have children. That's what you're arguing for every time you agree with an overpopulation argument.

The new twists of ecological destruction are also highly misplaced. You'd have to pin the blame on the places which are reproducing the most, which is not the case. The damage we do with deep sea fishing, fish farms, and meat farms is not the fault of the poor nations overbreeding - the only groups we could blame for overpopulation right now.

In reality, we'd not be causing nearly as much damage to our environment if we weren't using fossil fuels, weren't transporting a massive portion of our goods from overseas, weren't getting most of our meat from cows and other methane producers, weren't fishing in such a way that destroys the seafloor, etc. There's literally hundreds of ways I could list that we're doing which if we switched to an alternative would solve large portion of our ecological damage.

We all are carrying out these unsustainable practices, regardless of population. Those practices are the problem, not overpopulation. We could still be producing enough food with sustainable methods that don't destroy the world ecology.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 0 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Well I can compare your anti-population-reduction stance to Elon Musk. Do you feel good knowing that Christofascist and Technofascist oligarchs hold the same view as you?

As for your absolutely bonkers claim that sustainability isn't directly proportional to population size, I feel need to argue such a blatantly false statement.

[–] Senal@programming.dev 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm not the same person btw.

Genuine question, wouldn't a directly proportional link require that sustainability efforts go up in a direct mirror to population?

edit: a downvote isn't particularly helpful here, is that a downvote of "yes, but i don't want to admit it" or "no, because reasons" ?

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online -1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Ask better questions, ig. Do I look like I'm running for governor? Idk what you think should or should not be happening, but the answer has absolutely no impact on what is happening now and what we know will happen as a result: human overpopulation is real, it is the driving force behind ongoing global ecosystem collapse, we know of many safe and friendly methods to reduce birthrates.

[–] Senal@programming.dev -1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I’m....not sure how much better i can phrase that question ?

It was concise, contained all the information needed for an answer, it could even be a single yes or no.

If you have an example of how that could have been asked in a better way, I’d be interested in seeing it.

There was no reference to my thoughts on the overall theme, the question is only loosely related to that theme.

If it helps, i don't care at all about the overpopulation classification or anything to do with it.

Is it easier if i remove all references to the theme? Let's try this :

Doesn't directly proportional mean both metrics being compared need to track each other?

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I didn't tell you to rephrase anything. Let's end this here.

[–] Senal@programming.dev 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

ah, so questions about logic aren't good questions?

or just that one ?

edit: i replied before your edit.