I am happy to report that the current human population is estimated to exceed 7.4 billion and growing. For my annual update to the Optihumanist Principles, I changed the last line of the "Life is limitless" section to the following:
We welcome the propagation of life throughout the Universe.
More people is going to mean more people able to advance our species.
Kurzgesagt quotes a United Nations report as predicting that the human population will stabilize at less than twelve billion. For the following reasons, I predict that the population will someday exceed twelve trillion:
As world-wide prosperity increases, industrialized nations will no longer be able to rely upon economic immigration to sustain population levels. To prevent decline, governments will adopt policies supporting families raising children.
As medical technology advances, both life spans and fertility spans will increase. Living longer means that people will have more years to have more children.
As the human race progresses, access to resources supporting population growth will increase. This means using advanced technology to do more with less here on Earth while simultaneously reaching out to the near-limitless resources off-world as we colonize space.
Some years ago a member of a group that I was in asked us for ideas on behalf of a local utility company that she was associated with. She was asking for innovative ways in which consumers could conserve the product provided by the company. I forget exactly whether it was water or electricity that was provided but you get the point.
Straight away I responded that the utility company should increase the price in order to decrease demand and then use the extra profit to increase capacity. When she asked how this might impact the poor, I responded that the price could be progressive. When the gentleman next to me told her that he agreed with me on this simple solution, I think she was a little disappointed that we were not suggesting ideas that might involve a voluntary reduction of consumption of the utility as a form of individual sacrifice.
I thought of this as I was watching the new educational video Can You Fix Climate Change? by the YouTube channel "Kurzgesagt -- In a Nutshell". The video makes the point that individual sacrifice is not going to be effective in eliminating the emissions that cause global climate change. They go so far as to suggest that recommending individual sacrifice is a cynical ploy by the worst emitters to distract us from more substantive policies.
Where I thought this video floundered is toward the end where it insisted that there was no one solution to the complex problem of reducing emissions. The video suggested that we should demand change from our elected officials despite the fact that we are not quite sure what to do. Finally, the video opined, we should continue to engage in personal sacrifice just to do our small part even though it really will not help with the overall problem.
I watched the video again to see if there if there was any reference to a carbon tax. I saw a very brief mention that suggested that imposing the costs of carbon capture on the energy industry would bankrupt it. To this I respond that even with a carbon tax the traditional energy industry will never go bankrupt until people are able to get all of their energy needs fulfilled from carbon neutral providers.
Later the video suggests that politicians are reluctant to reduce subsidies to the carbon emitting energy industry because doing so would have the downstream effect of increasing the prices of consumer goods. I respond by recommending that we use the income from the carbon tax to mitigate these impacts. The carbon tax income could be used to subsidize the necessities for living while simultaneously expanding our energy capacity by funding research into carbon neutral sources.
This video was funded by the billionaire Bill Gates so I started to wonder what he has against the carbon tax. I found a YouTube video by Gates entitled This tool will help us get to zero emissions. Given this title, I initially assumed that this video would propose the carbon tax as the solution since it could be that one tool.
Instead Gates suggested what he calls the Green Premium. This seems to be a plan to quantify the emissions that are coming from the production and consumption of each product and then funding research into reducing those specific emissions. In an interview in which he is directly asked about the carbon tax, he states that it could work but then implies that it is not politically adoptable because of the increase in prices to consumers.
Gates is pushing the Green Premium as the next best alternative but I am not willing to give up on the carbon tax. The carbon tax is straight-forward and it lets the invisible hand of the free market determine where best to invest research dollars into carbon neutral technologies. I believe it can be politically viable so long as we offset the indirect impact of the carbon tax on consumers with benefits from the income to make the overall effect progressive.
I love the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. I frequently reference their animated educational videos in my weblog entries. To support the production of more of their edutainment, I ordered some of their merchandise for my youngest children who are also fans.
I watched their new video Tired of Doomscrolling? in which they conclude with a message of optimism for the future of humanity. It reminded me of their older video in which they describe their philosophy of Optimistic Nihilism in which they remind us, like stoicism, that that nothing really matters since everyone eventually dies. Ending on a positive note, they say that knowing this liberates each individual to choose their own meaning of life.
I think, however, that this philosophy contradicts billions of years of evolutionary history in which life gravitates toward increasing complexity. Furthermore, similar to those who believe in divine providence and the assurance of an eternal hereafter, adoptees of the philosophy could use it as a justification for passivity in the face of long-term challenges to humanity. To clarify that that the optimism in Optihumanism is active rather than passive, I made the following update to my Optihumanist Principles:
Optimism is effort. We support our belief in the future through our endeavors.
In the new Kurzgesagt video We Found a Loophole to Survive the End of the Universe, the narrator speculates that an intelligent race that could upload their minds to a digital utopia might "activate their pleasure centers and experience perfect bliss forever". If the purpose of evolved life is to evolve, this would seem to be a dead-end. I prefer to think that progress might continue forever, always striving for some unreachable ideal state, at least until we can figure out what our post-evolutionary purpose might be.
We seem to be currently sliding toward a digital utopia but without the benefit of individual immortality. Addictive entertainment such as YouTube Shorts is providing the intermittent reward dopamine hits of a slot machine. If we choose videos that are educational entertainment, "edutainment", we can get some long-term benefits from our investment of time.
In our family, we moved our Digital Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. This seems to work better for our children as it gives them a chance to recover from school on Saturday by playing computer games. Sunday then becomes the day to focus on homework assignments due on Monday that were put off the day before.
I tell the children that they can get on their laptops on Sunday if they are doing homework, blogging, coding, drawing, or otherwise creating. I think that it is important that we are not just consuming content but also synthesizing it to produce new works. They say you learn more by doing.
I am concerned that many retirees are spending their final days watching old television shows when they could instead be volunteering, sharing their wisdom through writing, or otherwise contributing in some fashion that they find self-actualizing. As someone who never has enough time to work on all of the projects that I want to, it is hard for me to understand those who are satisfied with merely consuming and never contributing. Rather than as a rest stop on the way to heaven, I see my future retirement as a potential producer paradise.
The Stoics reasoned that all of our joys and sorrows are ephemeral. Documenting what you have good right now might someday come to seem at best bittersweet and at worst a painful reminder of loss. Health, wealth, and wisdom all eventually fade.
The Stoics did not seem to recognize that there are indeed some things to get excited about. Blessings that extend into perpetuity, such as children and grandchildren, still matter even after you are no longer capable of caring. I think a gratitude journal should focus on those things that survive you after death.
I am grateful for the following:
My children and all of my future descendants
That my children will raise their children in freedom
That happiness for all people is gradually improving over time
That future medical technology will eventually conquer death
Previously I wrote about the science fiction / comedy / romance series Upload on Amazon Prime. They finally came out with Season 2 which I just now finished binge-watching. I noticed that they are really exploring the ramifications of what the future could make possible including downloading.
I had been waiting until Season 2 came out to share with you an animated educational video on this topic from the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt -- In a Nutshell. Their video Can You Upload Your Mind & Live Forever describes the science behind mind uploading including techniques such as brain scanning. This future medical technology might not be available before you die so consider preserving your brain in the interim using cryonics.
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