Didn't you notice that multiplying and expanding is the quality of all life, as a phenomenon?

With that, being happy does not seem to be a universal quality of life; some would even posit that the opposite is true (ask Gautama B.)

I don't see humans completely overcome their biological nature any time soon, if ever.

> Didn't you notice that multiplying and expanding is the quality of all life, as a phenomenon?

That's just what species are selected for. If you have two competing populations and one multiplies and expands just slightly better than the other, everything else equal, then that one will eventually outcompete the slower one.

But it does not have to be that way. Humans are the top predator, so no competition here. We could make do with limiting expansion if we chose to. It's still life, but without this "quality" that you seem to consider a necessity.

Out survives

We have no predators but we do have a lot of existential threats. The more we spread out the more chances we have of surviving. If we sit on our hands and stay put we’ll wind up like the dinosaurs one way or another.

There are other alternatives beyond "spreading out" and "sitting on our hands".

Solving world hunger does not need expansion. Stopping climate change does not need expansion. Preventing the upcoming antibiotics crisis does not need expansion. To the contrary, expansion makes all those things worse or has even started them in the first place.

Stopping world hunger does not need more food, or even fewer people. Humans produce quite enough food to feed everyone already. The problem is distribution.

This problem is twofold. First is that much food is produced far from many poorly nourished people. This problem is totally solvable by modern transport. There are enough charity donations to prevent hunger everywhere.

Second, and most importantly, it's the social structure what prevents ending the hunger where the hunger still is. People prevent production and distribution of food in order to keep the social structures where they are on top, or are fighting to be on top. They themselves are not hungry, and don't care about the rest much.

Exactly. These are social and political problems. They won't be solved by expanding. On the contrary, expanding makes them worse.

> I don't see humans completely overcome their biological nature any time soon, if ever.

Not intentionally, but we've managed to create societies where reproduction is extremely costly in every conceivable way and are even working to convince people that reproduction is outright tyrannical, sexist, and environmentally genocidal.

The instinct will certainly remain, but population decline seems inevitable the way things are going. Even a few decades from now, the human breadbaskets of the developing world adopt the anti-natalist systems we have in the developed world.

Eternal population growth is not a necessity for advancing civilization.

What is the right number of unique minds?

That's an ethics question; advanced civilisations are not required to be ethical.

I don’t see how aspiring to be an unethical civilization with a fixed number of individuals is preferable to a civilization that grows and shrinks having pockets of ethical and unethical members.

If the argument is that somehow the former is more environmentally friendly, then I don’t understand why we should accept dystopia for an uncaring god.

A better question is how much any of these minds deserve and what they do to achieve it. Competitive reality is not a dream, it’s pretty harsh. There is not much to have and you can only have so much in total.

Likely below infinite?

The idea that this absurd self-destructive civilization understands “biological nature” at all is laughable

I suggest that you read about the history of ecological changes (aka "catastrophes") during the last billion years. Life is not a perfect serene balance, if anything, it's the opposite of that.

A non sequitur is as good a defense of this absurd society as any.

> Didn't you notice that multiplying and expanding is the quality of all life

Humans are exceptional in this regard as that can expand beyond the limits, and at the expense of, all other known species. Humans are also exceptional in that they could extinguish themselves, either by choice on their own folly.

None of those are exceptional. Have you heard of invasive species?

> Have you heard of invasive species?

Of course. But they reach a limit. Only one species is able to exploit resources, and the biosphere, to its own ends. Agriculture, mining, and technological advancement are peculiar to humans. All of these permit us to live longer, with fewer setbacks, and in environments no other animals can survive (space, and soon other planets). Are these not exceptional traits?

We can also engineer a virus, or deploy strategic weapons that could wipe out our entire species (and a bunch of others). Is that not exceptional?

Agreed.

But some animals have agriculture (ants?) and some plants exploit metals in the soil (phytomining)! Still, Sapiens are the champs.

> Agreed.

And it's such a banal obvious claim I'm making, and yet it's being downvoted to oblivion. I can't imagine cane toads doing anything I mentioned.. or even ants having some sort of hegemonic control over the fate of all other species.

I'm gobsmacked. Let's take what I consider the most indisputable claim:

> Humans are also exceptional in that they could extinguish themselves, either by choice on their own folly.

Could you imagine ants finding a method to annihilate themselves? I don't claim that animals are unintelligent, but we are unique in our ability to create technology to achieve almost any goal, no matter goal's 'sapience'.

> If tomorrow all ants disappear then most land-oriented ecosystems would just collapse.

I don't dispute this, but it's completely orthogonal to my claim. Humans have disrupted the biosphere in a manner that is unprecedented since when meteor strikes and seismic events were still shaping earth

We don't even have a billion years before the sun heats up to the point that Earth's oceans boil away.

Yes. We are likely living in an early age of the Universe, but a middle-to-later age of the solar system.

It depends on how you define "early age" for the universe. Of course it can go on a long time, so in that sense the universe is extremely early age. On the other hand most of the stars that will ever exist have already been born, and every moment that goes by more parts of the universe move forever out of our reach due to the expansion of space. The universe may last forever but most of the action has already happened.

Early in the sense that we even got the chance to observe galaxies outside of our local group, or the CMB.

The age of star formation is mostly over yes, but not completely yet - and I believe it's figured that no red dwarf can have reached even a tiny fraction of its lifespan so far?

Right, I remembered this term incorrectly.

I don't think there is a "happy urge to multiply until critical shortage", as far as I know. World population growth is slowing down currently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

The funny part is that we are already at the critical shortage point. The current human population is unsustainable. So whether or not population growth slows down isn't really material anymore...we've already proven that we'll multiply until we start killing our host.

On what criteria do you base this?

The horrid state of the planet. That's a good one.