financial incentives to address human overpopulation

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

lower population density would provide greater resistance.

human population density hasn't got much to do with bacterial antibiotic resistance, but i think you mean that human resistance to disease would be higher. i'm not sure why though. if anything resistance probably increases with population density because the more diseases you catch the more you're resistant to. low population densities can isolate gene pools rather than mixing them to spread genetic resistance across populations.

ninky_2

chewmylegoff wrote: »

human population density hasn't got much to do with bacterial antibiotic resistance, but i think you mean that human resistance to disease would be higher. i'm not sure why though. .

same reason kids get sick when they go back to school. contact with a larger number of humans (hosts) increases transmission.

ninky_2

chewmylegoff wrote: »

possibly, but then some aliens will invade, create mind-controlled husks to infiltrate our hippy society and then blow up big the tree we all live in with very large missiles.

have you been smoking something?

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

same reason kids get sick when they go back to school. contact with a larger number of humans (hosts) increases transmission.

you seem to be conflating the concepts of transmission of disease and resistance to disease.

when your kid goes back to school he gets flu and is ill for a couple of days.

when your kid goes to conquer south america, he gives them flu and they all die.

ninky_2

chewmylegoff wrote: »

you seem to be conflating the concepts of transmission of disease and resistance to disease.

when your kid goes back to school he gets flu and is ill for a couple of days.

when your kid goes to conquer south america, he gives them flu and they all die.

well only the ones that come into contact with the disease / other contagious humans.

threshold host density.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_host_density

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

well only the ones that come into contact with the disease / other contagious humans.

you are still conflating the concepts of resistance and transmission.

if you just intended to say lower population density brings lower rates of infection, you may well be right, but that is nothing to do with resistance.

ninky_2

chewmylegoff wrote: »

you are still conflating the concepts of resistance and transmission.

if you just intended to say lower population density brings lower rates of disease, you may well be right, but that is nothing to do with resistance.

not really. i'm looking at the ability of a species as a whole to resist disease rather than the ability of an individual host of that species to resist it once transmitted (which is what you are talking about).

having more hosts won't benefit a population lacking in resistance to a disease. having fewer people will actually benefit it (unless it is the odd non density dependent disease such as hiv).

non sexually transmitted diseases such as flu are density dependent. i.e. they will infect a greater percentage of a given population the higher the density of that population is.

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

not really. i'm looking at the ability of a species as a whole to resist disease rather than the ability of an individual host of that species to resist it once transmitted (which is what you are talking about).

oh i see, you are using your own bespoke definition of resistance. well that makes sense.

julieq

Or if we decide we'd prefer to listen to something at a slightly higher level of intellectual depth than the Daily Mail, how about:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7723/

This is one of the most apt bits:

"There is a reason Malthusians are always wrong. It isn’t because they’re stupid… well, it might be a little bit because they’re stupid. But more fundamentally it is because, while they present their views as fact-based and scientific, in reality they are driven by a deeply held misanthropy that continually overlooks mankind’s ability to overcome problems and create new worlds.

The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction."

Kohoutek

julieq wrote: »

Or if we decide we'd prefer to listen to something at a slightly higher level of intellectual depth than the Daily Mail, how about:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7723/

That is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively transform society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other thing

It might seem clever if you don't understand that our industrial economy and food supply are predicated on inputs of cheap energy, of which 90% is fossil fuels...