Hippocratic oath for scientists and engineers?

Hi sevs,

Population reduction has been mentioned on this forum quite a few times over the past 15 years or so. See the archived posts of myself and George Fiske.

Human greed and politics will probably result in your second, natural (less preferable) scenario?

Cheers, Don

Unfortunately, this is how it is going to be…
Do not give me credit for the thought though, I picked it up from the greatest since Charles Darwin biologist: Richard Dawkins. Once the thought is out there, I do not see how you go around the problem.

One correction: population reduction sounds more like Auschwitz to me and it is NOT the same as “family planning”… Having only one or two kids might sound cruel to some folks, but it is different from the “alternative” … And the alternative looks pretty BAD. Unless, of course, we delve into parallel realities and star systems and re-populate 'em all :grinning:

Yes, population reduction as I indicated, is most definitely not some sort of cull of people. A pity that many people seem to jump to that erroneous conclusion.

Perhaps population decline would be a better term.

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If I could find it there is an interesting paper from research conducted in Australia that indicates that the earth is approaching an ecological catastrophe that sees population crashing as a result of insufficient resources. It happens in the ‘natural’ world and is expected to occur to the human world.

Hi Camphuw,

Yes, I think that both myself and sevs (and also George if he ever watches this forum these days) have concluded that the “natural way” is the most probable scenario. Such is the greed and politics of mankind.

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The Chinese attempt at controlling population by compulsorily limiting families to one child was partially successful - however it had the adverse effect of distorting population, as the Chinese culture values male offspring more than female, and whilst any number of female children might be acceptable before a male is born, many families could not accept having a girl, with then no chance of a boy. You may use your imagination to guess at how that was achieved, and whatever ideas you come up with may have applied.

Of course there is a simple means of population control and ensuring food supply: canibalism!

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That reminds of the real, horrific story of the starving Japanese soldiers eating each other as a result of the island hopping military strategy deployed by the American/Australian.

Btw, engineers performing Hippocratic oath? It would never happen.

I don’t think Hannah Fry has thought this one through too well…
…hippocratic oath to cannibalism in a score or so of posts …!

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One curious result of this “cultural bias” was published in The Atlantic: being a male you have to divorce to get married! In short: now girls there have their choice and they choose the boys with property. So, boys marry a real-estate agent to get their first flat at a discount, then divorce and enter the “field”. Living with your mom gets you nowhere

it is also pretty weird how Mother Nature had set up a barrier to LGBT movement, For all of us, mammals, different methylation pattern of our genomes prevent same-sex partners from having a child. It may be solved in the near future (and me being one of those “crazy scientists” who look into this), but the very fact that this strict separation of sexes is noted only in mammals… and mammals seem to “Rule The Earth”… is noteworthy.

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