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Why does a country need a certain population level? It's governments that like a rising population, they like to have more money to spend. But the people are generally better off with a smaller population. A plot of land doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and you're not breathing in everyone else's farts. Defence and international influence are the main things that benefit from higher populations, that's why politicians like more people. The main thing for the welfare of the people is to have stability, with slow population movements. And as the world is massively overpopulated by humans, I would aim at a slow decline, as a population policy.

Don't be ridiculous. This is a total ranting rhetorical muddle as usual and contains a stupid straw man. There is no such thing as a "Carnot engine". You have made that up. There is a Carnot cycle, which, as several people have told you several times, is a theoretical optimum heat engine cycle whose thermal efficiency, according to the theory of thermodynamics, no real engine can exceed. The theory of the Carnot cycle would thus obviously be falsified if someone were to produce a heat engine exceeding Carnot cycle efficiency. So it is - obviously- a falsifiable theory, in Popper's terms.

Recently I've been reading and watching some of Peter Zeihan's views, specifically in his latest book: The End of the World is Just Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Zeihan is an expert on demography and geopolitics, and combines the two disciplines to produce some sobering forecasts about what the world will look like in the coming decades, particularly as numerous countries suffer irreversible population implosions due to insufficient birth rates. China is possibly the most well known case, but many other countries will suffer exactly the same fate in the 21st century. A key point that Zeihan makes is it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for countries to regain their population levels after this happens, namely because it takes so long to generate, well, a generation. This article points out just how serious China's population decline is anticipated to be. Link to Article The United States, on the other hand, seems to be in a pretty good place, demographically and geographically speaking, to make the transition. Overall Zeihan has some interesting points. Many of his points are directly inferable from current events. For example, he points out that Russia is basically in its last generation before collapse, and Putin is only accelerating this. According to Zeihan, the planned 500,000 man onslaught, a result of Russia's winter-long mobilization effort which it will throw at Ukraine this spring, will be Russia's final ability to fight a conventional war (should they not have a resounding victory across the board). They just won't have enough people (in this case fighting age men) after this. Zeihan has a youtube channel and a website if you want to investigate him. His views are somewhat antithetical to the idea that less people in the world would be better. Zeihan is obviously an expert in his field, and his predictions are based on verifiable trends, and are quite pessimistic for most countries. He sees some countries regressing rapidly into a state of anarchy due to the breakdown of critical infrastructure and logistics, for example, triggered again by not enough people. However, I wonder what unforeseeable (or foreseeable) events might drive the world into an alternate state of reality other than the one Zeihan portrays. For example, I can easily see A.I taking over much of the human labor that will vanish as a result of the population collapse. Interestingly, the US and its allies strategy to control microchip and semiconducter production seems to be a very relevant gambit designed to prevent any adversary from developing a viable A.I. integrated military, or at least one that can compete with the West and its allies. Another example might be human cloning or so called "baby farms" where humans are produced en masse in a laboratory, not unlike the Institute in Fallout 4. In short there are many avenues for adaptation in a world with much less people. Finally, there's the viewpoint that population collapse for the world is long overdue, thanks to the threat to biodiversity and collapsing ecosystems caused by globalization. Zeihan points out that Japan has already reached a "post boomer" society, and has handled it rather elegantly. Perhaps the coming population decline and deconstruction of globalization will be a net positive for everyone. Thoughts?

Globalization is bad ?? It has improved the living conditions of countries like Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan, Singapore, etc., that were considered 3rd world countries 70 years ago. It is improving the living conditions ofEastern Europe after 50 years of oppressive dictatorial Communism. It does this by industrialized countries becoming 'consumers' that outsource 'production' to lesser developed countries, until they too become consumers, and production shifts somewhere else, eventually bringing the playing field level for all. You guys are speaking in terms of abstracts; let's look at real world situations. The UK had a referendum against a form of globalization. BREXITwas a retreat from a more global organization; how did it work out for them ??? Instead of the 300 million savings per year, advertised on the sides of buses, they are losing Billions. It is the only country in the Eurozone experiencing a large negative economin growth. And it can't be attributed to bad governance, because there are many countries with incompetent governments.

No. I take care to line up my initial conditions in a consistent way so that I don't get caught in a circular sequence of robbing Peter to pay Paul (which your posts tend to be full of btw). Eventually the message sinks in that there are no free lunches and life's a bitch.

Excellent news! Eight billion is not sustainable if everyone seems to want a western lifestyle. And there are clear quality of life benefits (open green spaces and wilderness preserves and uncut tropical forests producing oxygen and so on) in having population drop back to 2-3 billion. (A plus one to @mistermack for noting the need for reduced population, with a slow decline.) Economic systems that depend on endless growth must be reformed. Endless growth is the doctrine of a cancer cell. I would think so. It will also help free up resources to aid countries that are still struggling to reach their demographic shift.

not necessarily mass is simply resistance to inertia change. The video is likely referring to thermal equilibrium and the subsequent thermal dropout due to inflation of the electroweak symmetry breaking. Likely Higgs inflation

When my children were 8 - 10 they were absolutely disgusted by people smoking and sweared to never smoke in their life. Guess what happened when they were 14 - 16 ...

Precision doesn't always take advanced technology. The surface plate, that is (still) an important element of precision engineering can be made with engineer's blue and a hand scraper. Hobbyists still grind telescope mirrors to very fine tolerances by hand. Having a reflective surface allows the human eye to detect minute variations of shape. This is a real possibility, a simple, clever solution. Of course it uses ramps. This is another possibility - And for moving the blocks to the site, these kinds of circle segments have been found and moving blocks by rolling them has been suggested as their use. The objection was there was no obvious way to secure them. I'd try wrapping with leather straps to see how they roll.

It reminds me of the UFO=aliens crowd. Improper extrapolation from the data, cherry-picking, and of course the “it must be aliens” conclusion when the phenomena are unidentified.

What fucking racism??? We're all subjected to endemic cretinism!!! For forty thousand fucking years!!! It's right there on the god damned skulls!!! Aaand there goes the theory of evolution. That sure as hell is an umbrella hypothesis in equal measure. Well done. You just gave creationists their best weapon ever. AAH must be wrong 'cause it's umbrella hypothesis trying to explain way too many seemingly unrelated phenomena. Then a buck load of other umbrella hypotheses must be wrong too. The theory of the heliocentric near-universe. The theory of gravity. The theories of relativity. Of plate tectonics. Of evolution by natural selection. How much are you willing to sacrifice to finally shut that Welsh grandma up?