I think genwin's point is that we humans behave very stupidly whenever we find an innovation that allows for exponentially more of anything. We behave as if that massive growth will continue forever, and it never does, and usually leads to a crash worse than the solution. So if a new invention allows us to feed all 7 billion of us comfortably, instead of just feeding 7 billion of us comfortably we'll instead create 10 billion, 20 billion, 100 billion of us, up to whatever point the innovation no longer feeds us all comfortably, and then it crashes, and then instead of a billion people dying off we now have 90 billion people dying off. Where I think genwin is wrong is in blaming culture or religion. Instead I think we're just stupid that way.

I do not see factual basis for this claim - how Green revolution led to a crash that is worse than the solution? How modern medicine led to a crash? So far all malthusian prophecies had been reliably wrong. You can claim that sometime in the future it may happen that they still will be true - I can not really disprove that. But you can not say "it never does" - because so far it actually always did.

See how long you can keep borrowing money. Pay off each credit card with a new credit card. You don't need to witness the crash to know that the future is bleak.

There is plenty of factual basis to the claim that we're borrowing against our future to feed the current population.

To "know" the future is bleak you have to be a prophet, since knowledge of the future is not available to mere humans, only assumptions about what might happen in the future. However, the fact that you claim something always happens and yet it never happened makes the claim a bit doubtful.

Yes, we can't know that something bad will happen when we jump off a cliff. If during the fall someone claims that something bad always happens at the bottom and yet it hasn't happened, the claim is doubtful.

We assume this always happens it because we observed many things falling off many cliffs. Though if you had a parachute concealed on you, our assumption about what would happen if you jump off a cliff would be proven wrong.

We never observed the thing that were predicted above, despite the claim that it always happens. We didn't even observe the "fall" you claim to be happening right now. No evidence for it exists except for repeated claims of impending doom, usually accompanied by sermons to repent and sacrifice to whatever favorite pseudo-deity the would be prophet happens to believe in. I have nothing against faith, but this particular faith wouldn't be my choice.

Actually there is plenty of evidence of societies suffering greatly when they exceeded their resources, including modern ones like during the Rwandan genocide. We can also observe the current global fall, in terms of fast declining ocean fish stocks, fast depleting aquifers, and tons of other measurements. The book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a layman's introduction, with references to extensive scientific evidence in its appendix. The relevance of the evidence is always debatable but to say there is none or that such failure hasn't been observed, or even that a fall cannot now be seen in progress, is false.

I am not saying society failure never happened. I am saying society failure because of improved conditions of life so far never happened - Green revolution did not actually led to something worse than widespread starvation. Like Rwandan genocide, most of current failures are designed, not just happening due to overpopulation - they are consequence of man-made evil designs, not development of society.

But that's not what studying population shows us: when people have economic opportunities, education, and choices, they choose to have fewer children. So much so that we end up with the "problem" of the birth rate dropping below what's needed for replacement. It doesn't appear that population growth will ever reach the point that we'll have a problem producing enough food to feed everyone.

Education is the key to amending the culture and religion that is the root cause of the problem.

Yep.

> Instead I think we're just stupid that way.

That's culture and religion. Both could change to promote smarter sustainability.

No, I'm advocating not making the problem worse while ignoring its root cause.

It's not the choice here. Monsanto can not reform Indian or Chinese society into something else. The choice here is either we have better crops and people do not starve, or we do not have them and people starve. You say "people do not starve" is a bad choice. To me it looks like advocating starving off people as the means for population control.

No, the choice here is either we have better crops and people starve, or we do not have them and less people starve. brent_noorda explains above.

In this scenario "less people" is achieved by starving them off, so you're basically saying "we will starve people off and then there would be less people to starve, so it's actually a good thing". Seems to be like an extremely cynical piece of mental gymnastics.

Nobody needs to starve when the root cause is focused on. You're basically saying "we will starve people off in the future, but save less people today, so it's actually a good thing". Of the two of us, I'm the one advocating that less people starve.

"When the root cause is focused on" is an extremely vague and non-practical phrase. You can always say "since we have people starving, root cause is not fixed, so we should leave them starving and not help them until it is". What is your method for making "less people"? We have population of 7 billion and growing, Green revolution technology can enable us to feed them. If you deny it, then what you propose to do with those people, where they are supposed to go?