Even if there's a lot of scientific evidence, statistical proof etc. it's sort of surprising to me that when chatting with people all over the world (in dense cities and also in non-dense areas) how often I hear the sentiment that "there are too many people" and get the sense that they do mean that there's too many people in the world (not just within the surrounding 5-10km which might actually be true).

This might also be one of those things that aligns with people's experience of the world, and the de-population thing is inherently counterintuitive unless you are, by definition, outside the norm- that is, you would only ever notice this if you live where people already don't live. (rural Japan, etc.)

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neutronicus 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I guess I don't understand what's supposedly been proven wrong?

There seem to be real concerns about whether the environment on Earth can sustain the impact of human society in its current form, and the population is an obvious lever to scale that impact.

I guess what's "surprising" is that birth rates are responding to the pressures I'm alluding to? Rather than just continuing runaway exponential expansion?

	▲	amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think people are talking about two different things. The initial panic was that agriculture could not scale to population growth, and millions would starve. That part turned out to be quite seriously wrong, the reason people starve is that they have really crappy governments. The idea that a growing population has quite serious effects on the natural environment hasn't been proven wrong. Trying to get the entirety of the third world up to first world living conditions is putting a serious strain on natural systems. Having a lower population would probably help with that problem. The current panic around falling populations seems to have two drivers: economic systems that are built as essentially a ponzi scheme, like many retirement plans including social security, and a pretty racist idea that we need to have a lot more white babies to keep brown people from taking over.