http://newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true&print=true

Hmm… You bring up some interesting questions of morality. I would agree that the 400 pounder with cheese you describe should probably change eating habits. However, some of us who would die without medicine through no fault of our own would still like to live a while longer.

What about cases where someone has done something stupid in the past and now requires care even though they have learned their lesson and will no longer repeat the stupid action. Consider someone with illness from smoking who has successfully quit. Do we take away their care?

How do you decide and who gets to decide?

I think I’ll go with bobbo’s suggestion. If someone wants to live and we have the means to help, we probably should. It’s about freedom and basic human rights.

No country can provide health care to everyone. In the U.S., we say, no money? Go die. (And, yes, that is what emergency room only care does say.)

In more civilized countries, they make decisions based on things like QALYs and cost per QALY and moral issues of life-sustaining treatment versus non-life-sustaining treatment. They also weigh a host of other issues, many of which I probably don’t even know about.

I only know this much from participating in a focus group pertaining to public health care spending.

In short, they have a large symposium of people from government, the medical profession, the public, and others who get together to discuss what treatments will and will not be provided so that all have some input. I think this is a much better system than pump air through the nearly dead meat until his/her money runs out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

Hmm… You bring up some interesting questions of morality. I would agree that the 400 pounder with cheese you describe should probably change eating habits. However, some of us who would die without medicine through no fault of our own would still like to live a while longer.

What about cases where someone has done something stupid in the past and now requires care even though they have learned their lesson and will no longer repeat the stupid action. Consider someone with illness from smoking who has successfully quit. Do we take away their care?

How do you decide and who gets to decide?

I think I’ll go with bobbo’s suggestion. If someone wants to live and we have the means to help, we probably should. It’s about freedom and basic human rights.

No country can provide health care to everyone. In the U.S., we say, no money? Go die. (And, yes, that is what emergency room only care does say.)

In more civilized countries, they make decisions based on things like QALYs and cost per QALY and moral issues of life-sustaining treatment versus non-life-sustaining treatment. They also weigh a host of other issues, many of which I probably don’t even know about.

I only know this much from participating in a focus group pertaining to public health care spending.

In short, they have a large symposium of people from government, the medical profession, the public, and others who get together to discuss what treatments will and will not be provided so that all have some input. I think this is a much better system than pump air through the nearly dead meat until his/her money runs out.

When I stated that math and humor have little overlap, I expressly was saying there was “some” overlap. Humor is often idiosyncratic and often comes across wrong–so does being serious? I think humor will beneficially spice any conversation–once the participants are on the same wave length (a math reference).

Thomas and Scott are busy demonstrating that communication can be difficult even when both parties are being serious. I’d rather be mistaken while being humorous.

#196
> Native Americans were agrarian.

Yes and no. It depends on the time period, the tribe and how strictly we are defining “hunter-gatherer”. Many tribes were at least hunter/farmer by the time of Europeans contact.

Yes. And the more numerous were presumably those practicing pure agriculture, especially in South and Central America. Still though, I do not believe this qualifies as a group of hunter-gatherers on which to base any comparisons. Further, the fact that Europeans had better/worse germs to bring with them doesn’t mean anything about the lifestyles of either group.

20-30 million in North America is tiny considering the relative lack of competition for resources, the supposedly healthier life style and the unlimited food supply. By 1600, Europe’s population alone, after the Black Plague wiped out 1/3, was 78 million (http://www.answers.com/topic/1600).

You’re still confusing numbers of people with individual health. Look at the most densely populated nations on earth today and tell me that the individuals are healthier there.

Even for nations that do not have the highest density, but have high density and personal wealth, it must be noted that such nations could not possibly survive in isolation. Consider Japan as one such example. They have high wealth and high population density and get nearly all of their food and raw materials from elsewhere.

Group size is not a measure of individual health.

Try this, go through this list of countries by population density. For each country, ask two questions: 1) Would you want to live there? and 2) Are they largely self-sufficient or reliant on other nations for the majority of their food?

http://tinyurl.com/63sdv

Since nature cares only about reproduction numbers and not for individual health, agriculture wins. We both agree on that.

For people who may want a better life, lower population density is far preferable. You have not stated anything to make me doubt this at all.

I will admit though that there is a minimum for a healthy group. Most of us, of any society, would be short lived without enough genetic diversity and without group cooperation. That minimum though is far below any numbers we’re talking about. For most of history, group size was around 150-200 individuals with interaction with and especially marriages between nearby tribes.

Since the number of people on the entire planet around 70-80,000 years ago was between 2,000 and 7,000 depending on the source, it clearly shows that the minimum cannot be higher than 7,000 for the entire planet. So, I think we have a large range of numbers available for discussing optimal population level for both group and individual health.

Minor correction. There is a link in one of Thomas’ posts regarding the population densities of New York and Nebraska. I apologize for my inaccurate claim that he has not backed up anything yet. My mistake.

#192
RE: Obesity

As I suggested, the WHO is using body mass index to determine overweight which is a flawed formula. The body mass index would calculate that almost all professional athletes are overweight. For example, Vernon Davis plays for the SF 49ers. He’s 6′3″, 253lbs and 3%-6% body fat (hard to get an official stat on his body fat). He is obese on the BMI. A better formula is needed before one can claim that 1/6 of the planet is obese.

The high body mass index athletes you describe are a negligibly small percentage of the population. If you want to want to contradict WHO, you’ll have to do better, such as, finally posting a link to back up anything you say. You have yet to state anything other than your own opinion. This is getting boring.

#193
RE: Population growth.

If half of NE turns into NY, it could support another 2700 people/sq mi or so and there are 38,500 sq mi in half of NE. That comes out to over 100 million people.

However, living in New York, I attempt to buy food as locally as possible. I still end up buying salad from California. I avoid buying apples from New Zealand, but am probably in the minority for knowing or caring about this. I buy Californian or French or Chilean or South African wines. I buy organic beef or preferably bison, neither of which comes from less than 200 miles away, usually much farther. Etc. Etc. Etc.

In short, New York is not self sufficient. So, the planet cannot become as populous as New York.

There is *a lot* of open land in the world even if you take out natural reserves and parks. I’m not suggesting we turn NE into NY (or even move there), but there are plenty of places to build that are not the traditional cities.

And yet, consider this, also from The Dominant Animal by the Erlichs. From page 240.

Almost all of the world’s land that is suitable for agriculture, including what can reasonably be irrigated, is already being cultivated, and what still could be converted to cropland is generally of inferior quality. In recent decades, a significant portion — on the order of 10 percent or more — of the world’s agricultural land has become too degraded for productive farming and has been taken out of production.

The note about inferior quality is mentioned elsewhere in the book. The simple explanation is that humans picked the best land first. The land that has not yet been cultivated is, at this point, quite far from the best land.

From the same book on page 242.

In the past decade or two, expansion of global food production has failed to match the growing demand, and reserve supplies by 2007 were at a worrisomely low level, enough to meet demand for barely eighty days. Increases in grain yields (amount produced per unit area) have lagged globally, despite the need for such increases as populations in developing countries continue to grow.

You (and everyone else on the planet) must learn to think globally. To begin with, you must remember that food does not come from your supermarket, at least not initially. It tends to come from very far away these days. And it takes massive amounts of water to grow it, massive amounts of oil to process and transport it, and even quite a significant amount of oil to make most industrial fertilizers. (Eat organic whenever possible please.)

If you eat up the food chain, i.e. meat, as I do, then your food requires dramatically more water and energy. It also requires multiple pounds of vegetation to produce a single pound of meat. This may vary depending on the meat. At a lecture, I heard 6 pounds of vegetation for a pound of chicken, 8 for a pound of beef, and 200 for a pound of tuna (though the vegetation is not grown by humans in the last case, obviously). Tilapia, carp, and catfish are all better than the other meats I mentioned.

Now, if you want an overlap between math and humor, I suggest you read this post on Cage Match, one of the longest (and most popular posts there.) It drove me nuts, and still does.

Yes and no. It depends on the time period, the tribe and how strictly we are defining “hunter-gatherer”. Many tribes were at least hunter/farmer by the time of Europeans contact.

20-30 million in North America is tiny considering the relative lack of competition for resources, the supposedly healthier life style and the unlimited food supply. By 1600, Europe’s population alone, after the Black Plague wiped out 1/3, was 78 million (http://www.answers.com/topic/1600).

As I suggested, the WHO is using body mass index to determine overweight which is a flawed formula. The body mass index would calculate that almost all professional athletes are overweight. For example, Vernon Davis plays for the SF 49ers. He’s 6′3″, 253lbs and 3%-6% body fat (hard to get an official stat on his body fat). He is obese on the BMI. A better formula is needed before one can claim that 1/6 of the planet is obese.

#193
RE: Population growth.

It does not take an authoritative source to deduce that infinite population growth will exhaust a planet’s resources. That is as obvious as it gets.

However, let’s take your other argument about the lack of land for reasonable population growth. There are approximately 18 million people in the greater NY area which covers an area of about 6700 sq mi for a population density of 2790 people/sq mi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area). Nebraska has a population density of 23 people/sq. mi. If half of NE turns into NY, it could support another 2700 people/sq mi or so and there are 38,500 sq mi in half of NE. That comes out to over 100 million people.

There is *a lot* of open land in the world even if you take out natural reserves and parks. I’m not suggesting we turn NE into NY (or even move there), but there are plenty of places to build that are not the traditional cities.

You guys are hardly assholes (OK well 2 or 3 are). Stubborn and opinionated, yes. That’s what makes for great argument.

Well, time to write some unit tests and code. See you later.

No. Not necessarily. We’re all assholes. I’m just the particular type of stubborn asshole who can go at this as long as anyone. And, I haven’t found other threads to be all that interesting. So, I’m sticking with this one. Is that why you checked back? (And, thanks for helping get to 300.)

#210–SL==everything about modern life is artificial. I assume you mean that people with chronic diseases (or anyone else) who cannot care for themselves and who wish to end their lives with dignity should not be prevented from doing so?

Government should be ALL ABOUT providing choices, and leaving the individual alone to make them.