Alright, so the history of human nature involves bursts of population growth preceded by doomsayers who insist now we're all really fucked foodwise, which never actually happens because of major technological innovations (domesticated crops, crop rotation, steam/coal power, chemically synthesized fertilizers, genetic engineering, etc...). I'm starting to wonder, though, if this is a trend we can indefinitely sustain or if we're getting close to the wall.
In my head, this is most easily envisioned as an integral--you're cutting the area under the curve into infinitely small rectangles, but it's still a finite area--or, after reading The Motion Paradox (Joseph Mazur), it's somewhat like Zeno's arrow, which ends up dividing distance into successive halves (forming a sequence of 1/2^n).
Long story short, though, it seems like we're getting to the end of what has until now seemed like an avoidable future. There's always been more room in the past, there's always been areas we could expand into--but unless people are going to start living in the desert (which is fraught with all sorts of problems, and would exacerbate the current climate crisis)...we're running out of space. Fast.
Suddenly living in outer space doesn't seem like a complete waste of time and resources!
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