I think our lifespans will increase dramatically after 15 years, and that borning more kids will create over-crowd problems. Do you plan to marry and get more girlfriends without having kids or you rather have kids in future?

you must be... kidding

If you are indeed serious, here is my answer:

There would not be overpopulation problems with regard to increased lifespans, as long as we continue to work on sustainable development. Technological advancement will increase our lifespans, but also increase the number of people the Earth can support.

Having children is one of my few true goals.  I really don't think overcrowding will be a problem for us even with age extension or, hopefully, complete negligible senesence.  My optimism may be due to an unfounded optimism in advancements in space exploration.

but borning more kids only will create more problems

we do not have enough capacity for those to live.

With all the advances in technology and those that will be made in the next 20 years we will be able to sustain an incredibly larger population then we have yet to even come close to meeting. With advanced nanotechnology we will build Arcologies that reach the skies and will house millions. Through space exploration and future expansion we will definitely colonize other planets, moons, ect. Overpopulation would only occur if our technological/scientifical progression and knowledge were hindered.

The Mentalis

We have plenty of room on this planet.  Censuses have shown that you could put the world's population in the American state of Texas which each person having 1123 square feet to themselves.  That's not exactly giving them wide open spaces, but we're not trying to cram everyone into Texas.

Indeed there is plenty of room and the populations of the western world are not replacing themselves fast enough. There will be many more elderly people in Canada (for example) than there will be children starting well, right now. Nursing homes will fill up; elementary schools will close.

I personally am happy to have reproduced (while in my 20s to boot).

ideal:

We have plenty of room on this planet.  Censuses have shown that you could put the world's population in the American state of Texas which each person having 1123 square feet to themselves.  That's not exactly giving them wide open spaces, but we're not trying to cram everyone into Texas.

You must be kidding. The problem is resource consumption, not space.

But as others have pointed out, overpopulation won't necessarily be a problem for very much longer - new technology will reduce resource consumption per person (duh), and population growth is slowing in the developed world (in fact, world population growth is anticipated to go negative in a few decades - although of course we should all be suspicious of simple numerical extrapolations that far ahead).

I think most of you may be a little optimistic in terms of technology saving us from being unable to support our population.  There is also needed a series political and idealogical change that has to happen as well.  We need to think more sustainable levels of consumption in the first world as well, and i think that change is going to be much slower than the technology and will hinder the ability of the technology to help solve these problems.  Couple that with developing nations reaching first-world status, and the inevitable outcome that they will start consuming just as unsustainably as the first world is.

As to the actual topic on hand, I'm only 19 and I do not see that decision being made for certain until I am a fair bit older and have settled down.  However I do lean towards never having kids, and if I do, only 1, due to both resource consumption and the preference towards agelessness; as well I would rather be more focused on my own life without having to worry about a new life.

EschewObfuscation:

You must be kidding. The problem is resource consumption, not space.

Resource consumption is just as negligible a problem.  We have unfathomable amounts of arable land.  We only need to cooperate so that it gets used and the food is transported to the entirety of the planet rather than being wasted as is so often the case now.

This site has some related info;

http://www.overpopulation.org/

I think it's important to distinguish between projections about the advancement of certain technologies (that are blossoming) IE : singularity et al.... - and projections about global change. IMO, the singularity is good because it has generated interest, yet I'm concerned that it will become a distraction from what needs to be done.

There is also the ethical question of creating a life through Darwinian means;

http://www.abolitionist-society.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=239

"...the populations of the western world are not replacing themselves fast enough."

Do they really need to? As I've said several times in several locations on this site, I really can't see this as some kind of crisis--I just can't.

Immigration can fill out the ranks of workers needed to support the Social Security System, at least in the United States. I suppose Japan, having a much more restrictive immigration policy, will have trouble though.

The world has more than enough people. We have plenty, plenty, plenty!

That said, whether someone decides to have kids or not is really a personal matter.

Me, for various complicated and irrational reasons, I decide not to.

Mr. Farlops:

Immigration can fill out the ranks of workers needed to support the Social Security System, at least in the United States.

Yeah, we can get immigrants for the labor pool without causing much of a problem.

The problem is, immigrants come from their cultures and have their ideas, while we have ours. You may dismiss this as ethnocentrism-- valid enough, I suppose-- but how many people outside of the Western First World hold to transhumanist ideals, or even the basic humanist ideals necessary to support transhumanism?

Evolution isn't about improving ourselves-- though it's an admirable goal-- it's about improving our species one generation at a time. We can't do that if we remove ourselves from the gene pool.

Now, I ain't so keen on having biological children myself, unless some of my genetic defects can be corrected-- but we need to be having and raising children as a group, or else the posthumanity we're fighting for can never exist.

Truthfully I had not even considered the environmental impact of having a child. My close friend, who is a vegetarian and very much into animal rights and the environment, wants to have children. I don't think it has registered as a concern with her either.

It will take a radical change in the way humanity consumes and manages its resources if there is to be any real impact (as stated above several times) on the balance of population and resource consumption and degradation. And I have no idea what would bring about this change.

Radical ecology types argue that the human population should be dramatically reduced (mentioned in Citizen Cyborg, I believe) if humanity and the environment are to survive at all. Well, yeah. It's obvious folks.

My boss lamented that only the right-wing crazies are having children and this is clear when you look at what is going on with the Christian Reconstructionists and their ilk (Alberta anyone? Women dropping out of the work force to homeschool their hellions for Jesus.) These people tend to view Man, and in particular, men, as being at the top of the food chain and exploitation for the sake of money and power is not below them, nor is ignoring the less fortunate (social security nonsense, cuts to veterans pensions, Katrina aftermath, etc. etc.) Jesus is their social safety net! (See the December 2005 issue of Mother Jones.)

It is these very people that scare me. I would be more concerned about how their attitudes affect the environment and the well-being of all of us than I am about overpopulation.

Gaia has ways of fighting back. One never knows what cataclysm could wipe out large numbers of people, not to mention alter the environment.

Korimyr writes, "The problem is, immigrants come from their cultures and have their ideas, while we have ours."

I think none of us really know if this is a potential danger or not. I just don't buy into the alarmism.

All I can do is point to historical waves of immigration in the United States and say, "See? Didn't hurt so much, did it?" It's true that waves of immigration do change the country immigrated to. The US cultural character did change somewhat. At the same time the country changes its immigrants as well. It's a bidirectional process. The question is whether this renews or diminishes national culture or not. You could argue for both.

Personally I think, if done right, it renews. Change, although really irritating, is  in the long run mostly good. Periodic national questioning of collective character is good. Despite it all, I like the United States of the present day much more than the United States of the early 1800s--only landed, white males could vote, slavery still existed and so on. Maybe immigration had some vague and indirect contribution towards that change for the better.

Korimyr asks, "...how many people outside of the Western First World hold to transhumanist ideals, or even the basic humanist ideals necessary to support transhumanism?"

I think we might be surprised. Western ideals didn't emerge from a vacuum. There was a long period where most of Europe didn't hold "Western ideals." There were many contributions from other cultures outside Europe that eventually profoundly affected the formation of "Western ideals."

I find it contradictory for some transhumanists to say that change is accelerating and deepening on the one hand and yet claim that large portions of the world are somehow unaffected by this. How can these both be true? Gibson's truism that the future arrives unevenly does have a lot of weight but what kind of time gap are we talking about here--merely years or long centuries? If the accelerating change argument means anything at all, shouldn't that gap between cultures be shrinking even as we speak?

It's also ironic about the company these alarmists are keeping. Are the America Firsters, the Timothy McVeighs, the Unabombers, the xenophobes of Europe and Japan, from the same ideological group as Wahabists? Do they all fear the emerging global culture, the culture of the future? It seems like they all want to reject change and shut the world world out.

Their loud outcries and acts of violence can be viewed as a sign of how successful, implacable and pervasive global modernity is. That's all they've got left now--violence. They've already lost and their clock is rapidly running out.

I prefer to use the rather discredited word "modernity" instead of "Western ideals" because modernity isn't tied to any specific culture or geographic location.

On the other hand, I wonder about this hunch I have. It seems to smack of manifest destiny. And it really is only a hunch. We'll see.

Korimyr writes "...it's about improving our species one generation at a time. We can't do that if we remove ourselves from the gene pool. ...but we need to be having and raising children as a group, or else the posthumanity we're fighting for can never exist."

Well, I have to ask you who do you mean when you say "group?" If by group, you mean all humanity, then we are having plenty of kids. Only a nuclear war, asteroid impact or some equally catastrophic event is going to wipe out six or ten billion people that quickly.

And if we can gene bank endangered biodiversity, who is to say we can't do the same for ourselves if it's necessary? Personally I don't think human diversity is in any danger of diminishing yet. I don't think it's necessary to personally sow my oats to somehow protect human diversity. The connection is so vague and indirect it's essentially meaningless.

If we're so concerned about about humanity loosing our unique genetic combination--something that seems weirdly arrogant and macha or macho to me--donate to a sperm or egg bank. And pay to have your genes cloned.

But raising kids is fun and rewarding. I have  no problem with people wanting to do that if that if that's their choice, I'm glad for them.

Just please don't frame it in terms of this vaguely ethnocentric and racist "duty to the race." That's just ridiculous.