A common argument for an ever increasing human population is that it would mean more clever people to help solve the world's problems. While this sounds good, it's debatable whether it would result in a net gain or loss to the list of the world's woes.

One problem with the argument is that as the number of cluey, smart, entrepreneurial or just plain "good" people increases, so too does the number of clueless, stupid, lazy and just plain "bad" people. The distribution of abilities in the human population probably follows a bell-shaped curve, and a larger population simply means, all other things being equal, a larger bell. It would have to be shown that the positive influence of the "problem solvers" was not just equal to, but disproportionately greater than, the negative influence of the "problem creators" to support this reason for an ever expanding population. Readers with any experience of life can decide that one for themselves. In any event, the world doesn't seem close to running out of problems.

A greater population does not necessarily mean that we will have more clever people to solve the world's problems.

Further, according to the argument's logic, a larger population is certain to lead to an increase in human suffering when the next natural or human-made disaster strikes. In contrast, there is no reason to think a larger population per se is likely to lead to any off-setting increase in human happiness. For example, how much happier would a population twice its present size make you?

The argument also implicitly supports the school-book "great person" view of scientific discovery; that is, great discoveries are dependent on the appearance of single exceptional individuals. Instead, the history of ideas shows that great discoveries are more dependent on time and circumstance. When the time is right, any number of people could make the same discovery. In science, for example, research teams often race to be the "first" to crack a problem.