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Originally Posted by redpoint5
While it's impossible for me to know exactly what it was like to live with less people around, I'm fairly certain I enjoy antibiotics, plentiful food, electronics, leisure, and a relative lack of threat of enemy invasion.
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Antibiotics, electronics, and so on were made possible by a small fraction of the current population of the Earth. Indeed, to a good approximation, by a small fraction of the US and western Europe. And what with one thing and another, antibiotics are losing their effectiveness.
Plentiful food and leisure? Well, hunter-gatherers had that, and overall a more varied diet than most people in the West consume today. As for lack of threats of enemy invasion, read the news from Europe lately?
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I'd say that my quality of life is among the highest experienced by humanity. Perhaps there is a positive correlation between population and quality of life?
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You have to remember that correlation is not causation. Sure, some things have improved over time, while others have peaked and are now getting worse. But as above, the improvements are almost always created by a small fraction of the population.
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The real fear is Involuntary Human Extinction, which at the top of the threat list would include war/terrorism with biological/chemical/nuclear weapons.
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On the contrary, nuclear and/or biological war seem to be the only things that can possibly divert humanity (along with most vertebrate life) from its current headlong rush to involuntary extinction.