You make it sound like that's a positive achievement.
There are "Limits To Growth" [0]
Also, while the population growth itself may not be a positive achievement directly, it's kind of necessary for all the scientific, technological and cultural achievements. Unless you don't see those as positive either - in which case I don't think there's anything left to discuss.
This is just natural selection in action: only people who are good at slotting into bureaucracy and being well-behaved cogs in the wheel will thrive in this environment, and other types of humans will die out. This exact same argument suggests we should not tolerate indigenous people who live separate from civilization. Adapt or die right? But this conclusion is typically quite abhorrent to the same type of people who advocate for your position. Can't have it both ways.
They tracked it. That's all. I see no convincing argument that advanced civilisations occur only in a pool of enormous labour surplus.
The utilitarian in me, and the compassionate human, prefers a world that takes 50,000 years to reach a sustainable, comfortable technological society with a smaller population, than one that grows in 5,000 years to far beyond it's capacity, overproducing consumerist junk, poisoning its planet and seeing billions dying in wars and famines so that a few of us can bow down before the altar of "growth",
Maybe the fact that we have to kill so many of our own kind in order for one percent to live in luxury and pat themselves on the back about "achievements" means we're not really as smart as we think we are as a species?
