16 ms·

The world might run out of people

103 points by tombot 8y ago

whack 8y ago
Our economy and intellectual progress is massively predicated on specialisation of labor. When I consider any single aspect of our life, even something as "simple" as how elevators work, it's astounding the amount of complexity that goes into it. Complexity that we can handle because we divvy it up amongst many many people who are completely specialized in understanding and fulfilling that task. Gradual increases in population don't really scare me. Technological progress has always scaled with population, and technology can free us of natural resource constraints. But in a world of shrinking population, entire fields of practical human knowledge and know-how can be lost forever.
- collyw 8y ago
  >entire fields of practical human knowledge and know-how can be lost forever. Plenty of examples of that happening as a result of technology.
  - dahfizz 8y ago
    Can you give an example? Technology may remove the need for physical skills, but I don't really see how it would wipe out fields of knowledge.
    - rficcaglia 8y ago
      navigate by stars and moon and position of the sun vs chronometers vs gps?
      - dahfizz 8y ago
        Yes, the practical skill of navigating by stars is not practiced by most people because we have better navigation methods. But the knowledge of how to navigate by stars was not erased by the invention of the gps. That's still part of humanity's body of knowledge.
        jdbernard 8y ago
        Maybe, but if you're talking about recorded knowledge I'd argue we're still losing a bulk of it. Recorded knowledge fails to capture all the layers of depth that lived experience contains. Hopefully the recorded knowledge is enough to jump-start a new learner if no masters remain, but even that is not guaranteed.
    - pintxo 8y ago
      The cause as per the GP is not technology: > But in a world of shrinking population, entire fields of practical human knowledge and know-how can be lost forever.
    - monetus 8y ago
      I'm having trouble finding a source with a search engine, but I've heard of bronze age shields that were impossible to reproduce with current metallurgy. Ancient concrete recipes are rediscovered occasionally. These aren't fields though. The loss probably wasn't as simple as older technology being surplanted by newer tech. I think what you are looking for my be found in farming though. I would think there are entire avenues of research abandoned.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - dmead 8y ago
        they are fields. you're being biased. it's still lost knowledge that used to be known by lots of people. the point stands.
        monetus 8y ago
        Of course it stands, regardless of the pedantry over whether it is a category or a detail.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Smithing for instance. Used to be there were folks throughout the world that understood hand-working metal intimately. Now its almost died out.
    - tomjen3 8y ago
      Can you create abortificiants/contraceptives from local plants? Most of that knowledge, which used to be widespread among women, was never written down, and with modern pills nobody needs to.
- matt4077 8y ago
  The trend of lower birth rates depends on increased development and education. The net effect is you could have a third of today’s population, and still more specialized elevator music backup vocals mixing engineers than before.
- everdrive 8y ago
  This cuts both ways, though. Elevators are quite nice, but what about nuclear weapons and Skinner boxes? (aka, smartphones) I'm not trying to paint a broad brush where technology is either all good or evil. But, quite a bit of the magic of population size and telecommunications are wasted on useless or evil efforts. And, at some point, there will be too many people. We can debate on the number the Earth can safely support, but we must agree it's lower than infinity. So, there must be some balance to overpopulation and destruction it brings, and underpopulation and the progress it halts. Do you think there's a good balance we can / should arrive at? Do you think we're anywhere close to it?
- bamboozled 8y ago
  I often think about this too, are people who understand incredibly complex things dying off / retiring faster than technology can keep up with it ? I think about maitaitining really complex infrastructure, you kind of see this in Japan. So much complicated infrastructure, so many people checking out.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > So much complicated infrastructure, so many people checking out. Do we know if Japanese businesses realized this at all? I think here in North America companies are still thinking it'll all be fine and the knowledge will somehow magically transfer to the next generation that they couldn't be bothered to train, largely as a lot of baby boomers haven't left yet, but they are going to, and soon.
    - bamboozled 8y ago
      Someone has realised it as Japan has finally warmed up to the idea of increasing immigration numbers sharply after resisting to do so for a very long time.
    - magduf 8y ago
      They don't need to train them, and it will be "all fine": the executives making these decisions will be able to collect their golden parachutes and retire in luxury by the time the boomers retire, and their companies will flounder and die only after this point, so the executives have little to worry about.
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        As it happens most of those executives are Boomers as well, so it works out quite nicely all around!
- detcader 8y ago
  Can you give an example of why this is bad? What more do we really need in terms of technology, to survive as nations and be happy? Could this point in our achievement be enough? Maybe a drought of elevator specialists decreases the amount of elevators we can have. We have to walk up stairs more often. Not ideal. But maybe more people spend less time having and raising kids and more time working on themselves. Mental health improves and people are more compassionate toward themselves and others. I would choose that world, not actively fight against it.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    >What more do we really need in terms of technology, to survive as nations and be happy? What timeline are we talking about. > Could this point in our achievement be enough? To ensure eventual extinction, yes. Modern technology is wholly dependant on a great number of unstable and unsustainable systems. Fossil fuels are the best example of a great technological boost that is destroying our atmosphere. Renewables, while so much better, are not without their drawbacks at a world civilization size. Still, it could create a nice, clean, and happy doomed world. Below us vast volcanoes, things not seen for tens of thousands of years, wait to explode below us threatening to blot out the sun for a decade (hope you don't depend on solar panels). Above us rocks the size of mountains race through the blackness of space at insane speeds waiting to find a gravity well and vaporize what is at the bottom of it. There exists threats, ones we've only come to realize exist in the past century, that can wipe mankind off earth in the blink of an eye. The solution to most of these is making sure we just aren't on earth, and become a spacefaring civilization. For that we will need technology far beyond what we have now.
    - detcader 8y ago
      It's almost as if we are in Omelas, our worldwide festival of novelty and technology relying on a hidden destruction of the environment we do not pay attention to except once in a while (not to mention the countries.) I don't believe space travel is worth it if we get there through war, interpersonal alienation and violence required by the only current system poised to do it. Sometimes we have to entertain the idea of letting go of preventing every possible bad outcome and focus on what is needed in the current moment. Regrettably I'm not the most persuasive philosopher; Gil Scott-Heron has a song called "Whitey on the Moon" if one wants to think more poetically about it.
- jopsen 8y ago
  You suggest that technology would progress to free us of natural resource constraints, why wouldn't it also free us of manpower constraints? (after all the robots are coming). As for population going to zero, I suspect it'll be a while -- and that we could increase birth rates with financial incentives, 2-3 years parental leave wouldn't be very dystopian :)
adrianN 8y ago
That's interesting. I've heard the exact opposite opinion somewhere, that the education of women doesn't have as big an effect as anticipated by the models, especially in Africa. This graphs shows it https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attainment-vs-fertility https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attain... For some countries like India or China, the effect is very strong. Just a few years of education drastically reduce the number of children, but for other countries like Uganda or Zambia the effect is much smaller. The original source where I first heard this (which I sadly can't find again) claimed this was due women wanting almost as many children as men in these countries.
- pasta 8y ago
  That's because it has to do with the death rate of children. On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800). The combination of enough food, education and good health care are why less babies are born. So if you live in a country with good education but lack of food most women will still have more babies than two.
  - watwut 8y ago
    > On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800). Citation needed, especially since we are talking about much different cultures.
    - epakai 8y ago
      It's fairly independent of culture, and where culture matters it eventually changes because women become enfranchised. Use slider at the bottom to vary time. https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;&marker$axis_y$which=children_per_woman_total_fertility&domainMin:null&domainMax:null&zoomedMin:null&zoomedMax:null&spaceRef:null;;;&chart-type=bubbles https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;&mar...
      - 8y ago
alecco 8y ago
A world with declining population. Full of old people due to population pyramid inverted. Full of stupid, and impulsive, and likely religious zealots, as those are the only groups with fertility rates above replacement level.
- joshuacc 8y ago
  Everyone who wants more than 2.1 kids is stupid, impulsive, or a religious zealot? That seems unlikely.
  - Robotbeat 8y ago
    No, but it is true that groups with higher birth rates in spite of having middle class lifestyle tend to be religious. there are lots of stupid, impulsive religious zealots with quiverfuls. But also a lot of wonderful, loving religious folks with quiverfuls. I wish there were more other types who had a birthrate above replacement, but outside of religious circles, having more than 2 kids is rare and even considered uncouth. If lots of couples have 1 or no kids and lots of people aren't even in couples, then we're going to need a LOT of people having 3 or more kids. But we aren't. Especially among the non-religious. It could be that in the future, religion is a social trait selected for because it leads to higher birth rates. I haven't seen a lot of introspection on this idea that doesn't quickly verge into, um, questionable rhetoric, and I'd like to see a lot more of it.
    - watwut 8y ago
      Quiverfuls are quite rare even in religious families with multiple children. It takes extraordinary conviction to continue when you are already feeding 10 children on one income. Even if those children do some of work.
      - Robotbeat 8y ago
        Agreed. But I suppose I was using a broader definition, like anything more than 3 or so kids.
matt4077 8y ago
I’m somewhat surprised by the tone of surprise in this article/interview. While I still frequently see references to “out-of-control population growth” among laypeople here on HN or on Twitter, often in reference to Africa, I have long gotten the impression that the scientific and political communities have turned to models showing drastically lower birth rates coinciding with increased development. Lower infant mortality, access to birth control, and social safety nets that do not rely on immediate family are obvious factors here. This is umabigoulsy good news, unless you posit a harm from not being born. In any case, it’s unlikely that humanity is going to disappear of its own choosing.
- Robotbeat 8y ago
  The slowing of the birthrate to manageable levels is very good, but too much of that (i.e. below replacement) leads to an inverted age pyramid, which is NOT unambiguously good. The fact that birthrates are falling and many countries will be left with a huge number of elderly folk without enough young folk to take care of them is not unambiguously good, particularly when it happens everywhere so there's nowhere to import young immigrants from.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    An inverted age pyramid can be just fine if automation picks up the slack and causes productivity per capita to soar. The great thing about automation is that it’s always improving, never going back (except when old equipment gets retired). Once Tesla improves feature X it’s rolled out to all cars at once, for instance.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      > if automation picks up the slack and causes productivity per capita This is only true if the income disparity is not out of control. Current trends show us that income disparity is increasing where the super rich gain everything, and the poor are screwed without some kind of income redistribution (high wealth taxes for example).
TheBeardKing 8y ago
Better data from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
pjc50 8y ago
Sigh. Someone has a book to sell by going against conventional wisdom, and the classic approach of taking a small trend and drawing a huge long straight line through it. It's not really surprising that this has happened, given the extent of efforts to reduce birth rates as a way out of poverty.
- Robotbeat 8y ago
  This is the same argument that has been used for decades and centuries to worry about population explosion, though. Was that mere book selling? We've now seen a trend of below replacement in places like Japan lasting for decades now, and they've luckily been able to change their society to be more welcoming to immigrants in order to compensate, but that only works if there are countries with higher birth rates to compensate.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Or climate change? (Ducks) PS: I realize now that people downvote not based on the content of the post or the argument but based on whether they don’t think the argument should be made because they dont like the conclusion.
    - Robotbeat 8y ago
      No, climate change was predicted well before a temperature change was observed (i.e. over 100 years ago), and it was based on the fact that the world burns enormous amounts of coal and the fact that CO2 has a certain infrared absorption spectrum. It was a prediction based on basic physics before an empirical observation of the global result was seen. But there is something analogous: look at birthrates, and you have a pretty good idea about which direction the population will trend to within a few decades. It's a pretty straightforward, fundamental relationship.
      - EGreg 8y ago
        Right, but like all things it ignores other variables, such as for example the sun going into a cooler period or the gulfstream or el nino changing. Obviously the former is global while the latter likely won’t counteract the warming effect much. But it’s extrapolating based on the assumption that we know there won’t be any other mechanisms — feedback, collapse, new phenomena being activated by this like the growing of new phytoplankton-like organisms or trees outside human habitats which automatically sequester trillions of tons of carbon back) https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/we-are-making-the-globe-greener/article26147272/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/we-are-making-the-gl... https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/dead-forests-release-less-carbon-into-atmosphere-than-expected https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/dead-forests-release-less-c... We can’t do it ourselves: https://www.businessinsider.com/so-much-co2-planting-trees-cant-save-us-2017-5?utm_content=buffer367e0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-biuk&r=UK&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/so-much-co2-planting-trees-c... And https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161435.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161435.h... I happen to think that the extrapolation is going to closely approximate what will actually happen, but I could be wrong.
lamename 8y ago
What I didn't see mentioned in the article is the 3rd possibility: that the population will grow but eventually reach a stable plateau. I don't know the number (<12 bil maybe) but this was argued by Hans Rosling. Can any demographers weigh in?
- naravara 8y ago
  IIRC the UN estimates in the early 2000s said it was going to top out at 11 to 12 billion and plateau there. This article is a much rosier estimate and expects us to top out at 9 billion or so before rapidly declining.
sametmax 8y ago
I haven't heard of a specie disapearing primarily because it didn't have enough babies. Even the giant panda, before arriving to this situation, had seen their forests devasted by us. So at best, I expect our specie to mess up in some big ways, then maybe, the finish blow will be reproduction. Yet I doubt it. First, other threats have a way higher likelyhood. India has no water, terrible social tension, instable border situations and the nuclear bomb. We killed 60% of the insects. There are microparticules of plastic everywhere in the oceans. Not to mention climat change, our mad scientist attitude towards everything, and the systematic conversion of limited natural assets into short term cash machines. Second, fertility is something we have been working on for some time now, and our mad, but smart, scientists are pretty good at it. Lastly, I even doubt that natural fertility will ever be a permanent problem. Nature has cycles to regular species population, and may impose on us some drastic mesure, but like all cycles, it goes back to where it was.
- ccozan 8y ago
  Well, look again. Humans are quite the only species capable of understanding at a higher level the reproduction and controlling it. So, yes, this plays a bigger role than environment, where humans can thrive in almost any conditions, if the technology is allowing it. No intrisic force makes a woman to have children and how many, just cultural and basic economy.
- Nav_Panel 8y ago
  Calhoun's "Beautiful Ones" study from the 1960s is the just-so story here. A rat environment is built, becomes overpopulated, and eventually the children stop breeding and the colony dies out. However, it's of dubious predictive value.
  - Analemma_ 8y ago
    As much as the Internet loves the Rat Park study, it’s important to note that it has never replicated; several groups tried and failed. Until more information comes along, it should be considered another victim of the replication crisis and not taken too seriously.
- 8y ago
Symmetry 8y ago
In the long run more agreeable (in a Big 5 sense) people have more children and agreeableness is fairly heritable so don't expect the decline in birth rates to last forever. https://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fertility-rates-shouldnt-be.html https://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fer...
bparsons 8y ago
Important to note that these two authors wrote another book in 2013, claiming that Canada would never elect a Liberal government again, because of demographics or something. This was 18 months before the Liberals won a massive majority. https://www.amazon.ca/Big-Shift-Canadian-Politics-Business/dp/1443416452 https://www.amazon.ca/Big-Shift-Canadian-Politics-Business/d...
fallingfrog 8y ago
In the short term, this is good news. Sub-replacement fertility is not zero; if the world population were to reduce by 1% per year for a few decades, it would reduce the pressure on the Earth's ecosystems and make some space for a better life for the remaining people. The population can always increase again.
lisper 8y ago
> “In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline,” they write. “Once that decline begins, it will never end.” I'll give you very long odds against.
- simplicio 8y ago
  Yea, the debate about the UN's demographic projections are interesting, but the framing that the world is going to run out of people is dump, and kinda distracts from the interesting parts. 8 billion people is still a pretty crazy number of people.
- kijin 8y ago
  Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the decline ends at some point and a sort of long-term fluctuation takes over. Economic, political, and technological changes all affect how many babies people have, as well as how long they live.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Well, if we change 'never ends' to 'until the earth is uninhabitable by solar irradiance', then is premis can be completely true. For example if we have 10 billion people and reduced the total population by 2 every year, that would give us 5 billion years, which is way after the sun has gone red giant.
phkahler 8y ago
That ended rather abruptly, and never even mentioned decline or running out.
stevehawk 8y ago
I've always kind of felt that man kind would go the way of the Mice Utopia experiment - https://www.returnofkings.com/36915/what-humans-can-learn-from-the-mice-utopia-experiment https://www.returnofkings.com/36915/what-humans-can-learn-fr...
est31 8y ago
This is indeed the leading theory about where the world will be heading over the next couple of decades. But I think the answer really depends on the culture of subpopulations. In the USA for example, republican ruled states have more babies than democrat ruled states [1]. Or in israel, the fertility rate of the orthodox haredi minority is very high with 6.9 children per woman in 2017 (children not childbirths) compared to the non-haredi per-woman value of 2.4 [2]. So where will this lead us to? I think we'll experience growing percentages of conservatives/orthodox populations across the world while the liberal populations will shrink. Overall there will be a shrinkage but the conservative population growth might eat up that shrinkage and one day we might have overall growth again. But predicting the future is hard of course. For example, you could have the conversion of the conservative mindset towards liberalism which is happening in the entire world since maybe 100 years or such eat up every population increase of the conservative minorities. Or you could have sci-fi tech that influences population infertility quite much, e.g. with artificial uteruses. With them, minorities that value large amounts of children might grow quicker and governments could want to influence how many children are being grown to fight population declines. Or it might be figured out how to prevent/reverse aging and the number of "natural" deaths will sink to zero. Then your population will start growing again even without the contribution from conservative/orthodox minorities as the number of babies would still be larger than the (low) number of deaths due to accidents, crimes, etc. [1]: https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/republicans-have-more-children/ https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/republicans-have-mor... [2]: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439 https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439
- matthewdgreen 8y ago
  One might point out that orthodox-religious and Republican children are a major source of liberals.
  - est31 8y ago
    Exactly, that's what I've meant with "conversion of the conservative mindset towards liberalism". Liberal groups have high capabilities of converting conservative people towards them while conservative groups have high capabilities of reproducing. I don't worry about liberals for that reason: the more conservatives, the larger the pool of people they can convert to their ways. Liberalism originated in a world that was far more conservative than the conservatives we have today, and they still managed to get where we are now. I'm definitely not worried.
thomasahle 8y ago
I didn't know this was controversial? The UN numbers referred to show that this is a likely outcome already on page 2. At most the author seems to disagree with UN about ~1 billion people. Well within the uncertainty. https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_KeyFindings.pdf https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_Key...
rainworld 8y ago
Quoting Spandrell: At this moment, every single human population with an IQ over 95 has a fertility rate below replacement; and the places where the most intelligent and productive people tend to live, big cities, have generally fertility rates below 1. Not below 2, replacement, but below 1, half of replacement. As I’ve said again and again, big cities today are IQ shredders, where the genes that code for high intelligence go to get shredded in the corporate and bureaucratic rat-race, depriving humanity of the biological building blocks for a better future.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- est31 8y ago
  Is there a study that confirms this? I couldn't find any links in the blog post you seem to have copied it from. https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/tucker-carlsons-war-against-woke-capital-and-the-future-of-the-right/ https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/tucker-carlson...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - xmmrm 8y ago
    Just compare TFR and average IQ tables. The pattern is obvious.
- jackfrodo 8y ago
  My understanding is that Spandrell considers himself a "race realist." Please don't bring right-wing racist thought into HN.
  - Stratoscope 8y ago
    I didn't see anything right wing or racist in the original quote, did you? It was an interesting observation regardless of who made it.
arthurcamara 8y ago
The article makes it sound like a journalist traveled around 26 countries (~10% of countries), interviewed only a handful of people in each (the ones they could reach), and concluded that UN's demographic projections - formulated with tons of data, academic methodologies, and carefully crafted by statisticians and global development experts - are wrong The article and book sound pretty biased and clickbaity from what I can tell so far. I'll stick with the UN for now ;)
vages 8y ago
Analogy: If someone on a diet keeps losing weight, they will disappear too. But outside pressures and incentives change, and there's also internal regulation. Your weight will stabilize sooner or later. I think the same goes for populations. When people become scarce, making more of them will be rewarded in some way or another. I'm not sure the authors believe humanity will celibate itself out of existence. But I'm sure they'll sell more books with "extinction" rather than "stabilization" as a headline.
foolsgold 8y ago
I was expecting a link to the National Inquirer, and not Wired. Utter nonsense
Balgair 8y ago
I've not read the book yet (it only came out yesterday), but I think there are a few issues with the piece: First, we should look at the authors of the book. Again, I've NOT read it, so this is based on a bit of internet sleuthing, and nothing more. The authors are primarily writers and news commentators in Canada. John Ibbitson writes for The Glode and Mail and is a political commentator[0]. Dr. Darrell Bricker is a pollster, political commentator, and author of a few books focusing on Canadian current events and issues[1]. I cannot speak for their personal knowledge on Earth's population nor the accuracy of a book that I have not read. However, based on their Wikipedia bios, I can conclude that they are not career professionals in global demographics. Speaking personally, they give me a Robert Reich/Thomas Friedman vibe more than anything. Now, specifically about the Wired interview, there are some things that stand out: > And then I saw one woman reach in and pull out a smartphone, look at it, and put it back. And I realized, here we are in a slum in Delhi, and all these women have smartphones. Who can read. Who have data packages. And I was thinking, they have all of human knowledge in their hands now. Depending on the time and place that the authors were in Delhi, this may be incorrect. Free Basics was recently shot down in 2016, so if they were there after that decision, they are correct [2]. If they were there before that ruling, then it is highly likely that these women were only able to access Facebook and not the internet at large. In addition, though the Wired interview was very short, they may not have had anything other than basic phone functionality. I would love to know more about the actual data on how internet penetration occurs in the lower castes/classes of India. > The UN says they’re already baked into the numbers. But when I went and interviewed ... Wolfgang Lutz in Vienna, ... he walked me through his projections, ... All he was doing was adding one new variable to the forecast: the level of improvement in female education. And he comes up with a much lower number ..., somewhere between 8 billion and 9 billion. Based on some quick googling of Dr. Lutz, I would be a fool to disagree with his expert assessments [3]. He holds two doctorates, one in Demographics from U. Penn, and one in Statistics from U. Vienna and has been working in global demographics issues since 1985. I've not researched him in depth, but he seems like a level-headed person without much of an 'agenda'. He is a recent editor of a 1000+ page tome titled "World Population and Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century"[4]. So, if Dr. Lutz's believes that just adding in female education will drop the world population by ~two billion babies, then I would be loathe to argue with him. > In the Philippines, for example, fertility rates dropped from 3.7 percent to 2.7 percent from 2003 to 2018. That's a whole kid in 15 years. I'm not certain what 3.7 percent fertility means. I believe that there may be a mis-transcription here. What I think the authors mean is that the Philippines had a birth rate of 3.7 children per woman. For reference, Yemen is an even more extreme example:. In 1986, the fertility rate was over 9. Today it stands at 4; so 5 children in 30 years. Overall, the Wired article stands as a good promotion for the recently released book. However, I feel that listening from Dr. Lutz himself may be a better and more productive use of time [5][6]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ibbitson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ibbitson [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Bricker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Bricker [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Lutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Lutz [4] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/world-population-and-human-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-9780198703167?cc=us&lang=en&# https://global.oup.com/academic/product/world-population-and... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDuJPJ5J5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDuJPJ5J5c [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJ7EApyi-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJ7EApyi-A
jelliclesfarm 8y ago
Optimal carrying capacity would be 1 billion. We were half a billion in 1600s. If everyone had 1/2 surviving child, we will start coming down in about 200 years. Would love it if someone smarter than me can do that mathematical projection? We need everyone to have 1/2 child so we have genetic diversity.

103 points by tombot 8y ago

Our economy and intellectual progress is massively predicated on specialisation of labor. When I consider any single aspect of our life, even something as "simple" as how elevators work, it's astounding the amount of complexity that goes into it. Complexity that we can handle because we divvy it up amongst many many people who are completely specialized in understanding and fulfilling that task. Gradual increases in population don't really scare me. Technological progress has always scaled with population, and technology can free us of natural resource constraints. But in a world of shrinking population, entire fields of practical human knowledge and know-how can be lost forever.

collyw 8y ago
>entire fields of practical human knowledge and know-how can be lost forever. Plenty of examples of that happening as a result of technology.
- dahfizz 8y ago
  Can you give an example? Technology may remove the need for physical skills, but I don't really see how it would wipe out fields of knowledge.
  - rficcaglia 8y ago
    navigate by stars and moon and position of the sun vs chronometers vs gps?
    - dahfizz 8y ago
      Yes, the practical skill of navigating by stars is not practiced by most people because we have better navigation methods. But the knowledge of how to navigate by stars was not erased by the invention of the gps. That's still part of humanity's body of knowledge.
      - jdbernard 8y ago
        Maybe, but if you're talking about recorded knowledge I'd argue we're still losing a bulk of it. Recorded knowledge fails to capture all the layers of depth that lived experience contains. Hopefully the recorded knowledge is enough to jump-start a new learner if no masters remain, but even that is not guaranteed.
  - pintxo 8y ago
    The cause as per the GP is not technology: > But in a world of shrinking population, entire fields of practical human knowledge and know-how can be lost forever.
  - monetus 8y ago
    I'm having trouble finding a source with a search engine, but I've heard of bronze age shields that were impossible to reproduce with current metallurgy. Ancient concrete recipes are rediscovered occasionally. These aren't fields though. The loss probably wasn't as simple as older technology being surplanted by newer tech. I think what you are looking for my be found in farming though. I would think there are entire avenues of research abandoned.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - dmead 8y ago
      they are fields. you're being biased. it's still lost knowledge that used to be known by lots of people. the point stands.
      - monetus 8y ago
        Of course it stands, regardless of the pedantry over whether it is a category or a detail.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Smithing for instance. Used to be there were folks throughout the world that understood hand-working metal intimately. Now its almost died out.
  - tomjen3 8y ago
    Can you create abortificiants/contraceptives from local plants? Most of that knowledge, which used to be widespread among women, was never written down, and with modern pills nobody needs to.
matt4077 8y ago
The trend of lower birth rates depends on increased development and education. The net effect is you could have a third of today’s population, and still more specialized elevator music backup vocals mixing engineers than before.
everdrive 8y ago
This cuts both ways, though. Elevators are quite nice, but what about nuclear weapons and Skinner boxes? (aka, smartphones) I'm not trying to paint a broad brush where technology is either all good or evil. But, quite a bit of the magic of population size and telecommunications are wasted on useless or evil efforts. And, at some point, there will be too many people. We can debate on the number the Earth can safely support, but we must agree it's lower than infinity. So, there must be some balance to overpopulation and destruction it brings, and underpopulation and the progress it halts. Do you think there's a good balance we can / should arrive at? Do you think we're anywhere close to it?
bamboozled 8y ago
I often think about this too, are people who understand incredibly complex things dying off / retiring faster than technology can keep up with it ? I think about maitaitining really complex infrastructure, you kind of see this in Japan. So much complicated infrastructure, so many people checking out.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > So much complicated infrastructure, so many people checking out. Do we know if Japanese businesses realized this at all? I think here in North America companies are still thinking it'll all be fine and the knowledge will somehow magically transfer to the next generation that they couldn't be bothered to train, largely as a lot of baby boomers haven't left yet, but they are going to, and soon.
  - bamboozled 8y ago
    Someone has realised it as Japan has finally warmed up to the idea of increasing immigration numbers sharply after resisting to do so for a very long time.
  - magduf 8y ago
    They don't need to train them, and it will be "all fine": the executives making these decisions will be able to collect their golden parachutes and retire in luxury by the time the boomers retire, and their companies will flounder and die only after this point, so the executives have little to worry about.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      As it happens most of those executives are Boomers as well, so it works out quite nicely all around!
detcader 8y ago
Can you give an example of why this is bad? What more do we really need in terms of technology, to survive as nations and be happy? Could this point in our achievement be enough? Maybe a drought of elevator specialists decreases the amount of elevators we can have. We have to walk up stairs more often. Not ideal. But maybe more people spend less time having and raising kids and more time working on themselves. Mental health improves and people are more compassionate toward themselves and others. I would choose that world, not actively fight against it.
- pixl97 8y ago
  >What more do we really need in terms of technology, to survive as nations and be happy? What timeline are we talking about. > Could this point in our achievement be enough? To ensure eventual extinction, yes. Modern technology is wholly dependant on a great number of unstable and unsustainable systems. Fossil fuels are the best example of a great technological boost that is destroying our atmosphere. Renewables, while so much better, are not without their drawbacks at a world civilization size. Still, it could create a nice, clean, and happy doomed world. Below us vast volcanoes, things not seen for tens of thousands of years, wait to explode below us threatening to blot out the sun for a decade (hope you don't depend on solar panels). Above us rocks the size of mountains race through the blackness of space at insane speeds waiting to find a gravity well and vaporize what is at the bottom of it. There exists threats, ones we've only come to realize exist in the past century, that can wipe mankind off earth in the blink of an eye. The solution to most of these is making sure we just aren't on earth, and become a spacefaring civilization. For that we will need technology far beyond what we have now.
  - detcader 8y ago
    It's almost as if we are in Omelas, our worldwide festival of novelty and technology relying on a hidden destruction of the environment we do not pay attention to except once in a while (not to mention the countries.) I don't believe space travel is worth it if we get there through war, interpersonal alienation and violence required by the only current system poised to do it. Sometimes we have to entertain the idea of letting go of preventing every possible bad outcome and focus on what is needed in the current moment. Regrettably I'm not the most persuasive philosopher; Gil Scott-Heron has a song called "Whitey on the Moon" if one wants to think more poetically about it.
jopsen 8y ago
You suggest that technology would progress to free us of natural resource constraints, why wouldn't it also free us of manpower constraints? (after all the robots are coming). As for population going to zero, I suspect it'll be a while -- and that we could increase birth rates with financial incentives, 2-3 years parental leave wouldn't be very dystopian :)

adrianN 8y ago

That's interesting. I've heard the exact opposite opinion somewhere, that the education of women doesn't have as big an effect as anticipated by the models, especially in Africa. This graphs shows it https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attainment-vs-fertility https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attain... For some countries like India or China, the effect is very strong. Just a few years of education drastically reduce the number of children, but for other countries like Uganda or Zambia the effect is much smaller. The original source where I first heard this (which I sadly can't find again) claimed this was due women wanting almost as many children as men in these countries.

pasta 8y ago
That's because it has to do with the death rate of children. On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800). The combination of enough food, education and good health care are why less babies are born. So if you live in a country with good education but lack of food most women will still have more babies than two.
- watwut 8y ago
  > On average most woman want two children. But when a lot of them die they will get more (average of 6 around 1800). Citation needed, especially since we are talking about much different cultures.
  - epakai 8y ago
    It's fairly independent of culture, and where culture matters it eventually changes because women become enfranchised. Use slider at the bottom to vary time. https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;&marker$axis_y$which=children_per_woman_total_fertility&domainMin:null&domainMax:null&zoomedMin:null&zoomedMax:null&spaceRef:null;;;&chart-type=bubbles https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2018;&mar...
    - 8y ago

alecco 8y ago

A world with declining population. Full of old people due to population pyramid inverted. Full of stupid, and impulsive, and likely religious zealots, as those are the only groups with fertility rates above replacement level.

joshuacc 8y ago
Everyone who wants more than 2.1 kids is stupid, impulsive, or a religious zealot? That seems unlikely.
- Robotbeat 8y ago
  No, but it is true that groups with higher birth rates in spite of having middle class lifestyle tend to be religious. there are lots of stupid, impulsive religious zealots with quiverfuls. But also a lot of wonderful, loving religious folks with quiverfuls. I wish there were more other types who had a birthrate above replacement, but outside of religious circles, having more than 2 kids is rare and even considered uncouth. If lots of couples have 1 or no kids and lots of people aren't even in couples, then we're going to need a LOT of people having 3 or more kids. But we aren't. Especially among the non-religious. It could be that in the future, religion is a social trait selected for because it leads to higher birth rates. I haven't seen a lot of introspection on this idea that doesn't quickly verge into, um, questionable rhetoric, and I'd like to see a lot more of it.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Quiverfuls are quite rare even in religious families with multiple children. It takes extraordinary conviction to continue when you are already feeding 10 children on one income. Even if those children do some of work.
    - Robotbeat 8y ago
      Agreed. But I suppose I was using a broader definition, like anything more than 3 or so kids.

matt4077 8y ago

I’m somewhat surprised by the tone of surprise in this article/interview. While I still frequently see references to “out-of-control population growth” among laypeople here on HN or on Twitter, often in reference to Africa, I have long gotten the impression that the scientific and political communities have turned to models showing drastically lower birth rates coinciding with increased development. Lower infant mortality, access to birth control, and social safety nets that do not rely on immediate family are obvious factors here. This is umabigoulsy good news, unless you posit a harm from not being born. In any case, it’s unlikely that humanity is going to disappear of its own choosing.

Robotbeat 8y ago
The slowing of the birthrate to manageable levels is very good, but too much of that (i.e. below replacement) leads to an inverted age pyramid, which is NOT unambiguously good. The fact that birthrates are falling and many countries will be left with a huge number of elderly folk without enough young folk to take care of them is not unambiguously good, particularly when it happens everywhere so there's nowhere to import young immigrants from.
- EGreg 8y ago
  An inverted age pyramid can be just fine if automation picks up the slack and causes productivity per capita to soar. The great thing about automation is that it’s always improving, never going back (except when old equipment gets retired). Once Tesla improves feature X it’s rolled out to all cars at once, for instance.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    > if automation picks up the slack and causes productivity per capita This is only true if the income disparity is not out of control. Current trends show us that income disparity is increasing where the super rich gain everything, and the poor are screwed without some kind of income redistribution (high wealth taxes for example).

TheBeardKing 8y ago

Better data from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

pjc50 8y ago

Sigh. Someone has a book to sell by going against conventional wisdom, and the classic approach of taking a small trend and drawing a huge long straight line through it. It's not really surprising that this has happened, given the extent of efforts to reduce birth rates as a way out of poverty.

Robotbeat 8y ago
This is the same argument that has been used for decades and centuries to worry about population explosion, though. Was that mere book selling? We've now seen a trend of below replacement in places like Japan lasting for decades now, and they've luckily been able to change their society to be more welcoming to immigrants in order to compensate, but that only works if there are countries with higher birth rates to compensate.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Or climate change? (Ducks) PS: I realize now that people downvote not based on the content of the post or the argument but based on whether they don’t think the argument should be made because they dont like the conclusion.
  - Robotbeat 8y ago
    No, climate change was predicted well before a temperature change was observed (i.e. over 100 years ago), and it was based on the fact that the world burns enormous amounts of coal and the fact that CO2 has a certain infrared absorption spectrum. It was a prediction based on basic physics before an empirical observation of the global result was seen. But there is something analogous: look at birthrates, and you have a pretty good idea about which direction the population will trend to within a few decades. It's a pretty straightforward, fundamental relationship.
    - EGreg 8y ago
      Right, but like all things it ignores other variables, such as for example the sun going into a cooler period or the gulfstream or el nino changing. Obviously the former is global while the latter likely won’t counteract the warming effect much. But it’s extrapolating based on the assumption that we know there won’t be any other mechanisms — feedback, collapse, new phenomena being activated by this like the growing of new phytoplankton-like organisms or trees outside human habitats which automatically sequester trillions of tons of carbon back) https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/we-are-making-the-globe-greener/article26147272/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/we-are-making-the-gl... https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/dead-forests-release-less-carbon-into-atmosphere-than-expected https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/dead-forests-release-less-c... We can’t do it ourselves: https://www.businessinsider.com/so-much-co2-planting-trees-cant-save-us-2017-5?utm_content=buffer367e0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-biuk&r=UK&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/so-much-co2-planting-trees-c... And https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161435.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161435.h... I happen to think that the extrapolation is going to closely approximate what will actually happen, but I could be wrong.

lamename 8y ago

What I didn't see mentioned in the article is the 3rd possibility: that the population will grow but eventually reach a stable plateau. I don't know the number (<12 bil maybe) but this was argued by Hans Rosling. Can any demographers weigh in?

naravara 8y ago
IIRC the UN estimates in the early 2000s said it was going to top out at 11 to 12 billion and plateau there. This article is a much rosier estimate and expects us to top out at 9 billion or so before rapidly declining.

sametmax 8y ago

I haven't heard of a specie disapearing primarily because it didn't have enough babies. Even the giant panda, before arriving to this situation, had seen their forests devasted by us. So at best, I expect our specie to mess up in some big ways, then maybe, the finish blow will be reproduction. Yet I doubt it. First, other threats have a way higher likelyhood. India has no water, terrible social tension, instable border situations and the nuclear bomb. We killed 60% of the insects. There are microparticules of plastic everywhere in the oceans. Not to mention climat change, our mad scientist attitude towards everything, and the systematic conversion of limited natural assets into short term cash machines. Second, fertility is something we have been working on for some time now, and our mad, but smart, scientists are pretty good at it. Lastly, I even doubt that natural fertility will ever be a permanent problem. Nature has cycles to regular species population, and may impose on us some drastic mesure, but like all cycles, it goes back to where it was.

ccozan 8y ago
Well, look again. Humans are quite the only species capable of understanding at a higher level the reproduction and controlling it. So, yes, this plays a bigger role than environment, where humans can thrive in almost any conditions, if the technology is allowing it. No intrisic force makes a woman to have children and how many, just cultural and basic economy.
Nav_Panel 8y ago
Calhoun's "Beautiful Ones" study from the 1960s is the just-so story here. A rat environment is built, becomes overpopulated, and eventually the children stop breeding and the colony dies out. However, it's of dubious predictive value.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  As much as the Internet loves the Rat Park study, it’s important to note that it has never replicated; several groups tried and failed. Until more information comes along, it should be considered another victim of the replication crisis and not taken too seriously.
8y ago

Symmetry 8y ago

In the long run more agreeable (in a Big 5 sense) people have more children and agreeableness is fairly heritable so don't expect the decline in birth rates to last forever. https://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fertility-rates-shouldnt-be.html https://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fer...

bparsons 8y ago

Important to note that these two authors wrote another book in 2013, claiming that Canada would never elect a Liberal government again, because of demographics or something. This was 18 months before the Liberals won a massive majority. https://www.amazon.ca/Big-Shift-Canadian-Politics-Business/dp/1443416452 https://www.amazon.ca/Big-Shift-Canadian-Politics-Business/d...

fallingfrog 8y ago

In the short term, this is good news. Sub-replacement fertility is not zero; if the world population were to reduce by 1% per year for a few decades, it would reduce the pressure on the Earth's ecosystems and make some space for a better life for the remaining people. The population can always increase again.

lisper 8y ago

> “In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline,” they write. “Once that decline begins, it will never end.” I'll give you very long odds against.

simplicio 8y ago
Yea, the debate about the UN's demographic projections are interesting, but the framing that the world is going to run out of people is dump, and kinda distracts from the interesting parts. 8 billion people is still a pretty crazy number of people.
kijin 8y ago
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the decline ends at some point and a sort of long-term fluctuation takes over. Economic, political, and technological changes all affect how many babies people have, as well as how long they live.
pixl97 8y ago
Well, if we change 'never ends' to 'until the earth is uninhabitable by solar irradiance', then is premis can be completely true. For example if we have 10 billion people and reduced the total population by 2 every year, that would give us 5 billion years, which is way after the sun has gone red giant.

phkahler 8y ago

That ended rather abruptly, and never even mentioned decline or running out.

stevehawk 8y ago

I've always kind of felt that man kind would go the way of the Mice Utopia experiment - https://www.returnofkings.com/36915/what-humans-can-learn-from-the-mice-utopia-experiment https://www.returnofkings.com/36915/what-humans-can-learn-fr...

est31 8y ago

This is indeed the leading theory about where the world will be heading over the next couple of decades. But I think the answer really depends on the culture of subpopulations. In the USA for example, republican ruled states have more babies than democrat ruled states [1]. Or in israel, the fertility rate of the orthodox haredi minority is very high with 6.9 children per woman in 2017 (children not childbirths) compared to the non-haredi per-woman value of 2.4 [2]. So where will this lead us to? I think we'll experience growing percentages of conservatives/orthodox populations across the world while the liberal populations will shrink. Overall there will be a shrinkage but the conservative population growth might eat up that shrinkage and one day we might have overall growth again. But predicting the future is hard of course. For example, you could have the conversion of the conservative mindset towards liberalism which is happening in the entire world since maybe 100 years or such eat up every population increase of the conservative minorities. Or you could have sci-fi tech that influences population infertility quite much, e.g. with artificial uteruses. With them, minorities that value large amounts of children might grow quicker and governments could want to influence how many children are being grown to fight population declines. Or it might be figured out how to prevent/reverse aging and the number of "natural" deaths will sink to zero. Then your population will start growing again even without the contribution from conservative/orthodox minorities as the number of babies would still be larger than the (low) number of deaths due to accidents, crimes, etc. [1]: https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/republicans-have-more-children/ https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/republicans-have-mor... [2]: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439 https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439

matthewdgreen 8y ago
One might point out that orthodox-religious and Republican children are a major source of liberals.
- est31 8y ago
  Exactly, that's what I've meant with "conversion of the conservative mindset towards liberalism". Liberal groups have high capabilities of converting conservative people towards them while conservative groups have high capabilities of reproducing. I don't worry about liberals for that reason: the more conservatives, the larger the pool of people they can convert to their ways. Liberalism originated in a world that was far more conservative than the conservatives we have today, and they still managed to get where we are now. I'm definitely not worried.

thomasahle 8y ago

I didn't know this was controversial? The UN numbers referred to show that this is a likely outcome already on page 2. At most the author seems to disagree with UN about ~1 billion people. Well within the uncertainty. https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_KeyFindings.pdf https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_Key...

rainworld 8y ago

Quoting Spandrell: At this moment, every single human population with an IQ over 95 has a fertility rate below replacement; and the places where the most intelligent and productive people tend to live, big cities, have generally fertility rates below 1. Not below 2, replacement, but below 1, half of replacement. As I’ve said again and again, big cities today are IQ shredders, where the genes that code for high intelligence go to get shredded in the corporate and bureaucratic rat-race, depriving humanity of the biological building blocks for a better future.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
est31 8y ago
Is there a study that confirms this? I couldn't find any links in the blog post you seem to have copied it from. https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/tucker-carlsons-war-against-woke-capital-and-the-future-of-the-right/ https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/tucker-carlson...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- xmmrm 8y ago
  Just compare TFR and average IQ tables. The pattern is obvious.
jackfrodo 8y ago
My understanding is that Spandrell considers himself a "race realist." Please don't bring right-wing racist thought into HN.
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  I didn't see anything right wing or racist in the original quote, did you? It was an interesting observation regardless of who made it.

arthurcamara 8y ago

The article makes it sound like a journalist traveled around 26 countries (~10% of countries), interviewed only a handful of people in each (the ones they could reach), and concluded that UN's demographic projections - formulated with tons of data, academic methodologies, and carefully crafted by statisticians and global development experts - are wrong The article and book sound pretty biased and clickbaity from what I can tell so far. I'll stick with the UN for now ;)

vages 8y ago

Analogy: If someone on a diet keeps losing weight, they will disappear too. But outside pressures and incentives change, and there's also internal regulation. Your weight will stabilize sooner or later. I think the same goes for populations. When people become scarce, making more of them will be rewarded in some way or another. I'm not sure the authors believe humanity will celibate itself out of existence. But I'm sure they'll sell more books with "extinction" rather than "stabilization" as a headline.

foolsgold 8y ago

I was expecting a link to the National Inquirer, and not Wired. Utter nonsense

Balgair 8y ago

I've not read the book yet (it only came out yesterday), but I think there are a few issues with the piece: First, we should look at the authors of the book. Again, I've NOT read it, so this is based on a bit of internet sleuthing, and nothing more. The authors are primarily writers and news commentators in Canada. John Ibbitson writes for The Glode and Mail and is a political commentator[0]. Dr. Darrell Bricker is a pollster, political commentator, and author of a few books focusing on Canadian current events and issues[1]. I cannot speak for their personal knowledge on Earth's population nor the accuracy of a book that I have not read. However, based on their Wikipedia bios, I can conclude that they are not career professionals in global demographics. Speaking personally, they give me a Robert Reich/Thomas Friedman vibe more than anything. Now, specifically about the Wired interview, there are some things that stand out: > And then I saw one woman reach in and pull out a smartphone, look at it, and put it back. And I realized, here we are in a slum in Delhi, and all these women have smartphones. Who can read. Who have data packages. And I was thinking, they have all of human knowledge in their hands now. Depending on the time and place that the authors were in Delhi, this may be incorrect. Free Basics was recently shot down in 2016, so if they were there after that decision, they are correct [2]. If they were there before that ruling, then it is highly likely that these women were only able to access Facebook and not the internet at large. In addition, though the Wired interview was very short, they may not have had anything other than basic phone functionality. I would love to know more about the actual data on how internet penetration occurs in the lower castes/classes of India. > The UN says they’re already baked into the numbers. But when I went and interviewed ... Wolfgang Lutz in Vienna, ... he walked me through his projections, ... All he was doing was adding one new variable to the forecast: the level of improvement in female education. And he comes up with a much lower number ..., somewhere between 8 billion and 9 billion. Based on some quick googling of Dr. Lutz, I would be a fool to disagree with his expert assessments [3]. He holds two doctorates, one in Demographics from U. Penn, and one in Statistics from U. Vienna and has been working in global demographics issues since 1985. I've not researched him in depth, but he seems like a level-headed person without much of an 'agenda'. He is a recent editor of a 1000+ page tome titled "World Population and Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century"[4]. So, if Dr. Lutz's believes that just adding in female education will drop the world population by ~two billion babies, then I would be loathe to argue with him. > In the Philippines, for example, fertility rates dropped from 3.7 percent to 2.7 percent from 2003 to 2018. That's a whole kid in 15 years. I'm not certain what 3.7 percent fertility means. I believe that there may be a mis-transcription here. What I think the authors mean is that the Philippines had a birth rate of 3.7 children per woman. For reference, Yemen is an even more extreme example:. In 1986, the fertility rate was over 9. Today it stands at 4; so 5 children in 30 years. Overall, the Wired article stands as a good promotion for the recently released book. However, I feel that listening from Dr. Lutz himself may be a better and more productive use of time [5][6]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ibbitson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ibbitson [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Bricker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Bricker [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Lutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Lutz [4] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/world-population-and-human-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-9780198703167?cc=us&lang=en&# https://global.oup.com/academic/product/world-population-and... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDuJPJ5J5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDuJPJ5J5c [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJ7EApyi-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJ7EApyi-A

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

Optimal carrying capacity would be 1 billion. We were half a billion in 1600s. If everyone had 1/2 surviving child, we will start coming down in about 200 years. Would love it if someone smarter than me can do that mathematical projection? We need everyone to have 1/2 child so we have genetic diversity.