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The text has the same number, but interprets it, ah, interestingly: "By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scena

The text has the same number, but interprets it, ah, interestingly: "By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scenario." This is a pretty ridiculous statement from the article, considering the history of population growth. Growing from 7.8B humans to 11B in 80 years is a significantly reduced growth rate compared to historical data. It's even reduced growth on an absolute scale. Starting from 1930, we went from 2B to 6B humans in 69 years[1]. We added tripled the world population in a few generations. I think we'll be able to handle to slow, steady population growth of the 21st century. We have a lot of hard problems to solve in the 21st century, and population growth isn't even on the list. Edit: I finished reading the article. I would not recommend that course of action. The so-called "running out of people" scenario is that the world has between 8 and 9 billion people in 2100. While that is a significant change to the model, calling it "running out of people" is clickbait garbage. [1]: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

curo 6y ago
> We have a lot of hard problems to solve in the 21st century I've been on the hunt for an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest challenges are. Anyone know where this body of work might be? Copenhagen Consensus is an interesting one as a list of economists ranking cost-to-impact ratios. Something similar or adjacent? [1]: https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/ https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest challenges are No such thing exists. Such an assessment would be inherently political.
  - curo 6y ago
    True, although I think we can all smell the difference between a work intended for discovery vs. one that begins from a preset position.
- zhoujianfu 6y ago
  Income Inequality (go UBI!) Climate Change (go Tesla?) Authoritarian Rule (go...Democracy?) Disease and Aging (go science!) Racism and Religion (go education!)
  - tenpies 6y ago
    > Climate Change (go Tesla?) I am waiting for around the 2050s to see if/when the climate change movement goes against EVs in their current form. We're really just shifting all the polluting in time and place. Move it all to the front and back of the vehicle's lifespan, put a huge distance between the vehicle user and how the energy is produced, and we call it green because there's no smoke coming out of it. In practice the numbers seem to suggest the overall change in emissions is not better - at least not in the type of EVs that are popular now (e.g. Teslas). A much smaller vehicle, with much less batteries, perhaps.
    - scythe 6y ago
      >the overall change in emissions is not better This is false. The emissions associated with producing an EV are on the order of 15 tonnes CO2 equivalent, vs. 10 tonnes CO2 equivalent for a fuel combustion vehicle (FCV): http://tasri.org/upLoad/down/month_1710/201710242243229582.pdf http://tasri.org/upLoad/down/month_1710/201710242243229582.p... Meanwhile the emissions associated with gasoline vary but are at least 0.25 kg per mile (EPA average 0.4 kg/mile): https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/P100JPPH.TXT?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=2011+Thru+2015&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5Czyfiles%5CIndex%20Data%5C11thru15%5CTxt%5C00000011%5CP100JPPH.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=x&ZyPURL https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/P100JPPH.TXT?ZyActionD=Z... Over the lifetime of the car -- at least 100000 miles -- that's 25 tonnes at a bare minimum. But EVs last longer than FCVs, so we should increase the range to at least 200000 miles and 50 tonnes CO2 equivalent (or 80 for a typical car), where EVs start to pull away substantially. Furthermore, the emissions associated with EV producing depend in part on fuel-derived electricity used in manufacturing, which can be reduced dramatically by switching to nonfuel electricity production. Overall, EVs represent a massive decrease in pollution. However, the most important things to solve are the problems we haven't solved: principally grid-level electricity storage that permits a higher fraction of electricity production from renewable sources. EVs, wind turbines and photovoltaics by contrast are technologies that are already applied in practice.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  This seems to be the same area Effective Altruism is interested in. I recommend looking at 80000 hours as a starting point: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/
  - curo 6y ago
    Perfect, "Effective Altruism" is the keyword I'm looking for. I've heard of the 80000 people and will follow that thread. Thank you
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I think more importantly that you'll see different regions of the world experience very different growth rates, and that realignment will have a big impact on the world order. Europe and advanced Asian economies like China, Japan and Korea will (or in many cases already) see a declining population, while places like Africa and the Philippines will see huge population growth because their population pyramids already are "wide and flat" with a huge proportion of young people.
coldtea 6y ago
>Starting from 1930, we went from 2B to 6B humans in 69 years[1]. We added tripled the world population in a few generations. Along with huge technological changes. Nowadays the technological advances are more or less plateaued themselves compared to getting from no factories to factories, no electricity to electricity, no computers to computers, no telecommunications to telecommunications, etc, no cars to cars. Today we already have problems all around the world with the economy...
- WoodenChair 6y ago
  Just FYI, in 1930 there was already factories, electricity, telecommunications, and cars. No computers though.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Yes, there were, but as William Gibson quoted, "not distributed evenly". We had factories since the 18th century or so, but we had huge advances in the 20th century (from Taylorism to automation). And the "rich have phones" in the 1920s and 1930s to "everybody has one" a little later meant a different impact...
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    And no modern hybrid seeds, and not the same level of fertilizer.

curo 6y ago

> We have a lot of hard problems to solve in the 21st century I've been on the hunt for an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest challenges are. Anyone know where this body of work might be? Copenhagen Consensus is an interesting one as a list of economists ranking cost-to-impact ratios. Something similar or adjacent? [1]: https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/ https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/

nicoburns 6y ago
> an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest challenges are No such thing exists. Such an assessment would be inherently political.
- curo 6y ago
  True, although I think we can all smell the difference between a work intended for discovery vs. one that begins from a preset position.
zhoujianfu 6y ago
Income Inequality (go UBI!) Climate Change (go Tesla?) Authoritarian Rule (go...Democracy?) Disease and Aging (go science!) Racism and Religion (go education!)
- tenpies 6y ago
  > Climate Change (go Tesla?) I am waiting for around the 2050s to see if/when the climate change movement goes against EVs in their current form. We're really just shifting all the polluting in time and place. Move it all to the front and back of the vehicle's lifespan, put a huge distance between the vehicle user and how the energy is produced, and we call it green because there's no smoke coming out of it. In practice the numbers seem to suggest the overall change in emissions is not better - at least not in the type of EVs that are popular now (e.g. Teslas). A much smaller vehicle, with much less batteries, perhaps.
  - scythe 6y ago
    >the overall change in emissions is not better This is false. The emissions associated with producing an EV are on the order of 15 tonnes CO2 equivalent, vs. 10 tonnes CO2 equivalent for a fuel combustion vehicle (FCV): http://tasri.org/upLoad/down/month_1710/201710242243229582.pdf http://tasri.org/upLoad/down/month_1710/201710242243229582.p... Meanwhile the emissions associated with gasoline vary but are at least 0.25 kg per mile (EPA average 0.4 kg/mile): https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/P100JPPH.TXT?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=2011+Thru+2015&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5Czyfiles%5CIndex%20Data%5C11thru15%5CTxt%5C00000011%5CP100JPPH.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=x&ZyPURL https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/P100JPPH.TXT?ZyActionD=Z... Over the lifetime of the car -- at least 100000 miles -- that's 25 tonnes at a bare minimum. But EVs last longer than FCVs, so we should increase the range to at least 200000 miles and 50 tonnes CO2 equivalent (or 80 for a typical car), where EVs start to pull away substantially. Furthermore, the emissions associated with EV producing depend in part on fuel-derived electricity used in manufacturing, which can be reduced dramatically by switching to nonfuel electricity production. Overall, EVs represent a massive decrease in pollution. However, the most important things to solve are the problems we haven't solved: principally grid-level electricity storage that permits a higher fraction of electricity production from renewable sources. EVs, wind turbines and photovoltaics by contrast are technologies that are already applied in practice.
rhn_mk1 6y ago
This seems to be the same area Effective Altruism is interested in. I recommend looking at 80000 hours as a starting point: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/
- curo 6y ago
  Perfect, "Effective Altruism" is the keyword I'm looking for. I've heard of the 80000 people and will follow that thread. Thank you

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I think more importantly that you'll see different regions of the world experience very different growth rates, and that realignment will have a big impact on the world order. Europe and advanced Asian economies like China, Japan and Korea will (or in many cases already) see a declining population, while places like Africa and the Philippines will see huge population growth because their population pyramids already are "wide and flat" with a huge proportion of young people.

coldtea 6y ago

>Starting from 1930, we went from 2B to 6B humans in 69 years[1]. We added tripled the world population in a few generations. Along with huge technological changes. Nowadays the technological advances are more or less plateaued themselves compared to getting from no factories to factories, no electricity to electricity, no computers to computers, no telecommunications to telecommunications, etc, no cars to cars. Today we already have problems all around the world with the economy...

WoodenChair 6y ago
Just FYI, in 1930 there was already factories, electricity, telecommunications, and cars. No computers though.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Yes, there were, but as William Gibson quoted, "not distributed evenly". We had factories since the 18th century or so, but we had huge advances in the 20th century (from Taylorism to automation). And the "rich have phones" in the 1920s and 1930s to "everybody has one" a little later meant a different impact...
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  And no modern hybrid seeds, and not the same level of fertilizer.