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It's hard to take any kind of wholesale prediction of population calamity seriously after The Population Bomb bombed in the early 1970s. But this article claims

It's hard to take any kind of wholesale prediction of population calamity seriously after The Population Bomb bombed in the early 1970s. But this article claims to be able to predict the future of civilization 100 years into the future. Assuming we even make it another 100 years, there is no way to know what our population will look like then, or whether we could pull another technological/logistical food revolution out of our asses, or whether global cultures would start to embrace a further explosion of population. WW2 resulted in unprecedented population growth in the USA. There's no way to know if a similar event, here or in other countries, might shake what we expect growth to be, or why. The biggest mistake we could make is to expect consistency.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
> Assuming we even make it another 100 years, there is no way to know what our population will look like then, or whether we could not pull another technological/logistical revolution out of our asses, or whether global cultures would start to embrace a further explosion of population. It seems like women in pretty much all cultures where women achieve financial independence and have control over how many children they have, choose to have 0, 1, 2, or rarely 3. Which makes sense given the risks and costliness of childbirth for them. So I would guess that any culture that results in population explosion would have to either have medical advances that address the risks and costs of childbirth, or go backwards on women’s independence. Or really sweeten the deal in terms of financial and other incentives, but I don’t imagine that would fare very well.
- forkLding 4y ago
  Or there are technological advances in artificial wombs and children are grown in incubators so that women are no longer as involved in pregnancy/child-bearing. We have research papers with animal fetuses being grown in artificial wombs. Never know, could be some technology developed for humans during the next 100 years.
  - tough 4y ago
    Damn the matrix is so close We all batteries in 100 years
    - ahMath8 4y ago
      We’d be better utilized as CPU and memory storage. Maybe generate brain structure, biology state with (re)generative biology like Michael Levin is up to at Tufts[0]. There’s tons of alternative research paths going untouched that leverage information theory to hack “reality” directly rather than hack on synthetic computers and software within an enclosed time-space vacuum constrained by known hardware limitations. Metaverses running on synthetic machines seems way more prosaic than a metaverse in my own head I might be able to switch on off with a pill. [0] https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c
    - asdff 4y ago
      Once the machines take over they'd probably prefer to work with yeast as their bio battery of choice. No need to spend compute on a simulation, the yeast would be happy as clams living in a big vat with all nutrient needs met.
    - gruez 4y ago
      I don't see why you're linking artificial wombs with the matrix. In a matrix like scenario, I see no reason why the machines would even bother with artificial wombs, when the real ones already work right now (no R&D required) and are already pretty efficient.
    - kadoban 4y ago
      Humans make abysmally bad batteries or power generators. That was always the dumbest part of The Matrix. The original idea for that was that we were the computers for the Matrix simulation instead, which made at least marginally more sense.
      - staticman2 4y ago
        The original idea was never anything other than batteries. That rumor of producers changing it to batteries started because Neil Gaiman thought the battery thing was dumb so when he was hired to do a promotional wrote Matrix short story he changed it to the humans being used for computer processing.
- throwaway892238 4y ago
  These aren't even the beginning of the factors involved in child birth rates. Population is controlled by religion, government policy, cultural practice, wealth, quality of life, social equality, education, trade, war, climate, and a host of other factors. Any one of them could change and affect the population; multiple could change and shift it radically. And we cannot predict any of them with certainty even in 50 years, much less 100, for the entire planet. If you don't believe me, look at history. Plenty of times in history there have been great civilizations that grew and grew until they collapsed, or periods of great societal progress followed by periods of great strife, or periods of great feast followed by famine. Some of these periods lasted hundreds of years. Even today there are nations that forcibly control population whereas others do not. Some developing nations starve due to international trade policy while others grow to provide most of their needs. Some become more radically conservative while others grow more liberal. Some countries collapse economically while others become burgeoning super-powers. And all this in the face of global climate change on a scale not seen in millennia.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    >religion, government policy, cultural practice, wealth, quality of life, social equality, education, trade, war, climate, and a host of other factors. Which all are taken into account, by the financially independent woman choosing to get pregnant (because they have access to very effective birth control and are not being forced to have sex, and have abortion as an option). >And all this in the face of global climate change on a scale not seen in millennia. I think the biggest thing that has not been seen regarding population dynamics is women having complete control over if, when, and how many children they have.
    - throwaway892238 4y ago
      A financially independent woman in some developed countries today still doesn't necessarily get to choose when she will get pregnant, or by whom. Financial independence does not trump social convention (especially since social convention dictates financial independence). Hell, just look at the USA. A woman still can't choose when she can or can't have a baby, regardless of her wealth. This being one of the supposed "civilized nations"; other nations are far less subtle with their societal controls.
- prawn 4y ago
  Beyond childbirth, raising children is also a serious challenge, and that’s with school/similar taking care of them for hours of each weekday. Maybe not in developing countries, but I think rearing might be as much a factor as birthing in the developed world when it comes to moderating family size. I’m not convinced that how we do things now is the best balance of the interests of children and parents. As one example, on weekdays, a parent’s morning time with children is dominated preparing them for school while getting ready to work, and the evening time sees tired post-work parents doing the school run, sorting homework, preparing dinner, extra-curricular, etc.
  - throwuwu 4y ago
    Having one full time homemaker smooths things out quite a bit.
    - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
      Considering marriages routinely end up in divorce it would be stupid to sacrifice your career. "Oh I see you have a 15 year gap in your CV" LMAO.
      - throwuwu 4y ago
        “I spent the last 15 years raising a happy family and have good relationships with my children” is probably worth a lot more than career advancement and would likely reduce the divorce rate quite a bit. That’s not even considering the broader societal impacts of increased wages for everyone due to restricting labour supply, the creation and maintenance of strong family networks and communities and the improvement of QOL and reduction in expenses you get when you don’t have to outsource food, care, and attention to boxed meals, day care and screens. We only have ourselves to blame for the current mess we’re in.
- dbjacobs 4y ago
  Artificial wombs would take care of the risk to women issue. Then it just becomes a societal values question.
- usrusr 4y ago
  But those women who do have three pass it on to more next generation women than those who have zero. Pretty much every culture will slowly transform itself into a variation where three isn't quite as rare as it used to be, unless bounded by external factors like resource exhaustion.
  - CapitalistCartr 4y ago
    Number of children chosen is not genetically heritable. We overwhelmingly descended from larger families, yet most in rich countries choose fewer.
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      There were reasons for having kids and also lot more kids in the past; death or chronic illness of some of them, needing kids to take care of the elderly and work the lands and, the one many forget; religion nonsense as in not being allowed sex if not for reproduction. In the village where I was raised, all families had kids until the wife cannot have them anymore or dies because of that. And because of the rapid decline of religion over there, it was pretty much inbreeding as there are not many candidates that want a life like that outside these families, so always some of them have massive defects (my neighbour had a son born without a left arm, a blind daughter, a son with a disabling low iq, and more like that).
    - haihaibye 4y ago
      > Number of children chosen is not genetically heritable You mean it's not 100% genetic... very little is. But very little is 0% genetic Twin study has .35 correlation between identical twins but .21 for non identical https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-016-9805-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-016-9805-3
    - usrusr 4y ago
      It gets passed on just fine culturally
- rayiner 4y ago
  Define “women’s independence?” Fertility rates in the US cratered after 2008, but before that even states without many Hispanics like Idaho, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming had above replacement total fertility rates. I know folks on HN think those states might as well be third world countries, but they’re not exactly Gilead. American women say they want closer to three kids than two kids: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility-is-falling-short-of-what-women-want.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility... (average 2.7). Half of women with kids, and even 30% of women overall with a college degree, would prefer a homemaker role to working: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer-working-homemaking.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer.... These women would probably have more kids if it was easier to have a single income household. I suspect “logistics” has more to do with it than “independence.” Our education system and economy, in particular, causes people to spread out and move away from family. Raising kids without family around is much, much more difficult. There is also the fact that the feminist revolution stalled in this weird place where women have freedom to pursue careers--but only if they can shoehorn themselves into existing roles designed for men. Want to grind through your 20s in Big Tech or Big Finance seeking promotions? Fine. Want to take time off to have kids at an age when it's the lowest risk and you have the most energy for it? Then you're off the career ladder forever! That's not some unavoidable consequence of "women's independence." Our retirement and pension systems are very much designed around the biological reality of men's bodies working strenuous industrial jobs. But our career ladders haven't changed one bit to accommodate the biological realities of motherhood.
  - VictorPath 4y ago
    > Fertility rates in the US cratered after 2008...These women would probably have more kids if it was easier to have a single income household...Our education system and economy, in particular, causes people to spread out and move away from family. You might as well talk about how women might raise their children on Mars. Outside the Amazon jungle, for the past 10000 years women have been raising children under class-based society under class-based relations of production. The ruling class makes decisions about production, that's the point of a class-based society. Thus the world is turning into a place where the purpose of women's fertility is reproduction of labor, not an increase of it. The ruling class prefers two educated, productive children to three or four less educated, less productive children. It doesn't matter what working class women want in terms of children, because this is a class-based society, and the ruling class has things aligned to what is good for them, not her.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  The "problem" with kids is not so much childbirth as the following 20-odd years. Childcare is hugely expensive in terms of money and opportunity cost, and we can't just outsource it to grandparents or set the tykes to work hoeing potatoes at eight any more.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    Grandparents have too much to do now ha, driving RVs etc.
    - nxm 4y ago
      Or just continue working post retirement age as a way to keep active.
      - throwuwu 4y ago
        If they need a way to keep active, taking care of kids fits the bill.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- _0ffh 4y ago
  Or cultures that do not have unsustainably low birth rates might simply supplant the ones that have, as they die out.
- pojzon 4y ago
  > go backwards on women’s independence Many many countries recently went this path. Look at USA or Poland where abortion was forBiden.
- onetimeusename 4y ago
  There is an inverse relationship between income and fertility[1]. If costs were the reason people were having fewer children then why would the poorest people be having more children than the highest earners? It's either we have a very backwards welfare incentive that actually reduces poor women's "independence" or something else is going on. In reality, if you, as a woman, focus on your career until you are 35, implying a higher salary, and then find your fertility has dropped to < 10% of what it was when you were 20 I am sure you start having fewer children. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
criley2 4y ago
>But this article claims to be able to predict the future of civilization 100 years into the future If you read the article (I know, I know...) it's extremely honest about the accuracy of population modeling as it reaches into the future, and fully admits that projections past 70 years aren't good. It even does so relatively close to the beginning. “Demographic projections are highly accurate, and it has to do with the fact that most of the people who will be alive in 30 years have already been born,” the UN’s population division director, John Willmoth, says. “But when you start getting 70, 80 years down the road, there’s much more uncertainty.”
fulafel 4y ago
Which prediction are you viewing as a calamity, that we'll hit 10 billion in a few decades, or that the population might start to go back down after that? I think the Population Bomb scenarios have done better than people give it credit for. The authors are also still active in public discourse, see eg https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/26/world-population-resources-paul-ehrlich https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/26/world-po...
- throwaway892238 4y ago
  "The authors" are a dude and his wife who have been obsessed with the idea for 50 years. Most of what they predicted did not come to pass (of which Erlich later says "we clearly stated that they were not predictions", which sounds weird when you read the first sentence of the book). He has been debunked in multiple ways, and nobody takes him seriously, even if overpopulation is a major problem. Frankly he's just biased and has been trying really hard for a long time to find a narrative to fit his views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich

lotsofpulp 4y ago

> Assuming we even make it another 100 years, there is no way to know what our population will look like then, or whether we could not pull another technological/logistical revolution out of our asses, or whether global cultures would start to embrace a further explosion of population. It seems like women in pretty much all cultures where women achieve financial independence and have control over how many children they have, choose to have 0, 1, 2, or rarely 3. Which makes sense given the risks and costliness of childbirth for them. So I would guess that any culture that results in population explosion would have to either have medical advances that address the risks and costs of childbirth, or go backwards on women’s independence. Or really sweeten the deal in terms of financial and other incentives, but I don’t imagine that would fare very well.

forkLding 4y ago
Or there are technological advances in artificial wombs and children are grown in incubators so that women are no longer as involved in pregnancy/child-bearing. We have research papers with animal fetuses being grown in artificial wombs. Never know, could be some technology developed for humans during the next 100 years.
- tough 4y ago
  Damn the matrix is so close We all batteries in 100 years
  - ahMath8 4y ago
    We’d be better utilized as CPU and memory storage. Maybe generate brain structure, biology state with (re)generative biology like Michael Levin is up to at Tufts[0]. There’s tons of alternative research paths going untouched that leverage information theory to hack “reality” directly rather than hack on synthetic computers and software within an enclosed time-space vacuum constrained by known hardware limitations. Metaverses running on synthetic machines seems way more prosaic than a metaverse in my own head I might be able to switch on off with a pill. [0] https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c
  - asdff 4y ago
    Once the machines take over they'd probably prefer to work with yeast as their bio battery of choice. No need to spend compute on a simulation, the yeast would be happy as clams living in a big vat with all nutrient needs met.
  - gruez 4y ago
    I don't see why you're linking artificial wombs with the matrix. In a matrix like scenario, I see no reason why the machines would even bother with artificial wombs, when the real ones already work right now (no R&D required) and are already pretty efficient.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    Humans make abysmally bad batteries or power generators. That was always the dumbest part of The Matrix. The original idea for that was that we were the computers for the Matrix simulation instead, which made at least marginally more sense.
    - staticman2 4y ago
      The original idea was never anything other than batteries. That rumor of producers changing it to batteries started because Neil Gaiman thought the battery thing was dumb so when he was hired to do a promotional wrote Matrix short story he changed it to the humans being used for computer processing.
throwaway892238 4y ago
These aren't even the beginning of the factors involved in child birth rates. Population is controlled by religion, government policy, cultural practice, wealth, quality of life, social equality, education, trade, war, climate, and a host of other factors. Any one of them could change and affect the population; multiple could change and shift it radically. And we cannot predict any of them with certainty even in 50 years, much less 100, for the entire planet. If you don't believe me, look at history. Plenty of times in history there have been great civilizations that grew and grew until they collapsed, or periods of great societal progress followed by periods of great strife, or periods of great feast followed by famine. Some of these periods lasted hundreds of years. Even today there are nations that forcibly control population whereas others do not. Some developing nations starve due to international trade policy while others grow to provide most of their needs. Some become more radically conservative while others grow more liberal. Some countries collapse economically while others become burgeoning super-powers. And all this in the face of global climate change on a scale not seen in millennia.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >religion, government policy, cultural practice, wealth, quality of life, social equality, education, trade, war, climate, and a host of other factors. Which all are taken into account, by the financially independent woman choosing to get pregnant (because they have access to very effective birth control and are not being forced to have sex, and have abortion as an option). >And all this in the face of global climate change on a scale not seen in millennia. I think the biggest thing that has not been seen regarding population dynamics is women having complete control over if, when, and how many children they have.
  - throwaway892238 4y ago
    A financially independent woman in some developed countries today still doesn't necessarily get to choose when she will get pregnant, or by whom. Financial independence does not trump social convention (especially since social convention dictates financial independence). Hell, just look at the USA. A woman still can't choose when she can or can't have a baby, regardless of her wealth. This being one of the supposed "civilized nations"; other nations are far less subtle with their societal controls.
prawn 4y ago
Beyond childbirth, raising children is also a serious challenge, and that’s with school/similar taking care of them for hours of each weekday. Maybe not in developing countries, but I think rearing might be as much a factor as birthing in the developed world when it comes to moderating family size. I’m not convinced that how we do things now is the best balance of the interests of children and parents. As one example, on weekdays, a parent’s morning time with children is dominated preparing them for school while getting ready to work, and the evening time sees tired post-work parents doing the school run, sorting homework, preparing dinner, extra-curricular, etc.
- throwuwu 4y ago
  Having one full time homemaker smooths things out quite a bit.
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    Considering marriages routinely end up in divorce it would be stupid to sacrifice your career. "Oh I see you have a 15 year gap in your CV" LMAO.
    - throwuwu 4y ago
      “I spent the last 15 years raising a happy family and have good relationships with my children” is probably worth a lot more than career advancement and would likely reduce the divorce rate quite a bit. That’s not even considering the broader societal impacts of increased wages for everyone due to restricting labour supply, the creation and maintenance of strong family networks and communities and the improvement of QOL and reduction in expenses you get when you don’t have to outsource food, care, and attention to boxed meals, day care and screens. We only have ourselves to blame for the current mess we’re in.
dbjacobs 4y ago
Artificial wombs would take care of the risk to women issue. Then it just becomes a societal values question.
usrusr 4y ago
But those women who do have three pass it on to more next generation women than those who have zero. Pretty much every culture will slowly transform itself into a variation where three isn't quite as rare as it used to be, unless bounded by external factors like resource exhaustion.
- CapitalistCartr 4y ago
  Number of children chosen is not genetically heritable. We overwhelmingly descended from larger families, yet most in rich countries choose fewer.
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    There were reasons for having kids and also lot more kids in the past; death or chronic illness of some of them, needing kids to take care of the elderly and work the lands and, the one many forget; religion nonsense as in not being allowed sex if not for reproduction. In the village where I was raised, all families had kids until the wife cannot have them anymore or dies because of that. And because of the rapid decline of religion over there, it was pretty much inbreeding as there are not many candidates that want a life like that outside these families, so always some of them have massive defects (my neighbour had a son born without a left arm, a blind daughter, a son with a disabling low iq, and more like that).
  - haihaibye 4y ago
    > Number of children chosen is not genetically heritable You mean it's not 100% genetic... very little is. But very little is 0% genetic Twin study has .35 correlation between identical twins but .21 for non identical https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-016-9805-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-016-9805-3
  - usrusr 4y ago
    It gets passed on just fine culturally
rayiner 4y ago
Define “women’s independence?” Fertility rates in the US cratered after 2008, but before that even states without many Hispanics like Idaho, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming had above replacement total fertility rates. I know folks on HN think those states might as well be third world countries, but they’re not exactly Gilead. American women say they want closer to three kids than two kids: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility-is-falling-short-of-what-women-want.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/upshot/american-fertility... (average 2.7). Half of women with kids, and even 30% of women overall with a college degree, would prefer a homemaker role to working: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer-working-homemaking.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer.... These women would probably have more kids if it was easier to have a single income household. I suspect “logistics” has more to do with it than “independence.” Our education system and economy, in particular, causes people to spread out and move away from family. Raising kids without family around is much, much more difficult. There is also the fact that the feminist revolution stalled in this weird place where women have freedom to pursue careers--but only if they can shoehorn themselves into existing roles designed for men. Want to grind through your 20s in Big Tech or Big Finance seeking promotions? Fine. Want to take time off to have kids at an age when it's the lowest risk and you have the most energy for it? Then you're off the career ladder forever! That's not some unavoidable consequence of "women's independence." Our retirement and pension systems are very much designed around the biological reality of men's bodies working strenuous industrial jobs. But our career ladders haven't changed one bit to accommodate the biological realities of motherhood.
- VictorPath 4y ago
  > Fertility rates in the US cratered after 2008...These women would probably have more kids if it was easier to have a single income household...Our education system and economy, in particular, causes people to spread out and move away from family. You might as well talk about how women might raise their children on Mars. Outside the Amazon jungle, for the past 10000 years women have been raising children under class-based society under class-based relations of production. The ruling class makes decisions about production, that's the point of a class-based society. Thus the world is turning into a place where the purpose of women's fertility is reproduction of labor, not an increase of it. The ruling class prefers two educated, productive children to three or four less educated, less productive children. It doesn't matter what working class women want in terms of children, because this is a class-based society, and the ruling class has things aligned to what is good for them, not her.
rippercushions 4y ago
The "problem" with kids is not so much childbirth as the following 20-odd years. Childcare is hugely expensive in terms of money and opportunity cost, and we can't just outsource it to grandparents or set the tykes to work hoeing potatoes at eight any more.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Grandparents have too much to do now ha, driving RVs etc.
  - nxm 4y ago
    Or just continue working post retirement age as a way to keep active.
    - throwuwu 4y ago
      If they need a way to keep active, taking care of kids fits the bill.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
_0ffh 4y ago
Or cultures that do not have unsustainably low birth rates might simply supplant the ones that have, as they die out.
pojzon 4y ago
> go backwards on women’s independence Many many countries recently went this path. Look at USA or Poland where abortion was forBiden.
onetimeusename 4y ago
There is an inverse relationship between income and fertility[1]. If costs were the reason people were having fewer children then why would the poorest people be having more children than the highest earners? It's either we have a very backwards welfare incentive that actually reduces poor women's "independence" or something else is going on. In reality, if you, as a woman, focus on your career until you are 35, implying a higher salary, and then find your fertility has dropped to < 10% of what it was when you were 20 I am sure you start having fewer children. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

criley2 4y ago

>But this article claims to be able to predict the future of civilization 100 years into the future If you read the article (I know, I know...) it's extremely honest about the accuracy of population modeling as it reaches into the future, and fully admits that projections past 70 years aren't good. It even does so relatively close to the beginning. “Demographic projections are highly accurate, and it has to do with the fact that most of the people who will be alive in 30 years have already been born,” the UN’s population division director, John Willmoth, says. “But when you start getting 70, 80 years down the road, there’s much more uncertainty.”

fulafel 4y ago

Which prediction are you viewing as a calamity, that we'll hit 10 billion in a few decades, or that the population might start to go back down after that? I think the Population Bomb scenarios have done better than people give it credit for. The authors are also still active in public discourse, see eg https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/26/world-population-resources-paul-ehrlich https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/26/world-po...

throwaway892238 4y ago
"The authors" are a dude and his wife who have been obsessed with the idea for 50 years. Most of what they predicted did not come to pass (of which Erlich later says "we clearly stated that they were not predictions", which sounds weird when you read the first sentence of the book). He has been debunked in multiple ways, and nobody takes him seriously, even if overpopulation is a major problem. Frankly he's just biased and has been trying really hard for a long time to find a narrative to fit his views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich