The world might run out of people
wired.com
The world might run out of people
1–10 of 202 posts
Re: The world might run out of people
#2Our 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.
Re: The world might run out of people
#3That'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-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.
Re: The world might run out of people
#4A 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.
Re: The world might run out of people
#5I’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.
Re: The world might run out of people
#6Our 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…
>entire fields of practical human knowledge and know-how can be lost forever.
Plenty of examples of that happening as a result of technology.
Re: The world might run out of people
#7Our 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…
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.
Re: The world might run out of people
#8Better data from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
Re: The world might run out of people
#9That'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-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 co…
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.
Re: The world might run out of people
#10A 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.
Everyone who wants more than 2.1 kids is stupid, impulsive, or a religious zealot? That seems unlikely.