The world might run out of people • Hacker News Board

Re: The world might run out of people

#101

Post by handzbagz » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

bantunes wrote: post #91

magduf wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't fully explain why humans don't want to have a lot of kids. Have you ever been around kids? They're really a pain in the ass, especially if they're boys. (For instance, as a single guy, I'm far more likely to be interested in dating a single mother with girls than one with boys; little boys are just too destructive and disobedient.) Smart people aren't having so many kids now because they don't have to. I…

> Have you ever been around kids? They're really a pain in the ass, especially if they're boys. Suck it up. What, do you want having kids to be as seamless as an Uber Eats order? It's not. It's hard work. I'm sure your parents gave up on a lot to have you, too. That's part of being an adult.

That's precisely why I don't want them. I don't feel it's worth the time and effort.

Re: The world might run out of people

#102

Post by polskibus » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #87

rainworld wrote: post #71

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 intell…

This doesn't fully explain why humans don't want to have a lot of kids. Have you ever been around kids? They're really a pain in the ass, especially if they're boys. (For instance, as a single guy, I'm far more likely to be interested in dating a single mother with girls than one with boys; little boys are just too destructive and disobedient.) Smart people aren't having so many kids now because they don't have to. I…

I hear this argument quite often : "Smart people aren't having so many kids now because they don't have to."

Depends on what you're counting on in the future.

If you want to be taken care of when you're older, and almost no one has children, then your future is bleak no matter how much you earn now. Inflation will eat most of your savings that you'd want to spend on care. Of course there's immigration or you can move but you're going to be lonely nevertheless.

It may sound controversial but it's a bit like not getting vaccinated and counting on herd immunity. Who would be writing all those HN comments now if our parents hadn't had children?

Re: The world might run out of people

#103

Post by eyko » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #3

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-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…

I'm looking at Africa in the graph you've provided and the fertility rate quite clearly drops as the number of years in education increases, with a few notable exceptions that (I believe) can be explained:

* DPR Congo. By most accounts a failed state, although some would rather call it a violent kleptocracy[1] on account of the very successful exploitation of resources by the ruling elite.

* Gabon. Very underpopulated and underdeveloped given its size. It's not necessarily a poor country in terms of natural resources, but their massive debt and so-so management of resources and spending basically keep the population poor but healthy and well fed. In the case of Gabon, infant mortality rate is not that high (compared to neighbouring countries which almost double theirs) so I wouldn't take /u/pasta's suggestion that infant mortality or access to food has anything to do with the high fertility rate per mother. I would say that in Gabon it's simply the opposite: infant mortality rates have really dropped whilst traditional roles are still in place. There's also no pressure to have fewer babies as women (and men) don't and can't have much higher aspirations, economically and socially.

* Niger. Okay, literally one of the worlds most impoverished countries.

* The Gambia, perhaps the one I can't quite narrow down a reason for. I've been to Gambia on a few occasions, and I'd say that whilst it's still a very poor country (relying mostly on tourism, which isn't much, and agriculture -- not much land for it), it always felt quite safe. I would say the main reason for Gambia's high birth rate would be education and poverty. Most people still live in poverty and education is still not at desirable levels. In fact, the main reason I've visited the country was to volunteer with some non-profits involved in education.

I've also noticed that a few countries are not in that graph, for instance Ghana and Nigeria, two west-african powerhouses. I'd be curious to see what the line would look like for Ghana as this is one of the success stories of west africa. Extreme poverty has dropped to under 30% (from almost 60%) in two decades and it's one of my favourite destinations in west africa. Unfortunately, I couldn't find figures for female average mean schooling years to compare with their birth rate and infant mortality rate.

I do agree that there has to be a bigger picture here. I believe that the more choice an individual has, the fewer children. Economically successful countries will tend to have fewer children, depending on how their social structure supports them in raising the children. If it's something that may put a halt on your career aspirations, you'll probably delay having children or not have at all.

1. http://time.com/4545223/why-you-cant-call-congo-a-failed-sta...

Re: The world might run out of people

#104

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #77

dmitriid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultures have nothing to do with it. See Hans Rosling's talk on this [1] or see it yourself in data [2]. As soon as education, medicine, economic situation improves, you get a drop to ~2 children per woman across all cultures. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies [2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

While I see that there is a definite trend, if culture had nothing to do with it, why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children? And I see a ton of groups there that have the highest life expectancy and < 2 children, all Asian countries. That seems to indicate that 2 is not in fact a magic number at all.

>why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children?

Most likely answer, religion. Successful religions grow one of two ways, and generally have encodings for both. That is they tend to have means to convert the non-religious, and secondly, and importantly in this case, have 'strong' rules on having kids. For example, in the old testament Onan was killed for 'spilling his seed' and not impregnating his dead brothers wife.

That said, even in ancient times it appeared that birthrates did go down, as in Greces case, their city state succeeded. This left them open from attack and cultural take over by outside nations and ideals with higher birthrates.

In the modern world we are coming to the point where human labor is not as necessary and has been supplanted by machine labor. Also machine protection, in our weapons of war. This could allow a nation/culture to shrink dramatically while still being able to defend against outside threats. If such a shrinking culture were one that 'grew' by spreading its message to other cultures it may succede to grow and shrink the entire worlds population at the same time. These ideas of disappearing utopia cultures are often touched by science fiction.

Re: The world might run out of people

#105

Post by vages » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

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.

Re: The world might run out of people

#106

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #93

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

As it happens most of those executives are Boomers as well, so it works out quite nicely all around!

Re: The world might run out of people

#107

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

idrae wrote: post #70

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confused: that graph shows birth rates dropping like a stone, all toward 2.

If you hover over Africa you'll notice that the steepness of the lines is much lower than the rest of the world. Extrapolating from the lines I'm guessing they'll end up at 3-4 children instead of the ~2 children that most of Asia and Europe have.

No, they will end up at 2 or below when some form of long term stability is eventually reached. The political-economic situation, from outside nations messing with to internal corruption, explain a lot about its current birthrate.

China's current investment into Africa at this time may eventually bring the economic stability to many of these area. That said I'm not sure I'd want China enforcing my long term cultural stability.

Re: The world might run out of people

#108

Post by newsgremlin » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

pqokdwpokqp wrote: post #56

alecco wrote: post #4

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.

>Full of stupid, and impulsive, and likely religious zealots, They are so stupid, yet everyone else let themselves be out-bred by them? I think if that happens in the long-term, it more or less suggests "religious zealots" have adapted better.

If your only goal is to have children that can be done easily. The hard part is raising it with someone you may find out later you don't really like, that leads to dysfunctional or unhappy family situations. And regardless whether you are happy or not, having children limits your options in where can you go and what you can do. The goals of blue and white collar workers are different, the former is looking to just make a living to get by and have a family and that's the best they can hope for and sometimes that's all they need. The latter is seeking a balance of lifestyles that settling down makes it impossible to continue to seek the place where they are content and not settle for the next opportunity.

Re: The world might run out of people

#109

Post by _cbsz » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

polskibus wrote: post #102

magduf wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't fully explain why humans don't want to have a lot of kids. Have you ever been around kids? They're really a pain in the ass, especially if they're boys. (For instance, as a single guy, I'm far more likely to be interested in dating a single mother with girls than one with boys; little boys are just too destructive and disobedient.) Smart people aren't having so many kids now because they don't have to. I…

I hear this argument quite often : "Smart people aren't having so many kids now because they don't have to." Depends on what you're counting on in the future. If you want to be taken care of when you're older, and almost no one has children, then your future is bleak no matter how much you earn now. Inflation will eat most of your savings that you'd want to spend on care. Of course there's immigration or you can move…

> Inflation will eat most of your savings

What? This is why investment advice for retirement generally revolves around allocation into stocks and bonds while leaving only an emergency fund plus regular expenses in more liquid assets like savings accounts. Inflation will only eat your savings if you fail to invest. If you want to talk about risk, well, inflation is why a total failure to accept risk is extremely risky!

Re: The world might run out of people

#110

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #104

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I see that there is a definite trend, if culture had nothing to do with it, why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children? And I see a ton of groups there that have the highest life expectancy and < 2 children, all Asian countries. That seems to indicate that 2 is not in fact a magic number at all.

>why would the Israel and Faroe Islands outliers exist with many more children? Most likely answer, religion. Successful religions grow one of two ways, and generally have encodings for both. That is they tend to have means to convert the non-religious, and secondly, and importantly in this case, have 'strong' rules on having kids. For example, in the old testament Onan was killed for 'spilling his seed' and not impr…

Oh, I understand all that, but the two arguments made earlier was that culture had nothing to do with it (I'd say religion is in fact part of culture), and that societies move towards having two kids, which doesn't seem to be the case, it would appear that it actually goes lower, much lower.