The world might run out of people • Hacker News Board

Re: The world might run out of people

#151

Post by telesilla » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:24 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…

>little boys are just too destructive and disobedient

Don't blame the boys - I've known equally pain-in-the-ass families of girls, and wonderful boys. It's the parents.

Re: The world might run out of people

#152

Post by Balgair » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Bricker

[2] https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Lutz

[4] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/world-population-and...

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeDuJPJ5J5c

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJ7EApyi-A

Re: The world might run out of people

#153

Post by magduf » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

jpetso wrote: post #139

magduf wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not stupid to be "out-bred": you're enjoying your own personal life more by keeping more resources for yourself, rather than sacrificing your time and resources on kids with the goal of continuing your family line. Your kids, grandkids, and descendants aren't likely to be of much help after you're dead. This is an individual vs. society issue: having few kids is better at the individual level, but for society it…

One may argue that if you expand "for society" to a worldwide "for humankind", it's perfectly sustainable not to have kids at the current population level. I think it's a safe assumption that those with religious dogma and those in regions of high child mortality will continue to have many kids, one way or another. The "educated" non-religious class is probably the only one that has a real choice to make. If they kee…

The only problem with that (if you care about what happens to humanity after you die) is that it will likely result in a major collapse of society. The religious nuts and those in regions of high child mortality (which means they're all poor and uneducated) aren't going to be able to maintain or advance a technological society. They can breed, but that's not enough to know how to keep complex systems running, and things will collapse just like Ancient Rome, with technology being lost and everyone going back to being feudal serfs, or worse.

Personally, I just don't see a way to avoid some kind of major collapse of society due to one or more of the many factors facing us. For this issue, I think greatly improving human longevity is absolutely necessary, and if we don't do that, we're going to have another Dark Ages of some kind.

Re: The world might run out of people

#154

Post by magduf » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

stephenhuey wrote: post #118

GrinningFool wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Seems wiser to remain childless than to have and raise kids that you never wanted. How would that work out for the kid, otherwise? Or are we going on the assumption that once the kid is born, OP will no longer see it as a…

There's something to be said for that. My kids do require a lot of attention and work and I sometimes I feel very tired out and short on time to get things done before crawling into bed for enough sleep to be productive at the office the next day. However, even though I really enjoy creative technology work at my job, on average my relationships with my kids give me greater satisfaction than any projects I work on. M…

I have a good friend whose mother tells her that she (my friend) ruined her life, and that she never really wanted kids or to get married to the man she married when she got pregnant.

Re: The world might run out of people

#155

Post by magduf » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #138

simplecomplex wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you plan on taking care of you when you get older? You’re going to pay nurses, and maybe live in a retirement home?

Alzheimers patients need 24/7 care. This isn't something that small families with 3-4 siblings can do by reasonable means next to having a job, raising the next generation, and living in the neighbouring town or even further than that. In the old days, poor people just died young because of exhaustion and rich people well they have the means for proper care per definition.

It's looking like Alzheimer's will be a solved problem before too long, with all the current research on it.

Re: The world might run out of people

#156

Post by magduf » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

telesilla wrote: post #151

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…

>little boys are just too destructive and disobedient Don't blame the boys - I've known equally pain-in-the-ass families of girls, and wonderful boys. It's the parents.

Boys are inherently more destructive and violent than girls; it's a biological fact, and is the whole reason prison inmates are over 90% male.

Re: The world might run out of people

#157

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #146

pixl97 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a modern government can force every young person to to join the army. "Joining the army" and "Fighting a battle every day" are two different things. Most of the time armies are not doing anything. And when they are, it is a significant threat to ones continued existence, something humans are highly optimized to fight for. Keeping the old people alive has a few problems. First, if you take grandma to the roof and…

Good thing war and military culture is not depressing, alienating and suicide-inducing. The opportunity to help and care for other people is a great gift. Killing or culling individuals, populations... directly affects everyone's spiritual and mental existence.

>The opportunity to help and care for other people is a great gift

Which is why lots of people love the idea of pediatric care. You help them, they get better. You don't get better from old age. You deteriorate and die.

Re: The world might run out of people

#158

Post by JetSpiegel » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #44

whack wrote: post #2

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…

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…

> Maybe a drought of elevator specialists decreases the amount of elevators we can have. We have to walk up stairs more often. Not ideal.

Not really, it would make the skyscraper impractical. No one is going to climb 100 floors through the stairs.

Actually, this is not that bad...

Re: The world might run out of people

#159

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

simplecomplex wrote: post #131

handzbagz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who do you plan on taking care of you when you get older? You’re going to pay nurses, and maybe live in a retirement home?

An average middle-income family with two kids spends more than $200,000 to raise each child to age 17, followed by college costs (and/or any other support). In coastal cities, the number is more like $250k. That price is rising faster than inflation at about 3%, and college costs are rising 4%+. To begin with, let's just ignore college and just annualize it all to $15,000/year.

Merrill Lynch claims that an average retirement 'costs' about $740,000. Demographic breakdowns are much harder here, since they depend on both luck (health, mostly) and post-retirement location, so let's just use it as is.

The average age of first motherhood is 26, and fatherhood is 31. However, to my surprise, that's a bimodal distribution; let's use age 30 for our coastal/urban parents. The average age of retirement is apparently 63, so childrearing costs arrive 16-33 years before retirement costs. A stock market index fund held over the long term can reasonably expect perhaps 8% returns after inflation. Investing that $15k annually for 17 years should produce a retirement nest-egg of a bit over $2,000,000.

I tried to be pretty generous with my math here; paying for college, going from zero to one kid, or adjusting for cost growth all worsen the picture quite a bit. (Having >2 kids or living off the coasts improves it somewhat.) But the really damning part is that kids may not take care of you at all (it's a pretty heavy expectation), and even if they do most people face needs and expenses family can't take care of. If you have health needs that require regular care from a nurse, much less costly surgery, your kids are only going to be able to help by putting up money. And quite a few health problems like severe dementia make living at home with family nearly impossible by requiring full-time monitoring.

Living with family is probably a much better experience than living in a nursing home, and of course it's inherently rewarding for a lot of people. The data is irreparably confounded, but I wouldn't be shocked if people with kids are healthier and even longer-lived than comparable people without them. But there's really no salvaging the idea that having a family substitutes for an expensive retirement.

Re: The world might run out of people

#160

Post by telesilla » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #156

telesilla wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>little boys are just too destructive and disobedient Don't blame the boys - I've known equally pain-in-the-ass families of girls, and wonderful boys. It's the parents.

Boys are inherently more destructive and violent than girls; it's a biological fact, and is the whole reason prison inmates are over 90% male.

And those of you who aren't in prison, probably had better parenting right? (and some luck). Anyway, I don't mean to hijack this thread but if the parent is saying he doesn't want kids because they are unruly, he might look to the parenting of said kids. Kids can—and should!—be bringing joy and lightness and laughter and learning. It's a tragedy that the modern person avoids have children because of economic concerns and perceived issues of losing independence.