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The global fertility rate is falling

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Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#561

Post by lqet »

zeepzeep wrote: post #544
lqet wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. I have posted the following a few years ago: > My ancestors thought it was okay to have kids during times in which many scholars where certain the apocalypse was due in the next 25 years, during periods in which the plague killed more than half of the population, during the 30 y…

> assuming that you can look into the future. That's why I said "even the current world isn't".

But you don't bring kids into this world. You bring them into the world of the future, even if this future is only 9 months away.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#562

Post by saithound »

manquer wrote: post #543
saithound wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your proposed (not illegal, not unethical) explanation does not work out mathematically. Even in the extreme scenario where all families stopped would stop having kids after the birth of a daughter, the expected number of male children would equal the expected number of female children. And even if say 52 percent of babies born are boys, you won't ever get a male excess of the discussed magnitude (1100 men for every…

you don’t understand babies are killed (rares Nowadays) and selective abortions (million a year ) if it is not boy. while the national average is 1100 , there are already states where it is 1250 or more , they already import brides from other states because finding a match is harder . sex detection although illegal still happens , and abortions follow The numbers are real for both countries and are well verified over…

> you don’t understand babies are killed (rares Nowadays) and selective abortions (million a year ) if it is not boy.

I do understand. I know that the skew exists. I'm saying precisely that the propoposed "not illegal, not unethical" explanations do not explain the skew; in fact, it's mathematically impossible for the style of family planning strategies (e.g. stop having children if the first one is a girl) to cause this kind of skew.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#563

Post by 0xfaded »

nostromo wrote: post #391
gregfjohnson wrote: post #357

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

This is a bit like hearing a successful startup founder speak about the joys of success. It’s absolutely correct, but it’s also just one data point. Keep in mind, most of the lonely old people you see have children. And I’m not sure it’s a good, caring thing to tell childless people that they will be lonely in old age, because it need not be true.

The person I knew who had the most people visit in his old age was as far as I know childless. Through a chance encounter he welcomed me to San Fransisco when I moved there. Everytime I'd visit he'd seem to have a new guest over, but most of them he had known for many years.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#564

Post by harperlee »

capableweb wrote: post #518
jojobas wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps some 80% of global population would be very grateful to relocate to Georgia.

I know Americans on the internet usually view their country with rose-shaded glasses but this comment has to take the price. I don't know the number, don't think anyone does, but off the people I know, 100% would never want to move to any state in the US. Probably the real number of people wanting to immigrate to the US is closer to 0% than 100%.

It doesn't really make sense to try to pinpoint an exact number, but I think you are right in answering to another subtly different question: the real people that would move, given just the opportunity, and nothing more. E.g. my grandmother would not move, most non-white people would face racial difficulties there that might not be present in their home country and would not consider moving, a lawyer might not be able to maintain a bar status there, etc.

But if you read your parent post caritatively, and the context to which it is responding, they are discussing just location - so the implicit question is more of "would a random world citizen complain about moving to Georgia, in the conditions that a US citizen would move (belonging to society, job prospects, no issues with recognition of citizenship, education, job experience, no language issues, etc. etc.)". He is just answering to the dismissal of the Georgia standard of living.

So yeah, answering to that second question, and speaking as a western european, I do think that most (more than 50%) of my acquaintances would take the chance (I think this because most barriers would be being far from friends and family and language issues, but following the spirit of the initial complaint, we are talking about an american who already lives probably far away from friends and family, in LA or NY). Obviously this is also just opinion and I did not run a poll, but I thought the rose-shaded glasses thing was a red herring.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#565

Post by lazyjones »

bananaface wrote: post #466
killjoywashere wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's in the very poorest places that you're going to have a tripling in population ... it's amazingly as children survive, parents feel like they'll have enough kids to support them in their old age. And so they choose to have less children." https://www.gatesnotes.com/about-bill-gates/a-conversation-w...

I actually don't agree with that diagnosis. I think the very poorest people genuinely can't access contraception. Once you get above a fairly low level and the pill becomes affordable, something else becomes the bigger factor. I just don't buy that very poor people ration out sex under a precise calculation of how many kids they want. Doesn't fit my observations of how humans behave. Most people fuck because they're…

> Once you get above a fairly low level and the pill becomes affordable, something else becomes the bigger factor.

The life choices of women are an important factor. Having both a career and children is still difficult today and more women choose careers.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#566

Post by tsimionescu »

mjburgess wrote: post #501
tsimionescu wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you compare productivity across functions, nevermore industries? Does a nurse produce less than a director of marketing? By what possible metric? Profit comes to mind, but I am hoping no one is inhuman enough to judge the medical care sector by its profits...

Profit is a measure of productivity, other things being equal. A director of marketing creates a campaign which affects millions of transactions... so it's a function which can dramatically increase economic production. It's pretty easy to compare productivity across industries. Leave what "should" be aside, when you're planning for the success of nations you cannot rely on Moral Bonuses. The rate of economic activit…

> To pay for things we need the ratio of workers:transactions to increase.

Human health is also a component of that inequation. How are you factoring that in with profit?

Also, all of that growth is meaningless unless it somehow makes people healthier and happier. So I would say that having a huge and successful healthcare industry is one of the goals of the rest of the economy (as are food production, entertainment, knowledge production and others).

So, if we have enough wealth but not enough healthcare, food, fun or knowledge, than we can trade some of that wealth for more important things, like healthcare workers, or garbage collection, or agricultural work, or mathematics research, etc. Or child care, though I suppose you view stay-at-home parents as deeply unproductive by this measure.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#567

Post by j4yav »

jasode wrote: post #538
Apocryphon wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be logically valid, but it's pretty emotionally tone-deaf to blithely dismiss a long heartfelt personal account by saying "Survivor bias. Caveat emptor." Read the room, as they say.

>It might be logically valid, but it's pretty emotionally tone-deaf to blithely dismiss a long heartfelt personal account by saying "Survivor bias. Caveat emptor." Read the room, as they say. I think the (inadvertent) tone-deafness can work both ways. The gp (gregfjohnson) in telling his personal account was also inadvertently tone-deaf to some potential readers . If I can compress his comment into 2 parts: - part 1:…

I was in here earlier and the vast majority of comments were something along the lines of "I did the social maths and children have been determined unworthy, QED" so the GP I think was just responding with their anecdote to provide another perspective.

It's not surprising that someone immediately jumped on it to argue the maths so to speak, but it is slightly disappointing even if predictable. IMHO it should be ok for someone to recommend something to you that you don't like without it being seen as an invitation to a fight.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#568

Post by [deleted] »

kunai wrote: post #474
irrational wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can drive around the entirety of downtown Portland in about 5-10 minutes (depending on traffic). It would take at least an hour to drive around downtown Atlanta.

As someone that lives there let me tell you there is no "downtown" Atlanta. There is a neighborhood called Downtown, but it's one of three (four, or maybe even five, depending on who you ask) major, dense business and retail districts in the city limits, and even more in the suburbs. And yeah, would take you about an hour to hit all of them. Probably more with traffic. It's a very polycentric city. Kind of throws peo…

[deleted]

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#569

Post by edanm »

nostromo wrote: post #391
gregfjohnson wrote: post #357

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

This is a bit like hearing a successful startup founder speak about the joys of success. It’s absolutely correct, but it’s also just one data point. Keep in mind, most of the lonely old people you see have children. And I’m not sure it’s a good, caring thing to tell childless people that they will be lonely in old age, because it need not be true.

Luckily, the success rate with children is much higher than startups. (I think? and hope? Don't actually have data on this.)

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#570

Post by jdietrich »

bananaface wrote: post #480
Apocryphon wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be logically valid, but it's pretty emotionally tone-deaf to blithely dismiss a long heartfelt personal account by saying "Survivor bias. Caveat emptor." Read the room, as they say.

I don't even think it's logically valid. I think if you raise your children well, the chance that they'll be there for you in old age is very high. If you don't have kids, the chance you will have friends that loyal is low. Blood is thicker than water, people should be realistic. How do you measure that statistically? All you have are personal experiences. Saying, "not statistics, isn't valid" is obtuse, it leaves yo…

>I think if you raise your children well, the chance that they'll be there for you in old age is very high.

Our old friend Dunning-Kruger rather spoils this strategy. I know many people who have been abandoned by their children, but none who could proffer even the vaguest hint of why they might be to blame. Very few people intentionally set out to alienate their children, but plenty of people do it anyway.

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