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The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

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Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#81

Post by Zacharias030 »

api wrote: post #54
rendang wrote: post #51

The selection effects of this transition will be really fascinating to see after the fact. The species has spent a long time under selection pressure for "having more kids", but is being subjected for the first time to "having more kids while extreme prosperity and modern telecommunications exist" which is a very different thing.

I had an evolutionary bio professor in college say this: "you don't understand evolution until you understand how contraception could lead to overpopulation." Anything placed in the path of reproduction is a barrier to be overcome. If there is anything in the human genome that correlates with a positive desire to choose to have children, we are selecting hard for that right now. We may see a bottleneck this century a…

What do you / your prof think about the timelines though? I always heard people shoot these kinds of arguments down by saying that evolution does not significantly operate on our accelerated timelines of human technology.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#82

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4
retrocog wrote: post #3

This trend doesn't bode well for the long term survival of the social welfare state.

Social welfare state will still exist, it'll just be more costly as drag than it is today (in the US, ~$1.1T/year of uncompensated caregiving occurs, for example). Capitalism is more the challenge, it's built on squeezing the aggregate working age population for profits, and that cohort is in terminal decline over the long term. Between global sovereign debt load [1] and the demand for future profits (slides 31-33 of…

A tfr of 1.7, the welfare state will be costly but exist. A tfr of .73 like korea has? Long term, that’s 1 20 year old and 3 45 year olds taking care of half a baby, 7 70 year olds and 10 95 year olds

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#83

Post by robots0only »

Animats wrote: post #34

The future is probably a society with more robots than humans. We can see this happening now at Amazon. Amazon is a good case to watch, because their operations replace humans with robots on close to a one to one basis. Right now, Amazon has about 1.5 million human employees, and 1 million robots. Amazon reached peak humans in 2022, with around 1.6 million employees. Then human employees began to decline slightly. Ro…

The 1 million robot number that Amazon keeps on using is a quite nuanced. It includes more ~800K robots that simply just move stuff in a 2D plane. I think the number of robots that actually manipulate things is far far less (probably less than 500) (but really no human wants to just move things from A to B).

Also, I completely agree with what you said. Cars (w/ no self-driving) can be thought of as primitive robots (just like robots of today). For good or bad, we will move towards more and more automation.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#84

Post by pasquinelli »

Animats wrote: post #34

The future is probably a society with more robots than humans. We can see this happening now at Amazon. Amazon is a good case to watch, because their operations replace humans with robots on close to a one to one basis. Right now, Amazon has about 1.5 million human employees, and 1 million robots. Amazon reached peak humans in 2022, with around 1.6 million employees. Then human employees began to decline slightly. Ro…

they should form a union

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#85

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but the population numbers and statistics for Africa are totally unreliable. Fertility and total population are all wrong.

The DRC is said to have 100M people, but check out satellite imaging. There's no chance -- and I mean none -- that it actually has 100M people. Unless 9-out-of-10 inhabitants live in the woods under tree cover, the actual population of the country is probably closer to 10M.

You don't have to take my word for it. Look for yourselves. And take an satellite shot of Kinshasa (reported population ~19M), rotate or mirror-image it, and then ask GPT-5 to estimate its population. Also, compare for yourself vs. a place like Shanghai. (Reportedly just 20% more populous, but also visibly denser and roughly an order of magnitude larger.)

Many other countries in the region, like Nigeria, are much the same way. The population numbers don't line up with satellite imaging.

Then there are obvious economic measures, etc.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the numbers for Africa are maximally unreliable. There are various reasons for this that we can speculate on (foreign aid dependent on population numbers, etc.), but, anyway, at least take 'em with a grain of salt.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#86

Post by stego-tech »

Funny, I just wrapped a blog post about this: https://green.spacedino.net/i-dont-worry-about-population-de...

Good presentation by the author that reaffirms my own opinions about the topic, specifically that while it sucks and cripples the social welfare programs our (deceased) elders built on the theory of continued population and productivity growth, it's also an issue we can fix with coordination between powers and workers. It's about building a new environment that puts families, rather than employers, first, and encouraging participation in the creation and maintenance of that environment by everyone regardless of age or demographic. The return of third places, social events, volunteerism, clubs, transit, public gatherings, stay-at-home parents, and more.

And as I've seen others point out in regard to the biological procreation imperative, we as a species are wired to breed. For all the whining from puritans about pornography, I'm of the opinion that its proliferation and normalization in fact reflects a deeply-held urge of humanity to have more time to have sex and live authentically again, whatever that may look like to the individual or family unit. Humans clearly want sex, and families, and time off, but the current global civilizational model is work > all, and thus families have taken a backseat to GDP growth at all costs.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#87

Post by efkiel »

selimthegrim wrote: post #77
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark has been the most systematic about collecting this sort of data about immigrants from different places. I suspect you’d see similar results in the UK and Canada if those governments collected the data. Canada’s GDP per capita has actually started declining recently. I think Denmark’s welfare system is a model, so whoever you’re arguing with, it’s not me. I will point out that, if Denmark with its robust welfa…

What is MENAPT here?

Middle East, northern africa, pakistan

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#88

Post by silverquiet »

rayiner wrote: post #74
silverquiet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are the demographics of a small Nordic nation something "everyone" should understand? Whenever I've pointed to how well the social safety nets work in these countries and how they could be an example for the US, I've been told that the US is too different of a country to draw an analogy.

Denmark has been the most systematic about collecting this sort of data about immigrants from different places. I suspect you’d see similar results in the UK and Canada if those governments collected the data. Canada’s GDP per capita has actually started declining recently. I think Denmark’s welfare system is a model, so whoever you’re arguing with, it’s not me. I will point out that, if Denmark with its robust welfa…

Net cost to a national government and GDP per capita are not the same thing. Presumably these people become more productive by moving to more developed countries; that's the general reason that people immigrate to particular places. My impression without looking at the data is that US GDP per capita has continued to increase despite large (called a crisis by Republicans) numbers of immigrants during the Biden Administration. And given that these people are not citizens of the US, presumably they will not be eligible for all benefits granted to citizens which would decrease their cost to the government.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#89

Post by api »

Zacharias030 wrote: post #81
api wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an evolutionary bio professor in college say this: "you don't understand evolution until you understand how contraception could lead to overpopulation." Anything placed in the path of reproduction is a barrier to be overcome. If there is anything in the human genome that correlates with a positive desire to choose to have children, we are selecting hard for that right now. We may see a bottleneck this century a…

What do you / your prof think about the timelines though? I always heard people shoot these kinds of arguments down by saying that evolution does not significantly operate on our accelerated timelines of human technology.

How long an evolutionary change takes can vary widely depending on a ton of factors: current makeup of the gene pool, strength of selection, whether it's a single or multiple gene trait, whether and to what extent there are counter-pressures selecting in the other way, and so on. It's very hard to say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#90

Post by jhp123 »

rayiner wrote: post #33

The point on p. 39 about immigration is important for everyone to understand: > Most immigrants worsen the fiscal position of the government. According to an Economist article addressing data collected by Denmark, each non-western immigrants produce a negative financial benefit over their lifetimes, and immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, are a net cost on the government at every age: https://inq…

Progressive taxation will generally mean that anyone under the median income has a negative net impact on the government's finances. All this study is doing is reflecting the obvious fact that immigrants are by and large working class.
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