Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sas.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 409 posts

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

#101

Post by rangestransform »

robots0only wrote: post #83
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 (…

IIRC Amazon laid off the entire team that was working on manipulation research at the Boston area Amazon Robotics

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

#102

Post by testing22321 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #98
testing22321 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove right around Africa through 35 countries over three years. I drove across both Nigeria and the DRC. There are dozens and dozens of massive cities that take hours to cross in Nigeria you’ve never heard of. Anecdotally, it’s way, way, way more populous than anything nearby. Ethiopia felt somewhat similar in parts, as did Egypt.

Can you name a few of them in Nigeria? On satellite imaging, from what I've seen, they're not so massive, and they're mostly comprised of a sprawl of 1-3 story buildings. We can compare vs. cities that we have good numbers for. Or Chinese/Indian cities, for that matter. (After looking at Nigeria or the DRC, a quick glance at India via satellite imaging is shocking .) That said, Egypt is very populous, there's no doub…

I drove through at least 10 cities in Nigeria I’ve never heard of that had tons of buildings over 10 stories. I just took the fastest route across, I didn’t go wandering. This was 10 years ago too.

Also remember the DRC is almost a million square miles. So it’s 1.5x Alaska.

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

#103

Post by h2zizzle »

stego-tech wrote: post #86

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 an…

I'm a single, gay man. During two of my last major existential crises, for about two weeks following, I noticed a marked turn of my thoughts and feelings towards having (biological) children. Stuff like, "If I'd had a kid at such-and-such age, how old would they be now?", "How would I manage if a child was suddenly in my life?", and "Oh god, my line stops with me panic". For a number of reasons, I am extremely unlikely to ever have kids; it would take a change in my prospects so massive that I can't really conceive of it. For this reason, I have come to feel that there may be a common (often irrational) biological impulse to procreate.

But now that I get to the bottom of my message, it occurs to me that it might be tangential, since you're talking about sex, which is related to but encompasses a far larger category of activity than just procreation. Speaking through my lgbt lens (and again, probably tangentially) this false conflation creates at least the dual issues of the incorrect ideas that sex should only be for procreation, as well as the the incorrect idea that queer people can't (or shouldn't) be parents. Here's hoping that both get nixed as we rethink the role of sex, and the importance of family, in society.

Just some rambling, don't mind me.

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

#104

Post by chrisco255 »

stego-tech wrote: post #86

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 an…

The fertility rate is falling everywhere, even countries that have extensive childcare and maternity/paternity leave. Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45.

There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families.

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

#105

Post by chrisco255 »

seydor wrote: post #29
vonneumannstan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This totally ignores the fact that the decline in fertility is measurable across the globe in the poorest and wealthiest nations in the world. It's clearly not a simple matter of affordability...

Poor countries reproduce more, it's not same everywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

The rates are plummeting everywhere. Even countries that have 3 or 4 kids per woman used to have 5 or 6 and are on pace to drop below replacement within 15-20 years.

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

#106

Post by adriand »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #85

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…

I just did what you suggested and looked at Kinshasa and it looks HUGE to me. Endless rows of streets. Reminded me of Mexico City (and I just compared satellite imagery and they seem similar in that respect - and they are similar in terms of population). Big cities with few skyscrapers and tons of low rise buildings are quite common. In the west, Paris is an example of a populous city without many tall buildings.

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

#107

Post by xp84 »

angmarsbane wrote: post #91
rayiner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent is the bigger issue than affordability per se. My wife pointed out the other day that we had our second and third kids shortly after we stopped living in apartments and bought a house. We didn't plan to have a significant age gap between our first (who we had in law school) and our other kids, and we earned a lot of money the whole time, it just happened that way. She's convinced that having the extra space subc…

I've been encouraging my cousin who desperately wants children to have them in her two bedroom apartment but she feels that she needs to have a house first and she and her husband can't afford one. They're in their late 30s. My partner and I are mid-30s planning to have young children in our 2 bedroom apartment, we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST in our Los Angeles neighborhood. More space means untenable…

> we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST

This seems to be an absolute epidemic across the state. Same with condos. It's like they assume that apartments of any kind are only for single people and maybe a couple with one child. In other words, people who are dragging the fertility rate down toward 50%.

When I pull up Zillow and look at rentals across a huge swath of the East Bay, there are 8,309 apartments listed (I filtered out houses and townhomes). I add one filter: 3+ bedrooms. The number drops to 784. Fewer than 10% (!) of apartments listed have 3+ bedrooms. (Also, a quick spot check of these seems to show a nontrivial amount that are actually just houses with faulty metadata.)

This puts a tremendous burden on low-income people, to have to foot the higher cost of maintaining a home and/or of an absurd commute, just in order to have enough space[1] to have more than one kid. That, or overpay to compete for one of the few bigger apartments, many of which are "luxury" oriented.

Meanwhile, the high-income can afford a house or a luxury 3br apartment, but they are mostly high-income because they've deprioritized family, putting in 10+ years of being DINKs. In my circle of upper middle class tech types, many of them are 35-38 before having their first kid. 1 kid is much more likely than 3 for people starting in their late 30s, so this drags down fertility rates even among the "high income" subgroup!

[1] I know opinions vary on whether it's good and healthy to have kids sharing rooms, though imho I don't want a son and daughter forced to bunk together as they get older, and calls to 'just share rooms' is giving "Own nothing and be happy."

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

#108

Post by adriand »

baron816 wrote: post #22

The mid-century Baby Boom occurred after a surge in affordable home keeping technologies (vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators, etc). I think a rebound in fertility will have to come from technology. Specifically, robots to help with child care and new fertility treatments to allow women to have children later in their lives.

My concern is the intersection of rightwing natalism with Silicon Valley ideology leading to technological “solutions” involving, essentially, test tube babies. Take women out of the picture entirely. I can especially see a dystopian dynamic involving the “we have to compete with China” or “they’re doing it / about to do it in China” narratives.

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

#109

Post by sharadov »

XorNot wrote: post #79
TrackerFF wrote: post #38

Ironic as it may sound, coming from a childfree millennial, I'm kind of puzzled how the system will survive. Both my grandparents died in their 90s, and spent over 30 years are retirees - mainly living off their state pension. As people become older, they'll either have to work longer, or the system will come crashing down. Especially with lower fertility rates. My generation should be birthing kids as the previous o…

A substantial realignment in the economy is what's coming. The charge will be when the rate of vacated homes starts to uptick as their aren't enough capable people to live in them: right now the major metros have a lot of pent up demand, but those retirement figures imply a different reality as time goes on: eventually those people start going into care facilities, but their won't be nearly enough people around to su…

Case in point - Japan, with so many abandoned homes

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

#110

Post by chrisco255 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #64
ch4s3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mid-century Baby Boom came after WWII, and probably had very little to do with technology. The upswing started some time in late 1944 to mid 1945 as combat was winding down in Europe and a lot of young men were returning home. Otherwise fertility has been declining steadily since 1800 in western countries.

No, this is exactly the opposite of true: you need to do more reading about the baby boom. It happened across many countries, including ones which had little involvement in WWII, and in almost all cases it began in the 1930s, even with the Great Depression underway. It got supercharged by the end of the war because that's when the economic doldrums finally ended, but upward trend in fertility predated even the beginn…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-u...

The above shows the boom started in the 40s in the U.S. after 140 years of gradual decline.

Post reply on HN