11–20 of 81 posts
Uh.... This seems incorrect. Sure we can extrapolate the declining birthrate all the way down to zero, but realistically it will level out somewhere since humans will never stop producing more humans. Granted it might be a lower birthrate, but never 0.
The author's models for population growth are too rudimentary to be accurate over more than one or two decades. I find it really hard to believe that the growth rate for countries will maintain a constant value for the next few centuries.
The author's models for population growth are too rudimentary to be accurate over more than one or two decades. I find it really hard to believe that the growth rate for countries will maintain a constant value for the next few centuries.
Why?
What if people aren't dying in 2065?
Medical care is unaffordable / unsustainable in the high HDI countries and doesn't exist in the low HDI countries. Would have been interesting to look at the impact on the high HDI countries of mass invasion and demographic replacement. Many of those countries won't be in the "very high" category much longer. That will have the obvious impact on birth rates etc. Ditto long term trends in income inequality, in that po…
Maybe. Or maybe we're so wealthy and have so few kids that the health care industry is draining off the excess?
In either case, I think it's hard to make such generalizations about a group that includes both the US and countries that have single payer health care.
He also just assumes some naive correlations based on some graphs, without doing any rudimentary statistics (e.g. chi squared to check if the correlations are even notable), and then plugs the numbers in and see's what he comes out with.
Instead, he should base his model on data from say 2000, and then predict the population in 2015, and then if that's correct, he might be able to say something about 2065 with any degree of certainty.
That he disagrees with other predictions suggests his model is wrong, but it's difficult to say how.
not sure if there's anything more to say.
"The table above already shows that birth rates go to zero by 2065." Uh.... This seems incorrect. Sure we can extrapolate the declining birthrate all the way down to zero, but realistically it will level out somewhere since humans will never stop producing more humans. Granted it might be a lower birthrate, but never 0.
What if people aren't dying in 2065?
I spent a chunk of my life adjacent to bio/med research and my conclusion is radical life extension by purely biological means will probably remain unfeasible. Genetically, we're millions of years worth of horribly interdependent spaghetti code, there is no fixing this mess. So - barring the option to upload yourself to silicon - death won't be obsolete by 2065.
However we might see some very, very moderate increases in life expectancy across the board, even in comparatively poor nations, as long as they're not living in abject poverty. This would be cause for concern, but data from industrialized nations suggest a major regression in births once a population becomes (somewhat) wealthy and healthy.
The desire to procreate boundlessly may very well be a deep-seated instinct triggered by living in precarious environments. If dying slows down, it's because of improved living standards and medical care, the same things that stop over-procreation.
It seems to me that in order to control Earth's population, we need to address poverty, which incidentally would solve a huge slew of other humanitarian and ecological problems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also revolution. Automation vs labor vs 1848 and all that. Where there is food vs where there are hungry mouths are not obligated to match up as they do now. It would be interesting to analyze food production capability at various levels of petroleum production and then analyze the probability of those various levels of petroleum production. The days of powering your oxen with some acres of hay are long gone, takes q…
Energy will be cheaper in 10 years than it has ever been in history. Progress is pretty likely to continue.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2015/03/bbc-questions-in...