Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated • Hacker News Board

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#11

Post by pessimizer » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #4

>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…

Are you saying that large infrastructure projects have been systematically overcounting population in order to pay more compensation? That there's an interest in making them seem more disruptive, and as if they displace more people?

If that's an obvious conclusion, I need more explanation.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#12

Post by TwoPhonesOneKid » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

rendang wrote: post #6

I've typically heard it rumored that populations get overestimated, as corrupt local officials in developing countries want to get more resources/power allocated to their district

That seems like the kind of behavior that would drastically vary from place to place and culture to culture. Just compare Rwanda with the DRC, for instance—neighboring countries with nearly polar-opposite reputation of how corruption is expressed. The DRC's corruption (aka Tshisekedi) means very low centralized control and an incredibly brutal multi-front civil war. Kagame's style has led to one of the most authoritarian countries on earth, albeit one with very low crime rates. That these are bordering countries with overlapping cultures and peoples and these places produce such wildly different expression of societies (as of today, that is) is quite illustrative.

There are certainly some ways that the behavior of countries can be painted with a wide brush, but each country still has unique dysfunctions and strengths. It's very difficult to say anything broadly applicable that doesn't have glaring exceptions undercutting the premise.

This is especially, especially true in places with great restrictions on freedom of the press—Rwanda's image is almost certainly partially fabricated, but it's very difficult to interpret the state of affairs from outside the country.

Corruption is certainly a constant across all countries, but the form the corruption takes is very dynamic.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#13

Post by allturtles » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #11

jdietrich wrote: post #4

>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…

Are you saying that large infrastructure projects have been systematically overcounting population in order to pay more compensation? That there's an interest in making them seem more disruptive, and as if they displace more people? If that's an obvious conclusion, I need more explanation.

The issue is that the availability of money gives people an incentive to be counted, even if they don't live there.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#14

Post by kmeisthax » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #11

jdietrich wrote: post #4

>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…

Are you saying that large infrastructure projects have been systematically overcounting population in order to pay more compensation? That there's an interest in making them seem more disruptive, and as if they displace more people? If that's an obvious conclusion, I need more explanation.

No, it's the people being resettled who have an incentive to overcount themselves.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#15

Post by solid_fuel » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #11

jdietrich wrote: post #4

>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…

Are you saying that large infrastructure projects have been systematically overcounting population in order to pay more compensation? That there's an interest in making them seem more disruptive, and as if they displace more people? If that's an obvious conclusion, I need more explanation.

It doesn't need to be top-down corruption on the part of Dam Corp, LLC.

Think about it this way - you and your family live somewhere and are being displaced to make way for a dam, some guy in a suit comes around and says "we'll pay $1000 per resident to move you somewhere else".

Maybe your uncle lived at your house with his wife for 5 years, until they moved to the city last year. Your grandmother lived there until she died 6 months ago. So lets say it's just you, your partner, and 2 kids.

But, that's a lot of money - do you tell the man in the suit that your house has 4 residents, or maybe stretch the truth to 5 or 6 (your uncle might move back soon, after all)?

And remember, corruption often stacks - individuals might add an extra person here and there, but then the local relocation manager adds a few % to get a little extra on top, and their boss adds another few %, and so on... soon you're seeing 25% more people than actually reside there.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#16

Post by 00N8 » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #11

jdietrich wrote: post #4

>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…

Are you saying that large infrastructure projects have been systematically overcounting population in order to pay more compensation? That there's an interest in making them seem more disruptive, and as if they displace more people? If that's an obvious conclusion, I need more explanation.

No, I think the conjecture is more that people from the surrounding areas could be claiming residency in the affected area to receive the payouts, even though they normally live elsewhere.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#17

Post by insane_dreamer » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

Doesn’t every country or at least major country conduct censuses? Assuming there are some countries that can’t or don’t due to conflict, lack of resources etc. it seems these would be limited and therefore whatever estimates are made for those countries would be off my millions but certainly not billions.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#18

Post by kristjansson » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #4

>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…

A dollar per dead snake, you say?

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#19

Post by Newlaptop » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

Frustratingly problematic headline, I'd expect better from Popular Mechanics.

The title "Oops, Scientists May Have Severely Miscalculated How Many Humans Are on Earth" is entirely misleading- it's not "scientists" who have miscalculated this, it's government bureaucrats in various countries who are responsible for collecting and reporting census information in their region.

This matters, because we live in a world where many people get much of their information only from headlines, and a recurring narrative of "Scientists make mistakes" or "Scientists can't be trusted" has real impact to policy on climate change, vaccine hesitancy, and other areas where distrust of scientific knowledge or expertise causes uninformed people to make decisions harmful to their own well-being or harmful to those around them on everything from nutrition to pollution to evacuations before hurricanes.

Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated

#20

Post by lurk2 » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 10:12 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #10

zamadatix wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concerningly, they acknowledge accuracy of the numbers reported by the dam projects under limitations... by only highlighting the opposite, that it could be under-reported by them. I feel like I'm missing a lot for this to have been published but I'd expect such a paper about limitations of existing studies to be especially heavy on what the limitations of this new method might be. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41…

I’ve actually looked into this for a few developing countries, and dam resettlement figures are very likely to be inflated. There’s no actual combination of outsiders going around to every household in every village for even a dozen days of the year to plausibly provide a third party confirmation of claimed residence for each individual. It’s effectively villagers certifying each other that they really live there as…

One of the more frightening things I ever learned was that if the population of China began walking in front of you at a rate of 1 person per second, it would take approximately 31 years for the entire population to pass you.

The math, roughly:

1 billion people (there are more now, but we’ll call it an even billion) / 60 seconds ≈ 16,666,666 minutes

16,666,666 / 60 minutes in an hour ≈ 277,777 hours

277,777 hours / 24 hours in a day ≈ 11,574 days

11,574 / 365 days in a year ≈ 31 years.

That’s just China. The global population would take around 220 years, with not so much time as to say hello. A bureaucracy can of course delegate census reporting such that the groups become manageable, but it puts a lot of things into perspective when you understand the sheer scale of the human population.