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World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

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Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#111

Post by bigDinosaur »

aleksklarksr wrote: post #104
bigDinosaur wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't actually regress in terms of supersonic flight though, it just got relegated to specialist uses such as military. The actual advantage of the Concorde specifically was less than imagined - basically: would you prefer 7 hours in business or first class on a slower but vastly more spacious jet, or 3.5 hours on a much more cramped one? The Concorde was very fast but ordinary passenger jets are also quite fast,…

No, jets are slow and they getting slower to be even more economic. 800 km/h is just a fraction of 3500 km/h that planes can do. Bureaucrats are the ones who restricting progress to the point there will be no Wrights, or Jacques-Yves Cousteau or any other inventors. Everything restricted and regulated, controlled.

It's not and never will be cheaper to fly at 3500km/h compared to 800 km/h though. Would you pay the extra to shave off a few hours?

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#112

Post by techdragon »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #89
erklik wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even have a Concorde though. It's genuinely frustrating to me honestly. I feel like the level of advancement during that time was truly fascinating and it impacted people's life. Today, what do we have? Another iPhone? More faster computers? It's all incremental. Why can't we fly on a Concorde? (I know why obviously). I guess I am sad to see that tech that truly changed people's lives doesn't happen as much…

We didn't actually regress in terms of supersonic flight though, it just got relegated to specialist uses such as military. The actual advantage of the Concorde specifically was less than imagined - basically: would you prefer 7 hours in business or first class on a slower but vastly more spacious jet, or 3.5 hours on a much more cramped one? The Concorde was very fast but ordinary passenger jets are also quite fast,…

But we don’t get 7 hours in a more spacious jet. First class may be getting roomier in the most luxurious of first class having airlines. But many airlines ditched first class and their business class didn’t get more room when they added bigger planes, they simply adjusted the row placements, maybe one or two rows more business class on their busy routes that could justify it.

Airlines seating (minus first class) has on average become smaller in both business and economy class during the same timespan that relegated the Concorde to history. The airlines decided what they wanted. For most of this time airline tickets weren’t as competitive a market either with more flag carriers and less budget airlines cutting the costs at the bottom of the market.

Apparently people are happy choosing both slower and cheaper even if it costs them legroom (up to a point obviously, since Ryanair famously wasn’t allowed to try the standing room only short haul <2hr flights)

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#113

Post by smallerfish »

aortega wrote: post #53
gonzo41 wrote: post #17

This is fine, it's a small blip. Millenials and Zoomers and some Gen Xers will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down.

>will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down. Why? intuitively it would seem that that less humans will improve the environment, but intuition is often wrong. The planet can sustain much more people, it's essentially empty. More people means more intelligence and more money and power to improve the environment. Remember, most of the environmental damage was done by a very small number o…

> The planet can sustain much more people, it's essentially empty. More people means more intelligence and more money and power to improve the environment.

"Empty" is a very biblical word, with shades of the brass age Hebrew mission of “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

It's time to drop superstitious beliefs and take a hard look at reality. For example, we're using resources at a rate that is no longer sustainable (https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en).

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#114

Post by joshuahedlund »

hilbert42 wrote: post #92

These stats are frightening. In the past I recall seeing several different sets of figures for the amount of food the average human consumes in a lifetime. One estimate was about 70 tons and the other was 100 tons. (If anyone has better or more definite figures then let's hear about them.) Now, if we consider the other resources every new human will also consume during his or her lifetime - houses, vehicles, white go…

See the book More From Less for a counter-argument. Thanks to modern efficiencies and digitization a lot of resource use has decoupled from economic growth and some has actually peaked

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#115

Post by jotm »

randomsearch wrote: post #83
nivenkos wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're reaching a point where we're hitting the limits of Physics in many areas. Like it's hard to imagine an even faster passenger aircraft than the Concorde for example.

Don’t think this is the problem. I think it’s an allocation of resources problem. Pre 80s a lot of the best and brightest worked in engineering. Post 80s they went into finance and then tech. The latter a mixed bag - brought us Google maps etc but sadly mostly focused on selling ads. That’s the risk I see. We either need to change incentives or change culture to get back to a focus on progress / exploration rather th…

While incentives are pretty fucked (Instacrack being worth more than SpaceX, etc), allocation of labour is not a problem.

We simply have a lot more best and brightest in everything. There's so much talent it's unreal. There's not enough money to hire everyone, or technology to equip them in engineering.

It's kind of like art (pictures, movies, music, anything) - there's so much of it, so high quality these days that there really isn't anything that will stand out on its own. Same for celebrities, for that matter. Actors/singers/presidents? Meh, go to Instagram and OnlyFans and take your pick.

The only reason people 100 years from now will show something as an example of early 00's is marketing and survival.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#116

Post by vidarh »

b112 wrote: post #27
cloutchaser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe google it. Trending down also. World population will max at around 10bn

Last I heard though, in Africa, population decline was due to endemic aids/hiv, and no real inexpensive treatment. And some refusal to use condoms. If this changes, the trend will sharply reverse.

That makes little sense - what we're seeing in Africa like everywhere else is that increased living standards, education and healthcare including family planning consistently leads to dropping birth rates. At most improved treatment of HIV will lead to a short-term bump if life expectancy increases faster than birth rates drop.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#117

Post by BjoernKW »

usrn wrote: post #48
gonzo41 wrote: post #17

This is fine, it's a small blip. Millenials and Zoomers and some Gen Xers will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down.

It doesn't matter when Africa is exploding. All the low birthrate in the West does is weaken the countries trying to protect the environment. As this continues corporations will bring in the people from these undeveloped countries who will bring their unsustainable cultures with them. This whole "stop having children to save the environment" bullshit is dumber than the anti-nuclear crap and even more obviously wrong.

Given the "theme song" linked to in your profile, it's quite obvious where this is coming from, but let's talk unsustainable cultures then:

Again, from your theme song and your apparent fondness for the Teutonic Order I'm assuming you're at least familiar with Germany and the German social security system, which is very much a part of their culture.

The German state pension system basically amounts to a Ponzi scheme that requires a continuous influx of new contributors in order to not implode.

Not only is this pretty much a textbook case of "unsustainable", but given German culture is quite averse to change (which is unsustainable, too, by the way) and it therefore isn't particularly likely they're going to abandon their current pension system anytime soon, "bringing people from these undeveloped countries" also is about their only option left to keep the system from collapsing for just a little longer.

I'm not even talking general economic and societal repercussions here. It can be argued that a society with a declining population isn't long-term sustainable and ultimately will succumb to stagnation and a lack of innovation.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#118

Post by aleksklarksr »

neals wrote: post #99
aleksklarksr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will never know, this site is just a fake js counter, actual population data is very much hidden and obscured by statistics. For example, Russia claim they have 144 millions but in fact according to all data it is close to 120 millions. Same for china, where villages increase their reported population just to get subsidized. Africa? Middle east? Help me god India? Are you sure anyone know how many people died from…

Interesting take, I believe you. What is your background on this?

>The new Soviet Census (1939) showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match exactly the numbers stated by Stalin in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chi...

Lots of sources question population data as well as all other officials statistics. Nobody care. It is not just numbers, it is political statements.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#119

Post by Jensson »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #109
Jensson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More people means more brains, more intelligence, more energy to achieve things. More people means less energy and resources per person though, and people with little resources wont be using their brains to solve problems. Likely more people would have the opportunity to become Einstein's or similar if the population stayed at 1 billion than at 10 billion simply because we would have so much more raw resources to i…

> I don't see the benefit of adding another billion people who have to live a life in poverty. If we could give them a good life, sure add more people, but we can't even give the population of earth a good life today so why add more? One of the most stunning and under appreciated facts about the last two centuries is that, no matter how you measure it, the absolute number of people living in poverty has decreased eve…

And all that innovation happened thanks to the population living a good life with excess of resources. The people who lived in poverty didn't create much innovation at all, making more people who live in poverty wont add any innovation.

And even worse, if you add people until most has to live a life on the brink of starvation again that could stop innovation from ever happening again in the future, our current time is an historical anomaly and there is no guarantee that we can ever get back here if we screw up and get everyone back to a state of misery. There are only so many ways we can improve food production, we found a lot of them the past 200 years and that led to a ton of innovations since people no longer had to worry about starvation. But all of that will quickly revert if you can no longer buy food at a supermarket, since there is simply not enough food to feed every American, some will have to starve to death.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#120

Post by oldsecondhand »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #109
Jensson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More people means more brains, more intelligence, more energy to achieve things. More people means less energy and resources per person though, and people with little resources wont be using their brains to solve problems. Likely more people would have the opportunity to become Einstein's or similar if the population stayed at 1 billion than at 10 billion simply because we would have so much more raw resources to i…

> I don't see the benefit of adding another billion people who have to live a life in poverty. If we could give them a good life, sure add more people, but we can't even give the population of earth a good life today so why add more? One of the most stunning and under appreciated facts about the last two centuries is that, no matter how you measure it, the absolute number of people living in poverty has decreased eve…

So they make $3 a day instead of $2? Still not enough to create future Einsteins.
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