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Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

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Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#41

Post by mikeash »

amingilani wrote: post #11
ItsMe000001 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why you called it myth. Just because it sort of works short term does not tell you anything about long term consequences. Earth has changed drastically with all the humans on it. You need a lot of optimism about solutions for global warming and pollution. The linked short "feel good" video asks an extreme question "Will this lead to the end of our civilization?" (pretend the other side made a ridiculous c…

I think you misunderstand, the video isn't a happy colorful animation about an optimistic conclusion to humanity's problems. It discusses one specific problem : over-population. And distills a ton of data collected over the several decades to offer the conclusion. Historical evidence supports that a decrease in mortality rates is followed by a decrease in birth rate. Here, check out the data for yourself[1] The theor…

It doesn’t make any sense to me that overpopulation leading to resource exhaustion ha been debunked because the population has grown over 7 billion and it hasn’t happened yet. It brings to mind the image of a person falling off a skyscraper and plummeting to the ground thinking, “so far so good!”

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#42

Post by vjerancrnjak »

ForHackernews wrote: post #26
WA wrote: post #2

There is a fantastic video by Hans Rosling about the global population growth and why global population might actually stall around 10 billion people: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_... This relates to fact 2 in the article.

For the sake of the environment and every nonhuman species, we'd better hope that population growth doesn't just stall but reverses itself.

It's going to be weird to live in an age when pyramidal schemes (pension systems, academia etc.), that have been foundation of the modern civilization, start falling apart (given that they are based on a healthy population pyramid).

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#43

Post by gbear605 »

vjerancrnjak wrote: post #42
ForHackernews wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of the environment and every nonhuman species, we'd better hope that population growth doesn't just stall but reverses itself.

It's going to be weird to live in an age when pyramidal schemes (pension systems, academia etc.), that have been foundation of the modern civilization, start falling apart (given that they are based on a healthy population pyramid).

That's modern-day Japan.

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#44

Post by forapurpose »

bungie4 wrote: post #31

First off, I stand up and applaud the Gates Foundation, and everybody, who work to improve the lives of everybody on the planet. WRT: Extreme Poverty, a few years back, we had a political party who tackled the problem of poverty by redefining the measuring stick of what constitutes poverty. POOF much celebration and self-handshaking when they announced that during their term, their efforts dropped the number of peopl…

Extreme poverty, in this case, is a measure developed by economists and not by politicians, and AFAIK the definition hasn't changed significantly in many years.

As the parent says, not being in 'extreme poverty' doesn't tell us much about one individual. They could have $2.50 per day; they could be Bill Gates (of course, it tells us a lot if someone is living on less than $1.90/day; that's a much smaller range). But the aggregate measure is meaningful: The number is decreasing and has been for decades - a miracle relative to world history - bringing hundreds of millions of people of out hopeless poverty; just look at India, China, and Latin America. Yes, some are still very poor, but we can use other measures to examine that such as median income (which also has changed dramatically).

Also, 'poverty' in wealthy countries and 'extreme poverty' used in this measure are entirely different things. If you're reading this, $1.90/day probably won't pay for your electricity or water usage for the day, much less food, shelter, health care, education, transportation, etc.

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#45

Post by babbadook »

bungie4 wrote: post #31

First off, I stand up and applaud the Gates Foundation, and everybody, who work to improve the lives of everybody on the planet. WRT: Extreme Poverty, a few years back, we had a political party who tackled the problem of poverty by redefining the measuring stick of what constitutes poverty. POOF much celebration and self-handshaking when they announced that during their term, their efforts dropped the number of peopl…

If you are curious here is the larger exploration of global poverty from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

It has been a while since I read it but I found it quite compelling. If i remember correctly, the measures are based on consumption of goods per day to try to avoid complications related to differing economic systems. Also while it is true that measures can be manipulated to tell the story you want, it does not appear that that has been done in a significant way here. Even if it had i doubt that, such an extreme 90% -> 10% drop could be shown even with the most crooked measuring stick if things had not been genuinely improving a lot. Incidentally, my brother used to be a full on marxist until he read this data and completely abandoned that belief system.

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#46

Post by siruncledrew »

amingilani wrote: post #11
ItsMe000001 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why you called it myth. Just because it sort of works short term does not tell you anything about long term consequences. Earth has changed drastically with all the humans on it. You need a lot of optimism about solutions for global warming and pollution. The linked short "feel good" video asks an extreme question "Will this lead to the end of our civilization?" (pretend the other side made a ridiculous c…

I think you misunderstand, the video isn't a happy colorful animation about an optimistic conclusion to humanity's problems. It discusses one specific problem : over-population. And distills a ton of data collected over the several decades to offer the conclusion. Historical evidence supports that a decrease in mortality rates is followed by a decrease in birth rate. Here, check out the data for yourself[1] The theor…

> The shortage of resource because of over-population is an old theory, but we've seen no evidence to it yet.

That doesn't deny that it's still happening though. This sounds like the kind of argument Exxon, Nestle, or a logging company would use to continue siphoning up resources while saying "Well, we're all still alive, so no harm done." That's very short-sighted and limited thinking. There are many other consequences of an increasing population that by proxy contribute to resource depletion, such as pollution and over-development for example.

In a non-human comparison, look at the damage that happens when an invasive species enters a new environment and over-populates. The native flora and fauna suffer and the resources they rely on begin to disappear. Then we end up with a Lorax-like scenario.

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#47

Post by antisthenes »

amingilani wrote: post #11
ItsMe000001 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why you called it myth. Just because it sort of works short term does not tell you anything about long term consequences. Earth has changed drastically with all the humans on it. You need a lot of optimism about solutions for global warming and pollution. The linked short "feel good" video asks an extreme question "Will this lead to the end of our civilization?" (pretend the other side made a ridiculous c…

I think you misunderstand, the video isn't a happy colorful animation about an optimistic conclusion to humanity's problems. It discusses one specific problem : over-population. And distills a ton of data collected over the several decades to offer the conclusion. Historical evidence supports that a decrease in mortality rates is followed by a decrease in birth rate. Here, check out the data for yourself[1] The theor…

> The shortage of resource because of over-population is an old theory, but we've seen no evidence to it yet.

Malthus only has to be right once for you to see the shortage. E.g. you can always pull water out of the well, until you can't. If you can say that with a straight face and pretend it's an argument, then I can say "you can't predict that it will never be a problem as long as humanity exists" and be just as right.

The only argument here is for how we will deal with the shortage - violently or by gradually reducing the birth rates.

> Population growth eventually slows down when the mortality rate decreases.

Population numbers themselves are meaningless without estimates of resource consumption. Nor is necessarily having a high population at the level of "not starving" level of prosperity something that we should be striving towards.

> The population growth rate is expected to begin slowing

Yes, it's already slowing, but see above for why it's meaningless that it is.

> Colorful animations help people understand a point, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.

It also doesn't necessarily mean they tell the whole picture, the correct picture or contain any relevant information whatsoever.

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#48

Post by ForHackernews »

vjerancrnjak wrote: post #42
ForHackernews wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of the environment and every nonhuman species, we'd better hope that population growth doesn't just stall but reverses itself.

It's going to be weird to live in an age when pyramidal schemes (pension systems, academia etc.), that have been foundation of the modern civilization, start falling apart (given that they are based on a healthy population pyramid).

We're going to have to adapt. New technology and higher productivity should allow us to keep enjoying higher standards of living with declining populations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#49

Post by crazynick4 »

I don't think the graph regarding extreme poverty accounts for inflation. I don't know what an international dollar is, assuming its close, but 1.90 USD in 1850 is equivalent to about $55 today (according to Google), or 20,000 USD per year. That's not extreme poverty, I've lived on less than that.

Re: Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know

#50

Post by haltingthoughts »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #19
BerislavLopac wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what happens when the part of society that is living in economically stable and educated households > is not even reproducing to the point of replacing itself, while those living in low education and low > income households are massively reproducing? Migration is what happens. Followed by integration.

Can you explain how you see this as a solution? We can view this problem on any scale as it seems to be applicable everywhere. On a world scale the fundamental issue is that people who are of low education, low income, and high religiosity are increasingly the ones primarily repopulating our planet. This means that any given child is more and more likely to be born into this sort of circumstance. And many of these ch…

Immigrants have nearly identical views to other citizens:

https://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulle...

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