Augh

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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: January 26th, 2024

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  • The thing about long-term predictions (at least ones that get publicity) is that usually the goal is to change them, so few have been “proven”. No one is printing stories about how an isolated set of rocks is going to be decayed by X% due to weather, because no one cares.

    Except birth rates aren’t physics that will progress if left alone, they’re dominated by cultural choices that are impacted by economics and governmental policy.

    Exactly. Those are the factors that are being considered when making these predictions. If economic factors and policies are making it harder to have kids, then birth rates drop, which is what we’re seeing now. What else is going to have as much of an effect?

    These predictions don’t exist to take bets on. They’re not scrying into the future. They’re just binoculars that point to where we’re going.


  • No, they just need to be kept in that context. We trusted science on chlorofluorocarbons impacting the ozone layer, and chose to fix it rather than let it keep going. Was the projection “wrong” because CFCs were regulated, or did we just interact with it in a practical way?

    The same applies here. There’s a population issue that (as you mentioned in another comment) without other factors, will come into effect. China can fix it, or let things play out and see if the “unknowns” can fix it for them.