The UN Population Division report of 2022 projects world population to continue growing after 2050, although at a steadily decreasing rate, to peak at 10.4 billion in 2086, and then to start a slow decline to about 10.3 billion in 2100 with a growth rate at that time of -0.1%.
This estinmate is dropping almost every year. If the worlds population growth goes into reverse
How will we cope with a shrinking workforce, an aging population, and potential economic challenges, but also potentially lower resource consumption and environmental impact
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I'll be dead if a population catastrophe happens in 10 years or so. I feel it most for the generations to come. We will all face the increasing possibility of WW3 happening at any time now. Anyway, I am ready when my time comes. I have led a good life so far.
@caesar7 These were definetly the best of times, but if the problems of the present are overcome then are the best of times still possible in the future - yes. Will that happen ? Well in his book Sapiens Yual Noah Harari talks about a hunter gatherer having a shorter but more stress free life and how every time we developed civilisation to the next level of integration we give up some of our happiness. While I dispute that being killed by everything and anything more often is a small price to pain for a stress free life (I think its quite a big deal), I wonder where AI and automation takes us. Thomas Hardy's accounts of rural life in Dorset only 125? years ago seems grim and barbaric even, so rose tinted glasses come to mind, but in an AI driven future where resource conservation and eco concerns dominate can we go back to a life where the commute is no longer necessary. social media gives us human contact from our own home, and exercise is something we do by choice ? I think we already got there. Without overcrowding and the peer pressure for materialism, isn't someone who steps off the treadmill going to get the best of all lives right now - and better tomorrow and tomorrow ? Is it that society has to drop the need for competition and self advancement and adopt a new norm of self improvement and mutual support. The world still has many problems to solve but do most of those go away if everyone starts to value a "normal life" more and greed, ego, and competition become things of the past ? Is it our own competitive nature that makes society poisonous ? Now we can do so much more and are leaning more quickly than ever how to do even more isn’t it time to say to the population of the world, live in your own space, and do away with the whole concept that the goal in life is to be n Elon Musk (and who wants to) by chasing the rules so personnel success is capped at a certain level and the thing that brings fame is good deeds and no one is allowed to keep a fortune above a certain level but are instead bound by society to put it to good works. I'm not saying you cant have richer and poor, Im saying the rich have more of a duty to spend their fortune helping others because they can and therefore should and there reward should be acknowledgement and their punishment should be exposure ? So when the Forbes rich list comes out - the people at the top of it are vilified and criticised for not doing good deeds instead of being deified ? Is this not exactly what the man form Galilee said in his beatitudes ?
@caesar7 I recommend Sapiens as a good read. I recommended you read at least 1 Thomas Hardy book with annotated historical notes in it so you can see how hes drawing on real historical background. And I recommend yiu read the bizarre claims of the alleged survivor Al Bielek of the alleged Phildephia experiment "myth" not because I champion it as truth for one minute, but becaus eif its a lie, I think its a brilliantly constructed and very clever lie. The more I know about the Wheeler single electron universe theory (Wheeler was Feynman's early mentor and I think of Feyman as the greatest physicist and one of hte greatest teachers of all time - much overlooked in a world dominated by the particle physics. i find the particle physics view of the universe view as a semiicductr engineer and plastics optics expert I now find exteremly blinkered and darn right misleading. Wheelers single electron theory of the universe takes away the arrow of time which becomes just a human viewpoint of a symmetric system in which matter "moves" forewards in time but "antimatter" is movng backwards in time - so changing your future would leading to changing your past. So it supports that bizarre statement in the old Testamanet about God knwing everything about your future and yiour past and yet the bible saying you have free will to exercise to which will change not just your future and therefore your past but also that oif the entire universe slightly, I like it because its simple, and expalins all the observed facts including that the universe has been expanding but is now inflating, where the antimatter has gone (because thge positron being the lecton moving backwards through time would imply all antimatter is just matter moving throiugh time an could demostarte anti gravity) and where al the antimatter has gone and the filament structure of hte universe. These ar ethe biggest mysteries physicists are strugling with now and Wheeler's old theory can explan them all.
