In light of new data showing China's population shrinking for the second year running, a Shanghai-based think tank has drastically changed its 2100 forecast.
A projection 75 years in the future? Yeah, that’s almost certainly bullshit. Short term predictions already have optimistic and pessimistic paths based on how we as a society react because this isn’t just a physics problem, it’s heavily reliant on culture and policy and technological advancement. And birth rates are even more reliant on culture and policy.
It’s not a matter of doing math well, it’s that your unknowns destroy any prediction you’re making. If you’re doing it correctly you’re expanding your error bars as you get further into the future. By 75 years out you’re all error.
Its simple demographics. China hasn’t run out of kids, they did that 20 years ago after 1 child policy had been in effect for over 20 years. China is running out of adults on their 20s and 30s. They don’t have the enough people in the right age range to replace their numbers even if they could get young adults to have more kids (hint they are not convincing anyone.)
China is currently one of the fastest aging nations on the planet and it’s only going to get worse.
That’s going to be an issue in 10-20 years. Who the fuck knows what it’s going to be like 75 years from now. We’re talking about a span of time as long as Communist China has existed. 75 years ago computers barely existed.
Science, science can predict it. We have models that were created over 40 years ago that predicted current global warming trends.
We have models that accurately predict population trends as well. But it’s pretty simple, when you have an agrarian based economy people tend to have many children because they are helpful around the farm. When a society urbanizes having a dozen kids is now a burden and birth rates plummet.
China urbanized within a generation. Stack on the effects of the one child policy and they are no longer reproducing at a rate to replace their current population.
Social sciences and hard sciences are not the same thing. Social “sciences” are largely unfalsifiable and dominated by the “unless modified by human action” caveat that breaks predictions. You can predict very general trends like “fewer births”, but in 1949 you couldn’t look at the populations of Mongolia, China, and South Korea and know that they would have vastly different birth rates 75 years later.
Anyone projecting 75 years into the future is just making things up and doesn’t need to be covered as a news story.
Do you deny climate change on the same basis?
A projection 75 years in the future? Yeah, that’s almost certainly bullshit. Short term predictions already have optimistic and pessimistic paths based on how we as a society react because this isn’t just a physics problem, it’s heavily reliant on culture and policy and technological advancement. And birth rates are even more reliant on culture and policy.
Time series forecasting is a pretty well-established statistical method though.
It’s not a matter of doing math well, it’s that your unknowns destroy any prediction you’re making. If you’re doing it correctly you’re expanding your error bars as you get further into the future. By 75 years out you’re all error.
Its simple demographics. China hasn’t run out of kids, they did that 20 years ago after 1 child policy had been in effect for over 20 years. China is running out of adults on their 20s and 30s. They don’t have the enough people in the right age range to replace their numbers even if they could get young adults to have more kids (hint they are not convincing anyone.)
China is currently one of the fastest aging nations on the planet and it’s only going to get worse.
That’s going to be an issue in 10-20 years. Who the fuck knows what it’s going to be like 75 years from now. We’re talking about a span of time as long as Communist China has existed. 75 years ago computers barely existed.
Science, science can predict it. We have models that were created over 40 years ago that predicted current global warming trends.
We have models that accurately predict population trends as well. But it’s pretty simple, when you have an agrarian based economy people tend to have many children because they are helpful around the farm. When a society urbanizes having a dozen kids is now a burden and birth rates plummet.
China urbanized within a generation. Stack on the effects of the one child policy and they are no longer reproducing at a rate to replace their current population.
Social sciences and hard sciences are not the same thing. Social “sciences” are largely unfalsifiable and dominated by the “unless modified by human action” caveat that breaks predictions. You can predict very general trends like “fewer births”, but in 1949 you couldn’t look at the populations of Mongolia, China, and South Korea and know that they would have vastly different birth rates 75 years later.
U mad?