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.
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.
“Hey, here’s a possible future. Not the most likely or even the most accurate to some imagined neutral policy position, just one potential future. Or maybe even not a potential future if we’re missing a key impact.” It’s all bullshit man, with practically zero prescriptive value. One of the broadly assumed core components of birthing decisions, economics, is almost unpredictable even 20 years out, let alone 75. The simulation-based social “sciences” are just prettied-up hunches and guesswork in anything but the shortest of terms.
But I agree that they aren’t meant to be proven, because that’s a very convenient space to work in when your methodology is “I made a guess about the coefficient” combined with “what if complicated things were actually simple”. Garbage in, garbage out.
You sound really sure about your understanding of statistics and probability, and I don’t think anything I can say can impact that. I’m going to defer to the experts, but you do you I guess.
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.
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.
“Hey, here’s a possible future. Not the most likely or even the most accurate to some imagined neutral policy position, just one potential future. Or maybe even not a potential future if we’re missing a key impact.” It’s all bullshit man, with practically zero prescriptive value. One of the broadly assumed core components of birthing decisions, economics, is almost unpredictable even 20 years out, let alone 75. The simulation-based social “sciences” are just prettied-up hunches and guesswork in anything but the shortest of terms.
But I agree that they aren’t meant to be proven, because that’s a very convenient space to work in when your methodology is “I made a guess about the coefficient” combined with “what if complicated things were actually simple”. Garbage in, garbage out.
You sound really sure about your understanding of statistics and probability, and I don’t think anything I can say can impact that. I’m going to defer to the experts, but you do you I guess.