Empty Planet

[Skywalkre]

8 hours ago, Josh said:

It seems more likely everyone is just out of a job and wealth gets further concentrated. More over while I can believe AI will replace some office work, physical automation doesn’t seem to be moving forward in the same leaps and bounds.

Two things I've heard from folks who work in the field.  Automation never truly removes all people (your workforce is reduced by 80-90%) and the physical automation you talk about isn't even close to seeing the light of day anytime soon.

Isn't that kind of... funny?  Years ago all the talk was the lower end of jobs would disappear (and that's somewhat true as assembly lines are mostly robotic now) but today all the talk is how automation coupled to AI will be challenging and likely reducing the need for a lot of high paying, college-degree required work (such like lawyers do).

[Skywalkre]

3 hours ago, Detonable said:

  Regarding blue collar men, my son graduated from high school last year. Many of his classmates had started trades in high school and are now apprentice mechanics, plumbers, etc.  They are making decent money (although at the bottom of their pay band), have no college expenses, and will have 4 years of income under their belt by the time the college students start working. Their blue collar parents did just fine. 

I'm happy to hear those kids had that opportunity.  That is something that disappeared from our high schools here in AZ 30 years ago and is only starting to slowly come back (but still nowhere near as prevalent as it should be).

My concern, though, from reading up on this issue (and experiencing it myself is... will the women they're around be able to look past that lack of degree?  The modern dating scene is one where both sides share some blame... but hypergamy is entirely an issue women need to come to grips with and quickly.

[Skywalkre]

14 minutes ago, Angrybk said:

Used to live a block away from a working-class Brooklyn high school that got a lot of sh*t for being lower-performing, fewer kids sent to college etc. I used to get beers with their choir director(!) who told me "no way, those kids are all doing great now, they're all Lexus mechanics making six figures at 20!"

Their vocational ed stuff was incredible, it was literally called Brooklyn Automotive High School. They had a bunch of cars in the back of the school they'd make the kids try to fix up. 

I've certainly argued over the years that going the trade/blue collar route should be easier (bring shops back to high school) and more encouraged.

At the same time it has its limitations, too.

A friend from my old job stepped down to part-time to go to school to be an electrician.  He's a smart guy (was one of those enlisted nuclear techs in the Navy where the school had like a 90% failure rate) and he's been the top student from day one.  But now that he's close to graduating he's learned a lot of jobs in that field end up paying... not that great.  Like any career it appears a few people at the top bring up the average for the entire group.  On top of that the trades/blue collar route is just harder on your body.  My old job with him wasn't that bad... working in a warehouse and I was driving forklifts at the end.  Still... these months since I've quit... I actually work out less then I was but feel so much better.  Jobs like that are just hard on you as you age.

Saw a piece on long haul trucking a few months back.  They touched how it's possible to make six figures doing that... but that's after decades in the field.  On average new truckers make less than minimum wage when you factor how much they're actually working and on top of this they're away from home for weeks on end.  We have a trucker shortage for very good reasons (this piece touched on that we have something like 4x the number of folks with the appropriate license and training to do the work... it's just that they all quit shortly after starting).

I think the biggest selling point right now is the lack of debt if you can get into one of these jobs without taking on the debt.  The school my fiend is going to costs more than going to ASU for year and some of those guys are going to walk away with $20k in debt into a job just making $40k/year.  Not an ideal situation, either...

[NickM]

1 hour ago, Angrybk said:

 

IMHO we've always been an immigrant nation and that's how we've prospered. The answer is to figure out some intelligent policy sh*t and focus more on melting pot vs salad bowl stuff. 

 

 

The "Long Marchers" want us at each other's throats.

[bojan]

53 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

...And folks like Jordan Peterson were apparently wrong about what they're getting degrees in.  Peterson always argued (supposedly from data from Nordic countries) that women tended to get degrees in fields that were more... feminine.  Apparently the latest data shows women now outpacing men in STEM degrees and other more traditionally male areas...

In Serbia woman have taken over university level "hard sciences" long time ago. Faculty of chemistry has ~80-85% female students since... idk, 90s at least. Pharmacy was always heavily female, 90-95%. Physics, mathematics, electronics, computer sciences are at least 50:50 ATM. Technology and metallurgy (various sorts of applied chemistry like chemical engineering) was about 60/40 female/male when I did it in late '90s/early 2000s, nowadays it is more like 75:25 % female/male. Medicine (doctors, not nurses) is 70+% females. Law, economics and art have more equal "representation" than hard sciences, and always had. Overall, on university level there is about 20% more female than male students.

Edit - male to female ration in Serbia is 980:1000, so it is not some huge surplus of females causing it.

 

[Rick]

33 minutes ago, bojan said:

In Serbia woman have taken over university level "hard sciences" long time ago. Faculty of chemistry has ~80-85% female students since... idk, 90s at least. Pharmacy was always heavily female, 90-95%. Physics, mathematics, electronics, computer sciences are at least 50:50 ATM. Technology and metallurgy (various sorts of applied chemistry like chemical engineering) was about 60/40 female/male when I did it in late '90s/early 2000s, nowadays it is more like 75:25 % female/male. Medicine (doctors, not nurses) is 70+% females. Law, economics and art have more equal "representation" than hard sciences, and always had. Overall, on university level there is about 20% more female than male students.

Edit - male to female ration in Serbia is 980:1000, so it is not some huge surplus of females causing it.

 

Out of curiosity, is it known if these same women are employed in the field of their study now? Since the early 2,000's?

[bojan]

Yes, with at least same % as are males. In fact women with university education in "hard sciences" probably have somewhat* higher chances of finding a job, due the reputation of being more hard working then men, which is not unsubstantiated since they on average finish university faster than males, and with higher average grades**.

*It is hard to quantify, since even on single faculty combination of courses taken might make a lot of difference in perspective of finding a decently paying job.

** I know that back when I was a student for year after year most of the "student of the generation" titles would be taken by females and maybe only 1/5 would be male.

Edited May 1, 2023 by bojan

[Skywalkre]

45 minutes ago, bojan said:

Yes, with at least same % as are males. In fact women with university education in "hard sciences" probably have somewhat* higher chances of finding a job, due the reputation of being more hard working then men, which is not unsubstantiated since they on average finish university faster than males, and with higher average grades**.

*It is hard to quantify, since even on single faculty combination of courses taken might make a lot of difference in perspective of finding a decently paying job.

** I know that back when I was a student for year after year most of the "student of the generation" titles would be taken by females and maybe only 1/5 would be male.

This makes perfect sense in light of what prof Galloway has been talking about.  Simply put the male brain develops later.  Going to college at the age we currently push for it to happen puts women in an advantageous spot over men.  Galloway has suggested 'red shirting' males... starting them in kindergarten a year later than women... but even then that's probably not enough of a difference (some of these differences in benchmarks are years apart).

Edited May 1, 2023 by Skywalkre

[Angrybk]

My career field (cyber intelligence, private sector) saw a huge influx of women over the past ten years. Most of the companies are close to 50 percent women. 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Angrybk

[Detonable]

7 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

Per the bolded bit in the US and UK for sure women in their 20s aren't keeping up - they've clearly passed men at this point.  The breakdown of women and men getting degrees is apparently approaching 60:40 now (don't quote me on the specific ration but it's well past 50:50). 

And folks like Jordan Peterson were apparently wrong about what they're getting degrees in.  Peterson always argued (supposedly from data from Nordic countries) that women tended to get degrees in fields that were more... feminine.  Apparently the latest data shows women now outpacing men in STEM degrees and other more traditionally male areas.

The above graduation rates are apparently from the US and UK.  I'd be curious if they're the same in all Western nations and if Peterson's Nordic anecdote was from a time when rates had just hit parity (but were trending in the direction we're now seeing in the US and UK and that was an incorrect conclusion he made).

  Not sure women are keeping up with men on standardized tests. Certainly not regarding Nobel Prizes. 

[sunday]

52 minutes ago, Detonable said:

  Not sure women are keeping up with men on standardized tests. Certainly not regarding Nobel Prizes. 

In the bell curve of intelligence, women are smarter on average, but the standard deviation is higher for men, so there are way more dumb men, but of the few genius-level individuals, more are men also.

From my lecturing days, my most brilliant student was a young lady. She was blonde with blue eyes, so quite an exception to the dumb blonde stereotype. 😄

[Ssnake]

The bell curves of men and women have a huge overlap in most cognition and psychological tests. The differences are dramatic however when you get to the extremes of these curves, the exceptional ones. And awards tend to be given to those +four ... +five sigmas away from the median (or the lucky ones).

[Josh]

10 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

While the US can keep making Americans through immigration... this is still bad for the countries these immigrants are coming from and even moreso in a world with shrinking populations across the board (even in 3rd world countries eventually).

If you follow Zeihan he talks about this and highlights how from an American perspective this is great... because with globalization decreasing and America sitting either directly on or with good ties to countries with all essential resources needed to keep its economy going we'll be fine.

The rest of the world... well...

At the global level yes, it is going to become a huge economic problem. Though one does wonder if it isn’t for the best for humanity resource wise over a truly long time frame. Managing the problem is going to have to be country by country anyway you think about it, and some countries will probably be impoverished by the process.

[Josh]

10 hours ago, Angrybk said:

Used to live a block away from a working-class Brooklyn high school that got a lot of sh*t for being lower-performing, fewer kids sent to college etc. I used to get beers with their choir director(!) who told me "no way, those kids are all doing great now, they're all Lexus mechanics making six figures at 20!"

Their vocational ed stuff was incredible, it was literally called Brooklyn Automotive High School. They had a bunch of cars in the back of the school they'd make the kids try to fix up. 

There’s a high school in my old neighborhood of sunnyside Queens that literally focuses on aircraft repair. Google “aviation high school” or google map to 36th and queens bulivard; you can see a couple planes outside. I’m jealous.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Josh

[Ssnake]

A shrinking world population will be very beneficial for nature in general. It's just, at the state and global level we have not much of a clue about the socio-economic consequences. Historically, long-term economic growth rates correlate closely with the population growth. That would suggest long-term global stagnation or even recession. (Short-term economic growth is closely tied to energy prices, medium-term growth is dominated by technological innovation.)

[Mike1158]

https://foursquare.com/v/aviation-high-school/4ba3b83af964a5200c5838e3

 

Just about all political styles rely on increasing populations so we are going to have to evolve a different style of running the place.  A growing population will alwayts lead to larger demand for and higher rate of exploiting resources but without the increase in political income and a reduction in population means each and every succeeding generation will have to pay a greater share of the tax etc burden.  The greatest of all Pyramid/Ponzi schemes if you like.

 

Short version?  We have to kick politics in the nuts and go professional.

[DB]

16 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

As to the second point you made... one of these podcasts I just listened to touched the fact that women aged 40-45 are taking the most antidepressants than any other 5 years grouping of men and women.  Take a wild guess why that is...

Take on the traditionally male roles without the protection afforded by the traditional male role model and you are likely to narrow that gap. Nothing is without consequence.

On the education front, yeah, there is still a lot of bias in education, however there is some evidence that changes in curriculum (particularly a transfer of credits to coursework from examinations) switched the bias strongly from males to females. Perhaps a combination of a change from a short-term, high-pressure situation to a long term course-based commitment that suits the more mature ability to focus on things that are necessary and not necessarily interesting.

 

[PCallahan]

On 4/30/2023 at 10:40 PM, Skywalkre said:

This makes perfect sense in light of what prof Galloway has been talking about.  Simply put the male brain develops later.  Going to college at the age we currently push for it to happen puts women in an advantageous spot over men.  Galloway has suggested 'red shirting' males... starting them in kindergarten a year later than women... but even then that's probably not enough of a difference (some of these differences in benchmarks are years apart).

On a personal level, this is basically what I did.  I was a good but not great student in high school, not particularly mature, so I did a fifth year of high school (basically... a private school needed an offensive tackle...), and frankly, I grew up a shocking amount in that time.  I really did need another year before I was ready for college (plus I turned 21 at the start of my sophomore year!)

[futon]

South Korea’s current population of around 51.6 million is expected to decline significantly to 36.2 million by 2072 due to critically low birth rates, a statistics report showed.

The portion of seniors aged 65 and above in the population, which came to 17.4 percent in 2022, is expected to soar to 47.7 percent in 2072, according to the biennial report released by state-run Statistics Korea.

Regarding the state of the population, the agency predicted an annual fall of 0.16 percent for a decade starting in 2025, eventually accelerating to a 1.31 percent decline by 2072.

The gloomy outlook came as the country’s fertility rate - the number of children that are expected to be born to a woman over her lifetime - hit a record low of 0.70 in the second quarter of 2023, hovering far below that of other major countries.

https://m.koreaherald.com/amp/view.php?ud=20240109000745

[urbanoid]

Early estimates for Poland in 2023:

272k* births vs 409k deaths, TFR down to 1,18 from 1,26 in 2022.

*in 2017 it was over 400k births for comparison.

[Ivanhoe]

6 hours ago, urbanoid said:

Early estimates for Poland in 2023:

272k* births vs 409k deaths, TFR down to 1,18 from 1,26 in 2022.

*in 2017 it was over 400k births for comparison.

If you can arrange a tryst for me with Agata Trzebuchowska, I'll do what I can.

[Josh]

The Polish numbers surprise me a bit; I thought it was a rather religious population. That tends to produce larger families.

The numbers coming out of China, even the published ones, seem to be only spiraling further downward. It seems to me by mid to late century there is going to be a stark rearrangement of global economics based on who has human capital and who doesn't, barring technology simply making such obsolete (which also does not seem completely unlikely at this point). It seems like a rather horrific amount of economic change is coming (and with it, geopolitical power changes).

[BansheeOne]

Actually, Catholic countries in Europe have the lowest fertility rates; Croatia, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal and Spain pretty much bring up the rear. Ireland is the main outlier.

[urbanoid]

 

[BansheeOne]

Quote

Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021, with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Published: March 20, 2024

Summary

Background

Accurate assessments of current and future fertility—including overall trends and changing population age structures across countries and regions—are essential to help plan for the profound social, economic, environmental, and geopolitical challenges that these changes will bring. Estimates and projections of fertility are necessary to inform policies involving resource and health-care needs, labour supply, education, gender equality, and family planning and support. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 produced up-to-date and comprehensive demographic assessments of key fertility indicators at global, regional, and national levels from 1950 to 2021 and forecast fertility metrics to 2100 based on a reference scenario and key policy-dependent alternative scenarios.

[...]

Findings

During the period from 1950 to 2021, global TFR more than halved, from 4·84 (95% UI 4·63–5·06) to 2·23 (2·09–2·38). Global annual livebirths peaked in 2016 at 142 million (95% UI 137–147), declining to 129 million (121–138) in 2021. Fertility rates declined in all countries and territories since 1950, with TFR remaining above 2·1—canonically considered replacement-level fertility—in 94 (46·1%) countries and territories in 2021. This included 44 of 46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which was the super-region with the largest share of livebirths in 2021 (29·2% [28·7–29·6]). 47 countries and territories in which lowest estimated fertility between 1950 and 2021 was below replacement experienced one or more subsequent years with higher fertility; only three of these locations rebounded above replacement levels. Future fertility rates were projected to continue to decline worldwide, reaching a global TFR of 1·83 (1·59–2·08) in 2050 and 1·59 (1·25–1·96) in 2100 under the reference scenario. The number of countries and territories with fertility rates remaining above replacement was forecast to be 49 (24·0%) in 2050 and only six (2·9%) in 2100, with three of these six countries included in the 2021 World Bank-defined low-income group, all located in the GBD super-region of sub-Saharan Africa. The proportion of livebirths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa was forecast to increase to more than half of the world's livebirths in 2100, to 41·3% (39·6–43·1) in 2050 and 54·3% (47·1–59·5) in 2100. The share of livebirths was projected to decline between 2021 and 2100 in most of the six other super-regions—decreasing, for example, in south Asia from 24·8% (23·7–25·8) in 2021 to 16·7% (14·3–19·1) in 2050 and 7·1% (4·4–10·1) in 2100—but was forecast to increase modestly in the north Africa and Middle East and high-income super-regions. Forecast estimates for the alternative combined scenario suggest that meeting SDG targets for education and contraceptive met need, as well as implementing pro-natal policies, would result in global TFRs of 1·65 (1·40–1·92) in 2050 and 1·62 (1·35–1·95) in 2100. The forecasting skill metric values for the IHME model were positive across all age groups, indicating that the model is better than the constant prediction.

[...]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00550-6/fulltext

IOW, the future of humanity is in Pacific islanders and Somalis. 😉