dr_scientist

@dr_scientist@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan’s Birth Rate Set to Break Even the Bleakest Forecasts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Appeal to authority is neither a fallacy nor proof. It is rhetoric. It proves nothing, and disproves nothing.

  For example, your authorities debunk “long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s (sic) a necessity.” My authorities, like William Catton or Meadows, et. al. would say otherwise. Invoking them doesn’t prove my perspective. It does prove there is much debate about the subject.

  In such instances, defining metrics and showing your work, as the math teachers say, is the best way forward.

  The article in question, for example, relies on hype like ‘670,000, a level never previously recorded since national statistics began in 1899.’ Level of what? Percentage of population? Actual number of people? Compared to how many? With the priviso, for example that ‘The expected figure, … excludes children born to foreign residents”. How many of those? I suspect not many, but it’s necessary to know.

  What the article could have stated are actual metrics such as replacement rate, which in Japan is 1.20. South Korean is considerably lower, at 0.72-0.74. We could use words like ‘cliff’ I guess, but I prefer numbers, and I would encourage their use in articles such as this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan’s Birth Rate Set to Break Even the Bleakest Forecasts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure if ‘brought up and debunked by experts’ is the best argument out there. For example, ‘population inertia’ would cover only one lifespan, not centuries. That is to say, whatever the population is now, it could be 10 people to 100 billion people within 100 years. This is not discounting cultural and psychological factors, but if we’re talking human behaviour, that’s literally everything.

  Secondly, the population decline is hardly a cliff. It is decreasing in some countries like Japan, but when added into the global picture, we’re not even at neutral. We’re still growing.

  You are absolutely right that a larger aging population is something that must be addressed. However, if increased population pressure leads to a tipping point, like a shift in the AMOC or immigration pressure from hotter areas to cooler areas, our current treatment of old people doesn’t fill me with confidence. I think in a crisis, we would sacrifice them anyway. We would write some sympathetic think pieces about it though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK someone created a site to endlessly scroll Wikipedia⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It will remain a mystery

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK someone created a site to endlessly scroll Wikipedia⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I love this, but is anyone else having trouble with the css/text? Chrome seems to dim the images, but the white text is unreadable on all the images for firefox. Doesn’t work on Safari at all.