2024-12-27 04:09:07
Re @robinlavallee There is evidence that low fertility leads to civilization-level collapse.
https://x.com/Culture_Crit/status/1869112366052655120
2024-12-27 03:22:34
Re Japan and South Korea give us some answers with Herbivore Men. Taxes? Just working less, doing nothing, playing video games. Checking out.
That does not amount to a rebellion. It will just make the gerontocracy more evident.
Countries: Thailand, South-East Asia.
Thailand is already in an inverted pyramid. The population collapse is happening nearly everywhere.
2024-12-27 03:08:30
Re If there is a gerontocracy, the younger ones will rebel.
Will they? How does that happen? They take away the voting rights of the 65+ following an armed conflict?
fleeing to other countries or avoiding taxes
Fleeing to which country? Irak?
avoiding taxes
Young people increasing work for corporations as employees. It is difficult to avoid taxes in such a context.
2024-12-27 01:06:27
In 2023, Germany's birth rate plummeted to 1.35 children per woman, dipping below the United Nations' "ultra-low" fertility threshold of 1.4. This decline signals a challenging scenario where reversing the trend of falling birth rates becomes increasingly difficult. Concurrently, both Estonia and Austria have also fallen below this critical 1.4 threshold, aligning them with nine other EU nations—among them Spain, Greece, and Italy—that had already recorded fertility rates under 1.4 children per woman by 2022. Other countries have low fertility rates: Canada reached 1.33 in 2022. South Korea reached 0.72 in 2023. High fertility remains in Africa and in the Middle East, but even there, it is constantly falling.
To understand what a fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman means, consider that if you start with a population where half are women, and each woman has 1.4 children, the next generation will be less than 70% the size of the previous generation in terms of the number of women who will reach reproductive age. Your population shrinks by a factor of 2 (or more) each two generations. Over time, this reduction compounds, leading to a exponentially smaller population unless other variables like immigration, changes in mortality rates, or shifts in fertility rates come into play.
It would not be so bad if we got to 1.4 and stayed there, but the rates are falling in many countries. Once you reach 1.2, your population divides by 3 (or more0 every two generations.
Our intuitions regarding exponential decay are often wrong. Look around you and imagine that two thirds of the schools might be closed on the next 50 years.
People often make the mistake of assuming that a diminishing population means that, eventually, we just get a normal age pyramid, only smaller. But no: once you enter population collapse, the age pyramid goes to a kite... it is inverted. You end up (permanently) with a higher ratio of old people.
In most of the West, a large fraction of the 65+ people are entirely dependent on the state: they have insufficient personal savings to pay for their own healthcare. Thus younger people have to be taxed. There is often a myth that older people paid taxes that somehow went into a fund that pays for all that, but that's not how it works. The young pay for the old as part of a deal where they own children will later do the same for them.
In democracies, the kite means that older people will get to choose the politicians. We are literally headed towards a gerontocracy.
I predict that this kite population will put enormous pressure on science to deliver age-reversal technology. Simply put: we need people to be productive much longer.
It would be simpler to have more kids, and some communities will opt for that age-old option: they will thrive. By 2050, 25% of Isreal might be made of ultra-orthodox jews, for the simple reason that they have kids while others citizens do not.
But this will not lower the pressure for age reversal and the tech oriented people will be those most directly touched by population collapse. This is true even if you predict that AI will replace work. Indeed, politicians are likely to get older, to reflect their population. This means that you will have many more politicians that might suffer from dementia or be unable to climb stairs. That's not desirable.
People will learn that many animals do not age, not the way we do. Naked mole rats, are effectively ageless: they are fertile and cancer-free until death. Lobsters are similarily ageless, they just get larger and larger, and eventually suffer from parasites. Some wales and turtles are similarly ageless.
The future will not be like the present.
2024-12-26 23:25:10
Re AMD either supported AVX-512 properly, or it did not support it. So they did the right thing. They also support it uniformly.
I don't know what the PS6 will run on, but if it is an AMD processor, then it will have very good AVX-512.
And good AVX-512 is very, very good. It is a very good ISA. Don't dismiss it.
If I am given a console with modern AVX-512 (Zen 4 or better, VBMI2+) and you are not giving me access to AVX-512, then I'll consider you made a big mistake.
Initially, it looked like .NET would not provide AVX-512 intrinsics, and I was also skeptical... I paid little attention to AVX-512 relatively speaking... But AMD Zen 4 changed all that.
2024-12-26 22:52:34
Re A constitution is more than just words on a page; it's a living document shaped by those who interpret it.
We've got solid proof that the US government has stepped on American rights time and again. Take, for instance, this eye-opening case from the BBC:
"According to a majority of the Supreme Court, Mr. Biden had the law on his side when ordering healthcare workers to get vaccinated, but using a 51-year-old workplace safety statute to implement a vaccine-or-test requirement on all large employers was pushing it too far. This decision throws the current balance of the Supreme Court into sharp focus, with four reliably conservative justices, three liberal ones, and two pivotal figures - Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh - at the center of this ideological seesaw. This judicial mix represents yet another hurdle for Biden's Covid-19 strategy, which has often lagged behind the virus's unpredictable turns. The administration was slow on boosters and caught off-guard by the Omicron surge in testing demand. Now, Biden faces the challenge of either persuading Congress to legislate mandates - a tough sell considering the Senate's resistance to his agenda - or finding novel ways to guide the nation through the ongoing health crisis."

Here's the kicker: who interprets the constitution? The judges, appointed by elected presidents. This means the constitution's interpretation can swing with the political winds. In this case, a conservative-leaning court tipped the scales.
But look at Canada, where liberal-appointed judges hold sway. It's a stark reminder that law is fundamentally an exercise of power.
The Canadian lesson? Don't expect the courts to be your savior for rights protection. They're part of the government machine. Instead:
•Make allies with truckers. They move the nation, literally and figuratively.
•Leverage the influence of tech moguls like Shopify's leaders to fund independent media that can challenge the narrative.
•Get the attention of disruptors like Elon Musk who can amplify your cause.
The real freedom in Canada, as elsewhere, comes from those outside the government and judicial systems who stand up for it. The government might wield immense power, but it's also bound by its own cautious, often self-serving logic.
Engage, mobilize, and empower those beyond the courtroom to truly safeguard your freedoms.
@LichTamara did more to protect Canadian freedoms than any lawyer. @elonmusk did more to protect freedom of speech in the West than any court.
