What, by 2042? There’s no chance that it will take all the way to 2043 for this to occur? I wish I could be as confident in predicting events three decades yet to come!
(So far as I can tell from tracking down the press release and then the study in question, the prediction in question was formed by estimating birth, death, and migration factors for each age group within each demographic and performing the necessary calculations. Error bars are not indicated anywhere I have found.)
I think that a serious flaw of Less Wrong is that the majority of commenters weigh the defensibility of a statement far higher than the value of the information that it carries (in the technical sense of information value).
A highly defensible statement can be nearly useless if it doesn’t pertain to something of relevance, whereas a mildly inaccurate and/or mildly hard to rhetorically defend statement can be extremely valuable if it reveals an insight that is highly relevant to aspects of reality that we care about.
What, by 2042? There’s no chance that it will take all the way to 2043 for this to occur? I wish I could be as confident in predicting events three decades yet to come!
(So far as I can tell from tracking down the press release and then the study in question, the prediction in question was formed by estimating birth, death, and migration factors for each age group within each demographic and performing the necessary calculations. Error bars are not indicated anywhere I have found.)
I don’t think that the message is significantly changed if you add some variance to that.
You’re right—I’m just a bit trigger-happy about futurism.
I think that a serious flaw of Less Wrong is that the majority of commenters weigh the defensibility of a statement far higher than the value of the information that it carries (in the technical sense of information value).
A highly defensible statement can be nearly useless if it doesn’t pertain to something of relevance, whereas a mildly inaccurate and/or mildly hard to rhetorically defend statement can be extremely valuable if it reveals an insight that is highly relevant to aspects of reality that we care about.