When will the 200 billionth person be born?
00:00:00.000 | Current population of Earth is 7.8 billion people.
00:00:04.760 | Since about 50,000 years ago,
00:00:07.100 | when modern Homo sapiens first appeared,
00:00:10.280 | the number of people who have lived is 109 billion,
00:00:15.280 | which naturally leads to the other number
00:00:17.920 | that gives me pause.
00:00:19.280 | Since the origin of modern humans,
00:00:22.480 | 101 billion people have died.
00:00:25.600 | 101 billion stories of suffering, of triumph,
00:00:30.240 | of death in infancy, of living beyond 100 years old,
00:00:35.080 | of wars, of hatred, of love, and beauty.
00:00:40.080 | The data sources, estimates, and projections for this video
00:00:45.320 | are from the United Nations
00:00:46.720 | and the Population Reference Bureau.
00:00:48.800 | So the natural question I had when looking at these numbers
00:00:52.040 | is what are the next milestones?
00:00:54.160 | When will the 110th, the 150th,
00:00:57.320 | the 200 billionth person be born?
00:00:59.700 | And of course, let me say that predicting the future
00:01:02.000 | of anything beyond 10 to 20 years is very difficult.
00:01:05.900 | So this is more of an exercise of building intuition
00:01:09.060 | about the prospects of human civilization.
00:01:11.700 | This is the plot of the world population
00:01:14.240 | on the Y-axis in billions from zero to 12,
00:01:17.880 | on the X-axis from the 1500s to 2100.
00:01:21.680 | We'll reach eight billion people in 2022
00:01:25.480 | and 10 billion people in 2056.
00:01:28.640 | Based on your own projections,
00:01:30.000 | the population of Earth should level out by 2100
00:01:33.160 | at about 11 billion people.
00:01:35.600 | By the way, there are a lot of estimates
00:01:37.080 | of Earth's carrying capacity,
00:01:38.860 | the median of those estimates
00:01:40.280 | being around 10 billion people.
00:01:42.280 | So there's a lot of debates
00:01:43.720 | on whether we'll eventually exceed
00:01:46.240 | the human carrying capacity of Earth.
00:01:48.800 | It should also be noted that since we're living
00:01:50.680 | in the times of COVID,
00:01:52.400 | the estimates for excess deaths in 2020
00:01:55.560 | should be anywhere from zero to 20%.
00:01:58.120 | In several studies of the topic,
00:02:00.060 | the estimate rests at about 20% excess deaths.
00:02:03.040 | So 20% more deaths than otherwise would be expected
00:02:06.660 | for a non-pandemic year.
00:02:08.160 | But when we look at 2020 as a whole,
00:02:10.240 | it's very possible it levels out
00:02:11.600 | to much closer to 0% excess deaths,
00:02:14.800 | given the effects of lockdown
00:02:16.280 | on the patterns of human behavior.
00:02:18.560 | Now, we can take these projections of the world population
00:02:20.760 | and the birth rates estimated by the United Nations
00:02:25.080 | and talk about the number of people
00:02:26.800 | who have ever lived projected out into the future.
00:02:30.480 | Now, we hit the 50 billion person born mark
00:02:34.300 | just about a century and a half
00:02:36.440 | after the common era began.
00:02:38.720 | And we hit the 100 billionth mark just before 1950.
00:02:43.160 | The 110th billion person will be born in 2028.
00:02:46.840 | The 120th billion in 2102.
00:02:50.400 | The 150th billion about three centuries from now in 2340.
00:02:55.400 | And the 200 billionth person will be born in 2736,
00:03:01.600 | which is about seven centuries from now.
00:03:05.800 | Unless, as described in the Global Catastrophic Risk Survey
00:03:11.720 | about existential risk,
00:03:13.720 | that estimates the probability
00:03:15.500 | of the destruction of human civilization in a century
00:03:18.640 | at a terrifying 19%.
00:03:20.960 | And if we take that out to 2736,
00:03:24.960 | the probability that the 200 billionth person
00:03:28.760 | will never be born, at least on Earth,
00:03:32.360 | at a terrifying 77%.
00:03:35.240 | Of course, it's possible that the 200 billionth person
00:03:38.640 | will be born on Mars, or maybe even Proxima B,
00:03:42.680 | the closest Earth-like planet outside of our solar system
00:03:45.860 | that we currently know.
00:03:47.320 | Hope you enjoy these little videos.
00:03:48.940 | They're easy and fun to make.
00:03:51.160 | Give me a chance to talk about some cool ideas.
00:03:54.060 | So if you enjoy these, subscribe,
00:03:55.640 | and remember, try to learn something new every day.
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