OFC Meeting 12
OFC Meetings --> here
11 Dec 2018:
POPULATION and IMMIGRATION
-- Jess
This is partly a reprise of my attempt to cover FUTURE DEMOGRAPHICS in that disastrous first talk at Serious Coffee, but this time with a focus on the hot-button issue of IMMIGRATION.
Some questions from that first talk (did we answer any of them?) are:
- How mobile will people be in 20 years?
- Which people?
- What will be the effects of such mobility?
- Where will most of them live in 20 years?
- Where will Canadian immigrants come from? Here's some Census data. -- Compare the USA data.
- Where will Canadian emigrants (if any) go?
- How many people can Canada hold?
- What would be the ideal number of Canadians?
- How many people can the Earth hold?
- What would be the ideal number of humans on Earth?
- What will be the number of robots per person?
- What will the age distribution look like in 20 years?
- How old can we get?
- How old do you want to get?
- Will we just upload into Virtual Reality?
Some possible sources of ideas and information on this subject:
- The Limits to Growth (classic 1972 book whose gloomy predictions have been largely borne out)
- The Population Bomb by Paul & Anne Ehrlich in 1968, predicting catastrophes that have not happened.
- The Gapminder World website at http:www.gapminder.org which explains why they haven't & probably won't. (See especially the videos entitled "How Not to be Ignorant" and "DON'T PANIC: The Facts About Population". You should also buy the book, "Factfulness".)
Philip: from a comment in the New York Times: "The migration crisis is the population bomb going off."
Jess: That's exactly the sort of myth propagation Rosling warns against -- especially from journalists, whose job it is to make the news sound more dramatic than it is.
MINUTES:
IIRC, 8 people showed up for this meeting.
We probably have the Board Room again for 2019, thanks to Keith!
Anne Toby responded positively to my invitation to come speak on human genetic manipulation sometime this year. I will let everyone know when she picks a date; I presume we can accommodate her any time!
The January meeting may have lower attendance; we will just have a brainstorming session again.
Tentative topic for February: "Passion and Purpose -- what drives us to do what?"
Another candidate topic: "Privileging Ethics -- can enlightenment recapture government?"
It was suggested that some TED talks are as good as an OFC session. I agree, so I started a list on the OFC EXTRAS page, which see. (Please add your favourites!)
