The underpopulation bomb

While the global population of humans will continue to rise for at least another 40 years, demographic trends in full force today make it clear that a much bigger existential threat lies in global underpopulation.

That worry seems preposterous at first. We've all seen the official graph of expected human population growth. A steady rising curve swells past us now at 6 billion and peaks out about 2050. The tally at the expected peak continues to be downgraded by experts; currently UN demographers predict 9.2 billion at the top. The peak may off by a billion or so, but in broad sweep the chart is correct.

But curiously, the charts never show what happens on the other side of the peak. The second half is so often missing that no one even asks for it any longer. It may be because it is pretty scary news. The untold story of the hidden half of the chart is that it projects a steady downward plunge toward fewer and fewer people on the planet each year—and no agreement on how close to zero it can go. In fact there is much more agreement about the peak, than about how few people there will be on the planet in a 100 years.

From Kevin Kelly over at Edge. Lots of interesting data points throughout, and it raises an interesting question: what is the right economic model for a world of fewer people, more of them older?

A country like Japan, already deep in the throes of grappling this dual whammy of lower birth rates and an aging population, has popular art centered around this issue. Roujin Z, an anime movie from Katsuhiro Ôtomo, the creator of the great Akira, built a sci-fi thriller off of this socioeconomic issue. While I have not seen the movie, it sounds from plot summaries as if it was prescient in prescribing an increase in robot labor as one method of bridging the productivity gap that results from this population contraction and demographic aging.

Sometimes I think I should have kids just so that decades from now I'll have someone to teach me how to use the mind control or gestural interfaces on my set top box that allow me to watch reruns of Breaking Bad on my ancient plasma TV.

UPDATE: The plot of Roujin Z may be coming true: "The [Japanese] health ministry is launching a program to promote the use of nursing care robots to meet expected increases in demand in the face of Japan’s rapidly aging population."

Attention scarcity

Poor people often do things that are against their long-term interests such as playing the lottery, borrowing too much and saving too little. Shah, Mullainathan and Sahfir have a new theory to explain some of these puzzles. SMS argue that immediate problems draw people’s attention and as people use cognitive resources to solve these problems they have fewer resources left over to solve or even notice other problems. In essence, it’s easier for the rich than the poor to follow the Eisenhower rule–”Don’t let the urgent overcome the important”–because the poor face many more urgent tasks. My car needed a brake job the other day – despite this being a relatively large expense I was able to cover it without a second’s thought. Compared to a poorer person I benefited from my wealth twice, once by being able to cover the expense and again by not having to devote cognitive resources to solving the problem.

SMS test the theory with small experiments in which people are asked to play simple games. Poverty is simulated by giving some players fewer game resources. Players in the “poverty” conditions are then shown to devote more attention to the current round and less attention to future rounds, including borrowing more from future rounds.

More here at Marginal Revolution.  Most people have a problem of tending to the urgent over the important, but it may be that poverty exacerbates the effect. This and an earlier post on The Persistence of Poverty strike me as having advanced our understanding of the harmful effects of poverty.

I understand now why my grandmother and mother always told me to tend to my health when I was younger. It was years of accumulated wisdom on their part as to the attention-depleting effects of being ill. 

Mashing up the 21st and earlier centuries

art x smart has incorporated Apple devices into famous paintings from yesteryear.  I particularly liked these two.

The TV to get (before it's gone)

Those who know me well know I'm really fussy about my A/V setup. I was dismayed to learn that Panasonic is exiting the plasma TV business. Pioneer stopped making plasma TVs a few years ago, though not before I could snag one of their Kuro plasma displays. They produced the most gorgeous picture out there, with the deepest black levels, and now, more than 6 years level, my set still produces a better picture than the latest LCD sets on the market.

LCD is all the rage for how thin the displays are, but once you have the TV hung or set up the width and weight of the TV contribute little to your viewing pleasure. The most salient advantage of LCD TVs over plasmas is their ability to cope with ambient light better, but if you're a video enthusiast you'll try to control light in any viewing room anyhow. In all other respects when it comes to picture quality, I prefer plasmas. The average consumer cares less about such things, and thus LCDs outsell plasmas by a healthy margin.

If you are the type of person who cares about getting a TV with the best picture quality, Panasonic's impending exit means it might be your last chance to grab the best mid-sized plasma out there, the best of the TVs that won't cost you the price of an entry-level sedan: the Panasonic VIERA TC-P60ZT60.  I had heard good things from a few A/V enthusiasts I trust, so I checked one out at a local electronics store this week while waiting to meet up with someone.

It lives up to the hype. The black levels were visibly deeper than those of the LCDs around it (though you do have to tweak the settings as electronics stores notoriously jack up brightness and contrast levels for TVs on the showroom floor, and those aren't the optimal settings for everyday viewing). Contrast ratio matters a lot for actual and perceived picture quality. I'm not a fan of current 3D technology in home TVs so I can't speak to that aspect of the TV, but for normal everyday 2D viewing the Panasonic is at the head of the class.

So if you're looking for a TV this holiday season, snag one of these before they're gone forever. Word on the street has it they're being discontinued in December. If you want an even bigger set, Panasonic makes a 65" version as well.

The soon to be discontinued Panasonic VIERA TC-P60ZT60

Subconscious competence

Mark Cavendish is probably the greatest cycling sprinter of my lifetime, if not ever. When you see video of him in a sprint finish, it seems clear his superiority is a function of incredible physical gifts, he flies past other sprinters as if they're towing a cement block. 

But this interview suggests part of his dominance owes to a near photographic memory. 

“If I do a circuit,” he assures me, “then after three laps I could tell you where all the potholes were.”

Cavendish cannot say when or how he developed his photographic memory. All he knows is that he possesses an extraordinary gift for absorbing his surroundings. All cyclists reconnoitre the courses they will ride, learning the cambers, getting a feel for the twists. For Cavendish, knowledge comes more naturally. When he first applied to join the British Cycling academy as a teenager, coach Rod Ellingworth asked him to describe his journey.

Cavendish was able to describe his trip from the Isle of Man to Manchester in minute detail: the road numbers, the towns he went through, the times he went through them. Ellingworth realised he had an unusual talent on his hands.

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Is he a genius? “Last time I did an IQ test I was, yeah.” But a very particular sort of genius. “You called it conscious subconscious competence,” Cavendish’s agent Simon Bayliff pipes up from the back of the room. “You know when an athlete is in the zone? There’s actually a stage beyond that, where you are actually conscious of your subconscious. There’s a ladder: conscious incompetence, then conscious competence, then subconscious competence, which is the zone.”

“Now I have no f------ idea what he’s talking about,” Cavendish says, and we all laugh.

Another sport in which spatial perception and pattern recognition is critical is football, especially for the quarterback. A huge part of Peyton Manning or Tom Brady's performance is their ability to deliver a football accurately, but before the play even starts, they're already looking at the position of opposing defensive players like an array of opponent chess pieces and making some decisions as to first, second, and third options for that play.

Elite point guards in the NBA also seem to have an instinctive ability to read the alignment of players on a court and make the optimal decision as to how to get the ball to the right player at the right point in space to optimize expected shot outcomes. 

Perhaps the reason world class athletes sound so uninteresting when describing great plays they've made is that they've reached this level of “subconscious competence”; after all, if what you did was “subconscious” it may be beyond your own ability to verbalize.