The post leans too hard on “we have no idea.” Population numbers are estimates with error bars, especially in places with weak census infrastructure, but that’s not the same as ignorance. Most countries run censuses (sometimes badly) and use births/deaths/migration accounting to update totals. Calling them “fake” is misleading — it’s uneven data quality, not numerology. “Large uncertainty” ≠ “no idea.”

Countries have incentives to manipulate population data. Most error that I’m aware of is not attributable to poor data quality. For example, if you have a real estate bubble you have a strong incentive to show population growth.

Love this. I had a copy 40 years ago.

I can never watch just a minute of these guy’s video — it’s always the whole thing, always so interesting.

This is probably just availability bias / frequency illusion at work. Thinking about something once makes the brain suddenly notice it everywhere. The coincidences stick, but all the misses don’t. Feels like magic, but it’s just how attention and memory play tricks.

Did Mel or Richard write this part?

I'd be more impressive if he walked it backwards.

If he made it all the way he would beat the record set by by Plennie Wingo in 1931-1932 when he walked from Santa Monica, CA to Istanbul, Turkey backwards. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plennie_L._Wingo

It was a challenging walk.

so last security patch was over 7 years ago?

The Carl Sagan bit is also an amusing tribute.

sociopaths

Evidence-based reasoning needs data, even if imperfect. It's amzing that we reached a point in our society where that precept needs to be defended or justified.