| ▲ | jjk166 2 hours ago |
| Fake is generally the wrong word. Inaccurate would be much more appropriate. Every population estimate is just that. There is going to be error. The error may be small or large, and it may be biased in one direction or another, but there is a clear chain from data to result. Even if your data sources are fraudulent, if you're making any attempt to account for that, though you may not do a very good job, it's still just inaccuracy. Fake would imply that the people releasing the population estimates have a much better estimate but are choosing to instead publish a made up number. This may actually happen in a few cases, but the claim that it's widespread is both hard to believe and unsupported by this article. |
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| ▲ | crazygringo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Fake would imply that the people releasing the population estimates have a much better estimate but are choosing to instead publish a made up number. That is literally what the article describes, though, in Papua New Guinea. And it describes why states in Nigeria have such a strong incentive to fake their population numbers, that it's impossible to achieve an accurate national total. I do think the headline exaggerates, I doubt "a lot" are fake, but some do seem to be. |
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| ▲ | observationist an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Any country where there's no robust free press and legal protections for things like criticizing the government is lying about nearly everything, in the direction where the government feels it is advantageous to lie. If they feel they get a benefit from inflating population, they will inflate population, and it won't be subtle. The WHO and other international organizations are not legitimate sources of information; they take direction from their host countries and report numbers as directed. If you pick any country and look at proxies that have significant cost associated with them, at relative population levels of verified locations, the population of the world differs pretty radically from the claims most countries put out. If you don't have independent verification free from censorial pressures and legal repercussions, then you get propaganda. This is human nature, whether it stems from abuse of power or wanting to tell a story that's aspirational or from blatant incompetence or corruption. Population numbers fall under the "lies, damned lies, and statistics" umbrella. | | |
| ▲ | Braxton1980 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | >If you pick any country and look at proxies that have significant cost associated with them, at relative population levels of verified locations, the population of the world differs pretty radically from the claims most countries put out. Can you provide an example that shows a radically different population count? >If you don't have independent verification free from censorial pressures and legal repercussions, then you get propaganda Always? How would you perform a census without massive amounts of money and cooperation from the government? | | |
| ▲ | oyashirochama 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | China is the best example, its estimated that their population is off by entire countries in some statisitics, either through disppeared girls, hidden covid deaths, local economic fraud. There is also no independently verifiable group in China and is actually explicitly banned to use non-government methods. | | |
| ▲ | thijson 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I wonder if the population numbers could be reverse engineered through things like light pollution seen by satellites, or food consumption. Some people claim that China's population is half of what the officials claim. |
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| ▲ | carlosjobim an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | All "societies" from the smallest to the largest are built upon lies upon lies upon lies. When it starts falling apart, the violence commences. |
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| ▲ | Braxton1980 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | How is a strong incentive alone evidence of wrongdoing? | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I didn't say it was. I was just providing the context. The entire middle of the article describes the wrongdoing. |
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| ▲ | darth_avocado an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Fake would imply that the people releasing the population estimates have a much better estimate but are choosing to instead publish a made up number Fake simply means not genuine. It doesn’t require the people reporting it to have a real estimate. It simply requires the people reporting it to just not try finding the real number. |
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| ▲ | matt-p an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Incentives (for western Governments) are strong to show population has grown as little as possible, because it reduces stats on (mostly illegal) immigration, and improves GDP-per capita. I think it is probably healthy to explore if these incentives leak into the data that Governments produce. Probably to some extent it does, to be frank, even if that extent is just not looking too closely at passive measurements like food purchase trends or similar. |
