How many people might ever exist, calculated 

Wow. I always liked the idea of leaving the world a better place than when you found it, but I never though about how that improves the lives of potentially quadrillions of people.

I'm glad Earth has almost reached 8 billion subscribers! this is such a huge milestone

One point I think is important to make, when you mention the predicted time span over which a mammalian species might exist, that doesn't necessarily mean _people_ have stopped existing, just that _homo sapiens_ becomes a common ancestor for those species-and it could indeed be plural "species", especially without FTL travel-whose people will exist 1,000,000 years from now.

I was really hoping to notice the Sun model get bigger as the 1,000s of years went by, but then thought, oh wait that wouldn't nearly be enough time, then you went ahead and covered it anyway lol, pretty awesome.

The final thoughts at the end reminded of a great insight someone thought: When in science fiction people travel to the past, they are always so worried that even the the most tiniest change there could drastically change the present, but why aren't we worried about the our most tiniest choices in the present having the same effect in the future?

YESSS FINALLY. HE'S BACK TO SAVE ME FROM BOREDOM

Being so early in the history of humanity gives us a crazy amount of influence. As time goes on and the populations increase, your likelihood of becoming a legend decreases dramatically. Just think how Aristotle, Hannibal, David, and Ramses are viewed as great heroes, even though compared with today there are probably many with equal or greater skills/accomplishments. Compare this with the Bonapartes, Churchills, Washingtons, and Maos that pop up today. The heroes keep getting rarer and rarer, but also greater and greater as the competition for titles increases. Just how powerful with the "great men" of the future be? Edit: 76 comments and counting; wow. Let this be a testament to how easily RU-vid commenters can artificially insert motive into a mild academic preponderance. Please note that I'm calling these people "great," not "good." By "great" I mean significant/famous; the kind of person you can read a book about and 90% of literate people are familiar with. Very few people reading the comments actually had to Google who Mao was. I'm also not insinuating anything about how people become "great." Whether this is by circumstances or by their own ability doesn't matter. Each of these people have had influences across centuries and will continue to influence as long as humanity remains in roughly its current state. There are more famous people than ever, but most are forgotten within a decade. Will Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, and Pope Francis stand time? All I'm saying is that if they do, they will be statistically less impactful than someone living at the time of Newton, Ghengis Khan, or Columbus.

I remember when population approached 5b. Projections were wildly out-of-touch, they were saying something like 10b by 2000 and 15b by 2015. EDIT: 5b instead of 6b.

Thank you. It is thrilling to even try to find precise questions that are pertinent to the context even if we know that our answers might be not close to the truth because they are based on too many unproved assumptions--this beautiful video did it very well.

Damn my initial guess of “around 25 probably?” was WAY off

As someone who, less than an hour before you uploaded this, watched "The Last Human" by Kurzgesagt, I am impressed by how similar your math it. He actually used the exact same book to base his video on, which makes me wonder if this is in the book...

I hope in the future there's people like you helping us understand such interesting thematics! Thanks so much!

Amazing video! Always look forward to your videos. Don't stop making these

I'm not sure if you'll see this but I just found about this channel. Thank you for the longevity and effort you put into the videos. I will be watching everything that have been uploaded so far and will be watching whatever's being uploaded. You're awesome!

You always make me feel so smart. Thank you!

Always a great day when Primer uploads. Thanks for another amazing video!

This is literally the 3rd channel that make a video of this specific topic today. And I'm suscribed to all of them.

Always a great video man, appreciate the work you put into each video.

Very happy to see an upload from you again.

Kurzgesagt, Rational Animations and yourself all made similar videos today! I love the differing viewpoints and ways to look into our future, very insightful. Keep up the good work!

Very interesting video! Love the way you're using your channel to promote the book's important ideas. We loved the book too :)

I'm so happy to see you delving into longtermism explainers. I still find it hard to grasp just how big the future is.

This is the earliest Primer video I've every been to!

Absolutely love your videos Primer, thanks for all the content!

4:15 I think this doesn't take into effect the massive strides we've made in postponing, preventing or outright reversing aging on the cellular level. The lifespan will increase dramatically once these become commonplace, or as commonplace as applied revolutionary medical procedures are today.

As the starman pointed out in the 1985 Sci-Fi movie “Starman”, our species is still so very young, with a lot of potential left. We need to make the most of our potential and “grow up”. If not for our current population’s sake, then for the future’s. This video really shows us how many people depend on us here, now, to do that. Thank you for crunching the numbers! I’m equally fascinated by these ideas you talked about, so I look forward to more videos on this topic!

You are so amazing and these videos give me so much hope to keep going. Thank you!

This is one of those channels that I immediately click on a new video for. Absolutely top-tier content, the effort put into these videos is crazy.

Saw that book on the Kurzgezaght latest video too. Seems obvious that we have some very smart people trying to help steer our future. I hope they choose the right direction, and if it is correct that we follow along.

EXCELLENT podcast series called "The End of the World with Josh Clark" that deals extensively with existential risks and was probably made with the help of some people in the sources used in this video. Extremely interesting, informative, and not at all as depressing as a title like "The End of the World" would lead you to believe. The episode focused on Biotechnology, which came out in 2018 I believe, is particularly worth a listen with how prescient it was about what would happen in the very near future with the COVID pandemic.

Yes a new primer video!!!!, it has been so long!!

Thanks for the well made video!

Hi King! 👋

Bro it’s been 9 months we need more videos

Thanks for another thought-provoking video! You're really good at explaining your thought process along the way

just picked up "what we owe the future" on audible, excited to give it a listen! thanks for the recommendation

"All humans die one day" Queen Elisabeth : 🌚

Your animations has improved a ton since your first video…

So cool that you made a video on that topic!

as always an amazing video that takes me on the best explanation that could ever have been thought of to explain such a complex topic. Amazing work and can't wait to see what is next!!!!!

If I had a nickel for everytime that Book was advertised to me today I'd have two nickels. Which isn't much but it's weired that it happed twice

Where has this man gone?

This is one of the best channels ever made, and I'm sad I haven't subscribed until tonight.

Wanted to say that I found your videos yesterday (THE ALGORITHM was finally good for something) and I very much enjoy your videos and your blobs!

It's not often this king uploads, but when he does, it sure is a surprise.

Kurzgezagt recently made a video exploring how many people could be born if we do go intergalactic, and If I remember correctly, it is in the Octillions, which is 10,000,000,000,000 bigger than 100 Quadrillion.

Wow! Incredible video! So many new thoughts in my head.

I love the videos you make. Thank you for all the effort!

This Will Mccaskell guy is setting the narrative for the YT videos I watch recently

7:50 Extra points for remembering Pluto

Almost done binge watching all of primers videos. Stumbled across them today and couldn’t get enough of them.😂

I love this channel so much

These videos about population tell us how unpredictable the future really is.

Dude Kurgestat, Rational Animations, and Primer all coming out with basically the same video at the same time is insane!

YESSSS I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW YOU'RE BACK

never expected the next video being so quickly

We miss your videos

To be fair, it seems pretty darn likely that if humans inhabit more solar systems or even galaxies that we are as good as safe from ever becoming extinct since it would take quite a lot in so many places all to happen at the same time

What a beautiful video, man, I almost cry seeing those animmations

You have finally updated the channel!

I seriously can't imagine what technology and human society will look like in a hundred years, let alone when the sun is about to die. Assuming we don't either kill ourselves, are exterminated by an theoretically possible advanced alien race, or are wiped out by a astronomical disaster like a comet or meteor strike, the possibilities are endless.

I love how this explanation can be applied almost fully as the justification of the human race in Warhammer 40k xD . Anyway good job with this video ! I love what you're doing ^_^

Another great video, man what a good channel

I've binged this whole channel and just now come to the realization that this is the last video

9 months and counting... does anyone know what happened?

Hey, Ik this is an old video but I've been binging your channel and thought your animations were so cool. I was wondering if you had any tutorials on that? or any resources you used that inspired your style? Amazing vids btw, cheers.

Nice, thanks for the great video

Thanks for the video

"But fortunately for us, blobs don"t have fingers!" 3:20

Tough engineering indeed! Great video!:)

Love the video

This was posted 8 months ago when I'm watching please come back we love your vids

And when the world needed him most, he vanished

I need more videos.

Amazing video!

Great video, bought the book!

On the point of population growth, the graph you yourself provided plus many others widely available showcase that countries meeting these thresholds of standard of living and economics etc don't actually gravitate and stabilise at about 2 children per woman, but go below this. Without getting into anything political, the totality of the population growth for countries in North America and Europe is going to be driven by immigration from countries with positive population growth and lower economic power / quality of life. Basically all of these North American and European countries, plus several other highly Westernised countries like South Korea and Japan, are at sub-replacement fertility levels. So once the existing human material from earlier and more fertile generations burns itself out, there would be massive population decline, at least of native populations. But as the quality of life in these more fertile regions of the world (mostly Africa, projected by the UN to have over 4 billion people by 2100 (nearly half of the total world population predicted for the time)) goes up and potentially matches or even excels that of the West (which may well decline in quality of life with fewer people actually existing to sustain the systems that enable it), a global population decline until resources become abundant again or quality of life and its paradoxically anti-natal consequences reduces is likely to occur.

3:05: Note that the Malthusian Trap is a simplified version of reality. Now, if we can't figure out some way to live in space, we _are_ limited to a finite carrying capacity*, but that carrying capacity depends on a wide range of factors that Malthus didn't consider. To take a simple example: Even without changing available technology, trade can greatly increase the carrying capacity of a region, since it allows sub-regions to specialize in the crops that grow best there (rather than needing to grow _everything_ you need within a day's walk of home). *Technically I guess we're still limited to a finite carrying capacity if we _do_ figure out how to live in space, it's just a carrying capacity large enough that we'll likely run out of stars and other energy sources before we reach it.

This was a really interesting video to watch keep it up :)

Please do more videos I love them ❤

Rest In Peace

The fascinating thought for me regarding all of this is: at what point of future human evolution would we be defined as a separate species to our ancestors? As evolution is an incremental process, the point of speciation can be very hard to pin down with any certainty.

Very interesting, makes you think about your existence in a new light!

I love your style. Keep it up

1:08 its crazy how we are just so little of the percentage of all the humans that have ever existed on this earth

"How many people will live in the future??" Zero, if I play my cards right

I love this!

Man this video got pushed under the algorithm. I'm a subscriber and I only seen this 4 months ago

82 years is already Australian lifespan, but there are probably loads of countries that are like, 50 or 60, but to get 82 for the entire world… it’d be a big achievement.

Given the debate surrounding longterm-ism, this might **literally** be the most important question to answer.

Great content

This channel is awesomeeeee

Watching this video right after Kurzgesagt's new doomerist video is a breath of fresh air. So nice to see someone providing positive things we can do instead of just showing how bleak things have gotten or could be

V The “I miss Primer” Button

This is a video with everyone inside it. It makes me feel special

Thanks for the book recommend.

can't wait for the simulation where the blobs try and escape the dying solar system

Using 10.4 per year is a bit misleading as, as you said, 10.4 billion is the projected PEAK population (according to the United Nations). If you look at the graph you showed at 4:23, the data actually shows a negative trend after the world population reaches 10.4 billion.

I like the perspective from the end.

Haven't bought a hardcover in ages but subject intrigued me.