A lot of population numbers are fake

Local perceptions of “witchcraft” and modern tech

• Several anecdotes describe engineers and NGO workers in Papua New Guinea and parts of Africa needing rules or rituals to avoid witchcraft accusations when deploying radios or drones.
• Commenters link this to a broader distrust of technologically opaque systems, likening social media (e.g., TikTok) to “hypnotic spells.”

Population numbers as tools of power, war, and colonialism

• One line of discussion claims external population statistics mostly serve imperial, colonial, and corporate interests (planning wars, extraction, or aid flows).
• Others counter that conquest historically proceeded with very rough numbers, and that modern military planning cares more about capacity and logistics than raw population.

Complexity, epistemic humility, and “simple questions”

• Long subthread argues over whether “how many people live there?” should be simple.
• Some say apparent simplicity usually comes from weak definitions and overconfident summaries; others argue clear definitions can restore simplicity, but only inside constrained systems.
• Several people praise the article’s call for epistemic humility: statistics rest on fragile, complex measurement systems that are easy to overtrust.

Census practice in richer countries

• Firsthand accounts from Chile and the US describe censuses as massive, imperfect operations, especially during COVID, shaping skepticism about “official” numbers.
• Other countries (Nordics, Netherlands, parts of Germany) rely on population registers tied to legal identity, addresses, tax, health, and schooling—seen as far more accurate but dependent on strong institutions.
• Even these systems miss undocumented residents, emigrants who never de‑register, and the homeless.

Incentives, fraud, and “fake” vs “inaccurate”

• Strong debate over whether “fake” is fair: some insist most problems are measurement error and uncertainty; others emphasize direct incentives to inflate or deflate counts for aid, representation, real estate bubbles, or prestige.
• PNG and Nigerian examples are cited as outright falsification; Russia, Venezuela, and some ex‑Soviet states are suspected of quietly massaging numbers.
• China’s figures provoke intense argument: claims of overcounting, undercounting, “missing” women, and population momentum are all aired, with no consensus.

Proxies, conspiracies, and bounds on error

• Commenters suggest bounding real populations using food imports, energy use, satellite imagery, housing density, transport ridership, and school enrollment.
• Most reject extreme claims that world population is under 1 billion as arithmetically impossible, but many agree that global totals and projections likely have larger error bars—and more political bias—than usually acknowledged.