Report 002: Falling Birth Rates

> Connect the dots

● Women have never been better educated or had more opportunities. They have also never had their first child so late.

● Children have never been loved more. They have also never been more expensive in time, money and opportunity.

● Reliable contraception turned children from an expectation into a choice. Once something becomes a choice, it can be postponed.

● For most of history, children were also old age security. Today pension systems still depend on future generations, but fewer children are being born to support them.

 

Keep connecting the dots:

-United Nations World Fertility Report 

-OECD Society at a Glance 

-Human Fertility Database

Report 001: Cause of a Car Accident

> Connect the dots

● Ludwig Wittgenstein read a newspaper report describing a traffic accident that had been reconstructed in a Paris courtroom using miniature vehicles and dolls.

● The courtroom model was not the accident itself. It represented the relationships between the people, vehicles and events closely enough that those present could understand what had happened

● Wittgenstein used this insight while developing the picture theory of language in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. A proposition can represent reality without being reality itself. 

● No single witness describes the entire accident. Understanding emerges by relating multiple observations rather than relying on one complete narrative.

Keep connecting the dots:

-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914–1916 (29 September 1914)

-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

About dot.report:

This report illustrates the editorial philosophy behind this page. dots.report presents a small number of sourced observations for each report instead of a finished narrative. Readers are invited to connect the dots and form their own opinion.