1. I will immediately say that I do not quite agree with Winston Churchill, who is said to have remarked that " it is short-sighted to look too far ahead." Much depends on the choice of the object, the definition of the goal (scale), prerequisites (limitations), and forecasting tools. The article and book by A.V. Akimov make an original and methodologically interesting attempt (as I understand it, by means of iterative adaptations) to make a long-term forecast of the world population, and contain an analysis of major global perspective problems related to demographic growth in one way or another, which can hardly leave any specialists indifferent. 2. But, like many, he is filled with skepticism about the adequacy of future forecasts (although the population size, due to a certain inertia inherent in its dynamics, seems to be somewhat better suited to "forcasting"). The fact is that bifurcations1, qualitative shifts, and the results of the interaction of factors, including random determinants, are quite poorly predicted (in addition to known unknowns, there are known unknowns), especially when certain catalysts occur, the nature of their action is known, say, in 100-200 years or more (and in the article and book we are talking about a three-hundred-year forecast horizon) , we don't know much that is certain. It would be good to "catch" at least the sign of the process (growth/fall), extremes, inflection points. In this sense, I agree with J. M. Keynes, who emphasized: "I prefer to be roughly right, than precisely wrong". I believe that in this regard, the words of Napoleon are by no means meaningless, who, although he naturally had less information about the prospects for world development than we did, came to the conclusion that "nothing is impossible." In the long run, if we think realistically, we cannot exclude both "garlands" of surprisingly beneficial discoveries and inventions and periods of so-called belles epoques, as well as cascades of violence, genocide, ... Read more