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Negative things tend to grab our attention, but the world is actually doing pretty well. The number of people living in poverty has been going down steadily si

by panic 11y ago

Negative things tend to grab our attention, but the world is actually doing pretty well. The number of people living in poverty has been going down steadily since the 70's, for example.

shoo 11y ago
sure. but the human world is consuming environmental capital (e.g. fish stocks, easily accessible fossil fuel reserves, soil, space in the atmosphere to harmlessly store pollution) at a rate that isn't anywhere near sustainable. as we continue to burn through this environmental capital over the next decade or two things will probably continue to get better on average, in terms of material standard of living, until things start to collapse. i think negative things really grab our attention once they're happening and we're feeling the immediate pain. i don't think negative things that will happen in the future sufficiently grab our attention (otherwise we wouldn't be running society this way - a way that dramatically limits our options a few decades down the line - would we?)
- chippy 11y ago
  It's a human psychology thing, and not that objective. Negative news (and The News is always novel, crucial, negative, threatening but...) is always heard in our present. This may seem obvious, but it means that it's really hard for humans to step out of time and see events with the lens of history. Our psychology, and the news panders to this, thinks that RIGHT NOW is the most crucial, important, serious of times of all times. Every year we think that. It is not that every year things are getting progressively worse. Not at all. It's that we cannot see things for what they are. Objectively and relative to each other, without our present day emotions.
  - zepto 11y ago
    The lens of history doesn't have much to say about the resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, nor about the giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world...
    - chippy 11y ago
      Imagine yourself in 100 years discussing that present (i.e. what the issues are in 100 years, not in 2016). You will have the same perspective, of now, the same level of urgency, the same levels of complexity, because you are living in the now. Thinking about how someone in the future will think of their present does not say anything about the facts around our present or future, but it speaks volumes about how humans perceive their present. Thus I would say that "resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world" are making now as the most crucial of times. Rather they are things that happen, as usual which because we are living in the now we take for being the most crucial of all time. We always look back 100 years ago and think "oh, they had it easy" And "Oh, they had it easy" doesn't mean that life is progressively bad, from garden of eden to the present day, that would mean that 100 years from now it will be worse than it is now. No, what it means is that we are humans who don't usually have perspective.
      - zepto 11y ago
        You are the only person I've ever heard saying that 'in 1916 they had it easy'. I agree that if we are facing new challenges 100 years in the future, they will seem critical whereas the solved challenges of our present will appear solved and therefore not as challenging as they seemed at the time. This seems tautological. I don't see how this is informative, or different from a platitude like "our problems don't seem so bad after we've solved them".
chippy 11y ago
Very wisely put. Humans never put things into temporal perspective - the Now, the present, is more important than at any other time. Thus, in 10 years time we will consider that Now to be more important than the now, well, now. And in 30 years time we will think that that now is more important than in 10 years or now. This invalidates this kind of present-ism. Now isn't any more or less important. It's probably, on the whole, less bad, less important, doing okay actually.

by panic 11y ago

Negative things tend to grab our attention, but the world is actually doing pretty well. The number of people living in poverty has been going down steadily since the 70's, for example.

shoo 11y ago

sure. but the human world is consuming environmental capital (e.g. fish stocks, easily accessible fossil fuel reserves, soil, space in the atmosphere to harmlessly store pollution) at a rate that isn't anywhere near sustainable. as we continue to burn through this environmental capital over the next decade or two things will probably continue to get better on average, in terms of material standard of living, until things start to collapse. i think negative things really grab our attention once they're happening and we're feeling the immediate pain. i don't think negative things that will happen in the future sufficiently grab our attention (otherwise we wouldn't be running society this way - a way that dramatically limits our options a few decades down the line - would we?)

chippy 11y ago
It's a human psychology thing, and not that objective. Negative news (and The News is always novel, crucial, negative, threatening but...) is always heard in our present. This may seem obvious, but it means that it's really hard for humans to step out of time and see events with the lens of history. Our psychology, and the news panders to this, thinks that RIGHT NOW is the most crucial, important, serious of times of all times. Every year we think that. It is not that every year things are getting progressively worse. Not at all. It's that we cannot see things for what they are. Objectively and relative to each other, without our present day emotions.
- zepto 11y ago
  The lens of history doesn't have much to say about the resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, nor about the giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world...
  - chippy 11y ago
    Imagine yourself in 100 years discussing that present (i.e. what the issues are in 100 years, not in 2016). You will have the same perspective, of now, the same level of urgency, the same levels of complexity, because you are living in the now. Thinking about how someone in the future will think of their present does not say anything about the facts around our present or future, but it speaks volumes about how humans perceive their present. Thus I would say that "resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world" are making now as the most crucial of times. Rather they are things that happen, as usual which because we are living in the now we take for being the most crucial of all time. We always look back 100 years ago and think "oh, they had it easy" And "Oh, they had it easy" doesn't mean that life is progressively bad, from garden of eden to the present day, that would mean that 100 years from now it will be worse than it is now. No, what it means is that we are humans who don't usually have perspective.
    - zepto 11y ago
      You are the only person I've ever heard saying that 'in 1916 they had it easy'. I agree that if we are facing new challenges 100 years in the future, they will seem critical whereas the solved challenges of our present will appear solved and therefore not as challenging as they seemed at the time. This seems tautological. I don't see how this is informative, or different from a platitude like "our problems don't seem so bad after we've solved them".

chippy 11y ago

Very wisely put. Humans never put things into temporal perspective - the Now, the present, is more important than at any other time. Thus, in 10 years time we will consider that Now to be more important than the now, well, now. And in 30 years time we will think that that now is more important than in 10 years or now. This invalidates this kind of present-ism. Now isn't any more or less important. It's probably, on the whole, less bad, less important, doing okay actually.