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I think you misunderstand my criticism. On a very simplistic level, the article can be reduced to three statements: 1) A minority of people today believe that

I think you misunderstand my criticism. On a very simplistic level, the article can be reduced to three statements: 1) A minority of people today believe that life is getting better for humanity 2) Between 18XX and today, life improved (at least as measured by the examples given) 3) There are challenges facing humanity for the future and there is no guarantee that life will continue getting better I'm not disputing any of the points or data sets in the article, nor am I disagreeing with the author. I am simply disappointed that at an article which barely touches on the issue of whether life is currently improving or not is misleadingly titled 'Life is getting better for humanity'.

epistasis 10y ago
What you're saying would seem to imply that there's a reason to believe that all the trends in the article have stopped or reversed. Looking at the data provided, the trends are smooth and showing improvement at this moment in time, so I think that contention is reallt clearly false. If you're saying something else, I would like to hear it! But I so far have not been able to divine a different meaning.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  the point i think is that you cant use average living condition as a source for validating whether living conditions are getting better on average especially since we know that wealth and benefits of modern technology isnt actually getting evenly distributed. compared to 1800 sure, compared to 1960's not so sure.
  - epistasis 10y ago
    This article is not about averages where outliers drive up the metric (like wealth or income), it is about defined cut points. I'm still not seeing how that would relate to what he is saying, though. We are talking about the world, and the world getting better, which the data shows it clearly is. And the "is" is important there, that's the current trend we have.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      The world is getting better for some. For others all hope of a future where they ex. have a job is increasingly common. It all really depends on how you measure it.
  - hsitz 10y ago
    At the very least, evidence demonstrating a persistent, long-term trend would seem to be evidence in favor of the trend applying to the current day. Especially when the main thing driving people's perception that life is _not_ getting better seems to be media reporting that fails to focus on the big picture. In other words, the world could be improving while (of course) human lives are partly bad. Focusing on the bad --which can always be found -- and not on the overall general trend skews our perception about whether and how things are changing. Of course, there could be countervailing reasons (and evidence) that the general trend does not hold currently, like the suggestion that (a) distribution of benefits has become more uneven and (b) this uneven distribution may make things worse overall than they were before the benefits existed in the first place. There are lots of ways people could try to provide evidence that the general trend somehow no longer applies. But I think the linked article points out: this sort of evidence is not what media is giving. News media points out that something is bad, sure, but it fails to place it in broader context. The broader context is one of general slow improvement over long periods of time, which is something that we don't get from the news; news media likes to focus on today's bad things, long general trends are not "newsworthy". Also, as the article suggests, even today's positive evidence for the general trend is not newsworthy, in part because it is so pervasive and boring (e.g., every day 130,000 fewer people are living in extreme poverty). Something that happens regularly every day is not "news". (Or maybe the 130k fewer people thing is not news mostly because it's a good thing. The rate of murders and/or car accidents can be fairly stable, but people seem to have an appetite for hearing about each of these bad things as it happens, so that's what news reports.)
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      I am not listening to media and I am not saying it can't get better (post-scarcity is not something I believe is impossible for instance) but you have to be very precise when you make these kind of statements as they are ignoring the reality for many people. Just a simple fact that children today are less likely to live a better life than their parents in the west is worth thinking about. It might be an indication that yes life is improving globally but that does not mean it improving in a way that is proving this trend to continue.
  - jcam3ron 10y ago
    > cant use average living condition as a source for validating whether living conditions are getting better on average ...sorry, but what you just wrote doesn't make any kind of logical sense
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      It's means that you can't measure the living conditions of the individual by looking at generalized statistics and measures.
  - corysama 10y ago
    But, the data is not arguing about averages... It's showing that the for the vast majority of people on Earth, life has been getting steadily better for a hundred years. If anything, it's showing that the benefits are getting unevenly distributed in favor of the world's poorest. It's just that there's so many of them that that's still spread pretty thin. The amount of digging for "Sure... but... I can still think up problems in the world!" in these comments is pretty incredible. Try to be happy for the vast majority of people on Earth --even if we are not living in a universal idealized utopia.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      Thats not the point though. I am well aware that primarily the developing world are doing better, that is true but it is also trivial. The real question is what we do with those in the developed world. You are of course welcome to not find the issues we are talking about important but Trump and Brexit happened because of exactly that.
      - em500 10y ago
        > I am well aware that primarily the developing world are doing better, that is true but it is also trivial. The real question is what we do with those in the developed world. As someone who came from the developing world and still have a lot of family there, I find these statements pretty offensive.
        ThomPete 10y ago
        That was not the intention. Care to elaborate why?
        mjohn 10y ago
        Saying it's trivial that the developing world is improving could be interpreted as the developing world lacking importance in comparison to the developed world. Did you mean it was easy to achieve (not that I would agree with that either).
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
What you're saying, essentially, is that if you only have a one-sided derivative (change in conditions from past to present is known, but not from present to future), you shouldn't call it "the derivative" (i.e., you shouldn't say things "are getting" better). I can perhaps agree, as a technical matter, but I think your criticism is over-sensitive for a non-math paper.

epistasis 10y ago

What you're saying would seem to imply that there's a reason to believe that all the trends in the article have stopped or reversed. Looking at the data provided, the trends are smooth and showing improvement at this moment in time, so I think that contention is reallt clearly false. If you're saying something else, I would like to hear it! But I so far have not been able to divine a different meaning.

ThomPete 10y ago
the point i think is that you cant use average living condition as a source for validating whether living conditions are getting better on average especially since we know that wealth and benefits of modern technology isnt actually getting evenly distributed. compared to 1800 sure, compared to 1960's not so sure.
- epistasis 10y ago
  This article is not about averages where outliers drive up the metric (like wealth or income), it is about defined cut points. I'm still not seeing how that would relate to what he is saying, though. We are talking about the world, and the world getting better, which the data shows it clearly is. And the "is" is important there, that's the current trend we have.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    The world is getting better for some. For others all hope of a future where they ex. have a job is increasingly common. It all really depends on how you measure it.
- hsitz 10y ago
  At the very least, evidence demonstrating a persistent, long-term trend would seem to be evidence in favor of the trend applying to the current day. Especially when the main thing driving people's perception that life is _not_ getting better seems to be media reporting that fails to focus on the big picture. In other words, the world could be improving while (of course) human lives are partly bad. Focusing on the bad --which can always be found -- and not on the overall general trend skews our perception about whether and how things are changing. Of course, there could be countervailing reasons (and evidence) that the general trend does not hold currently, like the suggestion that (a) distribution of benefits has become more uneven and (b) this uneven distribution may make things worse overall than they were before the benefits existed in the first place. There are lots of ways people could try to provide evidence that the general trend somehow no longer applies. But I think the linked article points out: this sort of evidence is not what media is giving. News media points out that something is bad, sure, but it fails to place it in broader context. The broader context is one of general slow improvement over long periods of time, which is something that we don't get from the news; news media likes to focus on today's bad things, long general trends are not "newsworthy". Also, as the article suggests, even today's positive evidence for the general trend is not newsworthy, in part because it is so pervasive and boring (e.g., every day 130,000 fewer people are living in extreme poverty). Something that happens regularly every day is not "news". (Or maybe the 130k fewer people thing is not news mostly because it's a good thing. The rate of murders and/or car accidents can be fairly stable, but people seem to have an appetite for hearing about each of these bad things as it happens, so that's what news reports.)
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    I am not listening to media and I am not saying it can't get better (post-scarcity is not something I believe is impossible for instance) but you have to be very precise when you make these kind of statements as they are ignoring the reality for many people. Just a simple fact that children today are less likely to live a better life than their parents in the west is worth thinking about. It might be an indication that yes life is improving globally but that does not mean it improving in a way that is proving this trend to continue.
- jcam3ron 10y ago
  > cant use average living condition as a source for validating whether living conditions are getting better on average ...sorry, but what you just wrote doesn't make any kind of logical sense
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    It's means that you can't measure the living conditions of the individual by looking at generalized statistics and measures.
- corysama 10y ago
  But, the data is not arguing about averages... It's showing that the for the vast majority of people on Earth, life has been getting steadily better for a hundred years. If anything, it's showing that the benefits are getting unevenly distributed in favor of the world's poorest. It's just that there's so many of them that that's still spread pretty thin. The amount of digging for "Sure... but... I can still think up problems in the world!" in these comments is pretty incredible. Try to be happy for the vast majority of people on Earth --even if we are not living in a universal idealized utopia.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Thats not the point though. I am well aware that primarily the developing world are doing better, that is true but it is also trivial. The real question is what we do with those in the developed world. You are of course welcome to not find the issues we are talking about important but Trump and Brexit happened because of exactly that.
    - em500 10y ago
      > I am well aware that primarily the developing world are doing better, that is true but it is also trivial. The real question is what we do with those in the developed world. As someone who came from the developing world and still have a lot of family there, I find these statements pretty offensive.
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        That was not the intention. Care to elaborate why?
        mjohn 10y ago
        Saying it's trivial that the developing world is improving could be interpreted as the developing world lacking importance in comparison to the developed world. Did you mean it was easy to achieve (not that I would agree with that either).

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

What you're saying, essentially, is that if you only have a one-sided derivative (change in conditions from past to present is known, but not from present to future), you shouldn't call it "the derivative" (i.e., you shouldn't say things "are getting" better). I can perhaps agree, as a technical matter, but I think your criticism is over-sensitive for a non-math paper.